How User Accounts Can Boost Sales and Strengthen Customer Relationships
One of the downsides in consumers’ collective shift to spending more time online is the loss of a “personal touch” — that inimitable quality that comes from dealing with someone face to face. In fact, the unavoidable anonymity that results from the web can leave consumers feeling dissociated, taken for granted or even overlooked. Nowhere is this more apparent than when shopping online.
It therefore becomes important for retailers to provide consumers with a means to stake their flag, to map the terrain and to create some sort of home in these new, impersonal surroundings. One way to do this is by allowing consumers to register on your web store, providing them with new ways to purchase, store information and record their shopping histories for reasons both consultative and utilitarian.
One immediate benefit to consumers who register a user account on an e-commerce site is not having to re-enter their contact information for future purchases. Simply by entering a username and password, they can save significant amounts of time, particularly if it's a web store from which they buy frequently. And for those consumers who are afraid of collecting too many accounts and their requisite passwords, there are many tools available free of charge that will organize this information for you.
However, the benefits of registering for a user account don't end there. Over time, it's inevitable that one would want the ability to look over previous purchases for a variety of reasons: to compare with financial records; gauge purchasing trends; reorder particular products; and so on. Having an individual user account creates a “home” with which to associate past web orders, making them searchable and retrievable.
Some newer web store solutions even allow the ability to inquire about the status of outstanding orders in a retail store associated with a web solution, all based on customer login. In other words, a customer can back order a product at their local store, then track its progress from home through the store’s website. This allows retailers to communicate with customers in a way that's convenient for both parties. Again, a registered user account provides a home where pertinent information may be posted and read.
Individual user accounts allow access to other features as well, including wish lists and gift registries. These selling tools recruit new shoppers to your website, and provide them with a way of flagging favorite products that they want to review later before making a purchase decision. Gift registries are a powerful feature for consumers who want to invite friends and family to a predefined list of products they're interested in receiving.
By offering user accounts to consumers, online retailers are essentially extending their hands and saying, “You're important to this business, and this is one way we can begin to establish a relationship, even if we never meet.” It gives consumers a greater sense of permanence, and opens up powerful new features that make the shopping experience convenient and pleasing in ways that will bring them back. And by allowing consumers to see what they've purchased in the past, you increase the chances they'll purchase from you in the future.
Brad Malmberg is the training manager of Xsilva Systems, makers of a suite of retail tools tailored to the Mac platform. Reach Brad at brad@xsilva.com.
