5 Best Ways to Build Customer Loyalty
What’s the most difficult aspect of running an online business? If you ask around, most merchants will say that acquiring customers is the most challenging aspect. However, it is not the case. Nowadays, acquiring customers is easy as 1,2,3. You may think we are exaggerating, but no. with targeted campaigns and discounts, there’s always someone who will be willing to give your store a chance.
So, what’s the real challenge? It is getting the one-time customer to shop again at your store. In other words, converting a user into a repeat customer. While many may consider this easy, it is not, even for large stores such as Amazon. However, there’s nothing to worry about as this article discusses everything there is to know about building customer loyalty, ensuring customers keep returning to your store for more.
How to Build Customer Loyalty for Your eCommerce Store
There are different ways through which you can build customer loyalty. We are not going to focus on ways which require considerable investments or resources. Instead, our focus is on the most cost-effective methods which generate the highest impact. Without further ado, let’s start.
1. Interacting with the Customer
Something simple as interacting with the customer can do a world of good for brand loyalty. Let’s understand this point with the help of an example.
Suppose a customer is not satisfied with the purchase. He proceeds to reach out to the customer service department for clarification or return. Instead of replying to the customer on time, the agent leaves the email or message on read. What do you think will happen? Will the customer be happy? Will they ignore this experience and move on? Of course, not since the customer is certainly angrier than before.
They will leave a negative review, tell friends & family about the experience, and even post on customer awareness groups. This will likely lead to other customers avoiding your store. Ultimately, your sales will go down, unable to recover regardless of how much discounts you offer. All this could have been avoided if you had simply interacted with the customer. Even if you had rejected the claim, the customer would have been satisfied.
Therefore, the lesson here is that you need to interact with the customer as much as possible. After a customer completes the purchase, send out a survey form, asking them about their online shopping experience. After a while, follow up with a feedback form, enquiring whether they are satisfied with the purchase. These simple follow-ups highlight how much importance you give to customers.
As customers feel valued, they are likely to return to your store for more. Of course, there are countless other ways to interact with the customers. For instance, simply replying to their comments on social media or sharing user-generated content on your brand’s official can be quite rewarding. You can use our Magento 2 Social Feed Extension to automatically display live social media feed on the website.
2. Be Transparent
Nothing helps win over customers and foster loyalty than transparency. Be it pricing or the return policy, list everything in a clear and transparent manner. Don’t sneak in hidden prices at any stage of the checkout process since this can dissuade customers from completing the purchase. If there’s a mistake on your end, acknowledge it and inform the customer what you are doing to rectifying it.
3. Appreciate All Payment Options
Cart abandonment is a concern for every store owner. The below statistic shows the various reasons contributing to high cart abandonments.
Source: Statista
As you can see for yourself, 17% of respondents avoid completing the purchase simply because their preferred payment method is not available. The thing is that all customers have certain preferences. Some may prefer to use a credit card since it helps them accumulate points which they can use towards completing another purchase. Others may prefer mobile wallets since they are more convenient.
Others may opt for cash on delivery or a direct bank transfer. To avoid losing customers to competitors, try to offer the maximum number of payment options. Of course, you need to balance this with your own requirements since offering too many options can be quite burdening and frustrating. Remember, almost every payment provider charges a fee. So, don’t forget to consider these expenses.
To ensure that your profitability is not undermined, you can restrict payment methods based on customer groups, product attributes, cart value, and other parameters. You can do so by using our Magento 2 Payment Restrictions Extension. This allows you to offer the maximum flexibility to customers, but without adding to administrative headaches and cost issues. Restricting certain methods can help save transaction fees too.
4. Reward Loyalty
Never take customer loyalty for granted. Instead, reward it. You can set up a loyalty program for your store, thereby incentivising customers to continue shopping from your brand. For instance, you can set up a tiered loyalty program wherein customers who spend more get better rewards. You can even reward customers with frequent discounts. Do note that frequent discounts can be problematic since the customer will always want a discount. This would prevent them from completing the purchase at listed prices.
5. Stay Consistent with Quality
Nothing convinces a user to become a repeat customer better than consistent quality. When users understand that they will always get the same or better quality, they have little reason to shop elsewhere. Usually what happens is that merchants often try to lower costs by compromising on quality. This is the wrong approach since quality should never be compromised.
Final Thoughts on Ways to Build Customer Loyalty
This concludes our article on how to build customer loyalty. Whether your store is based on Magento 2 or any other eCommerce platform, you can implement the above strategies for maximum impact. If you have any queries related to our Magento 2 extensions, reach out to our support team. Thank You.
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