sales funnel |

How to Convert One-Time Shoppers into Loyal Customers (5 Tips)

Let's imagine that holiday sales were at an all-time high, and you started the year with a solid first quarter. However, as you scaled back on ads business began to slow considerably.

People are still buying from you, but you're surviving this quarter on a tiny group of repeat buyers.

By improving your brand's reputation and providing your customers with extra value, you can avoid that scenario and attract a larger base of loyal customers who keep coming back again and again.

Over time, this can stabilize sales throughout the year, helping your business get through those seasonal slumps more gracefully.

In this post, we'll share five tips to help you convert one-time shoppers into loyal customers without adding a lot of extra marketing costs. Let's dive in!

1. Start an Email List

Roughly 60% of customers prefer brands to contact them via email. It’s an easy, unobtrusive way to reach people.

An email list shouldn’t be pushy or make users feel like they have to sign up. Instead, you may want to give each customer an incentive to join, such as a discount on their next purchase:

An example of a signup page that offers discounts.

The example above is a simple and clean signup form that asks for nothing but your email address. It also offers a clear benefit – a 10% off code when you sign up.

However, once you gain a new subscriber, you'll need to keep them on your list. Let's take a look at two effective ways to retain subscribers.

Create a “Welcome” Automation

Creating welcome automations might be the best way to convert your time into value. They’re quick and easy to set up, and you can change the content to keep it relevant over time.

Some email list service providers like ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer straightforward ways to set up these automations. They also have a wealth of resources for writing welcome emails that convert.

Your initial email should include some information about your brand and what kind of content subscribers can expect from you. You can also add links to resources, flagship products, and your social media accounts.

Offer Discounts to Subscribers

Another effective way to retain subscribers is by offering discounts or freebies. Your discount doesn’t have to be anything big: 10-15% is common. If you’re offering freebies, this might be a test drive of your product or free samples.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure that customers have a reason to remain subscribed to your newsletter.

Follow up with great content they can look forward to, as well as regular offers and goodies. That way, customers are more likely to stick around for the long term.

2. Use Recurring Payments

Recurring payments are a great way to keep customers engaged and deliver their favorite products every month. Therefore, you may want to consider offering subscriptions to your best selling items:

As you can see in the example above, Shaker & Spoon delivers all the mixes and other fixings to help spruce up your drinks. Every drink has a background story, and they’ll teach you how to make it just like the pros.

If you’re looking to introduce customers to new products, you can also provide a subscription box service. For example, if you run an online food shop, you could deliver a mix of snacks or ingredients on a monthly basis.

3. Collect Feedback and Feature Reviews

Reviews can help you gain the trust of new customers and get a holistic picture of the customer journey. You can use this info to improve the customer experience and see if there are any concerns you need to address.

The simple act of asking for feedback shows customers that you care and are dedicated to making improvements. People appreciate being asked for their thoughts, especially if they feel that they’re contributing to your success.

It's important that you make it easy for buyers to leave reviews. For instance, you could include feedback forms on your site, or enable reviews through third-party platforms such as Google My Business:

Surveys are another great way to collect feedback and testimonials. You can email customers a link to a short survey that asks about their shopping experience.

WordPress form plugins like WPForms make creating and managing these types of surveys super easy.

Moreover, you can ask customers if they would be interested in being contacted for a testimonial. You can then feature these testimonials on your website, email copy, or social media pages.

4. Provide a Frictionless Shopping Experience

According to recent studies, shopping cart abandonment rates sit at almost 70%. One of the leading causes of this phenomenon is a long, complicated checkout process.

An easy checkout process can help you drive higher conversions. It can also encourage users to make additional purchases from your store.

Therefore, you want to make sure your site visitors are able to process their orders in a quick and efficient manner, without having to sign up for an account or being directed to other pages.

Fortunately, Buy Now Plus can help you simplify the checkout process with powerful buy now buttons. You can even cut out some extra steps and take users straight to the checkout page to complete their orders.

