How creating an online marketplace for your small business can increase customer loyalty

The best customers are repeat customers. 

Whether you’re selling products online or in person, the goal is to sell a product that the consumer desires to purchase again soon. Sure, it is easy to re-order products that you’ve already purchased on Amazon before. But is that customer aware of anything else your business does? They may be missing out on other products and services offered and may be unaware of your brand in general. 

The Buyer’s Journey

Each customer goes through a journey before converting into a sale (Sellers, 2021). The process looks like this: 

Awareness Stage > Consideration Stage > Decision Stage 

Yes, a customer can become aware of your business simply by walking by it. Or by hearing a positive story about your business from a friend. Of course, awareness can be increased through advertising or community outreach. However, in almost every scenario, today’s potential customers will type your business’s name into a Google Search. The first items that display on that Google Search will determine how much time the customer spends gaining awareness through the search. 

From there, a decision to purchase an item from your business depends on the urgency of demand and convenience of purchase. Why not create a website that increases a sense of urgency for your customer, while conveniently listing your items for sale? 

Brand Awareness 

Websites are packed full of information about your brand, which is communicated to the viewer via layout, color scheme, font choice, logo, content, etc. Your website is a platform to win the customer over, and if done correctly, they will become returning, loyal customers. If you provide a story as to why your brand is memorable, in turn, your product becomes more memorable. 

Targeted Consumer Reach

Many small businesses choose to list their items on a popular online marketplace, such as Etsy, Amazon, or Facebook Marketplace. These platforms (and many others) provide access to millions of shoppers that may stumble upon your product. You can advertise through these platforms as well, however, if done incorrectly, could add costly fees to your monthly bill with low conversion rates and little to no adjustment. 

When you have a marketplace on your website, you immediately have a smaller customer base to access. However, the customer base that you do have will be loyal customers that are more likely to convert into a sale. With your website, you can expand your customer base through targeted advertising that is monitored at a closer rate. Making informed decisions about digital advertising can drive mass amounts of traffic to your website. Once mass amounts of useful traffic arrive on your website, you are in control of the Buyer’s Journey.

Does your Small Business have more than one type of item to sell? 

Well, if you sell these products on Amazon, your customers are likely to only see one product that you offer. They may not even realize that they are purchasing from your business, only attributing the sale to the platform on which they bought it. This means they’ll tell their friends where they bought it (Facebook Marketplace), instead of who they bought it from (you) when a friend compliments your product. Word-of-mouth marketing gets less effective as brand awareness decreases.

Having a website that includes a marketplace allows for customers to easily view all products that your business has to offer, with the ability to purchase more than one item from you at a time. 

Customer Satisfaction

Are you okay with how Amazon, Facebook Marketplace, and/or Etsy respond to your unhappy customers? High customer satisfaction is directly related to returning customers (Suganya Rama Chandran, 2020). If you’d like to be in control of the way your brand interacts with unhappy customers, by turning their poor experience around with excellent customer service, we recommend doing so through an online marketplace on your business’s website.

Websites are limitless

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of features that you can add to your website to differentiate yourself from competitors. WordPress, for example, has 58,826 plugins to choose from that add a variety of different features to your website (WordPress, 2021). Plus, you can list as many items as you’d like without any added fees. If your product is easy to purchase through your website, you develop a sense of trust within your customer, showing them how it would be easy to purchase another item soon. At the same time, if your website has attractive features, it can help to make your brand more memorable, increasing the rate of returning customers. 

If your product is one-of-a-kind, your website can push urgency by displaying items that are sold out. If you offer a consistent service, your website can push urgency by displaying positive customer reviews or case studies. There are different ways to increase loyalty through your website, and almost all of them should be personalized for your business and/or industry. Are you wondering what the best option is? Feel free to reach out. We love talking about how to increase customer loyalty! 

Websites are track-able

You can easily view how many people have viewed each page of your website and see how much time your website viewers are spending while looking at your products. You can use tools like Google Analytics to see if there is a glitch in your website preventing viewers from purchasing a product. Trackable analytics can be turned into data that you can use to make an informed website and advertising decision in the future. Using data to fuel these decisions can help to uncover a successful customer experience, creating loyal customers in return.

All in all, websites are entirely customizable and your marketplace should be, too. Many people think transaction fees on Etsy, Amazon, and Facebook Marketplace are unavoidable. As it turns out, you can create your marketplace and take control of your business growth by winning customer brand loyalty. 

We are here to help develop beautiful, easy-to-use websites, that will elevate your business to the next level (we can also help to avoid those pesky bad reviews from popping up first on Google!). Click here to schedule a free consultation today.

References

Sellers, A. (2021, April 21). What is the Buyer's Journey? Retrieved July 2021, from HubSpot: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/what-is-the-buyers-journey

Suganya Rama Chandran, H. R. (2020, May 29). The Effect of Brand Awareness and Use, Product Awareness and Use on Brand and Product Satisfaction: A Study of Ayurveda Products from India. Sage Journals, 16(2), 103-121.

WordPress. (2021). Retrieved July 2021, from Plugins: https://wordpress.org/plugins/