What is the best way to ensure that the bottom line of your online store goes from strength to strength? Why, make sure that you build customer loyalty! If a solid chunk of your revenues comes from the same customers giving you repeat business over and over again, then all the new customers you add over time only help in increasing your profits!
Let’s look at how you can ensure brand loyalty by using one simple tool: Customer Registration on your Online Store.
1. Use their contact info to contact them: The first and the most obvious advantage of customer registration is that customers give you their contact info. This gives you the means to contact them every time you have exciting news for them, e.g. New Arrivals, End of Season Sale, Special Discounts, etc. Statistics show that emailers continue to be highly effective (check out our blog post that talks about this in detail.) So, not only do you help cause immediate sales, you also create top-of-the-mind brand recall amongst your customers who get your emailers regularly.
2. Make their experience easy and hassle-free: When customers register on your online store, one of the biggest advantages is that they only need to save all their details like contact info, shipping address, etc. one time. The next time they log in and make a purchase, this information gets auto-filled. This may not seem like a big thing, but habits of online users are changing and people are beginning to shop online more and more often. Even something simple as this removes the hassle of entering the same information over and over again and adds to a positive customer experience.
3. Create a database of their order history for them: What do you have to do if you want to tally your credit card statement with the purchases you have made online? Most likely, search and look through records of these transactions in your email, right? Make this process effortless for them by providing your customers with their order history at your online store. This will help them keep tabs on their purchases and make it easy to cross-reference them at any time.
4. Create Loyalty using a Loyalty Program: All credit cards and most major online stores got this right a long time back. Reward your customers for spending and give them incentive to spend more and more with you. Offer your customers reward points for every purchase they make based on the value of the purchase and make these points redeemable. Your customers now have a solid incentive to spend at your online store and accumulate these reward points so that they can get a large discount on a highly-priced item. You are not only getting them to spend more, you are likely up-selling your inventory, too! Read more on loyalty programs in this blog post.
5. Pamper them with Exclusive Privileges: A fun member benefit you can offer is to make pages of your website accessible to ‘Members Only’. On these pages, you can give your registered customers a highly exclusive preview of your hottest new arrivals with an opportunity to buy them before everyone else does! This works particularly well when you offer items that are limited in number. You can also offer your members exclusive discounts on these ‘Members Only’ pages, giving them further incentive to shop at your online store.
It may seem daunting at first, but really it is not very difficult to create brand loyalty. We are all creatures of habit and once we get used to something like a certain web store, it is just a lot easier to return there than to find one’s way through a whole new website.
Of course there will be people who will look for the cheapest possible deal for each and every purchase. But for most regular online shoppers, familiarity, ease of use, and small savings on time and effort go a long way in building brand loyalty.
And when you add exclusive discounts, exclusive privileges and rewards points to the mix (as benefits of being a registered customer), you can make your online store tantalisingly tempting to your customer base!
