A customer shops online and gets a message at the checkout page -
“Thank you for shopping with us. Please visit again.”
As simple as the message reads, the customer needs to have a substantially powerful reason to return to your online store. His first experience is the basis for building customer loyalty for any online store.
According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of the total profits of an online business are from repeating customers accounting for only 20% of the total customer base. Keeping your old customers engaged and happy is of equal importance as getting new customers.
Here are 10 ways you can build a loyal customer base and keep customers coming back for more:
1. Pleasant Customer Experience:
For an online business, a website becomes the identity of the products and services provided by you. A well-organized website with good quality images, uncomplicated site navigation, ease in finding the desired products, and easy cart access provide a pleasant customer experience.
Moreover, making the website responsive to different devices and providing different payment gateways adds to the shopping experience.
2. Provide Customer Reward Programs:
As per a survey conducted by eMarketer, 58.3% of customers online in 2020 preferred buying from companies that provide reward programs.
Providing offers and discounts to repeat customers conveys that they are a valuable part of your business which encourages them to not just keep buying from you but also recommend your business to other potential customers.
3. Take Honest Feedback and constructive criticism from your customers:
The work of any e-commerce store does not end at successfully delivering the goods or products. It is always beneficial to know your customers’ honest opinions. Creating surveys and feedback forms does not just make customers feel valued but also gives you some great insights into improving your products and services.
Adding a comments section on the website where customers can give feedback in the form of messages, ratings and post pictures is another way to encourage others to buy from you.
4. Deliver brand promise and promote shared values:
A survey conducted by Cap Gemini in 2020 found that about 80% of emotionally connected customers spend more on buying the products and promote the brand among others as well. Promoting shared values through advertisements, product descriptions and campaigns is an effective way of emotionally engaging customers.
Delivering quality through your brand is an efficient way to make your customers invest in your products. Customers trust a brand easily if it provides quality in its products.
5. Build a community around your brand:
Commonalities in customers can be leveraged to build online communities around your brand for instance in the form of Facebook groups or Instagram hashtags.
When customers recognize themselves as a part of an online family, they become your brand advocates, willingly advertising it among friends and family and providing their honest opinions. This is also a significant way of developing personal relations with your customers helping to build brand loyalty.
6. Provide Effective customer support:
Customer support is the most integral part of any online business. Customers trust businesses that give easy means for communication when they need help or in case of queries. Around 51% of customers stop business with a company after a single negative experience. Providing support through multiple channels gives customers a consistent experience providing immediate support in their time of frustration and confusion. Implying help desks, chatbots, and appointing a customer support team are some ways to implement customer support and services.
7. Engage on social media:
Social media is the best way to engage and communicate with your customers on the go. A study by dreamgrow.com stated that 95% of adults between the ages of 18 to 34 keep track of their favored brands on social media.
Social media platforms offer a means for you to connect through brand stories and anecdotes. Small activities and regular posts on social media pages help customers remember your brand and personally connect with the values it represents.
8. Implement Customer loyalty programs:
A well-designed loyalty program is one of the best ways for customer retention. Loyalty programs have an immense potential of keeping customers engaged by offering rewards, festive offers, free coupons and gift cards, free merchandise, early release of products, and discounts through point-based systems.
9. Track customer behavior for improving UX:
Consumer behavior can be tracked online using cookies, geolocation, IP mapping and device IDs, all of which are permission-based tools. The data obtained from these is analyzed to predict future activities of customers, connect with them on a personal level, give relevant suggestions the next time customers buy from you and much more.
10. Form Strategic partnerships with other brands:
Intelligent partnerships with other brands go a long way in not just improving sales and awareness of brands but also give a complete experience to the customers. Travel companies integrating with hotels, local restaurants, travel apparel brands and other holiday-related materials can help customers get a complete holiday experience and they would want to come back to you for planning their next trip as well. Thinking out of the box is the key to partnering with other brands that can enhance a customer’s experience of shopping with you.
In an online e-commerce community where the competition is growing every second, it is of great importance to build loyalty among customers as it costs five to twenty-five times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones.
Building customer loyalty is not just about providing a few offers and discounts, it takes strategic thinking and coming up with elaborate plans to impart customer satisfaction throughout. A satisfied, connected customer becomes a valuable investment as well as an advocate for your brand and (s)he needs to be valued as (s)he is the one who decides the future of your enterprise.
