Online customer experience determines the success of your business. If you’re an e-tailer, you know that a single mistake can be enough to drive a buyer away. In fact, almost 85% of consumers stop buying after a bad online shopping experience. If you haven’t already done so, it’s high time to optimize your digital customer journey, especially in a post-Covid context where buying habits have changed for good. Before the health crisis, online shoppers focused on price and speed of delivery. Today, 61% of consumers¹ rank the quality of customer service as the most important factor in their purchasing decisions. What does this prove? That the customer experience is now a powerful sales lever. If you don’t optimize it, you run the risk of missing out on sales and just as many customers. So, what are the new codes of online customer experience? And above all, how can you integrate them into your e-commerce business? Let’s find out

Online vs. in-store customer experience: what are the differences?

Customer experience (CX) is the overall perception a buyer has of your brand throughout their interaction with your store. In a physical outlet, this experience is based on tangible elements: welcome, human contact, advice, ambience or product testing. On the web, however, it’s all done through digital interfaces and virtual interactions, which profoundly changes the game. Online, this physical contact doesn’t exist, which can make the shopping experience impersonal, and this is all the more the case on marketplaces due to the uniformity of stores. As an e-tailer, your challenge is to compensate for this lack of direct contact with a fluid, reassuring and engaging user experience. Today’s buyers expect :

• Clear information.
• Fast exchanges.
• Personalized options.
• A fluid user interface, from landing page to checkout.

Please note: each channel has its strengths and limitations. A physical store offers direct contact, while an e-commerce platform offers greater freedom and immediacy. A store is also limited by its opening hours, logistical constraints and queues, whereas an online presence guarantees 24/7 access.

Why is it essential to optimize your online customer experience?

E-commerce customer experience, or marketplace customer experience, is not just about satisfying a one-off need: it has a tangible impact on your long-term sales performance. In fact, 86% of shoppers are willing to pay more for an excellent online customer experience². What’s more, a satisfied customer is a loyal customer, and that makes a real difference to your sales performance. A study by Harvard Business Review³ proves it: a 5% increase in the loyalty rate can generate up to 95% additional profits.

When there’s no physical contact, the website or marketplace becomes the only point of interaction with the buyer. So everything must inspire confidence. This means careful visuals, authentic customer reviews, smooth navigation, clear delivery times and accessible customer service. If you can do this, here’s what you’ll achieve:

• Better conversion and fewer shopping cart abandonments.
• Improved customer loyalty and higher average shopping basket.
• Positive word-of-mouth, with more reviews, recommendations and ratings on the platform.
• Enhanced visibility, especially if you’re present on a marketplace like Rakuten, where your Merchant Quality Score influences the placement of your products on the BuyBox.

Note: customer demands have evolved. They now want responsiveness, clarity and control at every stage of the buying journey

What are the trends in online customer experience?

In e-commerce,customer experience doesn’t follow a single model. To stay competitive, you need to know your customers inside out. Remember that expectations can vary according to :

• The type of customer (persona): a young urbanite in a hurry, a housewife, a retiree or a high-tech equipment enthusiast do not have the same expectations.
• Type of product: a ready-to-wear purchase does not require the same level of reassurance as the purchase of a luxury item.
• Time of purchase: during certain periods, such as sales, customers may accept longer delivery times.
• Your brand image: the more upscale your brand is perceived to be, the more demanding the requirements.

Faced with this diversity of behaviors, you need to know your customer base inside and out, so you can continuously adjust your purchasing path. In 2025, you can rely on several innovations to upgrade your customer experience and stay competitive:

• Advanced personalization options: product, content or offer recommendations tailored to the customer’s profile and buying behavior.
• Omnichannel journey: offer a consistent experience across all channels (website, app, social networks, point of sale).
• Self-service customer service: with easy access to dynamic FAQs or help centers to resolve problems without human contact.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): intelligent search engines, 24/7 chatbots and predictive analytics to anticipate needs.

While practical, these developments reflect a strong expectation on the part of consumers: greater simplicity, more autonomy and more responsive customer service, whatever the channel used.

