Ten years back, people thought of websites as brochureware.
Then, websites became powerful tools for winning new business by using clever SEO techniques.
Today, successful companies are leveraging their websites for customer engagement and loyalty.
This can be done very simply by :
- Personalising the website according to customer interests.
- Rewarding customers for loyalty. They can earn reward points everytime they buy
- Rewarding customers for referrals. Use a tell a friend or refer a friend widget for this
- Creating a forum for customers to make suggestions and incorporating those suggestions. It’s important to acknowledge the suggetions
- Putting an internal search on the website and analysing what your visitors look for within the site. Once you collect data, you can make the navigation easier or provide new resources to make the website more appealing to the visitors (many of whom may be your repeat customers)
- Having a Blog where the customers can share their ideas/experiences
- Creating an online community where customers or fans of your brand can interact. e.g, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Billabong/9234817714
Billabong has 193,115 fans on it’s facebook community site. This makes the brand stronger and increases customer loyalty. If you notice, the current profile talks about Billabong’s spring collection. They have a feed running to the facebook profile which updates new content. They also have user generated content like billabong videos.
