Customers are spines to every business. Call them the backbone and they fit in. There is no business that exists without people who keep them in existence with their patronage.
The same way a business with no customers will close up is the same way a business without a reasonable amount of returning customers might be experiencing low sales. Having returning customers make repeat purchases, the more their average order value increases which in turn increases customer loyalty and revenue for you as a Shopify store owner.
Table Of Content
1. Introduction
2. How To Retain Customers For Shopify Stores
– Attach A Discount To The First Or Next Purchase
– Free Shipping
– Improved Customer Service
– Personalized Shopping Experience
– Build Customers’ Trust3. Ways To Boost Customer Retention Rate For Your Shopify Store
– Social Media Presence
– Loyalty and Reward Strategy
– Own A Brand
– Personalized Email Marketing
– Quality Customer Service And Satisfaction4. Wrap
When nurturing your customers to make their first purchase in your store, you need to strategically plan your marketing activities from their first visit to their first purchase. This period determines whether a customer will be converted and also whether they will return to buy again after the first patronage.
Customer retention plays a key role when it comes to maximizing sales, increasing your customer base, and increasing revenue. There are several e-commerce metrics that customer retention can help you improve for your Shopify store.
These metrics are used to consider how well your Shopify store is performing whether in sales, revenue, or customer experience. Some of these metrics include customer lifetime value, average order value, churn rate, etc
How To Retain Customers For Shopify Stores
Customer retention is directly linked to good customer service and satisfaction. The higher your customer satisfaction level the higher the number of customers you can retain or convert into returning buyers.
To reduce the churn rate for your store, you need to keep your marketing game tight. There are many ways to make customers return to buy from your store after their first purchase. Some of these ways require that you map out a marketing strategy that can capture every class of buyers or visitors that comes across your store.
When analyzing online buyers, there are visitors who are window shopping, some with an intention to buy while orders are making product research. Strategically, your marketing should be able to incorporate all these classes.
Customer Retention Strategies: How To Drive Customer Loyalty
1. Attach A Discount To The First Or Next Purchase
Online buyers value discounts a lot no matter how minute. You can easily attract window shoppers with a discount for their first purchase. Showing customers that they can redeem their discount at checkout can spur them to buy.
You can as well attach a time limit to the discount to create sales urgency. One way the popular e-commerce outlet, Aliexpress captures customers using this method. At first login to the site, you get a certain percentage off every item you buy.
This can help you increase average order value for customers as well as make them return to buy more when they know they have a discount to redeem.
2. Free Shipping
Nothing quickens a customer to buy instantly than free shipping. Shipping costs for some customers are burdensome and expensive probably due to distance or nature of the product in question.
Offering customers free shipping for their first or next purchase can increase your customer retention rate and boost sales as well.
With StoreBundle, you can seamlessly display a free shipping bar on your Shopify store’s homepage, product page, or collection page. This is a feature among the 12+ apps on StoreBundle. Install here
3. Improved Customer Service
Customer satisfaction is easily attained with your customers are good with the customer support you give on your Shopify store. One way to gain customers’ loyalty is to offer good customer service.
A good customer service journey begins with accessible support by customers addressing core inquiries about the store or products. A personalized customer experience can help you build a strong bond with your customers which in turn strengthen customer loyalty.
Also, a consistent brand when it comes to how you treat your customers can boost your store’s reputation with customers. Online buyers are quite attracted to brands that are consistent with their method of business. Having a consistent brand can also help you retain buyers.
4. Personalized Shopping Experience
To facilitate a personalized shopping experience for your customers, you can make use of customer data to create personalized offers or product recommendations that customers might find interesting.
Creating a personable space for customers drives customer loyalty. They feel your brand is sold out to their demands. You can track customer browsing history to help you personalize buyers’ shopping.
For instance, if a customer frequently checks a product or products in similar category, you can tailor your broadcast emails using this data.
5. Build Customers’ Trust
This point carries multiple benefits. With the popularity of online buying, there are still cases where customers withdraw their purchase intention due to past fraudulent experiences on online shopping platforms.