Fragmentation of the purchasing path

The digital customer journey is now segmented into several stages. Indeed, a buyer may discover a product via an advert on Instagram, read reviews on a forum, compare prices on a marketplace, buy on another platform… then pick up their order at a pickup point or in-store. Your role in following this path is therefore to propose a navigation that is all the more fluid and intuitive, including:

• A clear user interface with visible CTAs.
• A high-performance search engine to find the right product quickly.
• Intelligent recommendations based on visitor behavior.
• A frictionless checkout: a sales tunnel with as few steps as possible.

Mobile at the heart of the online customer experience

Today, the mobile is the main point of entry in the customer journey. In fact, 74% of e-commerce purchases worldwide are made via smartphone⁴. And this figure continues to grow, particularly among buyers aged 18-35. To remain successful, your store must therefore offer an impeccable experience on mobile with :

• A responsive site or Progressive Web App (PWA).
• Fast loading, even with 4G.
• Navigation adapted to small screens.
• A simplified purchasing tunnel, with no unnecessary distractions.

Please note: With a poorly optimized site for mobile, you’ll miss out on many sales. With a few simple steps (content optimization, right image dimensions), you can already improve your mobile customer experience.

The importance of personalization in the online customer experience

What your buyers are looking for in 2025 is a tailor-made customer experience. That’s why personalizing your buying journey is essential today. Consumers want targeted messages, relevant suggestions and personalized shopping paths. They expect an experience that recognizes their preferences and rewards their loyalty. And unsurprisingly, it all starts with the very first navigation, with:

Note: you can easily implement these actions by exploiting your customer data (cookies, purchase history, browsing, abandoned baskets…). But there are limits to what you can do. Only collect useful data, systematically ask for your customers’ consent before soliciting them (GDPR requirement) and always leave the user in control of what they receive.

A well-thought-out and properly implemented strategy is capable of significantly improving customer satisfaction and generating more repeat purchases.

How does AI affect the customer experience?

In 2025, artificial intelligence will add a new dimension to theonline customer experience. Its role: to intervene at every stage of the customer journey, with, for example:

• Intelligent search engines that suggest the right items even with approximate queries.
• Predictive AI that anticipates a customer’s needs and suggests the right offers at the right time.
• Automated data cleansing and segmentation by AI directly in your CRM, for more targeted and effective campaigns.

On the customer service side, AI complements the human and takes over many tasks. An intelligent chatbot can handle simple questions 24/7, freeing up your teams for more complex cases. In practice, an AI-assisted agent receives a summary of the customer file before even taking over, saving precious time

The benefits for your store are many: constant availability, faster service and large-scale customization. But be aware of AI’s limits:

• Risk of dehumanization if AI completely replaces human contact.
• Importance of transparency: always inform your customers that they are interacting with a bot.
• Management of sensitive data: the data collected and used by your AI assistants must remain GDPR-compliant.

Rakuten France’s conviction is that AI is indeed a strategic asset, but this tool must always remain at the service of humans, and work in tandem with real e-commerce experts.

As you can see, today, the online customer experience is a strategic lever that constitutes much more than a simple marketing asset. Whether you’re a seller on the Rakuten marketplace or an independent e-tailer, you have the means to act on every step of the journey to transform the purchase into a relationship. Make the most of it!

Sources:
¹Qualtrics, Top consumer experience trends for 2024
²Alma, Expérience client e-commerce
³Harvard Business Review, E-loyalty: your secret weapon on the web
⁴ Fevad, Les chiffres sur le mobile commerce

Have you prepared your energy labels for June 20, 2025? From this date, a new European regulation will make it compulsory for smartphones and tablets to display energy labels, espacially on marketplaces. But beyond the legal obligation, this information is also a key purchasing driver for consumers, who are increasingly sensitive to their environmental impact and to controlling their energy consumption.

In this article, we will examine :

• What is the Energy Label?
• Why it’s becoming essential to your business
• How to make the most of it and optimize your product sheets?
• How to attract eco-responsible customers
  

What is the energy label and how does it work?

The energy label is provides information to consumers about a product’s energy performance on a scale generally ranging from A (very energy-efficient) to G (energy-intensive). The products concerned by this new obligation are smartphones, tablets and, in some cases, other electronic equipment, depending on the evolution of European regulations.

