The best practices: Online customer retention
In this information technology age there is an increasing need to learn how to retain our customers online. No longer is it just about providing smart, smiling faces to your customers and making sure they are made to feel welcome; it’s nothing to do with human contact anymore, it’s a whole new game.
Loyalty
In many people’s minds there is an easy solution for retaining customers, both online and on the high street, and that is to have a loyalty scheme. However, this isn’t always easy for those businesses that have just set up. Making grand offers and giving away products is not the best way for a new business to take off, but it doesn’t mean they can’t do other things to help retain their customers.
Show them you know what you’re doing
The best way of course is to provide an excellent service to your online customers and ensure that their every need is met, in much the same way as you would do if you owned a high street store. But this won’t do the job straight away and make you appear to be as reputable as you’d like to be.
Here are a number of other ways you can develop a positive image and make your customers believe that you are a business they can trust and they would want to do repeat business with:
- Consider publishing some genuine testimonials on your website. This is an excellent way of making people aware that you’ve sold goods and/or services before and that your customer has been pleased with the overall service. You don’t need to make them lengthy; just take quotes from the testimonials and place them somewhere that can been seen.
- Keep things simple and honest. Not only with testimonials either. You need to make sure your product descriptions are simple and honest, and not full of fantastic language that ends up making the thing you’re describing out to be something it’s not. There is nothing worse than a lot of sales type language on a website trying to make things seem more exciting than they are. If you sell toasters, just tell them what it does and not that it will match their kitchen; they’ll be able to decide this themselves. Remember, simple and honest.
- Allow access to contact information. This is a fault on so many websites, there are too many to count. Do not be one of those websites that hides their contact details behind a lot of useless FAQs (frequently asked questions) and suggestions. Have your contact details in clear sight and easily accessible.
- Better your own advertisements. This is an excellent practice to get into. If you can arrange for your customer to receive their goods or service quicker than you said you could deliver it then they are likely to be very impressed with your service and shop with you again. It’s a good idea to add a little time to your estimated turn around or delivery times to allow yourself the chance to make it shorter.
- Don’t bombard your customer with mail. This is one of the worst things you could do. Although email marketing has its place in business (a very specific one that needs training to achieve), it doesn’t mean that as soon as your customer gets home they need to be hearing about another offer you have on. If they’ve bought a product from your website you must tell yourself that you’re doing something right, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered. But asking them to buy more too soon could lose you that customer forever. Leave them alone for a while before you put them on your marketing list; and make sure they have consented to receive your promotions.
To conclude
Using the above ideas is a good way to begin building a reputation and offer your customers satisfaction that doesn’t have to come from monetary gain or other reward systems. Going back to basics and just providing a good service should be enough to retain those customers who have already shopped with you. Just ensure you make their experience a good one.
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