How To Delight eCommerce Customers So They Recommend Your Business

In the United States alone, the ecommerce industry is estimated to generate roughly $460 billion in revenue this year. That number is slated to grow nearly 40 percent by 2022.

Thanks to brands like Amazon, consumers have changed their buying behavior, resulting in an increasing amount of purchases being made through ecommerce stores. Thanks to this dramatic change in behavior, it has never been a better time to be an ecommerce business leader.

Whether your ecommerce business sells hockey sticks and sports equipment or cosmetics and skin care, building a base of loyal, repeat customers is one of the most effective ways to create a healthy business. To do that, brands should focus on delighting ecommerce customers in a variety of proven ways ranging from customer support to marketing and merchandising. By implementing the following strategies, ecommerce businesses will be well on their way to attracting repeat customers and word-of-mouth referrals.

Provide outstanding customer support

According to data cited by Help Scout, the average American tells nine other people about positive customer support experiences; however, the same report also found the average American tells sixteen other people about negative customer support experiences.

Ecommerce business leaders must ensure customers have positive customer support experiences in order to ensure repeat business and to benefit from word-of-mouth marketing. Not only is it less expensive to keep existing customers, but business referred via word-of-mouth referral is arguably the least expensive way to acquire new customers.

Use email marketing campaigns to recommend appropriate products

Once a customer has purchased an item from your ecommerce store, the relationship shouldn’t end. Instead, marketers should develop email drip campaigns which encourage customers to continue purchasing appropriate, related products from your store.

A study conducted by McKinsey and Company found that email marketing was 40 times more effective at generating purchases than social media marketing. While social media marketing certainly has its place when it comes to advertising your business and creating engagement, ecommerce marketers must use marketing automation to develop long-term relationships with existing customers.

By nurturing customer relationships through email, you won’t just be improving your bottom line; you’ll also be helping customers to find products they enjoy, which can bolster customer satisfaction.

Produce educational content to help customers make better decisions

Forrester found that in some industries, nearly 75 percent of buyers complete the customer journey on their own through online research. Buyers of all stripes are interested in consuming educational content that will help them to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Buyers want to browse customer reviews and compare pricing before making a purchase, but many businesses also find that creating informational blog content helps to attract consumers. Whether you establish a blog about how customers can repair their credit to start a business like yours or talk about fashion trends to watch next season, developing educational content to help prospective buyers make the right purchasing decisions and engage with your brand is one great way to delight customers.

Remember, developing educational content focused on popular search topics can help your brand be discovered by new members of your target audience.

Invest in retargeting ads

A recent report found audience members who viewed a retargeting ad were 70 percent more likely to convert on the advertiser’s website. Retargeting ads are designed to display messages to those who visited a website, but who did not convert.

The ads, which are usually placed on social media platforms or on media outlets, serve to remind website visitors to take an action they initiated but never completed. Think of the retargeting ads used by Amazon to remind shoppers to complete a specific purchase as an example.

Retargeting ads can serve to salvage a customer relationship that would otherwise have never existed by reminding website visitors to make a purchase. While customers don’t necessarily enjoy retargeting ads, if prospects never become customers, there will be no opportunity to delight them in other ways.

That said, many customers do appreciate retargeting ads, which may remind them of an item they left in their cart in a distracted moment, for example. At any rate, ecommerce marketers may decide to employ a potentially off-putting marketing tactic in order to delight customers in other ways later in the relationship.

Offer competitively priced items

An ecommerce platform called Bigcommerce found that price was the single most important factor in determining where people shop. The ecommerce industry is competitive; big-box retailers like Walmart and Amazon have the ability to negotiate aggressively with wholesalers in order to provide customers with the most competitive prices.

That doesn’t mean smaller ecommerce players can’t compete, though. Where large companies have massive amounts of overhead to contend with, smaller organizations can decide to run lean, passing the savings on to customers.

Conclusion

The ecommerce industry is growing quickly. Due to this growth, there is room for both large ecommerce retailers and upstart businesses. In order for smaller ecommerce players to compete, however, they must ensure customers have consistently delightful experiences.

By focusing on customer support, pricing, email nurturing, and retargeting ads, ecommerce retailers will be able to consistently delight customers and turn their business into one of many ecommerce success stories in 2018.

What areas will you focus on to delight customers this year?