Loyal customers are one of the cornerstones of a profitable business. Their loyalty means they are more likely to spend more on your site, they will also visit more often to make purchases, and ultimately, it will cost significantly cheaper to market to a loyal customer.

Still, only a fraction of initial sales—27 percent, to be exactly—become repeat customers. This gives ecommerce businesses, the opportunity to focus their branding and marketing efforts towards building consumer loyalty.

How do you go about and do that? Follow these simple tips that will help you grow a casual customer into a hard-core fan of your product or service:

1. Engage and communicate

A big part of the purchasing process usually involves emotion. Customers who come back for more, usually do so because they consciously or subconsciously associate a brand or service with a particular feeling.

On an eCommerce platform, nurturing positive emotions towards your brand is most easily achieved by communicating with your users and engaging them consistently so that they feel like they’re part of something bigger.

• Regularly communicate your brand’s latest news and developments.
• Share exclusive promotions and member’s only deals.
• Make sure you engage and talk to them, especially on social media.

2. Do not neglect customer service

It almost goes without saying that your customer service is a crucial part of your customer’s overall experience with your business. How you talk with them and respond to their needs is critical to the opinion they form about your service or product.

• Make sure that you reply to customer inquiries promptly, especially on social media channels.
• Provide feasible solutions that will address their concerns.
• Communicate regularly—whether it’s a simple ‘thank you’ email after a purchase or a follow up email to give them a platform to air out possible concerns.

3. Learn and understand what your customers want

Small businesses have a tendency to follow trends where they get short term gains. This is well and good in the beginning of your business, but if you neglect to evolve as the fad wanes, you’re left with a product or service that does little to interest or engage your existing market.

• Conduct surveys online to determine what your customers really want from your product and see how you can evolve and grow your offerings from there.
• Test, test, and test.
• Listen to what your customers have to say. Often you will find customer feedback on social media, offers you  useful and essential information about your business.

4. Be consistent

Consistency is the pillar of brand loyalty. There’s no point in ensuring stellar customer service if your customers can’t expect the same level of service every single time they come across an issue with your business.

• Ensure that your products and services are consistently up to par with your customer’s expectations.
• The same goes for experience—whether it’s your customer service or online user experience.
• Visual and brand consistency is a big part of this too—brand recall is only achieved if you have a consistent look.

5. Invest in your brand personality

Time and effort towards your brand’s look and personality is essential. As an ecommerce business, your brand’s feel is largely dependent on what your customers see online. That said, take the time to—

• Invest in an eye-catching, memorable brand logo design.
• Ensure your website is professionally done to convey credibility, trust, and confidence.
• Make the effort to create quality, relevant content that complements your product and service.

Quite simply, customer loyalty is anchored on your ecommerce site’s ability to draw customers to come back. And to do that, you have to make sure that your site and what you have to offer are all worth coming back to.

Give these tips a try and see how well they work towards making customers come back for more. If you think you need help turning leads into conversions, get in touch with us today.

And if you have any more tips to share about how an ecommerce business can continue to build loyalty, please feel free to share them in the comment section below.