Selling Online #15 : Measurement : Repeat Customers : Part 2

Last month I began the first of a two part series focusing on repeat customers. That column dealt with how to measure what was happening with regards to your repeat customer activity. This month’s conclusion will focus on some ideas on how to increase the quantity of repeat customers.

The first way to make sure that you are constantly increasing the number of repeat customers is the best way; provide outstanding customer service! If a customer has made a purchase from you and they get what they wanted at a price they think is a good value and every interaction they have with you is a positive one, you’re not providing a lot of reasons for them to shop anywhere else. Making sure that your customer service processes (order processing, customer notifications, returns and exchanges, etc.) are bullet-proof is the cheapest way to keep a customer coming back. This obviously has the dual benefit of keeping the revenue coming it, but reduces the necessity to do a lot more advertising to replace customers that never come back because you screwed something up.

Another good way to generate repeat customers is with a loyalty or rewards program. Some e-commerce platforms have this ability built in. If yours does not, it’s possible to purchase third-party programs that may be able to “plug-in” to your system, or you may need to (or choose to) build your own loyalty program. I’m sure you are probably familiar with the idea behind these programs because you personally use them through airline frequent flyer miles, rewards points on your credit card and so on.

If you like the idea of a loyalty/reward program, make sure that you make the perceived benefit high enough so that the customer sees a reason to use it. Too many companies that use these programs don’t see the expected returns because the reward levels are so high that there’s little motivation for the customer to participate (are your customers really going to spend $10,000 to get a free pair of gloves?).

Frequently changing sales and promotions are an outstanding tool to keep people coming back, especially if you back them up with direct email communications when the promotion changes. A cool example of a site that capitalizes on this is Woot.com. They sell only one product on their store, but the gimmick is that every day it’s a different product! Millions of people go there everyday to see what the new offering is. A similar program may help you keep people coming back to your site frequently, and if you choose good products, keep them buying!

Speaking of changing stuff on your site, another good way to keep people buying is to constantly source and offer new and unique products on your site. If people know that you are actively sourcing and offering stuff they can’t find anywhere else, they are going to keep coming back to see what the latest & greatest thing is that they didn’t know they needed but now can’t live without.

Internet only gift certificates are a tool that you can use to keep the repeat transactions coming in. While they may not start out as a repeat customer due to the nature of gift certificates (for example, the original purchaser of the gift certificate could be a rider’s wife, or brother) the recipient of the gift certificate will now have the chance to cash in a $50 gift certificate on a $300 purchase, and then based on the other items mentioned above become a repeat customer. To make this process as painless as possible, it’s helpful if your e-commerce platform allows for the issuance and redemption of gift certificates automatically. This keeps the amount of errors and fraud to a minimum because you can eliminate the human element from these transactions. The system spits out a gift certificate code when it’s purchased, and accepts the code and decrements the order total when it’s redeemed.

The final example is something that I’ll be talking about in more detail in the future, but having blogs, forums, and other participatory elements on your site are a great way to keep people coming back. And while this in and of itself does not guarantee repeat customers, just getting them back on your site is way more than half of the battle in creating a repeat customer. If you can get them to come back to your site often, and you follow the ideas above, as well as follow the merchandising suggestions from previous columns, your should see a dramatic increase in the amount of repeat customers on your site.

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