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How to make your website sticky

gift card, customer retention

If you want to reduce your bounce rate and retain customer loyalty, make your website sticky. This means providing enough interesting and unique content to make your visitors stick around. For customer retention, consider including the following on your website:

News

As an alternative to a blog, you can have a news page. A news page is easier to write than a blog. You can publish news about your products, special offers, and events. However, blogs are the popular choice.

Blogging

Blog posts can be time-consuming, if you are running your own website. If you have room in your budget to employ someone to write blog posts for you, then I would suggest you do this.

If you want to write your own blog posts, put a content strategy in place. Think about your objectives, e.g. to sell, to increase engagement, etc.

The content should be unique and no less than 300 words. I would aim to write anywhere between 600-2000 words. You can post blogs about your products and other related topics. For example, if you sell fish tanks, you may want to post a blog about a species of fish, or a scuba diving expedition involving your company. You can include relevant links and images to a few products on your website to prompt blog visitors to buy them.

To increase exposure on the internet, and encourage customer retention, publish blog articles on e-zine websites, e.g. ezinearticles.com. To get more traffic, you can add your website link to the bottom of your e-zine article. Publish your unique content article on your selected e-zine website before you publish it on your website.

Share Buttons

Share buttons or smart buttons, as they are also known, allow you to post and share your products, services, blog, and news events directly from your website.

social media share icon

They also allow visitors to share your web content across their social media platforms, and email their friends and family about your products and services. This is great free advertising. Not only does raise brand awareness and increase your web traffic, it can also help build organic backlinks.

If visitors frequently share your content across the web it sends strong social signals to Google, which means they will show your content more often.

If your content management system (CMS) has a smart button feature built-in, you can share your new products through your social media outlets as soon as you have added them to the page.

If your CMS does not come with share buttons, you may be able to get them in the form of a plugin. Check with your CMS provider.

Alternatively, you can obtain share buttons through the AddThis sharing website. This will require you to add additional JavaScript code to your site. You can ask your webmaster or web developer to add the sharing code, if you lack the experience to do so.

The top share buttons every website should have:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email (for visitors who do not have social media accounts).

Where to place Share Buttons

Display share buttons on the left side of your website, at the bottom of your blog and news posts, and/or on your product pages.

Product reviews are necessary for customer retention

Imperative for customer retention, reviews are an indisputable way to increase conversions, gain consumer dependability, and business credibility.

There are several ways to obtain credible reviews: through Trust Pilot, your Facebook page and through a “Google My Business” page. These reviews will show in the search results for your business. Never buy or post fake reviews as these can ruin your business. Try to get into the habit of responding to reviews good or bad to promote trust, loyalty, and to show that you are active in your business.

You can also display reviews and testimonials on your website. For eCommerce, enable the product reviews feature in your CMS.

Try to keep your reviews current and display your recent reviews first. Consumers have little interest in old reviews, no matter how good they are.

Newsletters

If you want to get more customers and retain customer loyalty, ask your customers to sign up for your newsletter. Place the “Sign Up” form on your homepage. You can send your newsletter subscribers information about new products, special offers and events.

To attract more visitors to sign up, offer them a gift, discount, reward points, etc.

You can also include customer testimonials and product reviews in your newsletter.

Do not provide important information about your products in an image because these images will not actually show up in the email. Email providers have this feature turned off by default.

Reward customer loyalty

Reward Points help build customer loyalty. A reward point can be the equivalent of a £1/$1 or less. You can offer a fixed amount of reward points for customers who purchase items from your store for the first time. You can also offer points when a customer registers on your store.

Do not forget to set your point system to remove reward points when an order is cancelled.

Virtual gift cards

virtual gift cards

If your customers are looking for a gift and cannot make up their minds what to purchase, a virtual gift card is ideal. As it is virtual, the customer need only pay for its value. Offer them on your website with a minimum, mid-range, and maximum value. You can create your own virtual gift card or use royalty-free images.

For example, your product name for your virtual gift card could be “$10 Gift Card”. However, the search engine friendly URL name should not include the currency symbol. In this case, the “$” symbol.

If your shopping cart has a Gift Card facility built-in, remember to indicate that your product is a Virtual Gift Card as opposed to a Physical Gift Card.

Wishlists

Wish lists are great for customer retention. This handy feature allows customers to add products to a wish list or email their wish list to friends and family. They can then purchase these items later if they desire.

Polls

A poll plugin asks multiple choice questions to your website visitors and displays the results in percentages.

You can engage with your customers by adding a poll to your website and displaying the results. If you decide to add a poll, make it interesting and beneficial. For instance, asking a website visitor for their favorite color isn’t likely to make them stay on your website for long.

For example, if you have an online denim store, you can ask the customer how many pairs of blue jeans they brought last year. A poll like this will give you an insight into the number of customers buying jeans and you can adjust your stock to match this correlation. Your poll will also leave the customer asking themselves: did I buy too many or not enough? Should I purchase a pair of jeans in another color? Or your poll may simply serve as a reminder to the customer that they need to purchase a new pair of jeans, which they can do from your website for example.

You can add an exit poll to your website to ask web visitors why they are leaving your site. You can also use polls as part of your social media strategy.

Chat

Live Chat

Live Chat windows are another way for you to engage with visitors to your site. Live Chat has the highest rate of customer satisfaction and customers are more likely to buy after a chat.

To ensure visitors have a pleasant and memorable user experience that will encourage them to buy, offer solutions. If a requested product is out of stock, offer an alternative. Be professional and friendly, and check for typos.

Live Chats will also teach you more about your customers behavior and what you can do to improve as visitors are more likely to voice their shopping experience on your website prior to converting.

A Chatbots role in customer retention

Chatbots use AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology to automate frequently asked questions and customer interactions.  Because they do not rely on a response from a human, customer service response times are increased. Ideal for small and medium-sized businesses, chatbots help cut down on customer email enquiries and costs, helps customers discover your products and services, helps you identify your costumers needs, and assist in driving sales, by selling to the customer during the chat process.

You can get Chatbot plugins for websites. You can also use Chatbots on Facebook and Twitter as part of your marketing strategy.

Get a feel for Chatbots by checking out Facebook Messenger and other eCommerce websites that utilize Chatbots.

Videos

You should create a YouTube channel to showcase brand promotional videos and to display products and events on your website.

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