5 Strategies to Retain Your Ecommerce Customers

5 Strategies to Retain Your Ecommerce Customers

09:45 19 September 2019

However, once you acquire your customers, you need to convince them to start buying from you repeatedly.

Once you build a solid customer base, you will realize that it is cheaper to invest efforts (and money) into getting your current customers to buy again from you compared to finding new ones. This is especially true in the competitive eCommerce industry where the cost of clicks and conversions always seems to be increasing.

As a logical conclusion, you should prioritize customer retention. That is, you need to put in significant effort into encouraging your current customers to come back for more.

However, this is easier said than done. That is why you will find some great strategies below that will help you retain your eCommerce customers.

Guest checkout

You are probably aware that having a guest checkout is good for your conversion rate. However, what can you do when your customers don’t have accounts? How can you track them?

Well, you can give them the opportunity to make an account after their first purchase. In order to convince them more easily, connect the request with a discount code.

You also need to know that the checkout process itself plays an important role. The simpler it is for your customers, the higher are the chances that they will be back to buy more from your website.

For example, when they first come to buy something from you, they should fill in the required form fields such as their email addresses, credit card details, and so on. However, you should also offer them a one-click payment for every purchase in the future.

That shouldn’t be a problem because there are some great payment gateways that have this ‘Remember Me’ option.

In addition, you should also optimize the ‘Thank You’ page that a customer sees following a successful purchase on your website. For instance, on that page, you could put an incentive sign-up for a newsletter. That can be an awesome way to remind your customers of your brand and inform them about new products whenever you like.

Loyalty program as a must-have

Customers who show their respect and appreciation towards your brand are the ones who come back for more, right?

People who really love your products will rarely shop only once and then look for another company to buy from. They stay loyal, and that is something that you need to reward. To be precise, you need to make your loyal customers feel special. They have deserved it.

So, it would be very wise if you considered the idea of implementing a loyalty program. This kind of program is devised to better re-engage those customers who display a high level of loyalty.

On top of that, when other people hear about your loyalty program and its benefits (think well before you start incentivizing), you will have a higher chance of converting even more leads into customers.

The gist, when it comes to loyalty programs, is to reward customers for their activity. The end goal is to motivate them to buy even more on your website. For instance, you could award points whenever a purchase is made.

Once a customer has amassed a good amount of points, they should have the benefit of transforming those points into a discount or getting a product completely free of charge. The way to implement this is up to you. But, you get the idea.

Fortunately, implementing this kind of program is no big trouble thanks to a wide range of online automated apps that make it really easy for you to set up a loyalty program. Moreover, you could go a step further by surprising your best customers with a small gift.

You could also offer an outstanding package or a personalized offer. It is up to you. However, stay within the safety limits regarding the budget. Do not spend way too much on rewards, but don’t be stingy either.

 

Customer service

A solid customer support service helps you effectively communicate with your customers and provide them with the right level of support. A good support system can help both pre- and post-sale by enabling a customer service rep to clearly communicate with the customer.

Therefore, installing a live chat or a help desk tool can really turn a customer question into a sale. It can turn a complaint into a resolution. Also, you could implement this on your website, through email, and even on your social media accounts.

Great customer service goes a long way since you are showing your customers how much you care about them. You are taking time to resolve every issue and thus make them happy. This is not just great for customer retention, but it also helps with acquiring new customers.

Word-of-mouth marketing is still really efficient. Once people start sharing the positive experiences they have had with your customer support agents, others will realize that you run a good company that treats its customers well.

If you grow enough that you need a whole customer support department, you could easily outsource customer support since there are many tools nowadays that make it easy to provide good customer support.

These are communication apps like Slack or platforms such as Basecamp and Jira. If you’re targeting the global market, you can also use sophisticated technology like VoIP phone systems Australia that allows you to have a phone call without having an analog line.

 

Observe (their behavior) and ask

Wouldn’t it be great if you could monitor how you are doing in your customer’s eyes? Surely, an insight of some kind would be helpful to you. But, how can you know this? What can you do to learn how popular and loved your brand is?

Well, obviously enough, you could start by asking the audience. To be precise, you can first observe how those revenue figures are adding up. And, when you see any unusual drops or fluctuations, you can introduce surveys to gain a better insight into the problem.

For example, one great way to measure the loyalty of your customers is by introducing an NPS survey. An NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey will help you understand what your customers think about you as a company as well as what they think of your products/services.

The NPS will tell you how much your customers like you and thus inform you about the weak points you should work on. That way, you will be able to address issues in a timely manner, keeping as many customers as possible. When you know where the problem lies, it gets much easier to resolve it.

Invest in content marketing and social media

Customer retention needs to be connected to content marketing. When you create valuable content that educates your audience, you increase customer loyalty.

So, create buyer personas to provide personalized content and make your customers feel like you speak directly to each of them. Do not try to treat all customers the same.

In addition, social media platforms are great channels for building relationships with your customers. Present your products or services, and also notify followers about promotions, special offers, or discounts.

Just remember not to be too pushy on these networks. Build a relationship instead of just trying to sell.

Finally, monitor the activity of your audience and whenever you see a negative comment, try to resolve it.