Going the Distance: Four Ways to Build a Better Customer Loyalty Program for Your Brand

It’s easy enough for a customer to join your loyalty program, especially when you’re offering an incentive such as discounts. All your customer has to do is give out some basic information, and voila! They’re in the fold, a brand new loyalty member with your company. From there, it’s happily ever after. You offer the perks; they stand solidly by you, bringing you their continued business. Simple. Or is it? In reality, just how many of those customers are act ively participating in your loyalty program? Do you know? Sure, loyalty program memberships are on the rise according to market research company eMarketer, having jumped 25 percent in the space of just two years. However, that figure may be a bit misleading. The truth is that, while loyalty program sign-ups may be more numerous, active participation in such programs is actually in decline. At the time of the study, the average US household had memberships in 29 loyalty programs; yet consumers were only active in 12 of those. That’s just 41 percent. And even that meager figure represents a drop of 2 percentage points per year over each of the preceding four years, according to a study by loyalty-marketing research company COLLOQUY.

When discounts just aren’t enough

So what’s a brand to do? How can you make your loyalty program worth your customer’s while—as well as your own? After all, gaining a new loyalty member doesn’t mean much if your customer isn’t actively participating in your program. Consider this: Does your customer loyalty program offer members anything different from what your competitors are offering? Chances are your program includes discounts. That’s a given. And what customer doesn’t appreciate a good discount? But when every other company out there is providing this staple benefit in comparable amounts, it becomes less and less likely that customers will remain loyal to any one particular brand. Frankly, it’s all too easy for customers to get lost in a sea of loyalty member discounts. They’re everywhere. In fact, just under half of internet users perceive that all rewards programs are alike, according to a 2015 eMarketer survey. The key to success, then, is to differentiate your business from the crowd. If you can offer your customers something unique and valuable beyond the usual discount, chances are they’ll be more likely to stick with your brand. Here’s some inspiration from companies who get it.

Virgin: Reward more purchases with more benefits.

That’s not to say you need to get rid of discounts entirely. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Customers still love a good discount. The goal is to be creative in terms of the loyalty perks you offer. Take the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, for example. As part of its loyalty program, the airline allows members to earn miles and tier points. Members are inducted at the Club Red tier, from which they can move up to Club Silver and then Club Gold. Here, it’s not just a discount. It’s status. And people respond to feeling important, elite. Still, even where the rewards themselves are concerned, Virgin is motivating loyalty customers with some pretty attractive offers. At the Club Red tier, members earn flight miles and receive discounts on rental cars, airport parking, hotels and holiday flights. But as members rise in tiers, they get even more. At the Club Silver tier, members earn 50 percent more points on flights, access to expedited check-in, and priority standby seating. And once they reach the top, Club Gold members receive double miles, priority boarding and access to exclusive clubhouses where they can get a drink or a massage before their flight. Now that’s some serious incentive to keep coming back for more. Discounts are still part of the equation – but they are designed with innovation and personal value in mind, elevating them to more than just savings.

Amazon Prime: Pay upfront and become a VIP.

What if your customers only had to pay a one-time upfront fee to get a year’s worth of substantial benefits? It may not sound like the smartest business idea at first glance. But take a closer look. Amazon Prime users pay a nominal $99 a year to gain free, two-day shipping on millions of products with no minimum purchase. And that’s just one benefit of going Prime. It’s true that Amazon loses $1-2 billion a year on Prime. This comes as no surprise given the incredible value the program offers. But get this: Amazon makes up for its losses in markedly higher transaction frequency. Specifically, Prime members spend an average of $1,500 a year on Amazon.com, compared with $625 spent by non-Prime users, a ccording to a 2015 report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Patagonia: Cater to customer values.

Sometimes, the draw for consumers isn’t saving money or getting a great deal. The eco-friendly outdoor clothing company Patagonia figured this out back in 2011, when it partnered with eBay to launch its Common Threads Initiative: a program that allows customers to resell their used Patagonia clothing via the company’s website. Why is this program important to customers? And how does it benefit Patagonia? The company’s brand embraces environmental and social responsibility, so it was only fitting that they create a platform for essentially recycling old clothing rather than merely throwing it away. The Common Threads Initiative helps Patagonia build a memorable brand and fierce loyalty by offering its customers a cause that aligns with deep personal values. OK, so their customers get to make a little money, too. Everybody wins.

