Learn how to get one-time shoppers back to get more product reviews on Shopify. 

The holiday and the festive season typically bring many first-time customers to eCommerce stores.

That’s because everyone wants to shop for discounted products from many different brands.

But after this shopping frenzy, there’s a lull.

Wouldn’t it be the best time to bring back your first-time customers and engage them?

But how do you do that? Most likely, your first-time customers chose to guest checkout instead of signing up on your website. And so, you don’t have their contact details.

Hooking your one-time holiday shoppers to your brand begins much before they first land on your website.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to bring back your first-time holiday shoppers and how to get them to share more reviews.

But first, let’s understand why you must collect reviews from first-time customers.

Benefits of getting product reviews on Shoppify from first-time customers

Understand customers better

If you want to know what your customers like, don’t like, and their preferences, the best strategy is to ask your customers directly. That’s where reviews come in. Ask customers direct or generic questions based on the information you’re seeking.

Helps create personalized marketing strategies

Customers might share positive or negative reviews. In both cases, you’ll know what they’re talking about. If the reviews are positive, you know what they like about you and give them more of that.

On the other hand, if the reviews are negative, you know your customers’ pain points. Therefore, you can create targeted campaigns to address their problems.

Boost customer loyalty

It is imperative to engage with first-time customers. When you ask them for reviews, it adds to their overall brand experience. When customers see that brands care about what they think about them or the products, they feel more confident and trust the brand.

However, before you can enjoy these benefits, you will have to work on some strategies to bring back your one-time holiday customers and get them to share reviews.

Strategies to bring back one-time holiday shoppers to get more product reviews on Shopify store

While we definitely recommend testing different strategies to get more reviews on your Shopify store, here are some of our favorites to bring back the holiday season shoppers.

1. Collect as much information as possible from first-time customers

During the sale season, new visitors might land on your site because of the discounts—those who want to make a quick purchase, and that’s it.

You know nothing about these new potential customers browsing products on your eCommerce website—what they like, their age or gender, their profession, etc.

If you want to cultivate a long-term relationship with these customers, you’ll need to gather information about them so that you can tailor their future shopping experiences.

And this is why it’s important to encourage customers to sign up or register on your website at the time of their first purchase.

You may think shoppers will leave without purchasing to avoid signing up, but studies show that 65% of consumers prefer to checkout with a customer account instead of guest checkout.

• Encouraging customers to sign up for a customer account helps collect their personal details, such as email id, phone number, name, location, birthdate, etc.
• You can gather first-time shoppers’ browsing patterns to understand their likes and dislikes
• You can engage customers via your live chat channels to learn more about them

Here’s an example of live chat options:

2. Encourage customers to sign-up

When shopping during the holiday season sale, many shoppers choose to guest checkout instead of signing up for a customer account. That’s because they may think they’re not going to shop often from your site.

But as an eCommerce business, your aim should be to keep them coming back to your store to buy more.

Motivating customers to register on your website is a game changer for building long-term associations. Once they register, you have their contact details. Then, you can engage them via various campaigns to bring them back to your site.

And here’s the trick to get them to sign up—ask them to share a review to earn vouchers, gifts, or discounts. Make sign-up mandatory during this process. This way, you can improve the chances of customers signing up.

In addition, use pop-ups, live chat, etc., to inform customers about the benefits of signing up for a customer account page. You’d be surprised to see the many ways in which customers use their account page.

Also read: 7 Observations We Have Made About The Use Of Shopify Customer Account Pages By Consumers

3. Promote your store credits/ rewards points program

Consumer studies show that store credits, reward points, and loyalty points have been huge customer engagement drivers—customers tend to stick around longer when brands offer points.

That’s because:

• Points work as an incentive
• Customers feel like they get something more when they get credit points
• It’s like a game to customers—the more points they earn, the more they benefit

But brands often forget to promote their benefits programs while customers are on their site for the first time.

Leverage this power of store credits to bring back your one-time holiday season shoppers.

Here’s what you can do:

• When first-time customers choose to checkout as guests, urge them to sign up by offering them store credits as an incentive.
• In addition, offer them more points to share a product review or feedback. You can do this as a separate post-purchase campaign or at the time of checkout.

