Does a customer account page actually affect customer retention and the overall success of your online store?

Let's use an illustration to answer that question.

Let's say one customer places an order in your store and checkouts as a guest. Then another customer registers on your website to set up an account page before checking out. Now that you have the second customer's email, phone number, order history, and other details, who do you think you can retarget with campaigns, discounts, and offers to keep bringing back to your store between these two customers?

Yes, you guessed right! That's likely going to be the last time the visitor without an account page will ever shop in your store, but with proper campaigns and offers, the customer with an account page can become a repeat customer.

So, what is a customer account page and how does it affect retention? Let's go into detail about how a customer account page affects retention and your overall sales.

Customer account page and its effect on user experience

Shopify stores, Walmart, Amazon, and many e-commerce stores that are doing it right quickly come to mind when we hear of the customer account page. And seeing these household names use customer account page is proof that it has its benefit. Simply put, a customer account page is a dedicated page where customers can find all their information - orders, delivery addresses, payment methods and card details, recently viewed products, wishlists, exchange & refund details, etc. This page simplifies customers’ actions on your site.

Several e-commerce surveys suggest that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.81% with the most recent study showing 74.52%. While there is a thorn of reasons for this, it becomes far more critical for merchants to keep customers engaged with their store. By adding a customer account page, you can help first-time customers interact with your page longer, and simplify how all customers interact with your store so that they can find items they are interested in faster, view past orders, add orders to Wishlist, save their delivery addresses and even participate in loyalty programs and keep a tab on the rewards they earn.

Clearly, you stand a better chance of improving your customers' shopping experience tremendously by offering customer account pages. For instance, you don’t need to request for your customer’s billing information every time they checkout after shopping. Customers are looking for less complicated activities and more time-saving features while shopping, and this is why saving their details with a customer account page so they don't get tired of inputting it every time can be a lifesaver for your business.                      

Why you need customer account page to boost sales.

More than half of your site visits don’t end up converting to sales. Out of every 100 potential shoppers, 70 leave without buying anything, that is why you need customer accounts to entice them with irresistible offers that will lead to prolonged engagement and eventually convince them to buy.

Without a customer account, you have little or no information on a customer's identity or order history and it becomes less easier to persuade your potential customers to buy your products using offers tailored to suit their needs. And you won’t have enough information to account page.

How various customer account features can help improve customer retention

When setting up a customer account page, there are six basic features you need to add to make the customer account experience richer for your customers.

Swift Login process

From the first step which is the login process, customers can immediately make a decision on whether they want to keep their account active and continue to shop with you or not. With a customer account Logging in is made faster with the saved login information feature, that autosaves your customers login details.

A trick to getting your customers to create accounts on your site is to make the registration process as simple and short as possible. Long registration processes can be frustrating for anyone. So when designing your customer account page registration forms, the goal should be to enable customers to register in a few clicks. You can even give customers the option to sign up using their social media accounts or email addresses, which will in turn give you access to their social media and emails for marketing and retargeting.

Store credits and Loyalty rewards

Giving incentives like loyalty rewards and points is a strategy that works all the time. Customers will keep coming back when they know that they have some sort of reward waiting for them on your site.

By having a loyalty feature on your customer account page, customers can easily see an overview of their rewards. How much of it they can spend, the methods for gaining more points, etc. Running marketing efforts centered around loyalty programs can keep your customers engaged and persuade them

Access to customer’s order history

Another feature that customers will largely benefit from and enjoy is the access they have to their order history when they have account pages.

With the order history feature, customers can see and track their previous purchases, current order, and delivery information . It can also help customers see the amount paid for every purchase, delivery address, delivery date and time, etc. Some eCommerce platforms like Shopify further enable customers to track an order in transit, make complaints about a product after it has been delivered, initiate returns, and repurchase an item within the customer’s account page.

The wishlist feature

With this feature, shoppers can save an item that they haven’t made up their minds about or wish to purchase at a later date. Once shoppers save an item to their wishlist, it makes it easier for them to find that particular item again when they eventually come back to purchase it.

To make their shopping experience more exciting, you could enable customers to view discounts and incentives available on those products when they access their wishlist or add a “share wishlist feature”, so that they can send it to friends and family who may wish to purchase the items for them as gifts.

For the records, a survey backed by Google found that 44% of customers want the wishlist feature on eCommerce site

Visible recently viewed products

While shopping, customers can decide to take a look at other products similar to the one they came looking for, or compare with other brands. Depending on the number of products they view in the process, it may be difficult to remember all viewed items that may have caught their attention or they may just not remember,  and there is no crime in that.

On the customer account page, the recently viewed feature allows customers to easily see all previously viewed items if they ever decide to purchase them.

Swift reorder process

What every merchant wants is for customers to keep buying their products after the first purchase. Customers enjoy simple buying processes and are prepared to spend more just to have a very convenient experience.

Your sales may be directly impacted when your customers have to start exploring your site to select the exact product, add it to the cart, and input the delivery information and payment information afresh before they can purchase an item they have purchased before or frequently do.

You can make the reorder process a walk-in-the-park for your customers byadding this feature to your customer account paged. That way, your customers will only need to visit their purchase history and either click the "reorder" button next to a product or click the product itself to complete the purchase.

Summary

You need a customer account page to give your customers a simple and customized experience This seemingly tiny addition can establish your brand as the go-to place for quick and easy buying in the eyes of your target market.

The customer account page features we've discussed can help you further personalize your customer's shopping experience, drive engagement and increase retention. And this customer account page is one of Chargezen’s approach to helping their subscription merchants drive engagement, improve retention and boost overall subscription orders. customers in setting up an account page, allowing you to access their data to personalize campaigns, engage them and retarget them to drive further purchases.

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