Customer success story: Leveraging the logged in experience to drive loyalty & improve CX

Often overlooked because it’s not part of the direct purchase funnel, your logged in or ‘account area’ experience is a critical part of your customer journey, particularly if your brand relies on regular repeat purchase. In this article we put forward 3 important use cases for the account area and showcase Incontinence Choice – a GENE client who’ve put the logged in experience at the heart of their strategy. 

3 simple ways your account area can improve customer experience

With the ever growing importance of first-party data it’s never been more important to encourage engagement with this part of your website. An intuitive, accessible sign up/sign in journey is vital, but once you’ve got customers logged in there are three popular use cases that are proven to positively impact retention:

Delivering a personalised experience

“Think of your website’s account area like in-store staff. They remember your customers, help them with questions about past purchases, and suggest new products based on their preferences.” says Sophie Alway, E-Commerce Solutions Specialist at GENE. 

With this in mind, think about your (perhaps hypothetical) in store team and the value they add for customers. How much of this experience can you bring online? Product recommendations are a quick win, while surfacing products for repeat purchase is proven to add value. We’re also seeing more and more examples of retailers bringing offers and discounts inside the account area (instead of promoting via site-wide banners) as a way of adding value but also incentivising log in.

Utilising self service to reduce customer service enquiries

Whether it’s updating address details, changing credit card information or tracking a recent purchase, allowing your customers to self-serve via your account area not only provides an improved experience, but will save vital customer services resources.

And the more you can automate, the better. Research suggests that 56% of e-commerce sites fail to integrate full tracking information into the account area. So if you can integrate fully with your shipping provider you’ll be providing an experience that not only meets customer expectations, but is also likely to be better than your direct competitors.

Improving the returns process

According to the Baymard Institute, 13% of people would be unlikely to shop again at an e-commerce store if they had a bad returns experience. With costs of acquisition rising, you simply can’t afford to be increasing customer churn with a clunky returns experience. 

Your account area is the perfect place to provide customers with the information, and the capability required to make that journey as smooth as possible. This could be as simple as generating a return, or providing FAQs but we’ve also seen some great examples of retailers gathering ‘reason for return’ information or providing the capability to swap or exchange a product instead of returning. 

Client case study: Incontinence Choice

Incontinence Choice is the UK’s leading online marketplace for incontinence products, and their subscription offering aims to revolutionise the £14 billion incontinence industry. 

In order to hit those lofty ambitions, their website needed more than the out-of-the-box Adobe Commerce/Magento account area. They wanted to put their customers first and create an experience that covered all possible journeys and probable tasks. And they asked us to help them bring it to life.

Combining real customer insight (gathered via surveys, users testing and customer service interviews) with quantitative data, our teams created 9 key user journeys and set about building an improved account area that covered all those customer needs. 

With an updated design and new functionality now live, we reflect on some of the project highlights:

Improved navigation and UX 

New features and functionality were a vital part of this project, but our teams understood that the information architecture and account navigation were just as important. With a new and improved dashboard design that focuses on reducing friction, customers are now able to access everything they need from one simple interface. 

Surfacing ‘Buy Again’ functionality

A key part of this project was creating a custom ‘Buy Again’ page. This page shows customers a list of all the products they’ve previously ordered, making it easy for them to quickly reorder right from their account area. This is particularly important for Incontinence Choice customers who are likely to purchase the same products on a regular basis.

Improving self-service payment capabilities

Choice Shops recognised the importance of managing payment methods and wanted to reduce the number of requests coming to their call centre. The new design also incorporated adding a new payment method, including Express Payments, via their account area.

Don’t be afraid of order cancellation

Incontinence Choice found great success by adding a cancel order button on the order success page, order confirmation email, and account area – available for customers to use up to 30 minutes after placing an order. 

Rather than negatively impacting revenue, 90% of all ‘cancellations’ actually resulted in a customer amending their order, and in 70% of those cases, they increased their order value by choosing faster delivery or adding more items.

Improved order tracking

A key project feature was the addition of a comprehensive order-tracking interface for Incontinence Choice customers. It shows the estimated delivery date, a delivery progress bar with all shipping updates, and a link to the courier’s website if required.

To further reduce the number of customer service calls, this feature provides order tracking not only for logged-in customers but also for guest users too, via a tracking page and a ‘Track Order’ button in every order confirmation email.