Five tips to retain customers

Customers are the lifeblood of your ecommerce business. In fact, without them, you don’t even have a business. What are the tricks to retaining them?

The answer is simple: keep them delighted. Keeping the customers you serve happy is the best marketing tool you have.

Studies show that, on average, it costs about five times more to bring in a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Of course, some degree of customer churn is inevitable, but there are ways to minimise this.

So how can you maximise customer satisfaction and keep your customers coming back again and again?

1. Offer top products

This is the number one tip. It’s obvious, but good quality goods will keep customers happy and encourage them to return to your ecommerce website.

2. Target the right ones

One of the best ways to retain customers is to target the right ones to begin with. You want your customers to value your ecommerce offering and you should offer them reasons to visit. Through surveys, find out more information about them – as well as giving you valuable data, it will help paint a picture of what sort of people you should be marketing to.

3. Be personal

Don’t just ignore who buys from you. They are not simply an invoice number, they are people. Treat them as you would a friend and ensure they know that their business is appreciated – say ‘thank you’ in their sales confirmation email.

3. Listen to them…

Make sure you listen to your customers – they will always tell you what it is they want. If you try and decide what it is they want without talking to them, you will be sure to fail.

4. …And don’t ignore complaints!

If any customers have complaints, don’t just ignore them. Apologise and then go out of your way to satisfy their complaint. More than ever, recommendations and online reviews play an important role in ecommerce. A disgruntled customer can damage your reputation very easily, so avoid this at all costs.

5. Keep refreshing your offering

You need to give your customers a reason for becoming repeat customers. A stale website will only annoy people – make sure you keep your site up to date with new products and services. And when you’ve made a major update, why not email your customer base to let them know?

6. Incentivise them

For your best customers, why not offer them online discounts? For example, once a customer has spent a certain amount, offer them a 10% coupon off their next purchase. You can also offer free shipping to repeat customers, or early previews if your products are seasonal.