6 Tips To Learn From Your eCommerce Customer Data

Start selling online with a well thought out customer accounting system, not just with the analysis of the amount of purchases. This is necessary for calculating individual discounts and scheduling mailing lists for each buyer separately.

Many Internet projects start selling online precisely because of the availability of a ready-made customer base. Often it is "borrowed" from other stores. In this case, the buyer will have to lure out more profitable offers and convenient terms of purchase. Information leakage can occur from project employees working on similar projects. For this reason, the first thing to think about is the protection of the client base and the assignment to work with it of a person who can be trusted.

How to collect information about customers

You can collect a heap of contacts, but never get the expected sales volume simply because of the inability to dispose of information. Maintaining the online store database requires a thoughtful systematization.

This can be done in several ways:

1. Excel file. To enter all information about clients in the table manually is the simplest option, which is suitable for small projects. It does not provide broad opportunities for analyzing and calculating individual discounts. This method will soon allow you to keep in one place general data with addresses and mail. 

2. Use of additional applications or programs without binding to the program of the account of the goods. Such provision provides more opportunities - here you can easily take statistics, calculate discounts to regular customers. Usually programs that are not tied to the inventory of goods, simply track the amounts to which the purchases are made and store the data about the buyer.

3. Programs combined with the consideration of goods. Applications that allow you to track not only the amount of acquisitions, but also what exactly the customer bought and when, fully automate the work on the client base. Such programs are installed immediately, they enter data from the very beginning, since later the restart of the system will be expensive and time-consuming.

4. You can download free applications that will help organize customer data. Most of them recognize excel-tables, and also output the necessary information in the same format, which is very convenient. Such applications are usually not integrated with the accounting software but can be synchronized with mail and telephony.

If there is no ready-made data, you will need to create the store database yourself from the very beginning, when start eCommerce Website. Ways of filling can be very different, it is worthwhile to give examples of the most common. 

5. Customer registration on the site. The simplest way - the buyer, making an order, leaves his data for communication. They are used in the future. 

6. Shares in social networks. It is offered to take part in the drawings in return for the left data.

To attract as many customers as possible and to build a database, they often use the move, when they register a discount on the first purchase for a website. This move works well, as many are determined to purchase, even if before that they did not need anything.

When collecting data, it is important not to overdo it. The sheet for filling information at the registration should be as short as possible, otherwise the buyer will lose patience and leave the business half way.

The following information is important for the site: 

• Buyer contact information: phone number and e-mail.
• Name and surname of the client. 
• Birthday (for sending congratulations and bonuses). 

This is the primary information, when the delivery is made, the manager communicates with the client and can also request the number of the identity document. This information is necessary for the organization of certain types of delivery.

Unfortunately, customer accounting also includes maintaining a blacklist. No matter how high the level of service, inadequate buyers will appear. They can regularly refuse purchases sent by cash on delivery, write unreasonable complaints and unpleasant reviews. They will have to open a stop list. How to work with customer information

There are several options for working with the client base to support the interest of existing customers and attract new ones, when start eCommerce Website:

1. Individual offers and promotions. Since each person feels special, it is special offers that push the buyer to buy, even if it was not planned. An example of such an offer is a discount for the birthday.

2. Discounts for regular purchases. The more a customer buys, the higher his discount on the site. On the one hand, this reduces the profit from the purchase, but on the other hand it ensures that the next purchase will be made in the same store. 

3. Seasonal discounts and promotions for holidays. By the holidays, purchases are made much more often, it is worth using this, and draw attention to the site at lower prices than competitors. 

4. Newsletter distribution. Updating the assortment or the appearance of new sections in the store is not just information for acquaintance. So, the site reminds of itself. 

5. It is also a good idea to send congratulations to your clients in honor of the holidays. This helps maintain loyalty to the store.

6. Every customer of the store, even if he once bought a trinket for a penny is nice, when the site remembers about it and offers special conditions for the next acquisition. This is one of the tools to stimulate purchases. For this reason, the account of the buyers of the online store must be kept from the first days.

According to the experience of managers on work with clients, too obtrusive sending of news and a reminder of yourself, as disastrous as a complete lack of work with the database. The golden mean is in the range between "you are beginning to forget" and "the site is spamming advertising". In this case, the majority of customers from the database will remain active, and will not just tick the list of buyers who have ever made an acquisition in the store.