American Airlines: Gamify your loyalty program.

If you’re going to offer your customers a loyalty program, why not make it f un? After all, engagement is key to building a strong relationship with your customer. And what better way to achieve that goal than making a game of it. American Airlines had this very thing in mind when it created its AAdvantage Passport Challenge following its merger with USAirways. The goal: find a new way to engage customers as big changes were underway. Using a custom Facebook application, American Airlines created a virtual passport to increase brand awareness while offering members a chance to earn bonus points. Customers earned these rewards through a variety of game-like activities, from answering trivia questions to tracking travel through a personalized dashboard. In the end, participants earned more than 70 percent more stamps than expected – and the airline saw a ROI of more than 500 percent. The takeaway: people like games.

Stand out from the crowd.

Your approach to your customer loyalty program should align with your overall marketing approach. Effective branding is about standing out, not blending it. Being memorable is key. To this end, keep in mind that loyalty programs are no longer a novelty. That means that yesterday’s strategies won’t work moving forward, so look for ways to rise above the noise, setting yourself apart from the cloying drone of countless other cookie-cutter programs.

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Pareto Principle Demystified: Applying The 80/20 Rule in Website Design

Are you spinning your wheels trying to boost traffic to your website? Are you constantly pouring resources into your site in an attempt to make sure that it’s everything your customers could want – adding new features, testing new strategies, redesigning in the name of staying current with the latest trend? What if I told you that the key to improving your website’s performance lies not in doing more but in doing less? If that prospect sounds too good to be true, I assure you that it’s not. Allow me to introduce you to the 80/20 Rule: focus on the 20 percent of things that will fetch you 80 percent of the results.

The 80/20 Rule defined

The 80/20 Rule is often interchangeably known as the Pareto Principle, Juran’s Principle and the Principle of Factor Sparcity. So what exactly is this multi-monikered principle? Let’s turn to Wikipedia for the answer: “The Pareto Principle...states that, for many events, roughly 80 percent of the effects comes from 20 percent of the causes.” The concept was the brainchild of business consultant Joseph M. Juran, and its namesake is Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who observed in 1906 that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. Since then, the principle has been applied widely to all aspects of business, whether it’s that 80 percent of a company's profits come from 20 percent of its customers, 80 percent of its sales come from 20 percent of its products or 80 percent of deals are closed by 20 percent of its sales staff. By following this principle, many businesses have realized great gains in profitability by focusing resources on the areas that net the greatest effect and eliminating, ignoring, automating, delegating or retraining the rest.

But how does the Pareto Principle apply to website design?

For the answer to that question, let’s head over to the blog of Tim Ferriss, a well-respected efficiency expert with a well-documented affinity for all things minimalist. Ferriss, a proponent of the 80/20 Rule, once performed a case study and noted that websites optimized using the Pareto Principle have a 20 percent higher conversion rate. Further more, Ferriss observed that in order to effectively implement the Pareto Principle in the design of any given website, only certain changes are required to be made, the majority of which involve the home page itself, since that is where most – if not all – of the site’s most mission-critical information lives. Most of these changes are relatively minor in nature, such as a cleaner call-to-action button, an uncluttered sidebar and so on.

Why should you use Pareto Principle in your web design?

The benefits of applying the Pareto Principle in the design of your website are two-fold for your visitors and for yourself. To begin with, the Pareto Principle means less work for you. Rather than fussing and fretting over how to max out every available square pixel of real estate on the screen with every conceivable feature and copy point, you only have to concentrate on that most important 20 percent that will take care of the remaining 80. Plus, keeping the focus on the most essential aspects of your site website ensures that your visitor’s attention is driven straight to your primary call-to-action elements (in fact, the Pareto Principle can be detrimental if not backed with a crystal-clear call-to-action mechanism). This in turn leads to higher conversion rates and winning over more new fans, subscribers and customers for your brand. From the perspective of visitors to your site, the Pareto Principle guarantees that they can look forward to a clean, streamlined browsing experience with fast page-load times that’s free of distractions and frustrations of any kind, thereby helping to turn turning random first-time visitors into regular users.

