Tag: Online Business

Customer Loyalty: 5 Strategies for Creating Lifelong Fans of Your Brand

 

Customer Loyalty: 5 Strategies for Creating Lifelong Fans of Your Brand

 

The last several years have seen a dramatic shift in consumer behavior, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowadays, you not only can test your gaming strategy at the Ramses book demo, but you can also conveniently purchase anything you need from the comfort of your home. The sudden shift to online buying has forced many businesses to digitize their operations to improve the buying experience and build real customer loyalty.

 

During these uncertain times, online businesses are looking for ways to improve customer experience to remain competitive. One of the most effective ways to boost customer loyalty is to provide a reliable and seamless checkout process. Choosing a suitable payment gateway for your online business helps improve customer experience and increases your return on investment, sales conversion, and customer loyalty.

 

That said, here are some of the best strategies for building customer loyalty for your brand.

 

Top strategies to win customer loyalty

 

1. Streamline the Payment Experience

 

The ease of an eCommerce payment gateway plays a crucial role in the overall shopping experience. If your customers face difficulties paying for goods or services on your online shop, they’re likely to look for an alternative. Things like requiring customers to fill lengthy forms, clunky menus, or multiple redirects could significantly slow down the checkout process. And it is one of the reasons most customers end up abandoning a purchase.

 

Incorporating a payment gateway that eliminates anything that negatively impacts the shopping experience can help make the checkout process faster, increase conversion rates, and boost loyalty. Streamlining the payment process provides a seamless shopping experience that customers demand. This, in turn, helps ensure lasting customer loyalty.

 

2. Provide Multiple Payment Options at Checkout

 

Another effective strategy for winning customer loyalty is providing multiple payment options. Many online shoppers second-guess themselves about a purchase at the checkout stage, partly due to the lack of a preferred payment method. In most instances, this results in shopping cart abandonment, damaging customer loyalty.

 

The good thing is that you can leverage alternative payment options as an effective way to increase conversion and boost customer loyalty. Providing only credit and debit payment options increases your risk of losing existing and potential loyal customers. Instead, include other familiar payment gateways such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Square, and other online payment options.

 

There are many payment gateway providers that can help you enable flexible online payments and increase customers loyalty. Your preferred payment gateway service should allow for fast, flexible, and secure payments. Offering multiple methods gives online shoppers peace of mind and greater satisfaction, knowing they can pay using a method that works best for them. This also makes them feel more in control of their shopping experience, which helps build customer loyalty for your brand.

 

3. Integrate Payment Gateway on the website

 

Redirecting your customers to a different website to make payments can be confusing and worrisome for most online shoppers and could potentially destroy their loyalty. This could also destroy trust and credibility among your customers, and many might consider your store a scam. To build trust and loyalty with your customers and improve their shopping experience, you need to integrate the checkout page into your website.

 

Integrating an online payment gateway into your online store is often a hassle-free process. Choose a WordPress payment gateway that integrates seamlessly with your site and accepts a wide array of payment methods. This ensures consumers can complete their payments smoothly and securely without having to leave your online store. It also makes online shoppers consider you a trusted and secure online seller, improving customer loyalty.

 
Integrate Payment Gateway on the website
 

4. Customize Your Payment Page to Your Brand Persona

 

Brand consistency is an effective way to build trust and foster lifelong customers. Consumers are likely to be skeptical when sent to a checkout page that looks entirely different from your online store. Keeping your design consistent across all pages, especially the checkout page, can help raise brand awareness and build brand loyalty.

 

Ensure the online payment gateway you use is customizable to give you control over the feel and look of your checkout page. This way, you can customize the page to match your website’s design, fonts, and colors. This also helps boost consumer trust and confidence with your brand, building customer loyalty and keeping them coming back repeatedly.

 

5. Provide Reassurances on Security and Privacy to Win Loyalty

 

Most online shoppers are more likely to abandon a shopping cart at the checkout stage due to payment security concerns. Apart from maintaining a consistent design and eliminating redirects to third-party checkout pages, reassuring customers their data is safe and secure is crucial for building trust and loyalty. Showcasing the security measures in place can help customers trust you more with their personal information and increase brand loyalty.

 

Display your site’s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate and PCI badges on your payment gateway page to provide assurance their confidential information is appropriately encrypted and securely stored. This makes customers feel safe shopping with you, which in turn boosts customer loyalty. Also, many customers are likely to recommend your online store to their friends and family, increasing your conversions and sales significantly.

 
Conclusion
 

There you have it! With these strategies, you can not only acquire and retain customers, but also build brand loyalty. Implementing these strategies can also help increase your sales conversion, increase revenue, and improve customer satisfaction ratings and win their loyalty. Understanding what a payment gateway is, how it works, and how to integrate a payment gateway to your eCommerce platform better equips you to boost customer loyalty in the long term.

 

Do you know of other effective strategies for building brand loyalty? Let us know in the comment section.

 
About the Author
 

Thomas Glare is a freelance copywriter who currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas has written a lot of pieces about the customer experience for a variety of publications, some of which include some well-known e-commerce websites. He also takes part in seminars as a guest speaker to give valuable advice on brand development.

5 Ways to Market Your Business Online

 

5 Ways to Market Your Business Online

 

If you have decided to market your existing small business online, then you are on the right track. In present times, seven out of every ten people choose their service providers online. So, it does not matter whether you run a salon, restaurant, grocery store or any other business. Taking your business online can significantly help accelerate sales.

 

However, most small businesses do not explore this arena, presuming it to be expensive. Still, with the right digital marketing plan, it can be a lot more cost-effective than traditional marketing. So, to help you get the most out of it, here are some highly effective ways in which you can market your business.