The label also considers several product attributes. For example, an A-rated smartphone will have better autonomy and lower consumption than an E-rated smartphone. Similarly, a B-rated tablet will be more shock-resistant and easier to repair than an F-rated model.

What’s more, each label displays a number of criteria that go beyond energy consumption:

• Battery life.
• Drop resistance.
• Ease of repair.
• Service life.
• Protection against water and dust.

Why is the energy label essential on marketplaces?

According to a recent survey, 70% of French online shoppers prefer environmentally friendly products ². What’s more, the steady rise in electricity prices (50% on average in Europe over the last 5 years) is also increasing the attention paid to the energy consumption of appliances. Thanks to the energy label, consumers can make better choices, enabling them to:

• Save money;
• Reduce their environmental impact;
• Encourage the purchase of repairable and more durable products.

Good to know: professionals who fail to display this information by June 20, 2025, run the risk of sanctions, as compliance with the new standards will be monitored by marketplaces and the authorities. What’s more, over and above the obligation, the energy label is also a marketing asset to be exploited: in fact, a brand that promotes transparency and eco-responsibility increases customer loyalty.

Do you see this development as a challenge? Rakuten is committed to working alongside e-tailers to help you make this transition with complete peace of mind. In fact, our platform is actively working for more sustainable and responsible e-commerce. Here are just a few of the many advantages that Rakuten offers to support your sustainable development:

• A team dedicated to verifying the conformity of products on the marketplace.
• The signature of a commitment charter to reduce the environmental impact of e-commerce ³.
• Active promotion of second-hand goods, with over 50 million second-hand items available.

How can you highlight the energy label of your products on your marketplace?

To grow your business in the world of e-commerce, you need to succeed in capturing the attention and inspiring the confidence of buyers. To do this, you need to optimize your product sheets and take care with the presentation of the energy label. Here are a few practical tips to help you do just that:

• Include the energy label in the photo gallery of your product sheets.
• Detail key information in the description:
  • Energy class (e.g. B)
  • Battery life (e.g. 30 hours in standard use)
  • Shock resistance (e.g. certified for 50 drops)
  • Repairability (e.g. easy-to-replace battery)
  • Protection against dust and water (e.g. IP68)

Check your compliance by ensuring that all data corresponds to the criteria required by the new regulations.

There’s no doubt about it: with a well-presented product and clear, accurate information, you’ll increase buyer confidence and improve your conversion rate.

How can you attract more eco-responsible customers to your online store?

Given the pressure of competition, it’s no longer enough to have a good product to attract an increasingly committed clientele. What you need to do is take a stand and make your values clear. If that’s what you’re aiming for, here are a few effective avenues to explore alongside the energy label:

• Highlight your commitment to the environment, for example, by mentioning your initiatives to reduce your carbon footprint.
• Offer sustainable products by favoring repairable, reconditioned or recycled materials.
• Rely on true transparency by clearly indicating warranty periods, repairability and your quality commitments.
• Use engaging marketing messages with taglines like :
  • “Do your bit for the planet with this energy-efficient product.”
  • “Opt for a sustainable and responsible appliance.”

Ultimately, displaying a compliant energy label is also an excellent way of reassuring and convincing environmentally conscious buyers. Don’t hesitate any longer, and get a head start on the market!

The 2025 summer sales kick off on Wednesday June 25 and run until Tuesday July 22. For all e-tailers, this period, governed by summer sales regulations, is a highlight in the sales calendar. It’s an opportunity to boost sales, build customer loyalty and attract new buyers. It’s a key moment when consumers are equipping themselves for vacations, outfitting their exteriors or renewing their wardrobes. Certain categories benefit particularly from this seasonal dynamic: fashion, garden, home, leisure, high-tech and travel equipment. Good news: you still have a few weeks to prepare for the 2025 summer sales. Take the opportunity to get a head start, as competition is even fiercer at this time of year

Summer sales, a decisive moment for your e-commerce sales

Online summer sales are always eagerly awaited, and for you they represent a tremendous opportunity for growth. In France, 54% of consumers plan to buy during the sales¹. Unlike other online promotional events such as Black Friday or flash promotions, which last 24 hours or just a few days, summer sales are spread over several weeks. They also involve many more items. And several other factors reinforce the commercial potential of summer sales:

• An active clientele, in search of bargains and more inclined to buy during this period.
• Higher average shopping baskets: consumers take advantage of discounts to treat themselves to products they might not normally have considered, especially higher-end items.
• Increased prominence on marketplaces: during sales, platforms like Rakuten adapt their interface, deploy dedicated banners, send out targeted CRM campaigns and offer special operations (boosted cashback, exclusive coupons, product prominence). These key marketing actions enable you to gain visibility without any extra effort on your part.