Putting Pareto into practice

Now that you’re on board with the Pareto Principle, how do you go about putting it into practice? To begin with, let’s take a literal interpretation of the rule: focus on the 20 percent of the elements that are responsible for the other 80. What is that magical 20 percent of the most vital things in your website? Call-to-action buttons, traffic funnels, images, whitespace, etc., right? In other words, USER EXPERIENCE. Yes, that’s right. The driving motive behind the 80/20 Rule is to provide the best possible user experience. Let’s examine the simple example of social sharing buttons – a nearly ubiquitous presence on every website or blog nowadays. Look at the sharing buttons that are present on your website. When was the last time the MySpace, Friendster or Digg buttons were used? These do not belong in that vital 20 percent. Similarly, let’s focus on another commonplace element of web design – the sidebar. Look at the sidebar elements on your own website or blog. What’s the purpose of having your 15 most recent posts listed there? If you are running a blog, your visitors can easily find your most recent posts on the main page of the blog itself. If you are designing for mobile, the Pareto Principle becomes all the more vital. In general, the elements that are prioritized for a mobile version constitute that 20 percent. If you are able to freely leave out certain sections of your website in its mobile version without negatively impacting its usefulness to your visitors, chances are that those sections do not belong in the most important 20 percent segment of your desktop version, either.

Five simple steps to implement Pareto

1. Identify the primary objective of your website. Is it to sell products, promote your brand or provide a service to the community? 2. Next, make a list of all items on your website that contribute directly to the fulfillment of this goal. For example, if you are selling products, the area where you promote your latest special offer or new arrivals belongs in the 20 percent. Also make a similar list of items that do not directly contribute to the main goal. 3. Eliminate any and all unnecessary elements. Easier said than done, isn’t it? 4. Refine, refine, refine. Make sure the focus of every page and every element on the page remains on that critical 20 percent of items that directly support your main objective. 5. Grab a coffee.

Analysis, prioritization, optimization and simplification

Before you launch into an all-out take-no-prisoners offensive to streamline your website, here are a few additional tips to consider: Analysis: Use tools such as Google Website Optimizer and Analytics to analyze your website’s most frequently used and important elements. Prioritization: Once identified, prioritize that 20 percent of important aspects that are responsible for 80 percent of the results. Optimization: Optimize that 20 percent elements and thereby see a boost in 80 percent of the performance. Simplification: Implement good design principles of minimalism and reductionism to simplify your site’s user experience without sacrificing quality. A final word of caution: Don’t overdo the 80/20 Rule. While you do want to focus on the 20 percent, this does not mean you should outright ignore the other 80 percent of lesser important things. When it comes to user experience, the details matter. Unarguably, the greatest benefit of implementing the Pareto Principle in the design of your website is that it allows you to keep your focus on the content that matters most. So go ahead, and experiment with putting it into practice. After all, what do you have to lose besides the clutter that is holding your site back from reaching its maximum performance potential?

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Requiem for the Flash Intro: Seven Dying Trends in Website Design

Thanks to the now ubiquitous #TBT (that’s “throwback Thursday” for those of you who don’t speak hashtag), every week we’re all treated to a cringe-inducing trip down memory lane that takes us on a tour of our most regrettable fashion choices, whether it’s the bad perms and acid-washed jeans we sported in the 80s, the grunge-era plaid shirts and Doc Martens of the 90s or the velour sweatsuits and Carrie Bradshaw-inspired nameplate necklaces we left behind in the early aughts. Just as in fashion, website design trends come and go. What’s popular one day is old news the next. And just as you wouldn’t wear shoulder pads and stirrup pants to a sales meeting, you don’t want your website to be an embarrassing amalgamation of passé design trends. After all, if your website looks dated, it won’t inspire confidence among prospective customers that you’re on top of your game – no matter what game it is that you’re playing. Here are seven once-popular design trends that are fading fast – and that you should purge from your website as soon as you can:

1. Flash intros

Once upon a time, everybody and their brother wanted a Flash intro to create a memorable first impression. These days, though, having a Flash intro is a recipe for disaster. First, in today’s era of mobile surfing, speed and simplicity win the day. Keep in mind, too, that Flash and iOS do not mix, so your site won’t even be accessible to users on Apple gadgets. Also, today’s visitor demands more control and fewer bells and whistles that only serve as obstacles to accomplishing their end goal.

