Around 73% of your customers will decide whether to buy from you based on the customer experience (CX) you provide. Buyers want interactions that are quick, helpful, knowledgeable, and friendly. These might seem like obvious customer expectations, but delivering on them requires a strategic approach.
Intelligent CX, driven by AI, automation, and data analytics, is on the rise. When 70% of buyers expect technologies like AI to be integral to their brand experience, digitizing every step of the customer experience becomes vital.
The good news: investing in digital customer experience (DCX) pays off in measurable ways. Companies that invest in customer experience see more than 50% higher revenue, greater brand loyalty, and enthusiastic word-of-mouth referrals.
In this article, you’ll learn how digitizing customer experience impacts your growth alongside 10 solid digital customer experience management tools for turning website visitors into buyers.
What is CX digitization?
CX digitization uses digital tools to make buyer interactions smoother, more efficient, and personalized across multiple channels such as websites and mobile apps. Think: websites that remember user preferences or chatbots that provide 24/7 support.
By adopting these technologies, retailers can provide faster and more convenient customer experiences, leading to higher satisfaction and stronger customer loyalty.
Digital customer experience vs. customer experience
Digital customer experience zeroes in on how customers engage with your brand through digital platforms such as websites, social media, mobile apps, and online chats. DCX aims to refine these digital touchpoints and improve customer satisfaction.
Customer experience covers every interaction a customer has with your brand, online and offline. DCX is a subset of CX—while DCX deals with managing online communities and chatbot interactions, CX includes all of that plus everything from in-store experiences to personal customer service.
The benefits of digitizing the customer experience
Improved customer satisfaction
A seamless, personalized experience across all digital touchpoints simplifies the buying journey. This approach helps convert prospects into satisfied buyers.
Happy customers are willing to try new products, pay up to a 16% price premium on your offerings, and share their positive experiences with at least six others, amplifying your sales and potential customer base.
Higher retention rates
Poor customer experience will quickly drive away your customers. According to a PwC survey, even when people love a company or product, 59% will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience. When you lose one loyal customer, it will take around three new customers to compensate for this loss. However, a strong digital customer experience can improve retention and repeat purchases compared to companies that do not pay attention to CX.
Better word-of-mouth marketing
Word of mouth is the leading source of brand discovery and can have a massive impact in expanding your brand’s reach. Happy customers often become loyal advocates, eagerly recommending your brand to others. This organic word of mouth drives new customer acquisition more effectively than any other marketing efforts.
10 strategies to digitize the customer experience
- Personalized marketing
- Omnichannel engagement
- Self-service portals
- Chatbots and AI assistants
- Mobile optimization
- Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)
- Loyalty programs
- Customer journey mapping
- Interactive content
- Feedback collection
1. Personalized marketing
Generic marketing will cost you sales and customer love. Customization is the first step toward exceptional customer experience, with 71% of buyers expecting it from brands and 70% ready to spend more on companies that offer personalized experiences.
Start your personalization efforts by digging into customer data to create rich user personas. Most customers are willing to share data if it makes their brand experience more meaningful.
Next, segment your customers by categories like demographic groups, buying trends, and online activity patterns. Then, target each group with tailored content, product suggestions, and relevant offers. Use your CRM data and AI-powered marking tools to test and refine your approach.
Take, for example, how Shopify helped Vahdam India tailor its global wellness brand for different markets. Vahdam used Shopify’s advanced features to create region-specific pages and improve its checkout process with timers, upsells, and testimonials.
As a result, Vahdam tripled its direct-to-consumer revenue, improved conversion rates by 25%, and maintained a solid 100% CAGR with 40% repeat business.
2. Omnichannel engagement
Offering your buyers a seamless brand experience across all sales platforms—website, app, social media, and offline stores—makes your customers’ lives easier and improves your chances of conversions, retention, and word-of-mouth referrals.
In fact, some 70% of customers are willing to pay more for brands that deliver excellent omnichannel experiences. Yet only as mall fraction of companies have truly nailed the offline and digital customer experience strategy so far.