Good to know: summer sales are also an opportunity to sell off your end-of-collection or surplus stock. These products are more likely to be snapped up when consumers are eagerly awaiting promotions.

Five tips for a successful summer sale

A successful summer sale can’t be improvised. What you need is a powerful, properly deployed strategy to optimize your sales and reinforce your brand image.

Anticipate your catalog and prices

Thorough preparation is the key to a successful operation. First step: analyze your market by identifying trendy products in your category. Use tools like Google Trends to spot seasonal expectations. Next, compare your offers with those of your competitors. For example, if you sell garden furniture, target the models most in demand during previous summer periods.

Next step: set strategic prices. Don’t sell at a loss, but offer attractive discounts while preserving your margins. Adapt discounts according to stock levels. Your best prices should be on the most popular items, or on unsold items that need to be disposed of.

Finally, be proactive in your communications. Plan key moments by creating a promotional calendar: launch, relaunch, last markdown. This organization enables you to align your e-mailings, visuals and publications with your customers’ expectations.

Good to know: if you sell on Rakuten, your dedicated E-Commerce Consultant can provide you with a list of products to highlight, advise you on pricing and support you in your communications. Don’t hesitate to ask!

Choose the best promotions

Your promotional mechanics must be clear, attractive and well thought-out. Your goal: to capture consumers’ attention. The important thing is to choose the right lever at the right time, and with this in mind, two formats stand out:

• Discount coupons, with limited duration or in restricted quantities, to play on scarcity and create a sense of urgency that generates sales.
• A temporary increase in cashback to encourage purchases while building loyalty.

Adapt your customer service to sales

During the summer sales, customer inquiries multiply: product information, order tracking or returns… More than ever, your e-commerce customer service must be ready. The right strategy: train your teams on products, delivery conditions and refund procedures. Once they’re up to speed, they’ll respond faster and more accurately. Another option: rely on tools to automate responses to recurring questions: chatbots, help centers or contact forms. Properly designed, they can absorb a large proportion of the flow of requests.

Let’s take the example of a shoe retailer: during sales periods, returns due to size errors are more frequent. By anticipating this problem with a clear size guide, a reassuring confirmation e-mail and a simplified returns procedure, you can significantly improve the customer experience.

Optimize inventories and deliveries

During the sales season, order volumes increase. That’s why your e-commerce logistics and inventory management need to run smoothly. To avoid delays or stock-outs, make sure you secure every step of the way:

• Order preparation: packaging, labeling and handling to handle large volumes quickly, everything must be ready.
• Maintain delivery times, even in busy periods.
• Reliability of carriers, thanks to trusted partners who ensure regular, trouble-free service.
• Management of product returns. Please note: returns are often more numerous during sales periods.

To meet this challenge, outsourcing your delivery management can be an excellent option. Rakuten Fulfillment Network, for example, takes care of all your e-commerce logistics. With RFN, you benefit from :

• Secure storage of your goods in partner warehouses.
• A high-performance logistics partner to ensure rapid preparation and dispatch of your orders.
• Reduced costs and mental workload during sales.

When you entrust your shipments to RFN, you save time so you can concentrate on what really matters: selling

How to optimize your traffic acquisition during the summer sales?

During the summer sales, it’s important to make good offers, but above all to ensure their visibility. Traffic doesn’t just happen: you have to generate it, amplify it and then convert it. Our advice: prepare a well-structured acquisition strategy as early as possible to capture attention at the right time, on the right channels.

