Step by Step Guide to Keep Customers Coming Back to Your Business

Best Practices

If you’re looking for ways to improve your online business, a customer retention strategy deserves your undivided attention. Let’s go through important steps that will help you improve customer retention. And make your business the first choice for your target audience.

Sure, when you’re running a business, it gets easy to sidetrack it and just go for a new audience to boost numbers. But in reality, it’s far more likely that you’ll make a sale to an existing customer.

Putting in the effort to get people to come back to you regularly doesn’t only impact sales. Your overall reputation will improve generating new customers through word-of-mouth in the long run. It’s much easier getting that first purchase than actually creating a loyal buyer.

So you get them to visit your online shop, browse around, maybe even buy something, but how can you get them to keep coming and become repeating customers? Check out the step by step guide below.

How to Keep Customers Coming Back to Your Business

1. Improve User Experience

No matter the type of product, your website needs to be fully functional and easy on the eye. Think about a brick-and-mortar shop where you can’t find the cabins to try out the custom clothes that you like, you can’t see shoe sizes anywhere, and the light is going on and off constantly. You wouldn’t exactly run back there next week, would you?

That’s why you should aim to make your website streamlined and focused on providing an efficient, substance-over-style experience. This means sacrificing things such as flashy animations and dynamic floating menus. Or getting better hosting for a faster loading speed that won’t have customers leaving because they got bored waiting to see the next page.

Search filters and specific categories can do wonders for user experience, especially if the interface is simple to use and provides customers with enough variations to simplify their search. Everything should center around creating an intuitive path for the customer that leads to the end goal: conversion).

Finally, a simple checkout process that doesn’t have any detours that would confuse the buyer and provide unnecessary upsales (there are better ways to do that we’ll cover soon).

If you set up a frictionless process and make it easy for them to get the thing they wanted, chances are the customers will take the journey again in the future. And the number of cart abandonments will drop.

2. Nurture Relationships

Communication is one of the building blocks on your way to forming a strong customer base. Therefore, you should work on creating a connection with your audience right from the start. And keep it up as long as possible.

Making a first-time buyer become a frequent customer takes some time, but it’s always worth it in the end. Start by creating a personalized welcome for all newly registered users. They must get used to hearing from you and by going a step beyond the generic “You’ve registered successfully”.

The first purchase is also an occasion to celebrate. Use it to express gratitude and show the customers that they’re more than just a number. Tell them that you appreciate their support and how important they are for your business.

Of course, you shouldn’t spam your customers, but following up on different relevant occasions can help you keep them engaged between visits. Aside from purchases, you can send them emails during holiday seasons, or when your new products drop. Or even share important news about your brand.

You don’t need to try and sell with every message you send out. But all communication should place them in the center. So, for example, when you’re talking about plans for your business, don’t forget to point out that you see the customer as an integral part of going forward and point out their contribution.

3. Use Relevant Channels

Aside from the communication you form with your customers and the direct ways to interact with them, such as email, you should also consider additional ways to stay their top-of-mind choice.

One of the best ways to do that is to create a strong social media presence. You don’t have to be everywhere. But you do need to find the one that’s the most relevant to you and use it to your advantage. For example, if you’re offering fun shirt designs, it’s better to double down on Instagram instead of trying to engage people on LinkedIn.

Even though this communication includes various goals and types of content, direct a large portion of it at loyal customers. And written with their experience in mind. Address them as if it’s a conversation and frequently ask them to participate in it.

One of the best investments when it comes to continuous communication is paid ad campaigns. You can use them both in social media and other places online, such as search engines. Show targeted messages to customers that already interacted with your shop.

By carefully aligning remarketing campaigns with the type of user you’re directing them at, you’ll bring personalization to another level. From reminding them they didn’t finish their purchase to notifying them that there are new models of their favorite product. This is a tool that will massively improve your chances of retaining customers.

4. Make the Most Out of Feedback

One of the foundations in building a solid relationship with your target audience is being open to feedback and two-way communication. When they know their opinion matters, they’ll be more likely to keep coming back.

Strong customer service can help with this, and you can implement it multiple ways:

  • Dedicated email address for support and feedback. This is a staple of every successful webshop. The customers need a way to contact you with any questions and concerns they might have. It should be clearly visible and have timely responses.
  • A live chat or a chatbot on your website. You can go one step further and implement a live support if you see it as relevant. This can also save you time in the long run, as you can prepare FAQ with the feedback you collect.
  • Active community management on social media. As your customers are more likely to spend time on their social media profiles than on your website, you need to give them an opportunity to communicate there as well. Don’t leave them waiting for too long and try preparing predefined answers or thinking about automation if the number of messages becomes overwhelming.

All of these have many benefits, but the most important is that you get valuable insights that can help you understand your audience better.

To really get the most out of having a proper customer support system, you need to act on the insights and implement the comments that you get as your business progresses.

5. Create an Incentive for Coming Back

Finally, while a good system that you built can do wonders for your customer retention, you still need to implement some concrete rewards for their loyalty. Of course, these don’t have to be actual gifts, but you do need to provide incentive that fits the brand and motivates the audience to choose you every time.

Maybe the most obvious choice (that still works) is discounts – they don’t have to be huge, but they do need have proper timing and communication in a way that shows customers that they earned them by being such a support for your brand. You can give them out on certain occasions or at more quiet times to remind them that there are new things in store for them.

Loyalty programs expand on that, giving additional benefits to customers who are a part of your community for a certain period of time or make a specific number of separate purchases along the way. They can include various benefits, such as the possibility of getting a new product before others or receiving a gift for every x amount they spend from their account.

Carefully curated recommendations can also be helpful for returning customers, as they’ll spend less time actually searching for something. Combine all of these with other functionalities such as wishlists, and you’ll have users more engaged in the long run.

Why Keep Your Customers Coming Back?

The essential part of getting customers to keep returning to your business is treating them right and showing that you value them for more than just their money.

Start by creating a comfortable environment that makes it easy for them to find what they need and get it. Communicate with them and allow them to write back – it should always be a two-way street.

Work on staying their top-of-mind choice and create a presence that’s not only based on sales. The customers should have interactions with your brand even when they’re not shopping.

Act on their feedback and always look for ways to offer something extra that will set you apart from the competitors. By introducing creative ways to award their loyalty, you’ll soon have a base that appreciates your business and is an important part of its success.

About the author:

Oliver Bridge – Oli is the CMO at Bonjoro, an app for sending personalized videos to convert and support your customers. He joined Bonjoro in 2016, and has helped build Bonjoro into one of Australia’s fastest-growing startups, with over 50,000 customers using the tool today.

How to Keep Customers Coming Back to Your Business

  1. Improve user experience

    If you set up a frictionless process and make it easy for them to get the thing they wanted, chances are the customers are going to take the journey again in the future, and the number of cart abandonments will drop.

  2. Nurture relationships

    You should work on creating a connection with your audience right from the start and keep it up as long as possible.

  3. Use relevant channels

    Aside from the communication you form with your customers and the direct ways to interact with them, such as email, you should also consider additional ways to stay their top-of-mind choice.

  4. Make the most out of feedback

    One of the foundations in building a solid relationship with your target audience is being open to feedback and two-way communication. When they know their opinion matters, they’ll be more likely to keep coming back.

  5. Create an incentive for coming back

    While a good system that you built can do wonders for your customer retention, you still need to implement some concrete rewards for their loyalty.

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