By Josh Marinaro
Look, we love paid media as much as the next person (actually that’s a lie, we definitely love it more) but let’s be honest: it’s not the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to securing conversions.
With paid media, you can spend a lot of time hunting down exactly the right person to purchase from you and serving them ads. If they then go on to become a customer, that’s great!
But if you’ve gone to all that effort to market to them and get them onto your website, and turn them into a customer – you don’t just want to forget about them. Right?
Making sure your website and wider marketing strategy is set up to keep those new customers interested can serve you well. Not only does it increase the lifetime value of that customer, it can also give you great data for your future campaigns, allowing you to use your paid media budget to innovate.
So with that in mind, here are some of our top tips for getting customers to make repeat purchases from you.
1. Introduce a wishlist function
We’ve all been there, lusting after an item that perhaps we don’t have the funds or space for just yet. This is where wishlists come in.Allowing your logged-in visitors to save items for later doesn’t just serve them. You can gauge your most popular items, for a start. But more importantly, it gives you a great excuse to nudge them with a little email reminding them. Kind of like the standard with an abandoned basket.
Couple it with a sneaky little offer – a discount, or free delivery – and you might just get that extra sale over the line.
2. Show them the details
Ensure your email and social channels (and remarketing campaigns!) are chock full of enticing product photography. If you can, put your products in-situ, and make sure they’re high-res so users can zoom in on the details.This is particularly true if your products come with a higher price tag – people want to be sure what they’re buying meets their expectations. If what you’re selling has particular USPs or specifications, include those too. These are good trust indicators, letting your audience know that you’ve taken the time to be transparent and give them all the information.
3. Provide a straightforward login process
How many times have you got frustrated because of a clunky login process? Making your users persevere to make a purchase is not a good look and can risk them abandoning the idea altogether.
Try and make logging in as easy as possible, with a streamlined process and setting cookies (with permission!).
4. Use offers effectively
Whether it’s a discount code once their order has arrived (“10% off your next order!”), or a little something for their birthday, offers are some of the main reasons why people sign up to mailing lists and hold out on buying. Okay, so you may be giving up a smidge of revenue to get them to buy again – but this is about lifetime value and building up a positive experience. This doesn’t mean devaluing your offering by serving discounts all the time. Segment your data and look for signs of a ‘warm’ audience – high email click-through rates, time spent on your site, items added to wishlists or baskets, and so on.
Hit them with the offer at the right moment. They’ll feel like the stars have aligned, and you get another opportunity to impress them with your products.
5. Personalise the experience
If you’ve got the capacity to, personalisation is where it’s at. Use labels, groups and taxonomies that your user is typically interested in to show them similar products you think they may also be interested in.
That means when they come to your website, they don’t have to have a particular idea in mind. If they’re a fan of yours, they may just relish the serendipity of being shown something that really appeals to them and buy on the spot!
6. Don’t hide your contact details
If someone runs into an issue, or wants to know more about an item, don’t make it difficult for them to find that information. A chatbot, or even a simple FAQ page, can be a straightforward way to handle the most common questions and free up time for customer service.
A positive customer service experience is vital to turning casual shoppers into advocates. If you’re the brand going above and beyond to help, you can bet your customers will remember that the next time they need something else you happen to sell.
Did you know we offer a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) service? If you need objective eyes on your website, we can help you identify areas of improvement to better serve your online customers – learn more about our CRO service.
