Category

Customer Retention

Repeat buyers are the key to long-term success for most ecommerce businesses. Our library of customer retention articles includes tactics for subscription ideas, loyalty programs, A/B testing, enhanced customer service, soliciting feedback, and much more.

Customer Retention
‘Retargeting’ Can Boost Conversions; A Primer

November 22, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Using behavioral retargeting to aim online display and pay-per-click advertisements at shoppers already familiar with a brand or some particular products could significantly boost sales conversions, with some estimates suggesting that retargeted consumers are 70 percent more likely to m...
Customer Retention
Engage Online Customers with SoLoMo

October 27, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Borrowing a strategy and a catch phrase from mobile applications, marketers can use social, local, and mobile (SoLoMo) promotions together to better engage customers. The term "SoLoMo" used to refer to a mobile smartphone application that combined social networking with some form of lo...
Customer Retention
5 Tips for Better Landing Pages

September 28, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Landing pages are important online marketing tools and keys to conversion. So almost anything that a marketer can do to improve a landing page's performance will also improve the bottom line. A landing page may be defined as a page on your website where visitors are sent to prompt a co...
Customer Retention
Understanding Basic A/B Testing

September 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A/B testing is a method for measuring the relative effectiveness of certain page content or marketing promotions. When properly applied, A/B testing may help marketers significantly improve conversion rates and establish a culture of improvement. In 2009, blogger Dustin Curtis conducte...
Customer Retention
14 Customer Feedback Tools for Small Business

June 3, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Feedback is essential to running a business. It tells you what’s working and what’s not. It provides you with fresh ideas on ways to improve your business. And it gives you insight into the needs of your customers. Here is a list of customer feedback tools. Some of the tools collect f...
Customer Retention
6 Things Consumers Hate About Ecommerce Sites

April 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce websites should inspire trust, engage customers, and make it easy to shop — ultimately leading to more sales. Unfortunately, too many online stores fall short in one or more areas. In this article, I am going to describe six things consumers — including me — hate to find on e...
Customer Retention
Consider the Subscription Model for New Revenue

January 25, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Selling to a customer once is great. Selling to a customer every year, month, or week is even better. This mantra of sorts — along with apparent growth in consumer demand and several new subscription-specific billing solutions — is creating opportunity for ecommerce entrepreneurs large...
Customer Retention
The PEC Review: Ethnio Helps Understand Customers

December 27, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Successful online retailers are often customer-focused service companies rather than just purveyors of products. Put another way, many successful retailers are successful not just because of the products they offer or the effectiveness of their marketing, but rather because they do a g...
Customer Retention
Advanced Search Techniques Improve Ecommerce Sales

August 4, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Depending on which expert you ask, something like 40 to 70 percent of online shoppers will navigate an ecommerce store using a product search, making on-site search extremely important even if the most conservative estimates are assumed. Not all site search is the same, however. Rather...
Customer Retention
Using Offsite Trust Marketing to Build Site Traffic

May 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Consumers buy from online retailers they trust, and unfortunately, nearly half of American consumers probably don't trust your business. Data from the Edelman Trust Barometer shows that in 2009 only 36 percent of Americans surveyed said that they thought U.S.-based companies were trust...
Customer Retention
The PeC Review: SeeWhy.com Helps Capture Exiting Shoppers

October 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A six year-old, real-time analytics firm seeks to help online merchants boost conversions by enabling stores to follow up with potential customers after those shoppers leave the site or abandon the shopping cart. According to SeeWhy, sending shoppers a customer-service-oriented email a...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know How: Public Relations 101

September 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Public relations is the art of managing your business' public reputation through media engagement, and it is an important and often overlooked part of successful ecommerce marketing communications. In public relations (PR) the aim is to build relationships with media outlets and blogge...
Customer Retention
The PeC Review: Runa Converts Reluctant Website Visitors

