Do you know that ecommerce companies derive 80 % of their return on investment from 20%of their customers? Also, it costs seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain the existing one. As astonishing as it may sound, acquiring a customer is not the only task that an e-commerce website needs to focus upon. In fact, it’s the retention of the existing client by providing them with best in class and unmatched shopping experience across all platforms that matters. How do you think the customer retention plan works? Do you think it’s important to incorporate customer retention plan into your marketing strategy? Yes, maintaining a balance between the two is the key to your success and hence, you need to stick to stick to some of the exclusive tips that adds to your retention game.
Create a Personalized Experience for your Buyers
Everybody has a different taste in shopping. While some choose funky design others might want something formal and if you are an e-commerce company, it is your responsibility to understand the psyche of your customer. You need to keep a track of your customers purchasing habits, the kind of pages they open, the kind of style they choose, products they view, the device they usually use for shopping and what piece of content do they consume? Once you understand the shopping habits of your customers you can have better plans to bring back your existing customers to your website by building audience segment and giving them a rich and personalized shopping experience.
Customer Loyalty Plan
“Buy 2 get 3 free” is the most ideal approach for attracting customers towards your product. Do you want to win back your customers? If yes, plan out a customer loyalty plan because this ‘godfather’ approach is successful most of the time. You can either provide your frequent buyers some loyalty points that can be redeemed in their next purchase or provide them with instant offers on discount coupon vouchers, surprise gifts, and cashback offer. Remember, your strategy alone will not drive customers to your website; it’s the addition of super customer experience, unmatched price and exclusive products that attracts maximum customers to your e-commerce website.
Unmatched Value for Customers
As an online buyer, will you choose to buy from a website that sells low-grade products at a cheap price? The answer is probably no because everybody admires and desires for quality in terms of shopping. Given the fact that cost alone isn't valued by customers, there have to be multiple components of value addition to optimize the overall shopping experience for each of your customers. As an e-commerce company, you need to master the ingredients to making a successful e-commerce website and eventually work upon your plan. Provide your buyers with the unmatched cashback offers, value-added benefits, gift vouchers and win your customer loyalty. Also, provide relevant information of your products to keep your customers engaged to your website; the more you provide, the better it is. Further, do provide unmatched product reviews across all your product to authenticate its quality and validate reasons for making your customers purchase it.
Strengthen Your Signup Game
Not everybody that comes to your website is prepared to buy something from your website. Therefore, as an e-commerce website, you can request your visitors to signup first to get going with their online shopping. This way you can easily engage with your customers (new) and work upon moving ahead with them in the buyers funnel by sharing useful and targeted content with them.
For example, if you are an e-commerce website that sells proteins, you can send articles and blogs related to fitness and gym to the targeted audience through email and eventually turn their attention towards your website with minimal efforts.
Make use of your Social Media
Ever tried logging your issue about an online experience on the company’s social media page? It works. As a company, you need to address your customers problem on social media, reply to each message that they have sent, take follow-ups and leave no room for imperfection in guiding them in their shopping experience. Further, you need to extensively monitor your social media handles to understand the behaviour pattern of your buyers, and to keep a track on their activities as far as your website is considered. It is considered that 88% of the customers don’t go back to the website if their social media complaint goes unanswered. Hence, be particular about operating your social media handles to provide customer satisfaction and a platform for your customers to freely communicate about their issues.
Focus on Your Customer Support
What do you think is the reason behind the unmatched success of e-commerce companies? How has the leading e-commerce company surpassed its competition in such a short window of time? Here is the secret; they focus on their customer support like that’s their only job. In fact, in one of the leading e-commerce companies in the world, it is their policy to make each employee of the company take customer’s call once a year to understand the mind of their buyers and make relevant products for them.If you are looking out for the same growth and retain maximum clients, start working on your customer care department. Try making the experience hassle-free for the customers by reducing the waiting time on IVR, simplify your complicated return policy, add responses on your social media, be proactive in approaching your customers and connect customers faster to agents to create a desirable shopping experience for your customers.
Delight Your Customers
Who doesn’t like surprises? The surprise doubles up if it is an unexpected one because the human brain is developed in a way, that the smallest of delight can trigger the amygdala. Eventually, keep a track on your regular buyers as well as the potential customers to send surprise gifts to them. Recently, a renowned watch brand sent their premium watches to their top followers on social media on a festive occasion. The best part about surprising your customer is, they feel connected with you as well as promote your products at their end. This doesn’t mean you need to keep sending goodies to your customers without keeping a track on your budget, instead switch to a calculated budget planning that includes customer gifting clubbed in the marketing segment.
Gamification
This may sound irrelevant, but it does bring a noticeable change on a large scale competition, gamification is changing the face of e-commerce websites in the current world scenario. Many a time the customer visits the website just to play games and try his luck for winning gift items and that is the time for you to market your products. Eighty out of hundred customers are sure to click on the product link and further, at least 50 customers will end up buying the product; isn’t that a fair deal? Take inspiration from many a top-notch e-commerce website, understand their gaming pattern, analyse the likes and dislikes of your visitors, create an engaging game, promote the gift items on social media and test your game before it is out for the users.
Gear up your E-commerce Game
While many e-commerce website are only focused on acquiring new clients, you need to gear up your e-commerce game by focusing both on acquisition and retention with these exclusive tips. This will not just save your time, effort and money but also create an enriched name of your e-commerce website amongst the customers in the long run and bring the targeted ROI to your company.
Author Bio: Being a senior business associate, Peter Davidson strives to help different brands and startups to make effective business decisions and plan effective business strategies. With years of rich domain expertise, he loves to share his views on the latest technologies and applications through his well-researched content pieces. Follow him on Google+ and Twitter.