Lifestyle brand Jenni Kayne, for example, was hitting a growth ceiling due to disconnected sales channels and operations. The brand turned to Shopify’s point-of-sale (POS) system for a solution.
Shopify helped unify inventory management, created seamless customer profiles across channels, and added custom tools. As a result, Jenni Kayne more than doubled its retail presence within a few years and built solid client relationships.
3. Self-service portals
Self-service portals help customers find answers and manage basic tasks without a customer service agent’s help. Examples include knowledge bases, password resets, service requests, and incident logging.
Around 39% of millennials prefer checking a company’s FAQ before reaching out for support, showing a clear preference for self-service options. But these portals aren’t meant to replace human customer care representatives. Human interactions are more important than ever today, with more than 82% of US customers saying they want more human help in the future.
Rather, these portals are designed to complement human services by saving time and providing a seamless customer experience. They also free up human employees to solve more complex customer issues.
4. Chatbots and AI assistants
AI-powered chatbots provide 24/7 support and are set to become the primary customer service channel for about a quarter of businesses by 2027. They alleviate pressure on your support team by answering FAQs, such as:
- Do you ship to my country?
- Where is my order?
- What’s your return policy?
- Can I exchange this item?
- How do I set up this product?
Integrate artificial intelligence into your website and mobile apps to improve product recommendations and customer service. Tools like Shopify Magic, for example, use AI to generate SEO-friendly product descriptions, boost email marketing, and turn live chats into sales opportunities.
5. Mobile optimization
Optimizing your ecommerce website for mobile is non-negotiable today, with 60% of American adults saying mobile is crucial to online shopping.
Here’s how you can optimize your website for mobile:
- Make sure your web pages load quickly on mobile devices. Even a fraction of a second’s delay can cost you sales. Quicker load times also improve user experience, engagement, and search engine rankings.
- Make key elements like the homepage link and checkout button always visible for easy access.
- Use high-quality images to appeal to the visual nature of mobile browsing.
- Focus on the essentials, such as product name, price, and call to action, to keep the screen space decluttered. Tuck additional details into collapsible menus.
- Add a sticky “Add to Cart” button that’s always visible as users scroll.
Mobile optimization is about reimagining the user experience for smaller screens and on-the-go browsing. So, focus on speed, simplicity, and ease of use.
6. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)
Augmented reality (AR) overlays digital content, such as images, sounds, or other sensory details, onto the real world through devices like smartphones or smart glasses. For example, if you own a furniture store, AR allows customers to try your products in their own environments before purchasing.
Take the case of Polish furniture maker Oakywood, which struggled with custom orders due to the buyers’ difficulties visualizing the final product. After migrating to Shopify and using Shopify AR, Oakywood could allow its customers to generate 3D models of custom furniture pieces and virtually place them in their homes.
This innovation led to a 250% increase in sales of important products, and a significant growth in average order value (AOV) across several markets.
Virtual reality (VR) moves users to an entirely different environment, immersing them in a fully digital world through a headset. In the automotive industry, for example, VR helps create virtual showrooms where customers can explore and customize vehicles in an immersive setting.
AR and VR give your customers an immersive product experience that helps them make more confident buying decisions. Fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff noticed that people were 65% more likely to place an order for their products after experiencing it in AR.
“We're always looking for exciting ways to connect and inspire shoppers with our new designs,” says Uri Minkoff, Rebecca Minkoff’s co-founder and CEO. “Now with video on our Shopify Plus ecommerce store, Rebecca Minkoff shoppers will see our collections brought to life.”
📌 Pro tip: With Shopify AR, you, too, can increase buyer confidence with 3D models that give your buyers a true sense of the size, scale, and detail of your products.
7. Loyalty programs
Some 79% of US consumers consider brand loyalty programs crucial for repeat purchases. These programs typically fall into one of four categories:
- Points program: Rewards customers with redeemable points for perks and discounts. Think Southwest’s Rapid Rewards.
