As an eCommerce brand, in order to grow, you need to constantly gain more purchases month over month. This need causes many businesses to ask how they can best retain returning customers. It is much easier to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. Customer loyalty is an extremely important statistic to monitor and strive to increase. Luckily there are specific things you can do with your store to increase your customer loyalty and retain first-time customers. We will go through the customer journey from the initial impression through delivery and post-arrival.
Customer loyalty is extremely important and also cost-effective for eCommerce brands. It's statistically shown that acquiring new customers is 5-25x more expensive than keeping an existing one.
In this blog we will go through 5 unique ways for eCommerce brands to improve loyalty.
Why does customer loyalty matter? When a customer is loyal to a brand (KPMG):
Homepage Design
Let's start at the beginning- a consumer's very first impression of your brand comes when they visit your home page. There are various things you can include and avoid in order to help improve customer loyalty. As soon as someone visits your storefront/site they are creating an impression of who you are and what your relationship or value will be. You want to avoid confusion and give off a professional and understandable impression.
With Shopify you're able to create an amazing brand presence as well as have a credible and professional feel to your eCommerce store. Of course, there is no one way to design your home page. But there are certain things that can then be personalized to your brand to help increase customer loyalty down the road and improve overall perception.
"Per expert analysis, the best e-commerce sites capture a user’s attention in less than 10 seconds. From a design perspective, you need to make the navigational flow clear so visitors can quickly choose the best path for themselves (and for your business)—that means balanced white space, intuitive navigation, and intentional design elements.
Adding to this urgency is a psychological phenomenon called “decision avoidance,” which is the tendency of humans to avert a decision that takes too long to make.
On a homepage, decision avoidance means “bouncing” by exiting the page or hitting the back button. To prevent this, the first task of your homepage should be to convince potential customers to stick around." (Shopify)
For most stores, you want to encourage them to navigate to "shopping." This can be done by spotlighting a new release, offering a discount if they checkout on that first visit or prompting them to browse your best sellers.
Free Shipping/Promotion
Starting at the top of the page, a great way to convince customers to stick around is by including a banner that can highlight either by offering free shipping or a promotion at the top of the page. A great way to incentivize this is with a purchase threshold or a limited time count down. Both incentivize the consumer to make a purchase at your store!
Branding
There are many things you can do on the branding/marketing side to make your store look the part. These things include but are not limited to: text, images, colors, videos, etc.
With your home page, how can you design it to help consumers remember it? Shopify says, "While it’s easy to get caught up in color palettes and font selection, it’s important to remember the purpose of your homepage: to convince people to browse your products and ultimately make a purchase. The easiest way to do this is to create an easy, intuitive, and straightforward user experience (UX).
If you’re considering what makes a great UX for the best website designs and homepages, here are a few questions to guide you:
Visitors sometimes land on homepages knowing what they want, and other times they don’t. You have to design your homepage with both in mind while ensuring your decisions align with your primary goals.
A good homepage should accommodate visitors looking for a specific outcome, while directing the attention of the ones who aren’t."
But home page isn't everything. There are other ways that can help increase customer loyalty that have been proven to work!
Email/Text Promotions
Now that a customer has purchased from you it is your chance to make them into a loyal customer by creating the best post-purchase experience possible. A great way to keep in contact with someone once they have purchased from you is with email and text promotions! This way the customer knows that when they buy from your eCommerce store they will be rewarded and valued as a customer.
As they go through checkout use the information you gather such as email and text to keep in contact after purchase. There still is a good balance that must be kept in order to not annoy the client but get your promotions out there.
Email and text promotions allow you to not only send out promotions but also receive feedback. Maintaining a relationship with your customers without being overbearing can create great customer loyalty. Not only are you sharing potential sales and products, you also open a line of communication between you and the customer allowing them to contact you if needed. This creates transparency and a better way to upsell future items.
Membership Program
Another great way to increase customer loyalty is by creating a membership program. As a brand, you can allow your customers the chance to join a membership/loyalty program. This way, instead of offering promotions to your entire client base, you are able to specifically offer promotions to your most loyal customers. This is able to greatly increase customer loyalty.
81% of consumers say being a member encourages them to spend more money with the company. (KPMG) This statistic alone shows just how powerful membership programs can be. In todays modern world we see so many people loyal to a certain brand. Examples of this include Nike, Apple, Spotify, etc. If you want to start creating customer loyalty use a membership program to start! Not only can you gain essential insight into your customers when they sign up but you can also offer your most loyal customers the best perks. Keeping a customer is much more cost effective than gaining a new one. As we read above, it's statistically shown that acquiring new customers is 5-25x more expensive than keeping an existing one.
Package Protection
Managing customer satisfaction from purchase to delivery can be difficult. There are so many steps that could lead a customer to feel unsatisfied and have a bad experience with your brand. Although you were able to get them through checkout and they made a purchase, there still is time for them to never return. A great way to ensure customer loyalty during post purchase is with Package Protection.
Shopify stated that "The 2022 Package Theft Annual Report shows 49 million Americans had at least one package stolen over the past 12 months, with the average losses totalling more than $2.4 billion in stolen goods.
The problem exists on the return side too. For every $1 billion in sales in 2021, retailers saw $166 million worth of goods returned, with 10.3% of returns being lost to fraud." (Shopify)
It doesn't matter if the package is lost, stolen or damaged. It's all the same to your customer. It causes a poor customer experience and costs you money.
Luckily through BUKU you can have Package Protection! Package protection give you and the customer assuring that no matter what happens during delivery they will get their package. We enable you to focus on growing your brand instead of delivery problems. With package protection give your customers the best post purchase experience and eliminate the worry of delivery for your brand and customer.
Customer Reviews
Creating a line of communication between your brand and the consumers allows you to make the necessary changes to meet and exceed expectations. Customer reviews give your brand insight into how you are doing and what you can improve on. Use them to not only make the necessary changes but also to create a conversation. By responding to reviews you show your customers that you care about what they have to say and that you will make changes if it is right for your brand.
By responding and soliciting reviews you as a brand show you care about how you are perceived and if there are any areas of improvement!
"According to a 2021 report by PowerReviews, over 99.9% of customers read reviews when they shop online.
Furthermore, 96% of customers look for negative reviews specifically. This figure was 85% back in 2018." (Search Engine Journal)
The reviews that you are getting can make the difference in customer loyalty now and in purchases to come. Responding to as many as you can as well as asking for reviews after a positive experience. Requesting reviews after a successful delivery can help fill the review space with more positive experiences as well.
Final Thoughts
Increasing customer loyalty is so important. Today, brands are experiencing an uptick in expenses to gain new customers compared to keeping an existing one. There are specific things you can do as a brand to help increase customer loyalty. Things such as homepage design, email/text promotions, membership programs, package protection and customer reviews.
By implementing the things discussed in this blog, you will be able to gain the trust and loyalty of those you sell to, all while exceeding expectations.
BUKU helps eCommerce brands in all aspects of shipping helping create the best customer shipping experience possible. From purchase to delivery ensure that your customers come back for future purchases! Interested in learning more about anything discussed in the blog? Click here
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