In 2023, about half of retailers plan to spend more on improving customer experience and retaining existing customers. It’s no surprise with the rising cost of digital advertising, shrinking e-commerce margins due to increased logistics costs, and a high chance for a recession in the US and other markets. Creating a post-purchase experience that inspires confidence in your brand and fosters customer relationships will be crucial to keep e-commerce shoppers coming back to you through the bumpy year ahead.
Looking at the best of the best experiences across 700+ brands that partner with parcelLab, we’ve put together a list of 10 tips on how e-tailers can customize branded tracking pages for better engagement and repeat purchasing.
1. Your shipment tracking page should be built into your brand experience
Having a branded tracking landing page that’s separate from your e-commerce shop creates two problems. First, it turns consistency into a nightmare for your e-commerce and marketing teams. They have to duplicate your brand look and feel, and every time you update your website, they need to make changes in multiple places. It almost always results in errors, inconsistencies and things becoming outdated. Second, an order status page hosted through a third-party does not contribute to building your site’s SEO authority. You’re wasting valuable traffic that could not only boost your domain, but also drive shoppers back to your e-shop. Retailers using embedded shipment tracking pages with proactive notifications typically see around 3 out of 4 customers return to their web shop! Giving them new opportunities to reconvert customers and making their marketing and e-commerce investments work harder for them – so they get more bang for their $buck!
“Our customers now receive all post-purchase messages directly from us, in our corporate identity and the Order Status page on our site has created some very valuable traffic.”
– Christian Schab, Head of E-Commerce, 11teamsports
2. Real time order and returns tracking
This one’s a little trickier. Connecting data sources across your tech stack — warehouse management and fulfillment hubs, payment systems, ERP, CMS, shop systems and customer service platforms — with your carrier data and post-purchase platform is the only way to get real time order tracking from checkout to your customer’s door and back for returns. Not only is it necessary to meet ever increasing customer expectations when interacting with the shipment tracking page, but it’s critical that customer service agents also have the latest status information when customers call for support. With the right data, you can also proactively handle more complex deliveries, like showing a combined view for split-shipments on the order status page. So, customers will know what’s in each package and when it will arrive, reducing inquiries and improving customer experience, win-win!
3. Be prepared to add shipment tracking page alerts
Business continuity plans have been challenged and updated over the past few years – from major weather events to supply chain disruptions and labor strikes. There have and will continue to be no shortage of complex situations outside of retailers’ or carriers’ control. It’s therefore vital to be proactive in communication with customers, in order to keep support teams from being overwhelmed with “where is my order” questions. Customers tend to have a lot of empathy for brands they know are trying their best. So, make sure you are equipped to handle the unexpected, for example customizing tracking landing pages with exception alerts. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst!
4. It’s not just delivery, it’s ready for pick-up
Customer order status pages aren’t just for home deliveries. Online shoppers expect a more omnichannel experience. Buy online and pick-up in store ‘BOPIS’ and curbside pick-ups have grown exponentially and can be great options for last-minute or impulse purchases. Branded tracking landing pages can be used to show “ready for pick-up” status updates, and help retailers reduce costly support inquiries – typically by around 24%! Customize your order status page with directions to store or pick-up locations, opening hours and any changes to usual operating hours, to help ensure successful pick-ups. Because smoother pick-ups make for happier customers and fewer inquiries – now that’s a reason to smile 🙂
__“parcelLab provides all parties with more transparency in the otherwise opaque shipping process. The customers know the current status of their order and we know whether everything is running smoothly with our logistics partners.” __
- Robin Jakoby, E-Commerce Product Owner, Gravis
5. Make customer order tracking multilingual
Half of US retailers ship internationally so it’s important to customize tracking landing pages to fit each region. Customers want a consistent experience no matter where they are shopping from. Extra localization efforts, such as regional language variations, address, date and time formats, will give customers a feeling of familiarity and trust, and make your experience stand out – so you can grow your international presence faster.
6. Omnichannel customer order tracking
While a branded tracking landing page on your website is key, it’s not the only place your customers will expect to find 24/7 real time order tracking information. This one is related to tip 2 above, with proper APIs and data connection options you will be able to deliver all the info customers want via their preferred channels. You can allow shoppers to sign up for SMS shipment tracking alerts via the order status page. Or help customers find order tracking in your ‘My account’ pages, via your app, on social channels, or integration with your chatbot. Delivering updates your customers want via their preferred channels, will increase engagement and reduce the need for support outreach.
7. Personalized shopping recommendations
Integrate your recommendation engine and display merchandise on branded order tracking pages to encourage customers to shop while they wait. Suggest accessories, add-ons and other products related to the order or customer purchase history to boost follow-on purchases and increase your customer lifetime value. Retailers using personalized recommendations on their order status pages and in proactive notifications have been able to achieve a 19% revenue increase – someone’s celebrating!
8. Integrated marketing campaigns
Amplify marketing campaign efforts by targeting your customers when they’re highly engaged. Connect your shipment tracking page with your CMS to save even more time. It’s a great space to showcase your current celebrity, back-to-school, seasonal, or holiday campaigns for improved engagement. Make those marketing dollars $$$ work harder for you! Or present exclusive access, sneak peeks, discount codes, and other incentives to increase and accelerate re-purchases.
9. Add social proof to your branded tracking experience
Differentiate your brand by making your community a part of customer order tracking. For example, you can share beautiful imagery from your Instagram account and influencers to create an emotional connection with your customers. Include tips and tutorials that get customers excited for their unboxing experience and create a sense of community that builds loyalty. Nothing drives repeat purchases like a bit of inspiration!
10. Understand customer sentiment
Add thumbs up/down polling to your branded order tracking page to better understand carrier performance and post-purchase communication satisfaction. Pairing sentiment data with your customer order tracking and logistics performance stats can help identify where problems truly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. With these new insights you’ll be able to take action where it really matters, like building new communications flows with goodwill gestures to recover from experiences that didn’t go to plan.
Building a branded order tracking page is easy with parcelLab
Implementing a new branded tracking page and your first post-purchase communications journey is low effort and can be done in just a couple of weeks.
You’ll need to configure your order and tracking data exchange, provide access to carriers and 3PLs, and share any existing communications templates and content. Your parcelLab implementation team will connect and validate your carriers, configure your business logic and build out your communications. After you review and approve everything, update DNS records, and add our JS snippet to your order status page, you’ll be set to go live!
You will also be assigned an entire onboarding team with implementation and account managers, engineering and operations support so you can fully customize your tracking landing page in your brand look and voice.
Take your branded tracking experience to the next level and drive real business value. We can help you:
- Ease customer order tracking anxiety and reduce “Where is my order/return?” calls by 25% or more
- Drive engagement:
Lidl saw 85% of customers return to shop
Hessnatur had a 365% increase in quality customer reviews - Retain customers:
Weltbild had 5% fewer returns
Lidl saw a 12% increase in basket size
If you’d like to learn more, book a demo today.
It’s quick, easy to arrange and by far the best way to explore our post-purchase platform.
Sources:
2023 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 Retailers, Digital Commerce 360
Digital Marketing Quarterly Trends Report Q2 2022
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