How Psychology Can Be Used To Boost Personalisation And Retain Loyal Customers Online

This article was originally published on c4commerce — Online shopping is expected to grow even further in 2018. In the UK alone online sales were estimated at over £70 billion during 2017, which was an overall growth of 11% on the previous year. With smartphones and desktops now becoming the platforms of choice for most customers (74%) when purchasing items, it is vital for retailers to ensure that online purchasers are receiving the levels of customer experience they expect. If not, customers will not repurchase and sales will decline. Once ‘ease of purchase’ is achieved by an e-commerce retailer, customers will become loyal. This is gold dust to any retailer in every sector – especially in a world where competitors are one-click away and customers are faced with an endless choice. Loyal customers will often spend more money, with an average increased spend of 67% compared to new customers. Loyal customers also require less marketing spend and are more than likely to recommend the company to their friends. Additionally, at least once a month, 58% of shoppers will revisit a site they have previously purchased products or services from4. This shows the need for prioritising loyalty in your customer experience strategy.

Using Neuromarketing To Retain Loyal Customers Online

Despite its importance, loyalty still remains a common pain point for retailers when it comes to optimising online channels. Websites often lack the same levels of customer care and personal service as physical shops. Physical stores can easily offer rewards for loyal customers and in turn, the physical store employees are taught the vital communication skills that are needed to maintain customers and keep them happy during their purchasing experience. In turn, this can be an issue for online channels as more than half (65%) of shoppers are frustrated by inconsistent experiences across channels. There are a number of easy to follow techniques that online retailers can use to overcome the challenge of retaining loyal customers. One often overlooked tactic is prioritising psychology, simple neuromarketing techniques can be adapted to enhancing the customer experience. In short, neuromarketing is the formal study of the brain’s responses to advertising and branding, and the adjustment of the messages based on feedback to create better relationships and responses.

Utilising Personalisation Techniques

Applications of advanced or even basic psychological principles are essential for e-commerce platforms in driving loyalty. The first way this can be done is by creating more personalised content to improve the user experience. It is a well known fact that people gravitate towards the people, places and things that most resemble themselves. Ultimately, customers will be attracted to a website that they feel they have something in common with or they can relate directly to. There are a variety of specialised personalisation techniques you can use, one example being using dynamic headings on your landing pages. These can be set up to be modified according to the advert a visitor has clicked through to arrive on your website, ensuring consistent messaging along the acquisition funnel. You might also insert visitors’ geolocations into your website page to to make your advertising copy even more relevant to their individual needs. This ensures that not only are you providing a personable service, but also that customers will be more engaged in products and services. The best part? These changes can be achieved with a few clicks.

The Scarcity Effect

Along with neuromarketing-based personalisation techniques, websites can use persuasion techniques, such as creating notifications to trigger a couple of seconds after someone arrives at a page. These capture the audience’s attention and create a sense of urgency, capitalising on the scarcity effect. This will encourage customers to finalise their purchases more quickly. The most effective notifications incorporate real time sales and stock data, and display the most persuasive message at the correct time. Persuasive notifications that combine neuromarketing principles and are optimised to display the message that results in the best conversion rate are an indispensable tool for marketers. It goes without saying that customers should be at the heart of every business, and it is vital to remember that retaining existing customers is just as important as getting new customers. Loyal customers are a valuable asset for any brand to have, not least because of word-of-mouth marketing results in 5x more sales than a paid media impression, and if you don’t invest time in retaining existing customers you’ll end up losing more customers than you gain. Personalisation will make your website feel more relevant to existing customers, whilst notifications that provide useful, real-time information about your products can increase your conversion rate whilst improving user experience. Retailers should look to utilise these techniques to ensure they fully-optimised in an increasingly competitive landscape.    

Philippe’s bonus tip:

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