Ecommerce Website Customer Reward System
A lot of well established online and offline retailers use customer rewards to increase sales for the business. They go by the name customer loyalty programs or customer reward point programs. These effective tools can be integrated into any marketing campaign. The primary purpose of having incentives is to reward customers who make repeat purchases, it encourages loyal buying behavior.
How a customer incentives program works is a visitor to your online store makes a purchase and as a result earns reward points based on either the total sum, the amount of items or specific type of products purchased. Reward points will then be accumulated and used towards future purchases. As an online store owner, you can choose how the customer reward program works. You can set a threshold for the number of points necessary in order for customers to redeem their rewards. You are also able to specify what kind of incentive to offer them, which can be in the form of discount for future purchases, free gifts or gift certificates.
Just having a customer reward program is not sufficient, you must make sure that its both easy to find and simple for your customers to use. It is important to display image or text links throughout your online store so customers are able to get the information they are looking for. Ideally, these links should be placed in areas such as headers, footers and sidebars. This way it does not matter which page a visitor lands on, they will be able to get to the customer incentives page. The information you provide your customers is critical as well, be clear and concise when instructing them on how to redeem their reward. The worst thing for a customer is not knowing where to redeem their reward or getting unexplained errors when finalizing an order. Go over all the little details and think in terms of a new visitor, then make the necessary changes to your web site.
An e-commerce solution that offers customer reward capabilities should be able to do the following:
- reward points system built into the store control panel
- be able to choose what type of reward to offer
- be able to convert points into gift certificates or gift cards
- be able to develop your own rules for calculating reward points
- be able to specify predefined criteria for reward redemption
There are many advantages for providing customer incentives on your e-commerce site. It is a powerful tool that will not only help you acquire new customers but also retain current customers. Studies indicate that it is a lot easier to sell to existing customers than it is to acquire new ones. As a matter of fact, it is 7 to 10 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to get a current customer to buy from you again. Repeat customers on average will spend 33% more than a new customer and if they are a part of a customer retention program, they typically spend 4 times as much money. There is plenty of reason to create a customer reward program of your own.
Since you are mainly targeting existing customers, the first thing you must do is announce this new program to them. Make sure you add image and text links all over your web site and if you have an email list, send a mass email out to everyone on that list. Dont forget to include program details in the checkout area. You can also use it as a promotional tool to acquire new customers. Useful tactics include rewarding existing customers for recommending their friends, creating contests where participants can earn rewards and giving away points to customers that provide positive feedback that can be used to help improve your site. Customer reward programs have the ability to become viral, especially if you use contests to entice people to join. Promote it to well known bloggers, post to related forums or encourage more people to follow you through your social media campaign. All of these tactics are used to market your business, the customer incentives are used to get them to come back for more.
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Now that you know why it is so important to have customer retention programs, you must first choose a reliable e-commerce solution that can easily set up a reward points program within your online store. It needs to be effortlessly set up and very simple to maintain. Most importantly, customers cannot have any trouble using it.
Core Commerce is a full service all-in-one hosting, design, and marketing software made specifically for e-commerce businesses. You can set up your store in minutes, and with powerful tools to help with not only creating customer incentives, but also SEO, product marketing and mobile commerce, its no wonder why it has been rated one of the best e-commerce solutions. Click here to try it absolutely free for 15 days, no credit card required!