Increasing customer engagement
Tips to help you build strong and lasting relationships with your customers.
Tips for success
The playing field has changed. Merchant A used to focus on Merchant B and maybe Merchant C as serious competition to be studied and outmaneuvered. Today, however, focus is on the consumer and “customer engagement” is top of mind.
Building strong and lasting relationships propels brand loyalty and keeps customers returning, buying more, and even bringing their friends and family members. Consumers know that, by and large, they can get the same products at several different stores or websites. Why choose yours?
The customer’s “journey” through your store or your website is your opportunity to start building true engagement. Put yourself in their shoes. Consider the shopper’s perspective, beginning with how you get their attention. First impressions matter. Make sure that first impression is consistent with the shopping, checkout, and ongoing contacts your customer will experience.
Design a total environment that reflects not only your products and services in terms of level of quality and price points, but also the tone and style that accurately characterizes your business. Customers will remember the look and feel of your store as readily as they will customer service (or lack thereof) and the purchasing experience.
- Check the natural flow and make sure your highest priority items are highly visible from the start.
- Draw shoppers via displays or supporting signage into the areas where you have the most success.
- Have enough employees on the floor at all times to greet and assist customers and help them check them out.
- Create a checkout experience that’s as safe as it is enjoyable.
- Encourage contactless payments to reduce long wait lines and help make checkout faster and more convenient.
- Promote your payment acceptance options via signage, including register stickers, in your windows and near your card readers.
First, if you don’t already have an online store, create one. Start by selecting a shopping cart platform. Consider technical issues like loading speed, features, rendering ability with all major browsers, flow transition from desktop or tablet to smartphone screens, compatibility with Chase Merchant Services, fit for your business requirements, your web developer skills, SEO features, and more. Need more ideas? Visit our Payment Solutions page for software options that are tailored to your specific business priorities.
Next, consider these important site design features:
- Keep the first impression clean and concise. Less is more. If visitors are overwhelmed with too many options or product variations, they may abandon your site.
- Focus on your most popular offerings up front, with the ability to see more by browsing.
- Eliminate excessive scrolling to see the most important content or images you want your shoppers to notice.
- Provide detailed product descriptions, including sizes/size charts, dimensions, weights, availability, or other specifications.
- Highlight an eye-catching “Do this” button (such as Buy Now, Join, etc.) on your home page to prompt customer action. It should be visible for all types of browsers and devices at first glance.
- Build in a fast track to payment, not a path that requires annoying extra clicks. Those clicks just might distract your customer and risk completion of the original purchase.
- Promote all your payment acceptance options including contactless cards. Chase merchants are typically able to accept all card brands so display the cards and wallets you accept on your site and make them clearly visible near the checkout section. Make customers feel secure and confident at checkout by displaying all security measures you take to protect purchases.
- Include information resources such as a Q&A, refund/exchange policies, shipping, and delivery, to name a few.
- Add a help desk and assign staff to monitor incoming questions or complaints.
- Make purchase history available.
- Conduct user research. How easily can online shoppers find products and services? Manage their cart or shopping bag? Apply coupons or discount codes? Checkout? Test multiple ways of getting shopper attention to take the next step you want for converting browsers to buyers.
- Set up email marketing and support automation BEFORE you get traffic to your online store. This is especially important for online-only stores.
- Enroll in free business profile listings to fuel SEO and help searchers locate your business quickly and easily. There are several listing services that can help you make sure your profile appears on the most popular directories or customer engagement drivers and in the right categories. Use key words in your business description, add appropriate images if possible, and update your information as needed.