Optimize your search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s essential in e-commerce, especially during peak periods such as sales. An effective SEO strategy is built upstream, well in advance of commercial events such as sales. It’s not enough to add a few keywords at the last minute. It’s about structuring your entire site to enhance its visibility over the long term: not just the product pages, but also the “About”, “Contact”, legal and main category pages. Here are a few tips for improving your site:

• Update all your content, especially your product sheets, with targeted queries such as “2025 summer sales”, “garden promotions” or “women’s fashion bargains”.
• Create a dedicated sales page, well structured and easily accessible from your home page or menu.
• Optimize your title tags and meta descriptions to capture attention and generate more clicks from search results.

Many e-tailers would like to increase their visibility without mobilizing major technical resources. Integrating a marketplace can be an effective solution. At Rakuten, for example, a dedicated SEO team continuously improves content, page structure and product data. As a result, the platform attracts over 15 million unique visitors every month – a superb opportunity to improve your visibility.

Expand your communication channels

Your traditional communication tools are powerful assets for generating traffic and strengthening customer engagement:

• E-mailing remains one of the most effective channels. Plan a series of campaigns before, during and at the end of the sales. Segment your audiences to personalize your messages according to their buying behavior.
• Social networks are essential for relaying your offers: static publications, stories, reels or sponsored videos… anything goes to generate interest. Be careful: keep your graphic charter consistent, but specific to sales.
• Your e-commerce site or marketplace store should reflect the spirit of the sales right from the home page: banners, countdowns, filters by promotion… Highlight discounts where buying decisions are made.

Good to know: on a marketplace like Rakuten, these efforts are partly mutualized. You can use banners, dedicated e-mails and web push campaigns sent to millions of potential buyers. As a result, you benefit from enhanced visibility without having to deploy a complex strategy yourself. It saves you time

Generate traffic with advertising campaigns

Paid campaigns provide immediate visibility. Here are three tips for successful advertising during the sales season:

• Choose the right channels for your target. Google Ads helps capture purchase intent. Influencer partnerships or video formats on Instagram or TikTok, meanwhile, allow you to showcase your products in a more inspiring way.
• Anticipate your budget and schedule. The best campaigns are those that have been thought through in advance: analyzing competitors, setting objectives, testing messages before the official launch of the sales.
• Optimize your performance as you go along. Follow your campaigns in real time: adjust audiences, adapt visuals, carry out A/B tests. Every detail can make a difference.

Join a marketplace for a successful summer sale

If you’re not yet present on a marketplace like Rakuten, now’s the time to take the plunge. Our strength: a committed buyer base that’s particularly active during peak shopping periods. Rakuten attracts over 15 million unique visitors every month. In addition to being highly anticipated, summer sales are prepared and promoted. Unlike an isolated e-commerce site, a store on Rakuten benefits from shared advertising campaigns, powerful visibility tools (cashback, coupons, banners, etc.) and a volume effect that only a major player can offer. This channel is a powerful lever for attracting new customers, generating sales and promoting your products in a secure environment. Creating your online store on Rakuten is fast, intuitive and you benefit from the support of our teams. With integrated logistics solutions, dedicated technical support and a simplified interface for managing your products and campaigns, everything is within your reach! So don’t let this opportunity pass you by: get started today and be ready for June 25

Sources :

¹YouGov

Customer acquisition costs have risen by 60% over the last 5 years¹. In an ultra-competitive e-commerce market, where new players are constantly emerging and it’s getting harder and harder to stand out, multiplying the points of contact with your customers is essential.

In this article, find out how to diversify your sales channels to boost your sales and secure your market position.

Why is diversifying sales channels essential?

Relying on a single sales channel, whether it’s your physical boutique or your e-commerce site, is a bit like putting all your eggs in one basket. Risky, isn’t it? Here’s why it’s crucial to diversify your approach:

Reach a wider, more diverse customer base

The e-commerce market is constantly evolving, with the number of online shoppers growing daily. In France, 40 million people buy online every year², placing an average of 60 orders per person per year. It’s impossible to capture all these customers with a single store, however effective it may be. By diversifying your sales channels, you:

• Increase your online visibility and brand awareness;
• Reach customers with different characteristics: age, standard of living, buying habits…

Adapt to customer volatility

Today, a customer can leave your purchasing path in a single click to buy from a competitor. It’s hard to keep your customers loyal, because consumers are increasingly demanding and have a huge number of similar items at their fingertips. Relying solely on the clientele of a single channel is therefore a mistake. By multiplying your points of sale, you can compensate for shopping cart abandonment in one channel with customers from another.

