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Improving the Student Experience through eCommerce: Best Practices

The internet now influences almost every sphere of life. With over 4.4 billion people now using the internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), it is understandable that society now borrows a lot of influence from online sources. Most internet users go online to research products and brands before making purchases. Ecommerce websites are among the most visited online platforms and they go to great lengths to provide delightful experiences to shoppers. College students are among the most intense internet users and when they search for thesis writing help from online sources, they expect similar customer experiences to what they enjoy from shopping sites such as Amazon and Alibaba.

To provide a pleasant customer experience to users, educational sites including colleges and universities, writing services among others must borrow ideas from their ecommerce counterparts. This article explores the ways in which educational websites can improve the students experience using ecommerce best practices.

1. Providing Excellent Customer Support

Ecommerce websites are renowned for their amazing customer support systems.  When shopping on Amazon or any other online store, you will most likely encounter live chat pop-up offering to provide assistance. If you have any questions, there is someone on the website to answer promptly.  

Users also find email, phone, social media networks and contact forms on these shopping websites.  These are aspects of every educational website should borrow. Whether you provide essay writing services or you run a college website, you can improve students’ experience by providing 24/7 support services. There are tools such as chat bots available to enhance user experience and you should invest in the same.

2. Audience Research

Ecommerce websites such as Amazon have invested heavily in customer research.  One of the main reasons these online stores succeed is because they take time to understand their audience and create experiences targeting them. There is no guesswork involved in online marketing and all content created and published has a target customer in mind.

Colleges, universities and other educational websites can learn and apply the same principles when building their websites. If you want to target students, you have to understand what they like and dislike, intense audience research will help you create website design and content that suits your target audience.

It is one of the most important steps in improving students’ experience when they visit your website. You should create personas, check competitor websites, read comments from students, pay for research and data, use free marketing tools, carry out surveys and use forums such as Quora to query students’ thoughts.

3. Easy Navigation

Web design is a crucial aspect in delivering the best user experience. Ecommerce websites invest heavily in ensuring easy navigation. According to a recent study, 38% of internet users top interacting with a website if the layout or content is unattractive. In the same study, 48% of users cited web design as the number one factor in determining the credibility of a brand.

If your web design doesn’t promote easy navigation, you are most likely losing potential customers. If students are your main target customers, you can improve their experience on your website by investing in the best navigation. You can do this by diving categories and labeling them clearly, make all navigation elements clickable links, accurate navigation titles, improve your website’s search feature and making sure every clickable image has an ALT Text.

4. Leveraging Students’ Feedback

It is important to utilize feedback from your website visitors in the bid to improve their experience. Shopping websites invest heavily in data collection and if you want to make your website attractive to students, you have to incorporate their ideas.

Some of the techniques to gather feedback from students include use of pop-up surveys on your site, use of a feedback button, offering an incentive to get feedback, using live chat to ask for feedback, asking why visitors want to leave your site and by using data from web analytics.   If you make it easy for users to give feedback at every point of contact, you will get invaluable information to improve the site.

5. Social Media Engagement

Most internet users are on social media networks and ecommerce websites make content with this in mind. They make sure their products are easy to share on social media and also share the same on the most popular platforms.

 If you have a target market among students, you need to up your content marketing strategy by creating content that they can easily share on social media. You should also post your content on these platforms and link back to your website. Most internet users trust brands with a social media presence and for this reason, you have to include social media links on your website.

6. Follow Up on Users’ Engagement

Online marketers work hard to drive traffic to their websites but this is not the end game. The main idea behind attracting traffic to a shopping store is to convert. As such, website owners use different strategies to engage the user throughout the purchase journey.

They nurture the lead until the conversion point and even afterward. This is something educational websites targeting students should learn. When creating your marketing strategy, your goal should go beyond attracting students to your website.

You should have follow up strategies to increase the chances of conversion. For instance, if you run a college website seeking to enroll students, you should follow-up on the user’s engagement up to and after they enroll. By constantly engaging with the student when they are on your website, there is a higher chance of conversion. The student will love the experience and this helps to achieve your website’s goal.

The ecommerce industry continues its incredible growth trend that seems unstoppable and there’s a lot to learn from the strategies shopping websites use. If for instance, you run a student accommodation website, you have to go beyond asking “what can you afford in rent,” and show your target customers options available in specific markets. Use video marketing to show different rentals and this will keep students coming to your site. By utilizing strategies that ecommerce websites already use, you will deliver the best student experience on your website which in turn helps to achieve your goals.

About the author

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Marry Maddyson

I'm a web content writer and a learning consultant from New York City.
I work at an education company which shares persuasive speech topics to students.