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With an online store, a brand is not able to see the customer shopping in real-time. No one's there to hear if there's a confusion at the checkout, no one there to smoothen the way if a visitor starts to say, "What the heck is going on with that cart?" or no one physically there to check if package got delivered in the condition promised. That is why ecommerce mystery shopping is an incredibly useful practice: it allows brands to put themselves in the shoes of its actual users and experience the digital shopping cart, checkout and delivery process as a real consumer would.
What Is Ecommerce Mystery Shopping?
Ecommerce mystery shopping is the process of engaging skilled mystery shopper agencies to deploy trained evaluators who act as true consumers browsing the website, searching products, and following through till the products are received. Mystery shopping is generally used to determine if a feature is functional, whereas internal QA testing is used to gauge if the feature works from a customer's perspective.
Evaluators don't skip any steps, don't have any special access, have no shortcuts, and the results are what an ordinary customer sees and experiences even the little things that internal teams, who know the platform inside and out, might not notice.
Assessing the Overall Online Shopping Experience
The online shopping experience is influenced by much more than simply the catalog of products. It encompasses the simplicity with which a consumer can discover what they need, the degree of trust they are able to put in the web page, pricing transparency and offers, and the responsiveness of chat or help. Mystery shoppers assess this experience overall, sometimes assuming various customer roles — in the first visit, one who returns for a repeat experience, a customer looking for a comparison, or someone using a discount code.
Common criteria that are usually assessed are:
- The ease of navigating from the landing page to the product discovery page.
- Product information, pricing and offers presented in a clear manner
- How well the repair team responds to your inquiries (chat, email, or phone)
- General level of trust and professionalism presented by the site.
Even if things aren't going wrong on the website, online buyers can simply click to another website and forget about it in a matter of seconds, with plenty of options right at their fingertips.
Evaluating Website Usability in Detail
Experience takes a broad view, whereas website usability zooms in on the nitty-gritty of how the website works for a real user. A website may be attractive but it can be difficult to use, such as pages that take too long to load, filters that aren't working, menus that are hard to navigate to, or search functionality that provides irrelevant results.
Typically, mystery shoppers look for usability through:
- Using different search terms and filters to find specific products
- Testing if products load properly with images, sizes and specifications on different devices
- Grasping the value of site speed and responsiveness, both on desktop and mobile devices.
- When using common tasks such as adding a coupon code, comparing two products
An outside, unbiased evaluation is one of the best ways to notice the sites quirks that usually go unnoticed by the internal team that are familiar with the site.
Scrutinizing the Checkout Process
The checkout process is often the most lost opportunity for e-commerce businesses to lose customers. Even with every other aspect of the shopping experience down under perfect, still, industry-wide cart abandonment rates are high, and much of that loss is due to checkout friction, such as unexpected costs, too many form fields, limited payment options, or confusing error messages.
The key elements that are evaluated in mystery shopping checkout reviews include:
- If the shipping costs and taxes are revealed at the last minute instead of up front
- How many steps and fields does it take to make a purchase?
- The availability of preferred payment methods and reliability thereof.
- Order confirmation is clear and timely delivery of the receipt or confirmation email is timely
Optimizations that take place at checkout, including those identified by real evaluator feedback, can have a direct and measurable impact on conversion rates as they are the last stage before checkout.
Tracking the Shipping Process
A purchase is just half the task. From ordering confirmation to the delivery at the customer's door, the shipping process is a significant factor in whether the customer leaves a bad review or becomes a repeat customer. Mystery shopping also continues in this post purchase stage and assesses:
- Whether the promised delivery time is adhered to or not
- The accuracy and ease of use of order tracking information
- The condition of packaging and if the product arrives undamaged.
- How delivery exceptions (e.g. late deliveries, missed deliveries, etc.) are conveyed to the customer.
Many e-commerce brands spend a lot of resources driving traffic to their store, but little resources in tracking customer behavior after they do the checkout. The application of mystery shopping fills this gap by making shipping a relevant part of the customer journey, and not merely a logistics back-office job.
Running an Operational Audit Behind the Scenes
In addition to the customer experience, professional audit and merchandising services can be used to provide an overall operational audit of a brand's ability to deliver the experience promised, across regions, product categories, or third-party logistics partners. For some brands, they excel in one city, and they don't in another because of the different courier you are using or different fulfillment center.
Operational audits are usually based on mystery shopping findings and review the following:
- Uniform delivery schedules for regions/warehouses
- Whether and how return/collection and refund processes are effective
- Web site accuracy in stock availability (if applicable)
- Whether the information provided to customers is accurate, up-to-date, and thorough
This operational lens is made possible by an individual mystery shopping visit which can now be used as a network-wide diagnostic tool, resolving any systemic issues instead of just the complaint itself.
Turning Insights Into Action
The true advantage of ecommerce mystery shopping is what happens post-evaluation! Brands that are successful with this data typically:
Focus on improving UX as needed, not as assumed;
- Support a pain point identified by the evaluators at checkout for use in simplifying checkout processes.
- Embrace delivery performance metrics to hold logistics partners accountable in an objective way.
- Keep refining experience based on ongoing comparisons between regions, devices and customer segments.
Rather than being a single event, regular mystery shopping is an ongoing pulse check and ensures that the digital experience remains in line with what customers are expecting.
Conclusion
Every click, page load and delivery update become a part of the brand experience in ecommerce, where customers are never able to physically walk into a store. Ecommerce mystery shopping provides businesses with an unparalleled and honest insight into their own platform -- from the initial browse to the final delivery, it is a shopping experience, website usability, checkout process and the shipping process that strengthens or subtly undermines trust. If you're serious about minimising drop-offs and encouraging repeat customers in your e-commerce brand, then mystery shopping is more than just a UX audit, it's a complete end-to-end reality check on the promise you're fulfilling.
