How to Design an App/Web-Based Experience to Encourage Customer Loyalty

You probably already know that attracting new customers is a lot more expensive than retaining existing ones. And you probably also know that in order to create customer loyalty you need to give your customers a reason to return. The question is, how to design the customer experience to achieve this? At Appetite Creative, we’re passionate about helping brands embrace the rise of digitalisation and build strategies to create customer loyalty by focusing on enhancing app- and web-based customer experiences.

So, what does that mean for marketers?

Web-Based Customer Experience

CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) can be used to keep track of the entire customer journey. CRM systems are used to manage all the relationships of a company with its existing and potential customers. Modern CRM software allows you to store relevant information about the customer in one place. It also ensures the information is accessible to different departments across your organisation, which in turn makes it easier to provide a cohesive and positive customer experience.

It also enables you to customise promotions and recommendations to the individual needs of each customer. Email marketing is easy to send out customised content to individual audiences. Personalisation helps with customer retention because the content is more relevant for the individual customer.

Customer Service

Another web-based experience that is of high value for customers is reliable customer service. Having a one-to-one experience with the customer in order to resolve problems quickly is crucial for creating a positive customer experience. Resolving customer complaints quickly can create a lifelong relationship with the customer. Web tools such as live chat or desktop software can create a great customer support service on your website, also chat-robots or social media can be widely used in order to support customers. For Spotahome we create messaging templates in order to ensure consistency with the brands messaging as wells as being able to respond to all messages via social media.

>>Find out more about what we did for Spotahome here.

Moreover, collecting customer feedback is easy thanks to web-based tools and it’s another great way to retain customers. Saying thank you for positive customer feedback not only shows the customer that the company cares about their satisfaction, but it can also help create a positive conversation with customers and gives companies the opportunity to turn bad experiences around.

App-Based Customer Experience

Many web-based customer experiences are also accessible via smartphones. They make it possible to connect with customers while they are on the go. For marketers, this development provides touchpoints with customers that go beyond the web-based customer experience.

Mobile apps can be used to offer loyalty programs and customers are more likely to use loyalty programs when they can access them from their smartphones because they are more easily accessible. Many companies already offer loyalty programs via mobile apps. What matters to the customers is that a loyalty program is intuitive and easy to use. It should keep the customer informed, provide relevant information and show personalised content. An appealing customer loyalty program gives instant rewards and rewards the customer for each purchase they make which is easy via an app. The app generated customer data can be found and analysed in order to determine customer purchasing preferences and offer the right product at the most convenient time. Besides promoting products at the right time, customer data can also help to promote products to customers at specific locations. In this way, marketers can, for instance, send notifications to customers when they are nearby a store or a restaurant.

Modern loyalty programs also reward customers for writing reviews, sending referrals to friends or sharing on social media. Loyalty programs on mobile apps facilitate the sharing of positive experiences from customer to customer. Referral codes and social media sharing buttons are a great way to bring your customers to spread awareness.

Gamification

Another great way to improve customer experience is to use gamification. Gamification is no longer separated from the customer experience or purchase process. It can be used in the form of a web- or app-based experience in order to make the purchase process for the customer more enjoyable. Gamification can help to make actions more enjoyable for the user and leaderboards or badges not only incentivise competition but also encourage customers to share their success with relatives and friends.

Great examples of using gamification elements in mobile apps can be seen in the campaigns that Appetite Creative has recently managed for TetraPak and Starbucks. For TetraPak, we used gamification to create an informative quiz application that educated kids, as well as adults, about TetraPak’s environmental impact. The average quiz session took 2 minutes and 49 seconds.

See and find out more about what we did for TetraPak here.

In a campaign for Starbucks, we created a gaming app for Starbucks that was not just fun but with an engagement rate of 90% also highly engaging.

See and find out more about what we did for Starbucks here.

To create customer loyalty, in the end, it all comes down to the customer journey and customer experience. Accompanying, supporting and entertaining customers across a variety of touchpoints can lead to improved customer loyalty. It’s essential to create a positive customer experience because that’s what ultimately brings them back.