How Knowledge Base Can Boost Your eCommerce Business

The world has come a long way in the last three decades of the internet, gaining ground each year especially with its impacts in commerce. Now, more than two billion people shop online every year, and about 33% of buyers worldwide shop online at least once every week. Going by the stats, we can conclude that there are numerous opportunities for eCommerce business owners to benefit from. However, the main challenge is finding a way to create a seamless sales funnel to convert your eCommerce visitors to customers. Thankfully, the eCommerce industry has many tools in stock you can use to improve your business, and one of them is a knowledge base.

One of the best practices you can use to boost your eCommerce business is by learning how to get a good number of your target audience to become customers. To achieve this, you want your eCommerce store to work exactly the way you want, and a knowledge base is one of the tools that can help you do that.

What is Knowledge Base?

Knowledge base involves collecting and using information about your eCommerce site to improve your business. You can use knowledge base tools or software such as Zendesk to collect and present specific data about your eCommerce website to your employees, and target audiences in a way that is easy to digest. Your knowledge base can include information such as glossaries, how-to guides, demonstrations, and more.

Why do you need to use a knowledge base?

Enhances Onboarding Process

Many big companies know that the onboarding process needs to be easy, fast, and effective so that new customers don’t become inactive. To do that, quickly and efficiently, they provide all the necessary information new customers may need to understand how every aspect of their product or service works. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) may come to mind, but the onboarding process needs more than FAQ to be very effective. You need a defined knowledge base to enhance your onboarding process so that new customers can go from “new here” to “okay, got it” in minutes.

You want to make sure that every time someone new visits your eCommerce store, they can reach the right information they need ASAP. Of course, that includes having a detailed FAQ section, but you also need other things such as including explainer videos about how to use your products. You can also include a section to share customers’ stories about your brand, product, and services.

A knowledge base will also ensure that employees have the right information to help new customers fully settle in.

Improves Customer Shopping Experience

Oftentimes when a potential buyer is exploring an eCommerce store, they get stuck at a point because of the lack of information about a product or service. Usually, they have no way to talk to a member of staff to clarify the situation. In the end, this potential buyer loses interest and goes to another eCommerce store where they can get all the necessary information they need. The difference between the first store and the second store, where the buyer finds the information they are seeking, is the knowledge base.

When you use knowledge base technology, you can build on it to enhance other aspects of your eCommerce business to provide your customers with a better shopping experience. For example, you can set up an AI chat plugin, but the chatbot will only work if you have a defined knowledge base. With that, the chatbot will have access to all necessary information to provide accurate answers to your customers.

It will surprise you how effective AI chatbots work these days with the right technical support and knowledge base — closely imitating human employees.

Improves Customer Support

When a customer reaches out, whether to make inquiries about your brand or product/service or to make a complaint, one of your employees will attend to them, but it’s not always a trained customer support employee. Since the employee doesn’t have all the necessary information about your business operations, they may not have the right answer to the customer’s questions, which is a problem. But you can solve the problem by using a knowledge base. With a knowledge base, all your employees will have access to the same data making it easier to give customers correct and unified answers.

Keep in mind that creating all-around effective customer support involves carrying your support team along. Of course, depending on the type of product or service you provide, your support team may not have to attend to buyers. But if your type of product or service requires the support team to interact with your customers to help them fix problems, then you need to give your support team access to your knowledge base.

Additionally, a knowledge base helps improves productivity because it creates a simple system where employees can access any information about your business to answer customer questions.

Boosts SEO Ranking

As an eCommerce business owner, you understand the importance of SEO and SEO ranking, but SEO can be difficult to crack, especially if you’re new to the eCommerce world. While you’re busy learning how to improve your SEO skills, you can use your knowledge base to optimize your SEO to boost your SEO ranking.

The key is to include target keywords in your knowledge base content. Plan your knowledge base content and review the content regularly to update where necessary. Use effective knowledge management software. Ensure that you’re using the correct formatting; you can use Microsoft Support to help with that.

Saves Time and Money

If you can devise a method to save time and money in your business operations without compromising on quality, then go for it. Having a knowledge base can help you save time and money because you can automate some processes instead of assigning some employees to the tasks. For example, you can use a chatbot instead of hiring someone to provide answers to customers.

On the other end, your employees will have more time to focus on operations that absolutely need human intervention. Also, a knowledge base will speed up your business operations since your employees will be able to access all necessary information whenever they need, saving time searching for said information.

Adds More Credibility

As a business owner, one of the ways to present your brand as an authority in your niche is by letting your target audience know that you are very knowledgeable in your subject area. When your customers see you as an expert in your field, they will develop more trust in your brand. You can use your knowledge base to address many topics within your niche so that your customers can visit your site wherever they need clarifications on such concerns. Include curated content on your website, and you can also create email campaigns with curated content.

Over To You

In this current eCommerce space, running a successful eCommerce business that stays above the competition can be difficult. But you can make everything easier with efficient knowledge base management.