- Tiered program: Offers escalating rewards based on customer engagement and spending, providing more dedicated buyers with exclusive benefits. Starbucks Rewards is a great example.
- Paid program: Provides benefits for a recurring fee, offering immediate value. Amazon Prime is the gold standard in this category.
- Value-based program: Aligns customer spending with charitable contributions, tying purchases to social impact. Lush’s Bring It Back program is a great example.
Through a well-structured loyalty program, you can increase repeat sales, retain more buyers, gain customer trust, and boost organic growth. The key is to align your program with your brand values and customer preferences.
8. Customer journey mapping
Customer journey mapping tracks the buyer’s path from their first encounter with your brand to their final purchase.
Start by tracking each stage of the customer’s journey—browsing your website, making a purchase, and leaving customer feedback. Then, gather data through analytics, surveys, and social media to get a clear picture. Analyze and diagram the data to create a customer journey map.
Remember, this path isn’t necessarily linear, but it can typically be divided into stages like awareness, consideration, acquisition, service, and loyalty.
Customer journey mapping reveals insights into things like your customers’ demographics and the time they take to move through each stage. It also shows you any bottlenecks in their path so you can fix them.
For example, through journey mapping, vegan protein bar company Misfits discovered that US-based Gen Z consumers were their top customer demographic. So, as a part of its recent campaign, Misfits is seeking college ambassadors to promote its products across US campuses.
Continue to revisit and refine your customer journey too. Use insights to drive improvements and regularly update and refine the map to keep it fresh and relevant.
9. Interactive content
Interactive content involves users through quizzes, polls, games, and interactive videos. While traditional content is passively consumed, interactive content uses tools like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create experiences that respond to user actions.
Due to the active engagement factor, customers spend more time with brands sharing interactive content, leading to almost doubling conversion rates and a 79% higher brand recall rate than static content.
Interactive content is also more reusable and shareable. You can easily update quizzes, calculators, and similar elements without creating new content, and users are more likely to share such content on social media.
10. Customer feedback collection
To improve your customer experience, actively listen to your customers. Eighty-three percent of customers are faithful to brands that listen to and act on their feedback.
Collect customer feedback through focus group interviews, surveys, social media, online reviews, direct messages, and emails. Find out the recurring themes and pain points to focus on areas needing attention.
If customers complain about slow delivery speeds for ship-to-home orders, for example, outsource it to a logistics service like Shopify Fulfillment Network. The service connects your store with Flexport who will pick, pack, and ship orders. You’ll benefit from discounted shipping speeds and fulfillment expertise to speed up the process.
Whatever changes you’re making, let customers know when you make changes based on their feedback. This information builds trust and makes them want to engage more with your brand.
Your next step toward digitizing customer experience
Just one bad experience can turn 17% of buyers off, so when digitizing customer experience, prioritize strategies that make your buyers’ journeys from awareness to loyalty easier.
Memorize the basics: Customers want you to quickly solve their issues in a friendly manner. This could look like a fast-loading and mobile-friendly website, an intuitive self-service portal, or a brand that acts on buyer complaints.
But you don’t have to do all this alone. Platforms like Shopify are there to help you at every step of your customer experience digitization efforts.
Digitizing the customer experience FAQ
What is digitizing customer experience?
Digitizing customer experience means using digital technologies to improve customer interactions with a company. It involves converting traditional touchpoints to digital formats like apps, websites, or chatbots for more efficient and accessible services.
How do you digitize customer journey?
Map customer touchpoints and identify areas to prioritize your digital transformation efforts. Implement digital solutions at key journey stages and use customer data analytics to improve the digital experience.
How important is digital customer experience?
Digital customer experience is critical to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability. Good digital experiences provide 24/7 access, personalization, and faster service, giving businesses a competitive advantage and a way to meet customer expectations.
How do you engage customers digitally?
- Create personalized content across digital channels
- Use data analytics to understand customer preferences
- Offer customer loyalty programs or rewards schemes
- Optimize the digital experience for mobile users
- Enable self-service support
- Implement interactive features like live chat and customized recommendations to build connections
