The only thing better for your business than making a sale is securing a customer who will want to buy from you again and again.
With this in mind, here are some of the ways you can make sure your first-time customer becomes a regular:
Get their product to them on time and in one piece.
The first way you can make sure your customer wants to order from your website a second time is to make sure they’re happy with their first purchase. Once you’ve completed that all-important sale, it’s just as important to make sure that the customer receives the product they ordered within a time scale that is deemed to be suitable. It’s also important to make sure the product gets there in one piece. Failure to do any of these vital steps could result in your customer asking for a refund from their first order, let alone not wanting to purchase from you again in the future.
You might think the best way to assure your product gets there safely is to do it yourself. Unfortunately, it’s when you complete these processes by hand that mistakes are likely to be made. If you’re the only person checking each order as it goes out, it’s highly likely that you could stick the wrong address on the wrong package or even send the wrong product off. Instead, entrust a company that specializes in sending out packages across the country every day.
Find an order fulfillment company that uses a high-tech computer system to pick your orders. Many of these computers use barcode scanners and automated machinery to remove any chance of human error. Also, make sure you choose a company that has warehouses on either side of the country. That means no matter where your customer lives, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to get their product to them quickly. If you live on one side of the country and your customer lives on the other, even if you work as quickly as possible, there’s no way you could get that product delivered quickly if you dispatched it on your own.
Stay in touch.
During the order process, it’s vital that you ask for ways to stay in touch with the customer to be able to turn them into a regular customer. If they’ve given permission to use their email for marketing purposes in the future, you are then able to send them regular updates on new products and new promotions on your website. Make sure every one of these includes eye-catching images of your best products and an email subject that makes your message stand out from everything else in their inbox.
Offer financial incentives.
If your previous customer still isn’t ordering more products from you even though you’re sending them regular emails and social media updates, try offering them a financial incentive to ordering from you again. For example, emailing them a unique discount code for your website won’t only make them feel like they’re getting a better deal, but it’ll make them feel like you value their custom more. While your profit margin might be smaller than if they bought from you at full price, the reality is you wouldn’t have made any profit at all if you hadn’t managed to persuade them to make a sale.
