Convert
Building Block 6: Self-Service Sales
Challenge
It makes sense to keep improving on your online self-service purchase experience to make it simpler and better. Why is enabling customers to buy for themselves important? There are a few key reasons:
Self-service online marketplaces allow you to target volume businesses—like small office / home office (SOHO) and micro businesses—without breaking the bank, since the cost of online acquisition remains very low.
Self-service online sales help you get executive sponsors and channel buy-in.
Online self-service sales help establish future organic cross sell and upsell opportunities. Across the AppDirect ecosystem, we already see about 15 percent (and growing) of first time subscribers upselling and cross selling organically through online marketplaces completely on their own.
Improving Your Self-Search Approach
To help customers find, buy, and manage cloud-based business apps on their own, it is critical to nail down your end-to-end customer experience. Below are some tips and guidelines on how to develop a comprehensive customer journey that will help capture, consolidate, and structure end-user pain points, such as bugs, typos, usability issues, gaps versus expectations, and more.
Strategy Tips
![Test Everything]()
Don't assume something is working
Test it repeatedly, and then test it again.
![Customer Journey]()
There is no silver bullet to solving customer experience
Every interaction is important and problems during the journey can stop customers from buying.
![Consistency]()
Consistency is key
Make sure design and language are consistent across the entire journey including landing pages, marketplaces, etc.
![Content is King]()
Content is king
Customers expect to have access to information at their fingertips. Be sure you’re ready with clear value propositions, plans and pricing, FAQs, and more.
![Customers Expecting Support]()
Customers expect your support
Be ready to help your customers at any stage. Never hide behind a generic email address, and be sure to build a marketplace-specific support section and offer access to chat and/or phone options.
Perfecting the Customer Experience
Organizing a customer experience workshop with key stakeholders from across the organization is the best way to raise awareness about the customer journey. Aligning content marketing, customer support, payment options, and other teams on priorities is critical.