Some buyers are skeptical about buying an item from an online store or from a brand they have either never bought from before. To convert this category of buyers you need to prove a point that your store is genuine and trustworthy.
How To Build Customers’ Trust To Improve Sales
One of the ways to build customers’ trust is by building a consistent brand. Consistency can be in various forms either in customer support, brand marketing style, product category, etc.
Ways To Boost Customer Retention Rate For Your Shopify Store
1. Social Media Presence
Internet today can place you on top of the world in new minutes if you channel your efforts properly. To thrive as an e-commerce store this day, you need to leverage social media marketing.
Creating a signature for your Shopify store on social media can help you reach a super wider audience that you naturally might not be able to reach using traditional promotion techniques.
According to a survey by Data Reportal, 9 out of every 10 internet users use social media platforms every month. With a total of 4.74 billion people engaging in the social media space. This shows that more than half of the total world population makes use of social media.
Getting your business in this space gives you access to both paid and unpaid promotional activities that can scale your business higher. Another way to strengthen the social media presence of your brand is to engage User-Generated Content (UGC).
This way you can build trust that your Shopify store is genuine and safe to do business with. First-timers or visitors equally trust brands with strong social presence. This is a justification most online buyers look out for when shopping online.
2. Loyalty and Reward Strategy
Embarking on activities that can strengthen customer loyalty can help you retain more customers than ever. The bedrock of customer retention is to make your customers loyal to you.
Getting customer loyalty obviously cannot be bought, you need to keep up with a service that can initiate trust from your customers. Therefore, using tips and tricks that help you bond with customers is vital for this way of gaining customer retention.
You can also stage a reward strategy that will make your customers keep coming back to your store. Let’s say, for instance, you give points for every purchase customers make and these points can be used to purchase an item or pay for shipping for the next order.
Online buyers will definitely want to keep buying from your store with such a reward strategy so that they can redeem the points that they’ve gained. This is also a way of retaining quite a good number of your first-time customers.
3. Own A Brand
Beyond prepping your Shopify store for sales, you should also seek to create a brand for your store. This helps you stay consistent, build trust with customers, and gives you an edge when customers need to look for a store to get certain products.
The brand that customers see the most or are surrounded by its activities is likely to pop up first before others when there is a need to buy an item. A brand signature also helps you boost customer loyalty, if the brand is well known for good products and quality service, customers are likely to want to be associated with such brands.
Branding your online store and promotion gives you an edge with online buyers. They are quick to remember brands that they often interact with. Although branding goes beyond how to present your store. It also includes the type, kind, and quality of products that you sell.
This way customers will know who and what your store represents. Branding can help you make customers glued to buying from your Shopify store.
4. Personalized Email Marketing
Be personable!
One of the ways to get through the many social and internet noise these days is to stay personable. Using a marketing strategy such as email marketing and considering the number of emails every user gets a day, you want to ensure your emails are personalized enough to be checked and read.
Email marketing experiences a high churn rate as an average user gets about 121 emails daily which is quite high for any emails to be prioritized. You can email customers based on what products they interact with in your store.
Upselling and cross-selling is a feature that you can take up using email marketing. You can upsell products that are interesting to the customers.
Also after the first purchase, you can keep up with customers using email marketing. This way you get to stay in their faces. Sending emails frequently can help you trigger sales from customers thereby creating retained customers for your Shopify store.
5. Quality Customer Service And Satisfaction
Having a customer support team that is capable of handling any and every support issues, inquiries and complaint give you a point in building customer loyalty for retention purpose.
If customers know that they can easily get any product or purchase related issues resolved, they tend to trust such stores more. Also, when it comes to ordering fulfillment procedures, keeping your customers in the loop when processing their orders can help you retain more customers for your store.
Wrap
Running a successful e-commerce business requires effective customer service, problem resolution, appreciation, feedback, responsiveness, and transparency to retain customers. With these strategies, you can improve the customer experience on your Shopify store and increase customer retention rates. With a high customer retention rate, you can increase the profitability and sustainability of your business in the long run.
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