Bringing new customers to your door is essential for every e-commerce business. But what eventually makes them stick around? How much effort will you spend on your customer retention strategies to keep customers coming back for more?
There’s no doubt that customer retention is vital to your long-term success. If you’re receiving a healthy flow of new customers every month, you should focus on increasing the customer lifetime value of those customers with a solid retention strategy. This not only ensures to turn one-time shoppers into repeat customers but also helps you boost your revenue and profitability.
By creating a customer-centric shipping strategy prioritizing convenience and creating positive experiences with your brand, you’ll build loyalty within that crucial phase of the customer journey.
Here are some of the most practical ways how to create shipping experiences to supercharge customer acquisition and retention:
1. Meet Customers on Their Terms
In e-commerce, customers expect a personalized approach since it makes them feel special. Most businesses need to interact with their customers to get to know them better and create meaningful relationships.
So, think of embracing the “me-commerce,” wherein you meet your customers’ ever-changing and increasingly demanding expectations and habits. For instance, although some people love to talk with a customer service representative, others prefer to communicate via email or live chat. So make sure that you always meet customers on their terms.
Moreover, putting in the effort of placing personalized notes, marketing inserts, and discounts will delight and encourage customers to come back and buy from you sooner than later.
2. Eliminate Any Surprise Costs
Surprisingly, many businesses make this basic mistake. Make sure that all your shipping prices are clearly listed in your store. Users are less likely to purchase if they add something to their cart only to find out later that there are hidden charges, making the price too high.
You can boost your revenue with minimal effort by eliminating any surprise costs. Direct and upfront shipping helps reduce cart abandonment rates, thus enhancing customer acquisition and retention. You can also boost revenues with minimal effort.
3. Offer Excellent Customer Service
Even if you’ve offered fast shipping or a generous return policy, things could still go wrong. Ensure that the shipping experience remains positive and the customer returns.
Offer friendly, easily accessible customer service. Provide an email or phone number where customers can easily reach you. You can even offer live chat options as well.
Ideally, make sure that customers can quickly get in touch with you and do your best to solve their issues. This allows you to retain customers and create a loyal following in the long run.
4. Harness The Power of Customer Reviews
More and more customers are empowered more than ever to make informed decisions. They want to be heard, and they also want to hear other people’s views about their products and services.
Aside from the fact that reviews are one of the primary purchase decision factors, they can also be an excellent source for customer experience improvement.
Moreover, brands are favorably viewed by 77% of consumers if they’re proactive about customer feedback. Thus, it’s essential to harness the power of customer reviews online. It creates social proof, builds customer relationships, and maximizes your revenues.
5. Offer Multiple Shipping Options
Many brands don’t have great shipping options. If a customer has to wait longer for their orders to arrive, they are likely going to look out for competitors who offer faster shipping.
Therefore you should extend various shipping options to pick the speed at which orders are shipped. Many lead brands offer to expedite the shipping, 2-day shipping, and seven-day shipping. Some might offer overnight shipping even. Providing multiple shipping options makes your customers feel in control of the shipping process.
Moreover, if a shipping option is too expensive, isn’t available in their preferred courier, or is shipped in a cumbersome way, prospects will abandon their shopping carts altogether. It helps to expand your store’s current shipping options to avoid losing customers.
6. Diversify payment options
Managing your ecommerce business is all about creating convenience for your customers. By allowing diverse payment options, you’ll combat abandoned carts from customers who reach your checkout page only to find that there isn’t an available payment option that fits their preferences.
In the same way, providing multiple payment options allows you to cater to more people. Although some people may pay through credit cards, others prefer digital wallet payments. You can easily attract more people through enticing discounts and other effective marketing campaigns through digital wallets.
So, as much as possible, you must cover all the basics. That includes credit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Facebook Pay, and PayPal. You might also throw an option or web integration for payment plans via your marketplace platform.
7. Ensure accurate packaging and delivery
There’s nothing worse than receiving a package only to discover that you received the wrong item. Finding out that you didn’t get the products you ordered ruins the entire shopping experience.
Real-time inventory management and automated pick-pack-ship processes powered by a 3PL provider will ensure that every item shipped is correctly verified during every stage of the process. To know more, learn dropshipping here.
Although order accuracy may be challenging, outsourcing and automating fulfillment makes it as close to perfect if possible.
Ensuring accurate packaging and delivery and delivering all your goods intact simply shows that you’re going above and beyond to enhance the experience and keep your customers happy.
8. Stick to shipping time and tracking
Once you’ve given a date for the shipping period, you must adhere to that schedule. If you can’t commit to overnight shipping, you must send the package within two days.
Moreover, you don’t commit to a 2-day shipping time, only to deliver the item seven days later. Over time, this isn’t good for your brand image, especially if you’ve committed yourself as a customer-friendly brand.
Sticking to your shipping schedule shows you that you’re a brand with ethics, which should reflect every aspect of your business. Although there could be delays in your shipping for numerous reasons, you still need to minimize the uncertainty as much as possible.
Moreover, your customers expect 100% transparency following their order from the moment it’s placed until it reaches their doorstep. So, as a general rule, every customer should get an automated order confirmation together with their tracking information. By providing real-time tracking notifications, you can send customers promos or personal shopping recommendations that will draw them back to your ecommerce store.
Not only does this help eliminate inquiries from customers about the status of their order, but in the same way, it gives them confidence about your products and brand, which is enough to boost customer loyalty and worth-of-mouth marketing.
Over to You
So there you have it. Hopefully, this article has given you ideas on how to have a strengthened shipping experience and build a stronger brand connection with your customers.
Shipping experience will decide your level of expertise and your brand’s popularity. With an excellent shipping experience, you can quickly compel your customers to return to your site for your services in the future. Good luck!
