Tips for Onboarding eCommerce Customers
Selling online isn’t just about getting traffic to your site, it’s about onboarding eCommerce customers who want to come back often.
You’ve got the eCommerce basics covered: great product, excellent branding, and an up-to-date site.
But despite that and the growing shift to more online shopping, you may find that potential customers are visiting your site, maybe even putting items into their cart, but they still aren’t converting. Or, if they do buy your products, perhaps they’re not returning to buy again.
Without a base of loyal customers, it’s not easy to build a successful eCommerce business.
Why is customer retention so important?
Bringing in a new customer costs about five times as much as retaining an existing customer. Furthermore, existing customers are twice as likely to try new products and typically spend 31% more than new customers, according to a recent survey.
One way to combat a lack of conversions and a lack of customer retention and loyalty is through customer onboarding.
The process for onboarding eCommerce customers means supporting and guiding your customers as they arrive on your site, decide to make a purchase, and begin using your products. Onboarding starts with the first impression and continues as you build a flow to guide customers to make future purchases and ultimately refer others to your site.
Onboarding Tools for eCommrce
You need to focus on customer onboarding to ensure that you are providing a top-notch first impression to your eCommerce store’s visitors and that you’re creating a business that people want to share with others. If you don’t take the time to develop a great customer onboarding strategy, you’re going to have trouble building a base of loyal customers.
So, what can you use for onboarding eCommerce customers? The two most popular tools are guided tours for customer self-service and emails.
On-screen guidance can help customs complete their tasks and simplify the process. Self-service is popular with customers and deliver a top-notch experience encourages them to come back. Leverage on-screen guidance and other self-service tools like chatbots to make completing orders or other customer service tasks, like returns, easier.
One of the most powerful onboarding tools is email. Emails provide you with direct access to your target market, whenever you want it. With the rising popularity of social media, many business owners think email is slowly making its way out. While there are many engaging aspects of social media, there are still some ways it can’t compete with email.
These are the areas where you can use your emails to shine. With your emails to your customers, you can provide them with everything they need to know about your business, products, and services. Most of the information you want to pass on to your customers through your onboarding process can be done through email.
How to use email to onboard your customers
Here are some of the best ways to use emails for customer onboarding:
1. Welcome your customers
Use emails to welcome your customers. Your welcome email should be an introduction to your brand, sharing your message, your mission, your vision, and your values. Modern consumers want to know that when they support a business, they are supporting causes and issues that they care about. They want to feel an authentic connection with each brand and to be proud of spending their money on it.
You also want your welcome email to introduce your customers to your products. However, you don’t want to showcase what you are selling. Instead, you want to showcase the value you are providing. You want people to read this one email and to be able to understand the heart behind your business and what you can do for them.
2. Offer incentives to your customers
You’ll also want to send emails that offer promotions and incentives to your customers. These are great tools for building customer retention and making new customers feel grateful, comfortable, and secure when they purchase from you.
People love getting discounts, and a well-written and offered discount can make all the difference for new customers. Your emails are the perfect place to send incentives, as you get to decide who receives the offers and when the deals are sent out.
As you are onboarding eCommerce customers, a special promotion can entice them to make a second purchase.
3. Send important order information
Sending emails to new customers that provide critical or relevant information is an essential part of the onboarding process. You’ll want to provide basic information such as a confirmation email and shipping and tracking information. A great onboarding process goes beyond the basics. Consider sending a welcome email the day before the day their package is scheduled to arrive. You could link to an instructional video or a special message from your founder.
eCommerce Customer Onboarding Key Takeaway
Remember, when your customers feel valued, they will return. That’s why your customer onboarding needs to be directed towards your target market, needs to be relevant, and needs to make your customers feel like part of the family. Leverage self-service tools and emails to educate customers about your store and products while also making doing business with you as effortless as possible.