 

 Start with the Right Foot | Get an SSL Certificate

 

Your website is always at the core of your digital marketing plan, and the first step is to make that appear safe for the user to explore. That’s because you are going to provide a link to your official website in business listings, social media campaigns and everywhere else. So, you don’t want your website to shoot out a safety warning to the reader in the URL box. To make your site appear safe, you need to install an SSL certificate on your server. Another benefit of doing this is that you improve your chances of ranking better in search engines.

 

 Find the Right Social Media Platform

 

To run a successful digital media campaign, you need first to identify the social media platforms on which your target audience is most active. You can do this by considering the geographical location and the generation to which your prospective customers belong. If you are catering to a mixed bag, such as millennials and Gen X, then consider running social media campaigns on multiple platforms. The ideal ones for millennials would be Instagram, and for Gen X, you can count on Facebook.

 

 Cling on to a Micro Niche

 

To take your existing business online, you need to have a website with high-quality content that is focused on a micro-niche. That’s because SERPs rank such websites better than the rest and that’s precisely what you want. So, if you are an Attorney, then you would want to go a step further and classify yourself by your specialization and post relevant content.

 

 Blog with Laser-Focused Content

 

When you are trying to drive a specific category of people to your website, make it a point to publish laser-focused content that is directed towards them. So, if you sell toys, you do not want those interested in mainstream sports to find your website which sells plastic baseball bats for 4-year old. Likewise, if you sell pet food for canines, you do not want those who own a cat or a raccoon to find your site. Even if they do, it’s only going to bloat up the traffic statistics and isn’t going to help your business make sales.

 

 Bulk Emailing and How to Avoid the Spam Folder

 

A little over a decade ago, you could shoot out sales-related emails, and there was nothing that the recipient could do about it besides reading or deleting it. However, now, sales-related emails barely make it to the inbox and mostly end up in the spam folder. Nonetheless, bulk emailing is essential and works great, mainly if you have a pop-up that collects contact details of those interested in your posts.

 

So, you need to send out emails but also avoid things that can make them appear spammy and here’s how you can do that. Always keep the flow regular and avoid exclamations and loud fonts to avoid being noticed by the spam filters. Also, avoid words like discount, sales, urgent or anything else that indicates its related to selling or marketing.

 

Finally, you need to limit the links, compress the images and offer the recipient the option to unsubscribe. After you have done that, try to send yourself an email and check if it is being marked spam. Mostly it won’t, but if it does, then here’s a trick that could help. Please enter your business’ physical address in Google My Business and include it in your emails.

 

Final Takeaway

 

Most of the marketing strategies mentioned above are free, and the only thing you may have to pay for is the content. You can even get an SSL certificate with a bundled web hosting plan else; you can purchase it from SSL providers. Now that proves how cost-effective it is to market your business online, and when you are a small business, these strategies work exceptionally well.

7 Ways to Protect Your Online Business

 

7 Ways to Protect Your Online Business

 

Proprietors are the ones who undertake risk and are constantly involved in the process of innovation and discovering new business opportunities. The number of people entering into online business is on a rise mainly because of the alluring prospect it promises. The radius of customers for an online businessman is not fixed but can increase substantially over time. Many get inspired to go for an online business because of the immense freedom it offers with respect to the working hours, technology, the workplace, low initial capital investment and the scope of accessing the huge market across the world.

 

But in this digital era, it is of paramount importance to protect the online business as accessing the private commercial information is an easy-breezy job. Around 33% of such business faces the risk of cybercrime. Internet, being one of the basic necessities of the commercial world today there is no way it could be avoided by someone wishing to reach out to a wide range of customers. So the best option is to protect the online business from hackers in the following ways:

 

1)Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) – Majority of the business today demands online commercial communications and transactions with the clients. VPNs help to affix an extra security level by converting data into code in order to restrict unauthenticated or unauthorized access, hiding IP address and camouflage traffic issues. A variety of VPN is available in the market characterised by a varied list of services. One should avail the one which suits his/her business need.

 

2)Convert to HTTPS – HTTPS stands for hypertext transfer protocol secure. It can be interpreted as a secure communications agreement that offers an extra level of security between the client’s web server and browser. Thus, the data conveyed is backed up by security and its privation is ensured.

 

3)Keeping site up-to-date – Unmarked applications are easy to be targeted by the fraudsters. They look for unpatched sites with the help of automated internet bot. Thus it is of unparallel urgency to keep the softwares, upgraded with the latest version of security patches. Setting all the software programs to install updates automatically is the best thing to do.

 

4)Safeguard passwords – The very first step of ensuring internet security is to set a rather tough and solid password. This ensures singular protection to the commercial data and files of a business entity. The passcode should be formed by uniquely mixing letters in uppercase and lowercase, numbers and symbols and special characters. Further setting 2-step verification while signing in is considered to enhance security.

 

5)It is important to backup important data on a regular basis – Entrepreneurs going for regular back-up strategies are likely to save themselves from the misconduct of the hackers. In case of any malicious activity, one can restore the data in no time and continue the business activity without any sort of interruption. Adopting old school practice of storing the files in a CD or a pen drive rather than in an online platform could be of help on many occasions.

 

6)Imposing a security scheme – Employers must keep an eye on what his employees are surfing or downloading. Setting restrictions on the range of employees’ accession to items not related to work is very important.

 

7)One should possess knowledge of the trend of fraud – One can be cautious of little things like the name of the email providers, email domain label and client’s previous order history. Businessmen should invest in organising training to recognise the patterns and style of hackers. Experience teaches personals to recognise specific patterns of fraudulence and helps them to be vigilant. The hackers mostly aim at high valued products as they yield maximum profit and provide such delivery address which is out of reach for verification.

 
Author Bio:
 

HSP Media Network – India’s No.1 Media Marketing service provider Company. Bulk SMS provider company.