If you are looking to set up a business and you don’t have a huge amount of money to invest, you should consider the ecommerce industry. It’s easier than ever for people to set up their own online stores and start selling, and if you market yourself well, you can start to build a successful business from your living room. But if it were that easy, everybody would be doing it, right?
In reality, it’s not that easy because there is a huge amount of competition out there. It’s easy to set up an ecommerce store, but it’s very hard to turn that small store into a fully fledged business with a steady stream of customers. You’re competing with some huge online retail giants like Amazon or eBay, and getting people to come to you instead of them is tough. When you first start out, you may find that you see a surge of sales and you’d be forgiven for thinking that your business is about to take off. But then sales drop off and you’re struggling to make ends meet. This is common for new ecommerce businesses because they market themselves well enough to get some customers, but they don’t have any repeat customers that keep coming back over and over.
The key to building a stable ecommerce business is finding those repeat customers. That’s how you sustain the business and keep a steady stream of cash coming in. If you can’t do that and your sales are sporadic, that’s when you will run into cash flow issues and the business will fail. Unfortunately, finding repeat customers is tough, especially when people are already loyal to the big brands. If your ecommerce company is struggling, here’s how you can find more repeat customers.
Find The Right Audience
Big retail brands that sell a wide range of products find it a lot easier to get repeat customers because they’re a one stop shop for anything that you need. People don’t just go to Amazon for books anymore, they also go there for food and drink, entertainment, electronics, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Their customers have no need to go anywhere else.
But your business will not be able to offer that and you will be focused on a certain type of product. If you are going to get repeat customers, you need to find people that are heavily interested in that product, rather than people that may buy it once. For example, if your website sells baking equipment, your business will be sustained by the people that bake all the time and maybe even have their own business, rather than the people that buy a few items as a gift for somebody. That’s why it’s so important that you know your target audience and direct your marketing efforts toward them. If you can direct the right people to your site and develop a long term relationship with them, they will keep coming back again and again. But if you are only reaching people that have a passing interest in your products, you won’t get the repeat customers that you need.
Encourage People To Register Accounts
Most ecommerce sites will give you the option to register an account the first time you buy something. If your site doesn’t have this feature, you need to add it because it’s important for a few reasons. Firstly, it gives you their email address, which can be used for marketing purposes in the future. If somebody has already bought products from you, they are a good qualified lead because you know that they have at least some interest. By emailing them about new products or any deals and offers, you will encourage them to return and make more purchases in the future. It’s a highly effective way to keep people coming back.
The other reason that it’s important is that it makes the checkout process a lot quicker next time they come back. If they can simply log into their account and buy something without having to put all of their details in, it makes a big difference. If they are trying to decide between two sites, a customer is more likely to go with your site because they have used it before and it’s quicker. That’s why you need to encourage people to register for an account when they make their first purchase. Often, companies use a small incentive like a discount to get people to sign up.
Subscription Services
More retail stores are using monthly subscription services to give customers access to better deals or exclusive content. The most obvious example of this is Amazon Prime, and although it now includes movies and music, it started out offering free delivery on all purchases. You can also give people discounts on products for a base monthly fee. It’s fairly easy to set this up if you invest in the right subscription billing software and make some edits to your website, then you just need to market it. Once people are paying the subscription, they will always come back to your site because if they shop elsewhere, they feel that they are not getting their money’s worth. It can be difficult to convince people to sign up for the subscription service and it’s important that you offer them something good in return, but once they do sign up, it’s the perfect way to maintain their loyalty.
Good Customer Service
This is a simple one, but it’s probably the most important. When people buy products online, they want the checkout service to be quick and easy, and they want their product to be delivered quickly. If they have any problems with it when it arrives, they want a simple returns process to sort it. If your site doesn’t offer good customer service, you can be sure that people won’t come back a second time. They may also leave you a bad review, and that can be devastating because most people check reviews before using a new company.
Repeat customers are the backbone of a successful ecommerce business so you need to focus on using these methods to find customers that come back time and time again.