5. Set Up an Affiliate Program

Affiliate marketing allows publishers and influencers to promote your products for a cut of the profits. For instance, you can give affiliates the option to advertise your products using trackable links or discount codes associated with their accounts:

An example of an affiliate program application

This strategy helps you build a loyal customer base, especially if you’re also offering discounts to affiliates on top of their normal commissions.

It can also help you reach a wider audience, and thus increase your sales.

You can easily set up an affiliate program on your existing WordPress site using a plugin like Easy Affiliate. This tool also enables you to track your conversions, process your program applications, and manage your members more efficiently.

Conclusion

Building a loyal clientele is a long-term game. However, by implementing a few effective strategies, you should be able to convert most of your first-time buyers into repeat customers.

In this post, we shared five tips to help you retain your customers:

Start an email list that introduces your brand and provides additional value.
Use recurring payments for frequently bought products, and offer subscriptions boxes.
Collect and share reviews to help customers connect with your brand and gain their trust.
Provide a frictionless shopping experience by streamlining the checkout process with Buy Now Plus.
Set up an affiliate program with Easy Affiliate and offer discounts to your members.

Do you have any questions on how to convert one-time shoppers into loyal customers? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

5 Ways to Improve the Online Checkout Experience

You've got a beautiful website, great products, and buyers who want what you have. They get to the cart and hit the checkout button, only to be met with a complicated process with too many hoops to jump through.

Many may become impatient and leave.

Fortunately, you can make sure your customers don’t leave your site empty-handed and frustrated. By streamlining your checkout process, you can help prevent cart abandonment and increase your conversions.

In this post, we’ll look at some common checkout problems that often lead to cart abandonment. Then we’ll share five tips to help you improve your store’s checkout process. Let’s get started!

Common Checkout Issues That Can Lead to Cart Abandonment

According to recent studies, over 69% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts. Some of the main reasons for this include:

A lengthy or confusing checkout experience
Forcing visitors to sign up for accounts before they can check out
Jarring design that’s inconsistent with the brand
Sketchy-looking payment pages that don’t offer a sense of security

If buyers can’t get what they came for quickly, they’re likely to leave your site and do their shopping elsewhere.

Therefore, it's vital to ensure that your checkout process is quick and easy, and that it blends in nicely with the rest of the shopping journey.

5 Ways to Improve the Online Checkout Experience

Luckily, optimizing the checkout process doesn’t have to be complicated and time-consuming. Here are five simple ways you can improve the online checkout experience for your customers.

1. Simplify the Checkout Page

Typically, you’ll only want billing and shipping information on your checkout page. You may also want to gather some additional details, such as email addresses or phone numbers for sending order updates.

However, we recommend that you only ask for the information you need.

Moreover, the checkout page should be clean and distraction-free. If you run ads on your site, you may want to try to keep the order pages clear of them.

Here's an example of a clean and streamlined checkout page:

As you can see, this page asks for minimal information. There are no visual distractions, and the process is short enough that it fits on one page.

2. Make Sure Your Checkout is Mobile-Friendly

With more and more customers making purchases on their mobile phones, it’s important to ensure that you have a mobile-friendly checkout.

For instance, you may want to enable payments with digital wallets such as Google Pay and Apple Pay:

This way customers can use their stored payment details to complete their orders more quickly.

You can also use a buy now button to give customers the option of skipping straight to the checkout page. Especially on mobile devices, people appreciate a fast and easy purchasing process without the extra loading time.

At Buy Now Plus, we help you create high-converting buttons for a quick and easy checkout on any device.

Moreover, you'll be able to use these buttons on other platforms, including your social media pages and newsletters. This means you can accept payments from anywhere online.

3. Eliminate Surprises

A general rule of thumb for user experience (UX) is this: the more predictable your design and flow are, the better. Jarring, surprising experiences are an easy way to drive visitors away.

