Customer loyalty pays
A on customer loyalty report confirms that
e-commerce profitability hinges on getting customers back to a site to
make repeated purchases.
The report, released by Cambridge, Mass.-based Mainspring Communications
and international consulting firm Bain & Co., is based on surveys
of Web shoppers in the apparel, groceries, and electronics sectors.
The study found that retailers on the Web have to retain a customer for
12 months to break even on that consumer, and online grocers have to hang
onto a shopper for 18 months to recoup the $80 customer-acquisition cost.
Repeat customers spend more, the report said. For example, the average
repeat shopper at an apparel site spent 67 percent more in months 31 to
36 than in the first six months of shopping at the site.
In addition, repeat customers refer significantly
more people to a site, and those new customers over three years spend
50 percent to 75 percent of what the original customer spent, the report
stated.
The findings show that building customer loyalty and paying attention
to service are critical to making it on the Web, the authors of the report
said.
"What we're seeing is that if you play out the long-term aspects, customer
loyalty is the major differentiator for success," said Chris Zook, a Bain
analyst.
Zook contends that in the highly competitive world of Internet commerce,
customer loyalty may be more fragile and critical than it is for off-line
businesses.
Online shoppers avoid fancy features
A new study from 
PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PWC) has found that most online shoppers do not use the extra features,
or "bells and whistles," on ecommerce sites.
Only 19 percent of shoppers had ever filled out an online wish list,
for example, and only 13 percent of those had ever forwarded such a list
to friends or family members.
Features such as live customer service, personalization, and product
comparison guides were also unlikely to be used or to tempt shoppers into
buying.
The most popular and important features for online shoppers are search
capabilities and product information. About 77 percent of those surveyed
had used search facilities at retail sites and 43 percent said it was
the most important.
PWC said that online retailers must be careful not to add features to
their sites if they do not add any value or speed up the buying process.
"Businesses can't depend anymore on just
throwing out a net and getting new customers," - Jullian Chu, an analyst
at Mainspring.
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