Building Customer Loyalty: What NOT to Do

Building customer loyalty is something that all good ecommerce entrepreneurs strive for, and while it is important to know what to do in order to build loyalty; it’s probably equally important that you know what not to do.

Here are some No-Nos to bear in mind about building customer loyalty in your ecommerce business:

Too Many Distractions: It’s natural to want to have all the bells and whistles on your website, but please remember that the idea is to have an easy, user friendly experience that leads visitors to the desired destination; which is of course a purchase. Don’t have so many flashing graphics and pop-ups that visitors get distracted and lose sight of why they came to your site in the first place. Too many distractions will actually annoy rather than entertain, so keep these things to a bare minimum!

Yesterday’s News: A sure fire way to antagonize visitors is to have a big blurb on your home page promoting a wonderful sale with free shipping, and then let the shopper discover at checkout that the sale and free shipping ended several days ago. Having outdated information on your website is unprofessional and downright sloppy. Besides having some peeved customers, it will make you look untrustworthy. This also applies to items that are out of stock. Delete those items from your online catalog, or at the very least, prominently display the information that an item is temporarily out of stock and let shoppers know when it will be available again. Offer to notify them when the item is back in stock.

Difficult to Navigate: One of the very worst things you can do NOT to build customer loyalty is to have a clunky, slow, and hard to navigate website. Internet shoppers are notoriously impatient! If you can’t offer them an easy to navigate, streamlined and efficient website---they’ll go somewhere else. It’s just that simple. A surprising number of ecommerce websites are fine right up until the checkout process and then drop the ball by having a confusing, frustrating mess right at the most critical stage. Make sure that your checkout process is fast and smooth as silk to keep customers coming back!

According to a study conducted by WebSideStory, a returning customer is at least eight times more likely to make a purchase from you.

So, do the right things to build customer loyalty and keep those visitors coming back for more!