Therefore, it's a good idea to guide your users through the checkout process. You can use a multi-step checkout, which is excellent for reducing the amount of scrolling buyers have to do.

This enables you to cleanly display everything on a single page using a multi-step form:

An example of a step-by-step checkout process.

There’s another surprise no one likes to see: high shipping costs. Depending on the platform you’re using, it may not be possible to give an exact shipping amount early on.

However, you might want to provide an estimate or make it clear that there will be shipping and handling fees.

If you’re looking to speed up your checkout process a little more, you could offer a guest checkout option. Many customers, especially one-time buyers, don’t want to deal with setting up another account.

4. Keep the Checkout Design Consistent With Your Site

Having a professionally designed site can help you build trust. On the other hand, messy and inconsistent design might make your site look suspicious, scaring customers away.

Your checkout style should be consistent with your site. This means it should avoid any jarring, unnatural transitions.

You never want to make customers feel like they’re being shipped off to someone else to make their payments, unsure if they’re paying you or a third party.

With Buy Now Plus, you can fully customize your buy now buttons so they match your branding. This way, you can keep a cohesive design throughout your checkout process.

5. Include Obvious Security Features

Finally, your checkout process should also show users they can trust you with their payment details. Therefore, you may want to provide secure payment options such as PayPal and Stripe:

Displaying the names and logos of your payment providers can be a great way to offer that additional sense of security. Additionally, you'll want to ensure that these options are placed in a prominent area on your site, so customers are able to see them right away.

You'll be pleased to learn that Buy Now Plus runs on Stripe. This means that, as an online seller, you and your customers will benefit from Stripe's fraud protection and other security features.

Conclusion

A simple checkout experience can mean the difference between customers leaving your site with the products they love, or walking away empty-handed and frustrated.

Fortunately, you don't need to put a lot of effort (or money) into optimizing your customer journey.

In this post, we looked at five effective ways to improve your online checkout experience:

Simplify your checkout page by only asking for information that you need and minimizing visual distractions.
Make sure your checkout process is mobile-friendly and cuts out extra steps, by using a service like Buy Now Plus.
Get rid of surprises like high shipping costs, and let buyers know exactly where they are in the checkout process.
Keep your checkout design consistent with your brand.
Include secure payment methods, such as PayPal and Stripe, so your buyers feel safe when they’re checking out.

Do you have any questions about how you can implement these tips to improve your customers’ online checkout experience? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

How to Improve Sales With Social Media Content (4 Tips)

Social media represents a huge opportunity for any business owner. After all, there are over 2.7 billion monthly active Facebook users and 69.3 million Twitter users in the US alone. However, if you don’t plan your social activities carefully, it’s easy to let that opportunity go to waste.

Fortunately, there are tried-and-tested methods and tips proven to help improve your sales with social media content. By leveraging this advice, you can ensure that the time you spend on these platforms has a direct, positive impact on your profits.

In this post, we’ll discuss why social selling is more than simply posting your products across Facebook and Twitter. We’ll then share four actionable tips that you can implement today to maximize your profits. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Social Selling (And Why It’s Important)

Despite its name, social selling isn’t always about posting your products and services to social media. While it’s smart to keep your followers in the loop regarding new launches, discounts, and other product-related developments, this is only part of a successful social strategy.

If you really want to smash your sales targets, we recommend using these platforms to build brand awareness and connect with prospects. You can also develop relationships with both new and existing customers by responding to their comments on platforms such as Twitter:

By actively engaging with your target audience in a positive and helpful way, you can increase the chances that yours is the first company that person considers when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Social selling can also be an effective way to keep existing customers engaged and encourage them to remain loyal to your business, rather than defecting to your competitors.

How to Improve Sales With Social Media Content (4 Tips)

Social media has grown into a powerful marketing tool. If you’re ready to improve your sales, then here are our top tips for success:

1. Do Your Research

Today, there are countless social media platforms. With so many channels to choose from, it’s difficult to maintain a presence across every single site.

