The basic ecommerce account allows customers to access their order history, update their contact information, and reset their password.
The basic ecommerce account is not designed for growth and as a result misses opportunities for both the customer, you the product managers, and the company.
Moreover, the account offers a valuable chance to collect feedback, incentivize loyal customers, motivate them to share and endorse your company with others, and gain a more comprehensive understanding of their behavior and interactions. The account provides the perfect opportunity to enjoy these advantages for both our company and our customers.
Growth-optimized accounts
A growth-optimized account provides:
For your customers:
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The basics:
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order history
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customer profile
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Related information on products
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Up-sell and cross sell options
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Deals and specials
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Other products and services available
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Robust help and customer service / contact methods
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Likes, favorites and update on items you’ve tagged
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Useful and personalized content
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What’s happening and new with your company
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Personalize the UI: show what’s more relevant to the customer based on what you know about them
Fo you (product manager and company)
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Deep data and insights about your customers
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Trends about how your best customers interact with you
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Receive easy feedback and recommendations from users
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Better metric performance such as higher conversion, AOV and LTV.
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Potential churn signals from your best customers.
How Account works
A customer account is actually created on the back-end server side of the ecommerce application when someone makes a purchase, this is “required” to track for financial and legal purposes and not an option.
Without this information we can not process returns, track shipments and payment and a complete accounting ledger ready for potential audits. The basic account is built and tracked based on the customer’s email, phone number or both.
The key differentiator with what is referred to by customers as an Account is providing a way for the customers to access this information.
In order for customers to access their account they just need to add a password to the information they already provided to make a purchase.
The only additional step for customers is to create a password, or additional 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) means of accessing their account.
Having access to an account is also beneficial for customers so if they have a question about a purchase or return they can quickly find the information without having to contact support and potentially wait.
In fact even in case of guest purchases it’s best to offer a self service way for customers to access their purchase history.
From the product manager point of view the Account can be an interface where we can learn more about customers, present valuable information to them and increase engagement.
On the financial side, increased engagement in a well designed account will lead to better unit economics on key metrics such as lowered CAC, higher purchase frequency and ultimately higher LTV.
High acquisition cost is a specially challenging side of retail with an increasing cost to acquire new customers so any positive impact on lowering CA is significant growth level.
The goal for product leaders is to move customers from transactions to a relationship, ultimately a valuable and trusting partnership.
As consumers we all know shopping for the right products is not easy. It is time consuming and often inconvenient even online because search is so difficult across the Web. A trusted retailer can save a lot of time and hassle for their existing customers.
Content
Content is a key part of personalizing the account experience for customers, and building trust along the way.
For instance, if you are selling running shoes, you can provide training videos that offer guidance on improving running techniques. Similarly, if your business revolves around skateboards, you can assist customers in enhancing their skateboarding skills.
However, it is important to not limit this valuable content to just the website. By moving such valuable resources to the customer's account, you can ensure that they truly appreciate the unique benefits they receive from your company.
Notifications and reminders play an important role in maintaining customer attention although we need be careful not to spam customers.
In general if someone has purchased a product from you in the past, sending them “useful” information once in a while will not offend most people. Note that by “useful” I mean useful for them, not just you!
Implementation considerations
When looking at implementing an optimized ecommerce account we need to consider multiple sides of the completed implementation.
Here’s an example of a template from a popular ecommerce platform account.
As we can see there is nothing special or exciting about this account, it’s purely transactional. This is what lost opportunity looks like.
Optimizing ecommerce Account pages
On the functionality side we want to plan out user registration to users’ ability to create and manage profiles, allowing customization and the addition of profile pictures, features like wishlists and favorites, notifications on discounts or restocks, personalized content dynamically curated based on user data, enhanced engagement, and relevance.
Also pay attention to design, UX and UI, as this can actually be a differentiator in modern consumers minds as well as highly mobile optimized including potentially native apps.
Also important are providing comprehensive order history and tracking details, communication preferences, personalized discounts, and loyalty programs, customer support, feedback mechanisms, and adherence to data privacy regulations.
Amazon has one of the most extensive and optimized account experiences. As we can see below there are a range of capabilities offered to customers to extend the basic account.
In fact Amazon has made the conscious decision to not allow anyone purchase from it without an account so it’s clear they understand the value of the account and their results, being the largest ecommerce company in the US, speak for themselves.
Every option here has been carefully evaluated and tested, and that continues every day. Especially on the mobile version there is limited real estate for displaying options so there is competition even inside Amazon on which features get on the menu.
Optimizing the Account is a worthwhile investment for ecommerce product leaders to unlock growth opportunities many competitors fail to capitalize on.