August 21, 2009 • Armando Roggio

By some estimates, fewer than 20 percent of online retailers have conversion rates above 5 percent. Most Internet merchants experience sales conversions of only 2-to-3 percent. To compensate for such low conversion rates, many companies make significant advertising investments to boost ...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Marketing to the Hispanic Community

August 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Hispanic community is one of the fastest growing online consumer segments in the U.S. It represents some 11 percent of the total U.S. online market and it is, therefore, an important segment for ecommerce marketers to consider. According to comScore, an Internet trend tracking firm...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Turn Customers Into Members

July 14, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Focusing a portion of marketing efforts on reselling existing customers or acquiring frequent shoppers could help boost sales for many online merchants. Often online retail marketing focuses on increasing site traffic and converting visitors. This strategy is really the heart of sellin...
Customer Retention
PeC Traffic Report: Four Good Web Tools to Identify Traffic-Building Trends

June 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Participating in trends that matter to your customers can attract significant website traffic, but knowing what trends to follow (or even how to interact with those trends) is a difficult task. In January of this year, Practical eCommerce published a column about developing customer-ce...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Six Ways To Improve Your Online Store

May 4, 2009 • Armando Roggio

An online merchant's most important marketing and sales tool is a content-rich, visually interesting, and factually accurate website. In this edition of "eCommerce Know-How," I am going to propose six ways to improve your site, and I am offering these methods exactly five months before...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Developing a Postcard Campaign

April 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A postcard marketing campaign can be inexpensive, and it could increase your store's sales next month. Almost every weekday at about 2 p.m., I trot out to my mailbox, wave at the retired Marine smoking cigarettes on his porch across the street, and collect my U.S. mail. I sort out the...
Customer Retention
PeC Traffic Report: The Direct Mail Solution

March 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Direct mail marketing is one of the oldest forms of modern promotion, but don't let its age deceive. Mailing coupons or even catalogs to potential customers can significantly improve site traffic and sales conversions. While the exact origins of direct mail marketing are in question, t...
Customer Retention
Survey: 2008 Holiday Sales Slipped for Many Internet Merchants

January 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

For the first time in years, holiday ecommerce sales fell in 2008 as online shoppers, apparently worried about the global economy and their personal finances, cut seasonal spending 3 percent, according to an established Internet tracking firm. But 47.7 percent of Internet store keepers ...
Customer Retention
Use Comparison Shopping Sites To Boost Leads

October 21, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Savvy online retailers can attract thrifty customers this holiday season with a sound comparison shopping strategy, but those merchants must be careful not to create a lot of extra work, damage their reputation, or waste money. Comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, Bizrate.com, ...
Customer Retention
Online Loyalty Programs Can Increase Repeat Shoppers

July 22, 2007 • Dave Young

Online merchants want to find ways to increase revenues by encouraging customers to make repeat purchases. Using an online loyalty program will certainly help, but it must be done carefully and with the right tools. There are many factors involved in creating a successful loyalty progr...
Customer Retention
SMBs Should Consider Surveys

July 15, 2007 • Pamela Hazelton

The online store that makes me feel awesome even after my product(s) have been delivered will get my business next time around. Their URL will be committed to memory, and I’ll visit the site often just to see what’s new. This store must cater to my needs, treat me like a person and does...
Customer Retention
Selling After Dec. 25

December 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

For the majority of online stores, the holiday shopping season is what makes an entire year’s worth of work pay off. With the bulk of shopping taking place the first two weeks of December, it’s typically considered the highest grossing month of the year. That may be so, but the normal s...
Customer Retention
Seek Quality Visitors

March 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

I’m no Search Engine Optimization expert. Never have been, and most likely never will be. I’ve found that SEO is such a niche market that anyone offering these services shouldn’t have time to do anything but. I do, however, work with store owners everyday and am often asked what can be...
Customer Retention
Reaping Holiday Sales in January

January 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

So many online stores put all of their focus into attracting holiday shoppers during the end of the year that they overlook the fact that the month of January can also be profitable. At the very least, planning ahead to handle holiday returns and exchanges can help reduce the burden of ...

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