Track changes in buying behavior

Purchasing behavior has changed radically in recent years. Customers are present on multiple sales channels: marketplaces, social networks, discount websites… It’s not unusual for a customer to pass through 3, 4 or more points of contact before finalizing an order.

Take Sophie, for example, who’s looking for a new phone. She sees a sponsored ad on Instagram for a new model. Preferring to buy refurbished models, she first looks at prices on eBay. The next day, she compares different models on a bargain site. In the end, she buys her phone on Rakuten, where she benefits from an attractive cashback offer. If you’re selling this phone, it’s in your interest to be present on each of these sales channels.

Avoid dependence on a single source of income

Dependence on a single sales channel can be risky. Has a Google algorithm change penalized your e-commerce site’s SEO? Does your favorite marketplace increase its commissions, or worse, close? These elements are beyond your control and can have disastrous consequences for a business centered on a single channel. Diversification is a resilience strategy that enables you to cope better with the unexpected.

How to set up a sales channel diversification strategy?

To successfully diversify your sales channels, you need to follow a few key steps:

How do you manage your stocks, orders and deliveries across different channels?

Selling across multiple channels can quickly become a logistical headache. Fortunately, there are solutions to make your life easier. For efficient, centralized delivery management, consider a logistics service like Rakuten Fulfillment Network. With this type of solution, all your orders are centralized in a single dashboard, you can monitor your stock levels in real time and choose your delivery methods in just a few clicks. Bonus: 99% of orders are delivered within 24 hours. A considerable time-saver!

What are the best sales channels to use in e-commerce?

There are a multitude of e-commerce sales channels, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The ideal is to use them in a complementary way to reach a varied clientele and maximize your revenues.

Your own e-commerce site

Specialized marketplaces

Did you know that 46% of consumers start their purchasing journey on a marketplace, and that 61% are more inclined to buy on a marketplace than on a retailer’s website³? For online shoppers, a marketplace has many advantages: access to a wide range of products in one place, low prices, promotional operations (sales, Black Friday)… Marketplaces are attracting more and more customers every year.

Advantages of a marketplace for a retailer

For a retailer, a marketplace also has a number of advantages:

• Traffic and brand awareness: marketplaces attract massive traffic. And traffic means sales opportunities. 15 million unique visitors visit Rakuten every month.
• Promotions and loyalty tools: marketplaces finance numerous promotional offers for sellers. Rakuten, for example, offers up to 20% cashback on all purchases on Mega Peak days, every first Wednesday of the month.
• Customer journeys and innovations: marketplaces generally have entire teams dedicated to optimizing customer journeys and integrating the latest technological innovations: chatbots, AI-supported search engines, optimized item suggestions… These are all essential but time-consuming elements that you don’t have to manage yourself.
• Complementary tools: Most marketplaces are complete ecosystems that offer numerous tools to optimize your business: advertising solutions, logistics services, retail media… At Rakuten, our solutions are integrated into a single dashboard. The objective? Develop your sales in just a few clicks.

As you can see, selling on a marketplace is an essential step towards diversifying your sales channels. All that remains is to choose the right platform for your needs.

Successful marketplace integration: Fnac-Darty group

Let’s take the example of the Fnac-Darty group, which integrated the Rakuten marketplace in 2023 to diversify its acquisition channels. The decision to join a marketplace was a response to the following challenges:

• Develop online sales in an ultra-competitive sector;
• Capitalize on Fnac-Darty’s physical network through Click and Collect;
• Offer concrete benefits to consumers (cashback, flexibility).

A year and a half later, the results are convincing:

By joining a marketplace, the Fnac-Darty group has benefited from a new customer base, increased in-store sales thanks to Click and Collect, and taken advantage of Rakuten’s loyalty-building tools. A successful gamble!

Sources

¹Profitwell

²Fevad

³ChannelEngine