5 Tips to Optimize Your Post-purchase Experience for Sales

Repeat customers are literally the best. They are cheaper and easier to sell to; they spend more per purchase; they’re even more likely to share your store with others and help you gain new customers. (Seriously, this post is chock full of incredible stats and tips about repeat customers).

What this means is that your store needs to be delivering an unforgettable post-purchase experience to its customers. Let’s talk about how to set your store apart.

Don’t waste your transactional emails

Transactional emails — the emails you send post-purchase containing the customer’s receipt and tracking information — have 8xs more opens and clicks than your marketing emails. They are even capable of generating 6xs the revenue of your marketing emails too.

It is key to optimize these emails for experience and even for your second sale. Here are some ideas:

• Include a dynamic cross-selling section that suggests related products.

• Share educational information about the product(s) purchased. For instance, if your customer bought a tent from you, including an instructional video about setting it up for the first time in one of your follow-up emails will improve their shopping experience. Customers find the educational material to be valuable, but you can also sneak some call outs to related products throughout.
• Include a bounceback coupon for their next purchase.

Create a seamless package tracking experience

Your package tracking experience can make or break your post-purchase experience. Leaving a customer in the dark as to where their package is or when it will arrive is a disaster. Conversely, giving your customer full transparency into where their package is located builds trust and excitement.

An easy package tracking experience reduces friction and increases trust, therefore aiding in creating loyal customers. In order to maximize this opportunity and increase brand memorability, it’s best to have customers actually track their package on your website, rather than on the shipping company’s site. An app like Tracktor enables particularly Shopify stores to do just this.

And bonus: not only does package tracking make for a better experience for your customers, but it also saves your customer support a ton of time. Self-service package tracking can completely eliminate “where’s my package?” tickets for your customers.

Interact with your product reviews

Product reviews can increase conversion rates by 270%, so they’re really important to your business. But did you also know that 70% of customers will change their opinion about your company after you reply to a review? Or that 41% of customers believe that a reply shows you really care about them?

Those numbers mean that a customer’s product reviews are a key place for you to change their mind about a negative experience or bolster their trust in you after a positive one — ultimately priming the customer for their next purchase.

When replying to a review, whether negative or positive, take the time to thank your customer for leaving the review. When replying to a negative review, follow that with an apology and offer them an email or phone number where they can reach you to further discuss the complaint. If it’s a positive review, you may wish to share ‘insider knowledge’ about the product they were pleased with and consider offering them something else to purchase that’s based on their positive comments. For example, a response to a positive review of a dress could be:

“Thanks so much for leaving a review! It’s great to know you love that floral print. Our designer was inspired by the rose garden at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco! Have you checked out our latest collection? There are some wonderful floral print skirts you may enjoy.”

Utilize exciting packaging

Your packaging is the very first physical impression you will make on your customer. Beautiful or fun packaging can make a customer feel like they’re 5 on Christmas morning all over again. And besides just leaving a positive impression of your brand, well-thought-out packaging can directly encourage sales by including bounce-back coupons or creative cross-selling.

You can take inspiration from the brand Care/Of. The company supplies vitamins to its customers, but what truly sets it apart from any other vitamin company is the packaging they use. They send customers a monthly supply of individually wrapped vitamins by your daily intake. The pouches themselves are personalized with your name and a quote, fun fact, or daily challenge. The pouches come in a recyclable dispensing box. As a customer myself, I continue to find myself delighted every morning when I open a new packet. I even get excited for my next month’s box to come in to see what my new set of challenges, quotes, and fun facts will be.

Make the returns process easy

It’s counterintuitive, but an easy return program creates repeat customers. Zappos found that 95% of its customers who make a return will make a second purchase. Follow these pointers to make your perfect returns program:

• Keep the policy simple. Something that applies to all your products across the board and can be written in a few clear sentences.
• Make it convenient. Accept multichannel returns. Send returns materials with the items.
• Do free returns. Customers don’t want to pay for shipping back or a restocking fee. While those fees make sense to you, they don’t make sense to a customer who is getting nothing in return for that money. Someone’s going to be out of money in this scenario — it’s better that it be you since that money could buy you a loyal customer.

Wrap-Up

Your job is only just beginning after a customer places a sale. There is no better time to prove to your customer that they should give you their loyalty. Using these five techniques, you can create a loyal base of customers.

About the Author

Cara Wood is the Digital Marketing Manager at ShopPad, a company devoted to helping Shopify stores become successful through custom services and pre-built apps. When Cara is not hard at work sharing the word about ShopPad, she can be found trying to keep her beagle out of the trash.