Is your eCommerce customer retention good enough? Perhaps your eCommerce strategy isn’t working as expected?
The truth is that it’s hard to attract customers in such a competitive industry, and it’s even harder to retain them for months and years to come.
Still, there are some proven ways to reach more customers with your eCommerce store, and that’s what we’re going to look at today.
But first, let’s define eCommerce customer retention.
What Is eCommerce Customer Retention?
It is the process of encouraging people to keep purchasing products from your online store.
For example, if 50,000 customers bought from your store this year, and 5,000 of them buy from you again next year, your retention rate would be 10%.
This, however, immediately marks the question of what is a good customer retention rate?
Naturally, the answer to this will vary depending on your niche, and other factors, but an average eCommerce customer retention rate is around 35-40%.
Here’s the formula you can use to calculate:
Retention rate= [(E-N)/S] x 100
Basically, you include all current customers, then remove new customers, and divide that by the number of customers from a year ago (or whatever other time frame you’ve set).
8 eCommerce Customer Retention Strategies
- Develop a Great Customer Onboarding Process
- Personalize Everything Possible
- Be Active on Social Media
- Encourage Referrals
- Invest in Customer Experience
- Communicate With Your Clients Consistently
- Craft a Nice User Experience
- Incorporate Automation
1. Develop a Great Customer Onboarding Process
The best place to start thinking about customer retention is right from the start. Once the user becomes your customer, immediately “hug” them with a nice onboarding experience.
It should all start with the informative welcome email you send to new customers, and that’s the perfect place to set expectations and promote unique offers to subscribers.
2. Personalize Everything Possible
Personalization is extremely important in the 2020s, so much so that 80% of people would rather purchase from a brand that provides a personalized experience, compared to one that doesn’t.
Furthermore, 92% of online shoppers have been influenced by personalized shopping cart recommendations.
In terms of eCommerce customer retention, you should look far beyond simply using the name of the person when you send an email.
Instead, focus on the purchase history of users, products they’ve viewed, and their overall buying characteristics. Would you recommend a pair of high heels to someone whose preferences are towards sneakers?
3. Be Active on Social Media
Social media is not only one of the best mediums to increase your eCommerce website traffic, it’s also a great place to win over your existing customers, and “persuade” them to buy from you again.
One of the best places to engage with your customers directly is social media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube – you should be wherever most of your customer base is.
Publish content regularly, encourage your followers to publish UGC (User-generated content), and use all possible methods to show your audience that you love them.
4. Encourage Referrals
Referral programs are an awesome way to drive up revenue and increase eCommerce customer retention rate.
Here’s a great example of referral marketing:
Seeing real people, outside your organization, promoting your business is a huge buying factor for many customers. Plus, it’s beneficial for everyone involved.
The person that recommends your products gets some kind of reward, like a discount for purchases, and the people that visit the promoted link, usually also benefit.
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5. Invest in Customer Experience
Even the most optimized website, with the best products and so on will not keep users coming back, if their customer experience was bad.
The thing about great customer experience is that it’s a never ending process. You can never be too good at it. In order to establish what your customers liked, and what they didn’t, it’s a good idea to ask them for feedback.
And it doesn’t need to be something overly complicated or intrusive. It could be just a single question, like “Are you satisfied with your last purchase?”.
6. Communicate With Your Clients Consistently
Communication is key. Furthermore, consistent communication is essential. Don’t leave your customers in the dark, talk to them regularly, using your social media accounts, emails, website accounts, and so on.
What’s more, don’t only notify your customers about sales-related topics. Send them holiday greetings, information that could be useful to them, and all sorts of other relevant resources.
They will appreciate you treating them with respect and wanting to eagerly help out, instead of just urging them to buy.
7. Craft a Nice User Experience
The overall user experience is another deciding factor behind customer satisfaction and retention. After all, if a user didn’t feel comfortable and/or happy during their purchasing process, chances are that they won’t do business with you again.
So, make sure to follow the best user experience practices, like:
- Clear navigation.
- Easy access.
- Understandable copies.
- Consistency.
- Contextual.
- Simple.
8. Incorporate Automation
If you really want to be modern, incorporate automation into your eCommerce store. Apart from following the trend, automation can bring with it great benefits to your business.
For example, it will boost customer satisfaction, increase efficiency, and save you time and money in the long run.
Last but not least, it’s cool. IКЕА, for instance, use augmented reality, to help customers imagine how furniture would look like in a house environment.
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Summary
eCommerce customer retention strategies require creativity, hard work, and above all – thinking about your existing customers, and how to inspire them to purchase from your store again.
Some would argue that it’s easier to retain a client than to acquire a new one, but that’s not entirely true. It’s not that simple nowadays. Clients have more choices than ever before, and must be courted, if you want to keep them.
It’s not enough to just have good products anymore. You must show your clients that you care about them, and are willing to go the extra mile to retain them.