A Fantastic Ecommerce Experience

Posted by Paul on May 29, 2015

As an ecommerce professional, I'm always paying extra attention when buying online. I look closely at the websites I'm using, their marketing and introspectively at my own buying processes. So when I see something particularly good, it makes me want to share it with our clients.

I'd recently bought some bathroom taps online from www.tapwarehouse.com. The buying process was noticeably good, but nothing to write home (or to our blog) about. It was a very specific and non-standard type of tap I needed to fit our basin so the usual Homebase / B&Q / Plumbase were out. Amazon and eBay also, unusually, drew a blank.

So I went to Google and did a search for the type of tap and switched to "Images". Instantly I was able to see the right type of tap and clicking "Visit Site" took me to a page on tapwarehouse where the price was pretty reasonable. The website loaded quickly, the UI was clean and the buying process simple. At the end of the checkout it asked if I wanted to create a password so I could check up on my order, selling the benefit to me. It was a nice little step that converted me from a Guest to a Registered User with very little extra effort and a clear benefit. So far so good but nothing outstanding, although I did get a strong feeling that their ecommerce systems were cutting edge.

It wasn't until I revisted the taps online a few days later that I received the following email:

Needless to say I was impressed, although I did wonder how they knew. Of course they must have seen the cookies that were set in my browser when I bought the tap.

There were a lot of things I liked about this though, for a start "Anything we can help with?" was very friendly and made me feel like I could contact them easily to ask about my order. Even the wording, "a little browsing spree" was comical and cute, yet professional.

In the end I didn't ask them anything, or "Continue shopping" as I'd already bought, but I did come away from my inbox feeling like they were a professional company who were incredibly pro-active and on top of things and were very keen for my business and to keep me happy.

You can achieve something similar in OpenCart with one of the "Abandoned Cart" extensions such as AbandonedCarts, although tapwarehouse go one step further by emailing people if the abandon the website even without adding to their cart.

Have you been impressed by an online shopping experience lately? Would you like to receive an email like the above or would you feel it's too much? As always, let us know in the comments!