A well-thought store credit strategy can help you bring customers back, as well as collect reviews for your business.

Also read: How To Use Store Credits This Holiday Season: 13 Actionable Use Cases

4. Include the ‘add to wishlist’ feature

Another way to make customers return to your Shopify store is to include the ‘wishlist’ feature on your website.

This feature enables shoppers to add items they like to a wishlist. They may not want to buy the product at present but wish to in the future. They can refer to the wishlist when they’re ready to purchase those products.

So, how does this feature help bring back customers? Here’s how:

• The wishlist feature generates more interest in products because shoppers have the option to explore the products later
• To use the wishlist feature, customers will have to sign up for a customer account to access their wishlist—this improves the chances of them returning
• Moreover, brands can create personalized campaigns around the products in customers’ wishlists to attract them back to their store
• For example, you can run a campaign, ‘buy from your wishlist, share a review and unlock discount’

Here’s an example:

5. Engage customers during their first visit

Your new customers’ first visit to your Shopify site is your first and last chance to engage them. If they leave your site without making a purchase, you won’t even have their email address to engage them in the future.

So, make the most of shoppers’ time on your website. Here are some ways to do so:

• Engage shoppers via live chat
• Offer them live shopping assistance
• Offer them discounts to increase sales
• Nurture new shoppers with recommendations
• Be proactive; if customers are browsing for too long, ask them if they need any help
• Make the checkout process easy for them

6. Provide an excellent first-time experience

With so many options of brands to shop from, eCommerce consumers expect the best experiences from all brands.

If something is not to their liking on your site, it will take them a second to leave your site and go to your competitors.

Moreover, price benefits and discounts aren’t enough to get customers excited—they also seek good experiences.

Simply put, retaining customers is challenging.

Leveraging customer retention features on your Shopify store makes it easier. So what are these features?

Recently viewed products

Shoppers can view the products they browsed on your site in the ‘recently viewed products’ section. This makes their shopping experience memorable and more enjoyable.

They don’t have to search for products all over again. This section is also helpful when shoppers want to compare the different products they like.

Quick login

To set the tone of a good experience from the start, ensure it’s easy for customers to sign up and log in. For example, enabling social login makes sign-up quick, easy to remember login credentials, and checkouts faster.

Provide instant gratification

One of the best ways to provide a good experience is to make customers’ first visits worth remembering.

There are many ways to do so. For example, offer them a first-time discount, give them incentives such as store credits to use for the next purchase, etc.

Another strategy is to ask them to write reviews as soon as they finish making a purchase. For example, ‘how was your purchase experience? Please share a review and enjoy a 10% discount on your next purchase.’

Reorder

The reorder strategy works best when you sell products and services that need to be replenished or bought regularly—for example, grocery, health and wellness products, beauty and cosmetics, pet products, etc.

The perfect way to bring back customers who purchased for the first time from your holiday sale is to send reorder reminders. Depending on the nature of your product/service, send reorder reminders every few weeks or months.

Combine your review-collection strategy with reorder. For example, ask customers to share a review of the product and avail discounts on reorders.

Here’s an example:

7. Automate the review process

As soon as shoppers make a purchase, you should be ready to engage them further. Asking customers to share reviews is one of those strategies.

But it’s important to automate the review-collection process. Shopping on your eCommerce site is on 24/7. And hence, automating the review process is the best option.

Combine the discounts and store credits strategies with your automated review process. For example, 53% of shoppers think their shopping experience would be better if the loyalty or store credits program is activated automatically at checkout.

You’ll need an intelligent tool, such as Flits, to automate some of these features, such as store credits.

Time to get more product reviews on Shopify!

Have you set up at least a few of these strategies to bring back your one-time holiday shoppers? If not, now is the right time to do it.

The basic principle of these strategies is that your one-time holiday shoppers’ first engagement with you is the beginning of a new relationship. It shouldn’t be treated as a one-time event. Instead, it would help if you had the above strategies set up much before the holiday season, so you are prepared to retain these first-time customers.

To begin with, set up your Shopify customer account page to boost your website sign-up rate. For that, you’ll need a tool such as Flits Shopify Customer Account Page.