To achieve the highest number of conversions, it’s smart to focus on the platforms where your target audience is most active. Some platforms are more popular with certain demographics. For example 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. By contrast, 80.9% of LinkedIn users are aged 24 or over.

If you’re unsure about your target demographic, you can learn more about the people who are visiting your site and purchasing your products using a tool such as Google Analytics:

Once you know where your audience is spending the majority of their time, you can focus all of your efforts on those platforms. This should have the greatest impact on your sales.

2. Avoid the Hard Sell

While it may sound counter-intuitive, it’s a bad idea to focus solely on driving sales. If you treat social media as an advertising channel, then you’ll probably struggle to attract a following.

Instead, we recommend building your social strategy around sharing valuable content. Ideally, you’ll already have a company blog.

These posts are great material for your accounts, but you can also create content solely for social media, such as infographics that you post directly to Twitter, Facebook, and other popular sites.

You might also share the occasional third-party resource, such as informative blog posts written by industry experts.

With social media, the clue is in the name. Therefore, it's a good idea to always look for opportunities to engage with your audience. This may involve liking and sharing customers' posts, answering questions, or responding to comments:

All of these activities can position you as a helpful, valuable person to follow on social media. Then, when you do post purely sales-focused content, your audience should be far more receptive to your message.

3. Partner With Relevant Influencers

An online influencer is someone who has a significant digital following. Similar to a traditional celebrity endorsement, an influencer can promote your business to their fans and followers.

This can be a very effective sales strategy, with around 34% of Instagram users admitting to purchasing something due to an online influencer:

An example of an influencer partnership, which may help improve sales.

The key to a successful partnership is finding the right influencer. Ideally, there will be an overlap between the person’s fanbase and your target audience.

In addition, when there’s a relevant link between the influencer and the content they’re promoting, you can capitalize on the assumption that they only promote products they genuinely like. This can further increase your sales.

Although it’s easy to get star-struck by the large follower numbers of social media’s heavy hitters, it’s worth noting that micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates.

This is most notable on TikTok, where micro-influencers receive 17.96% engagement, compared to 4.96% for mega-influencers. If you can identify a micro-influencer who appeals to your target audience, then you may be on to a winner.

One great way to recruit and manage social media influencers is to start your own affiliate marketing program. There are several tools that allow you to do this easily. One of our favorites is Easy Affiliate, a WordPress plugin that works beautifully with all kinds of membership and ecommerce sites.

Easy Affiliate WordPress plugin homepage

4. Leverage the Power of Buy Now Buttons

Although it shouldn’t form the core of your social content, you’ll want to spend some time promoting your products and services. However, even if a follower decides to make a purchase, they’ll still need to click through to your store in order to start the process.

This gives the customer plenty of time to change their mind. In fact, studies show that 69% of customers abandon their shopping carts. Therefore, it’s important that you simplify the purchasing process in order to encourage people to complete an order.

This is where buy now buttons come in. When you create a button using a flexible service like Buy Now Plus, you can post them across all major social media platforms:

You can improve sales by posting Buy Now buttons to social media.

Your followers can then access the checkout process directly from their favorite social networks.

To create your first buy now button, simply connect Buy Now Plus to Stripe, then follow the onscreen instructions:

We’ll also provide everything you need to post your buy now button across your social media networks. This includes dedicated Share to Facebook and Share to Twitter buttons.

Conclusion

Social media is a powerful platform for promoting your products and services. However, it’s important to use it wisely in order to maximize your conversions.

Let’s quickly recap four ways to improve your sales with social media content:

Choose the right platform for your business, based on your target audience.
Share valuable content and avoid hard selling.
Partner with relevant influencers to reach more people.
Add buy now buttons on your social media pages, using Buy Now Plus.

Do you have any questions about how to improve sales and engage with potential customers on social media? Ask us in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.