Online Shoppers Care About More Than Price
The conventional wisdom of e-commerce is that customers only care about the best price. As a result, many online retailers don't consider customer loyalty an attainable goal. But according to a recent Aberdeen report, online loyalty is possible.
Today's issue of 1to1 Weekly highlights some of the report's findings. The report, Online Customer Loyalty: Converting Occasional Shoppers Into a Loyal Consumer Base, says no single strategy has emerged as an online loyalty standard. However, common attributes of the best-in-class companies surveyed include targeted, behavior-based promotions (56 percent), personalization of customer communications based on preferences (28 percent), and increasing customer touchpoints before, during, and after the purchase (28 percent).
Greg Belkin, Aberdeen retail analyst and author of the report, says there are three pillars of a successful online loyalty strategy:
Customer attraction: Targeted, analytics-backed marketing campaigns can help to increase existing customers' spending. Examples include electronic coupons, personalized emails, advertisements, surveys, customer ratings, and blogs.Customer conversion: Dazzle site visitors with highly personalized experiences using specific strategic promotions, pricing, content displays, and cross-sales. Use analytics, CRM systems, and multichannel loyalty-card data to develop such personalized interactions.
Customer support: Support customers post-purchase with multichannel returns-management strategies and follow-up customer service.
Do you agree? Is online loyalty possible? While these pillar help improve relationships with customers online?
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Excellent article, I think you hit all the major points. Here at VeriSign I hear complaints about poor navigation causing confusion. Also if consumers get a hint of suspicion they play it safe and abandon their cart rather then risk ID theft. There is a new breed of shopper and they are “security savvy,” protecting their wallets and hard earned cash. Looking for security cues - found in the form of extended validation SSL, (a nice bright green url bar).
The competition is thick and ecommerce sites need to step-up and stand-out. And as you mentioned it’s much more than incentives and deals, it’s about trust and service.
Jody and Cory,
Great comments! I agree that it all comes down to trust. And great customer service. It's easy to use the excuse that all online shoppers want is price, but as you mentioned many companies are proving that to be wrong.
Cory, what was the retailer that sent you the note? Now that's going above and beyond!
Customer loyalty is not only attainable in e-commerce, it has been the backbone of growth for companies like Amazon.com, Drugstore.com, Expedia.com, Zappos.com (I'm naming all my favorites!) and dozens more who offer extremely personal and PERSONABLE service tailored to their customers.
And those are just the Goliaths of e-commerce. I know that, as a customer, I not only favor large companies that consistently deliver a positive experience I have been known to spend more money to buy from a small business online retailer 1) so I can support small business growth and 2) because their service is always more personal. Just today I received a package from a small company in South Carolina. Packed inside my box was a handwritten note thanking me for being a customer. You can't beat that.
I don't see why online businesses can't build loyalty. We hold online businesses to pretty high performance standards. If a business meets those standards, their customers will enjoy visiting their website as much as a loyal Macy's customer might enjoy visiting Macy's brick-n-mortar store.
We want to be able to easily find the information we need on the website, we want clear navigation, we want notifications on shipping, details on the product or service, we want to be able to make an appointment online. A business that offers that will likely have quite a few return customers.
If these businesses also offer useful content on their site so people will want to visit even when they are not buying, and/or offer e-newsletters, sales notifications, coupons and the like, this will also make people loyal.
And let's face it, there are enough dicey sites still out there to make people think twice about online shopping, even now. If they find a site they can trust, that offers everything they expect out of an online store (or a physical one), and receive excellent customer support, that will make them loyal for life. They may even be more loyal to some online retailers because not only are they getting excellent service, it is extremely convenient to be able to stay home, click on what you want, and pay for it without waiting in lines or even having to get the car out (and acceptable clothing;))