B2B pipelines can move slowly. There are often large amounts of money on the line, and for buyers, their decisions could affect the future of their careers.
Each step of the customer buying experience has to take this into account to ensure that buyers don’t get cold feet at the last moment. Once you’ve done the hard work of convincing them your solution is right for them, the last thing you want is a clunky, impersonal buying experience sending them running for the hills.
To help you avoid this and improve the buying experience, Hushly has collected 10 great buying experience examples that you can use starting today.
The Difference Between Customer Experience and Buying Experience
The best way to understand the distinction between customer and buying experiences is to imagine buying experiences as a piece of the larger customer experience.
From the moment they become aware of your solution to after they’ve made a purchase, the customer experience continues to evolve. It encompasses everything from their interactions with your representatives to their service needs, future purchases, and marketing experiences.
The first piece of the customer experience—and one of the most important—is the buyer experience. The buyer experience takes place before the customer has made a purchase, and reoccurs anytime they do so again. It includes things like their exposure to marketing, their experience with sales reps, the ease with which they checked out, and how quickly their products are delivered post-purchase.
Why Buyer Experience Is So Important
According to research by Gartner, companies that focus on providing a great buyer experience grow twice as fast as companies that don’t.
An excellent buyer experience is seamless, addresses the buyer’s needs, and keeps their frame of mind front and center. It facilitates checkout, provides the next steps, and delivers the product promptly and on time. By acting as a guide on the journey, your marketing and sales materials should always be ready to provide contextual, relevant information that keeps the buyer moving toward a purchase.
A bad buyer experience is clunky. It doesn’t accurately address buyer concerns. It fails to convince the buyer that your solution is right for them because the content available to them just isn’t relevant to their situation. It’s impersonal, hard to navigate, and results in fewer conversions and slower growth.
10 Buying Experience Examples
At every step of the buyer experience, your process needs to be capable of meeting buyer needs, or they could churn and the sale will be lost. To form a truly great buying experience every time, try implementing any of these 10 good experience examples from across the web.
1. Simplify the Buying Process Like Shopify
Shopify is a company with an extremely user-friendly interface and streamlined checkout process for its buyers. The ease with which buyers can use the interface means once the decision to purchase is made, there’s no friction on the path to purchase.
2. Automate Lead Nurturing
The faster you respond to a lead, the more likely you are to convert them. Waiting longer than 5 minutes to respond to a lead decreases your odds of qualifying them by up to 80%.
A fast response indicates to the buyer that you’re interested in their business and ready to respond to any questions or concerns they might have. Automating this process is the best way to ensure you’re always on top of leads as soon as they come in.
3. Provide Detailed Product Information Like Amazon
The easier a buyer accesses information related to the product, the more streamlined you’ll make their research process. This not only helps them understand your solution but even adds value by reducing their time spent searching for information.
A famous example is Amazon’s product detail page which provides detailed product descriptions, customer reviews, and Q&A sections to help customers make informed purchase decisions.
4. Offer Demos Like Hushly
Letting a buyer try out your product before they commit to purchasing is a fine way to add value and improve the odds of conversion. It displays confidence in your product and good faith for the buyer.
Hushly is an all-in-one AI-powered marketing platform for B2B marketers. We offer to build a personalized demo for each of our prospective buyers to help them understand how easy our product is to use and how powerful our solution can be for them.
5. Provide Personalized Recommendations Like Netflix
A personalized content hub is a great way to display relevant marketing materials to prospective buyers.
Netflix is a well-known example. Their algorithm is trained to find the content you’ll love and place it at your fingertips. This type of personalized recommendation removes friction and cuts down decision fatigue.
6. Offer Fast and Reliable Delivery
Whether you’re shipping a physical product or delivering a SaaS solution, it needs to be ready and waiting as soon as the buyer has completed their purchase. Any unnecessary delay in this step could throw up big red flags for a buyer and make it far less likely they’ll buy from you again.
7. Provide Excellent Customer Service
When it comes to running a business it’s sometimes said that the customer is always right. Though it’s an exaggeration, the spirit of the rule is true. By focusing on keeping buyers happy—even if it means taking a short-term hit—you’ll earn valuable trust and keep your reputation sterling.
In short, remain solution-oriented and always look to resolve conflicts in ways that keep the buyer happy and willing to buy from you again.
8. Offer Self-Service Support Options Like Atlassian
Atlassian is a B2B SaaS company that offers a range of products designed to help teams collaborate and manage projects more effectively.
Atlassian offers a comprehensive knowledge base and community forum to help customers find solutions to their problems. This enables their buyers to research on their own anytime and anywhere they see fit. It also ensures that any questions they may have are answered quickly and efficiently, reducing friction in the buying experience.
9. Offer Value-Added Services Like Salesforce
Salesforce is a leading CRM and sales automation platform. In addition to their core services, they add value for their buyers with services such as consulting, implementation, and training.
Advertising value-added services display confidence in your product as well as your company’s ability to continue to add value even after the initial purchase. It’s a great way to help skeptical B2B buyers convince themselves that working with your company is right for them.
10. Track Your Process Performance and Optimize over Time
There is no perfect buying experience. Each buyer is unique. Their situation will call for different marketing materials, sales tactics, and lead nurturing.
Start by choosing a few metrics to keep track of that will help you know whether your process is working as intended. Then, review it periodically for opportunities to optimize your buyer experiences.
Hushly Can Help You Create the Best Buying Experiences Possible
Hushly is an all-in-one buyer experience platform that can help you craft personalized and effective buying experiences regardless of what market you’re serving.
Our platform is easy to use, flexible, and includes features like:
- Personalized content hubs
- Personalized, self-nurturing landing pages
- Comprehensive conversion analytics
Check out a demo of Hushly today and see how we can help your business capture more leads, convert them, and grow.
