Increase your revenue from existing customers

Strategies to boost sales from existing customers

Merchants are often faced with the problem of stagnant or worse, diminishing revenues from existing customers. Constantly reinventing and innovating one’s service offerings, cross selling and reducing the customers’ pain points are key strategies to enhance revenue realisation from existing clients. We shall look into some of the winning strategies that can help merchants improve sales conversion from their existing customer base:

1. Customer engagement: Interactions with the e-commerce merchant influence client perceptions. Superior post purchase support and FAQs on the website about the products are some examples. It is also a good idea to have a payment gateway process that includes easy grievance redressal for chargebacks. The feature should ideally ensure that the customer can provide the necessary documentation and the complete transaction details available with the merchant are also accessible. This would facilitate transparency and improve the credibility of the merchant.
2. Winning customers’ loyalty: Merchants often face declined payments in case the customer fails to update his/her card data, resulting in card expiration issues. The payment solutions company can ensure smooth transaction processing with automatic data updating facility.This would also go a long way in improving customer experience and reduce order cancellation.
3. Omnichannel payment option: Merchants can allow multiple payment options including digital payments via mobile applications, thus enabling 24*7 transactions. Thus, time and space will no more be limiting factors in online purchases.
4. Quick authentication: A BCG survey estimates that the average e-commerce website requires shoppers to click 23 times before a purchase is completed. Merchants need to revamp the shopping experience and enable a one-click checkout with secure online payment systems. This would drastically reduce cart abandonment and revenue losses.
5. Local payment solutions: Some customers would prefer to pay with familiar, local payment modes. Thus, the merchant should integrate a payment platform that supports alternative payment methods in local currency as well. This would help retain local customers, who might not be aware of global digital payment trends.
6. Product differentiation: Merchants and payment providers can offer personalised recommendations to customers based on the data repository of past transactions. For example, in case of multiple saved cards, the website could suggest one of them as the primary card option based on the historical usage. Further merchants could also enable better site selection options, so that the customer undergoes minimum navigation through the website before purchase completion.
7. Cross selling: One can also offer innovative payment features like instant financing, and flexible payback terms to encourage big ticket and frequent purchases
8. Rewarding customers’ loyalty: A loyalty program with item discounts or freebies would positively impact website visits and sales size. The merchants can promote the benefits program by sending targeted -mail campaigns to existing customers with details of customized rewards and points status.
9. Low cost payment option: A charge for using the payment gateway is often a big put-off for customers. Thus, merchants should integrate a convenient ‘plug and use’ payment portal, which is free of charge for the customer.
10. Secure payment option: This is a critical aspect to ensure return customers. Merchants must ensure that the payment gateway and the e-commerce portal can securely store card tokens and confidential customer information. This would speed up the transaction time as the customer would not have to re-enter all the details each time before a purchase transaction.
11. Expert advice: To further enhance customer appeal, one may also consider the inclusion of a knowledge section or blog with practical information on the transaction steps and the payment process. An educated customer would be more willing to return again for additional purchases.
12. Keeping one’s ear to the ground: It might be a good idea to include an optional pop-up survey or a quick questionnaire to extract customer opinions or reviews on the ease of online operations and the product experience. This way one could address any shortfalls and win customers’ confidence.

With growing competition in the digital space, it is imperative that along with new customer acquisition, merchants devise innovative and strong strategies to grow business from existing customers. Providing excellent quality of payment experience, fostering customer trust through improved ease of online purchases, and winning a higher share of the customers’ wallet with quality products and service offerings are crucial for higher sales conversion from repeat customers.