2. Pop-over windows

As site owners became increasingly eager to turn their web presence into full-blown conversion engines, the pop-over window rose to popularity. As soon as a new visitor lands on the site, BAM! they are greeted with a request to complete a form to provide their contact information in exchange for a welcome discount offer or to follow the company on Facebook for future updates and promotions, thus giving the company all the ammunition they need to continue their engagement long after that visitor has moved on to other corners of the Web. But while these pop-overs are good for site owners (at least in theory), they are very disruptive for the user and provide roadblocks that only make it more difficult for them to accomplish what they originally came to the site to do. As a result, any value that might be gained in collecting the user’s data is quickly negated if that user has no interest in continuing their as a result of this negative first encounter. Thankfully, good UX is winning this battle, and the pop-over is falling quickly out of favor. Reality has set in that no one comes to a site for the express purpose of helping the site’s owner market to them, so it’s hardly the best way to lay a foundation for a successful long-term relationship. Instead of leading off the conversation with your survey request, Facebook follow prompt or current promotion, simply allow your visitors to dive right into the site to find the information they’re seeking or complete their desired task. Keep your mailing list sign-up and Facebook links in your site’s universal framework, and if you do your job in creating a positive experience for them, your visitors will willingly allow you to become a presence in their email inbox or their Facebook news feed all on their own. Read more: Deal-Breakers and Dead-Ends: Six Turn-Offs That Alienate Website Visitors

3. Animated billboards

Oversized, rotating slideshows have become a common fixture on home pages in recent years, largely because they provide a way to present several key messages to the visitor without requiring them to scroll or to click past the initial page. However, UX tests show that these animated presentations are not as effective as we’d like to think. While the initial message in the carousel often prompts a click, the effectiveness of subsequent messages in the loop drops dramatically because many users do not stick around to see all of the slides. Other users ignore these animated areas completely, perceiving them as banner advertisements that should be glossed over in search of more meaningful content. The billboard remains a popular design feature; however, the trend is growing toward featuring a singular strong message in this area combined with a striking visual image. Streamlining and simplifying allows this one key idea to come across loud and clear rather than being lost among a muddled array of messages that are presented indiscriminately in the hopes that one will result in the desired outcome.

4. Information overload

Continuing with the theme of reductionism, today’s most successful websites pare down the information presented on the home page in order to create a cleaner, more focused presentation. This is in stark contrast to the approach that many sites took for years, which was to stuff the home page with as much information as possible in the hopes that visitors would find whatever they might be looking for on that page without having to dig any deeper. The result is a page that is utterly lacking in direction; nothing is emphasized because everything is emphasized. In the end, instead of being guided intuitively toward the information they seek, users are driven away by an overwhelming mess of content that is not properly organized and prioritized. To avoid this pitfall, focus on only the most important information for visitors while providing easy pathways, such as search tools and user-friendly site navigation, to help them find the content that lies deeper in the site. This approach will ultimately yield a better experience for your users and therefore better results for your company.

5. Drop-down menus

For years, the drop-down menu has been the go-to solution for streamlining a site’s primary navigation options while providing easy access to secondary pages. But with the advent of touch-based devices, which do not have a hover state, drop-down menus no longer serve the needs of all users. The simple fact of the matter is that with the rapid growth of mobile Web use, you simply can’t afford to risk leaving these visitors stranded with no way to delve beyond your site’s home page. Instead, a better solution for modern websites is to feature secondary page navigation options along the top or side of the page within the relevant section of the primary navigation. Read more: 3 Simple Rules for Navigation That Will Boost Your Website’s Performance

6. Contact forms

The contact form has long been a staple of websites – so much so that it’s often used in place of providing other means of contacting a company, such as a phone number or email address. However, more and more, site owners are choosing to eliminate this form altogether in an effort to provide a more personal, service-driven experience. Instead of having a visitor’s first interaction with their company occur via a cold, faceless web form that goes to an anonymous recipient and assures no timeline for response, the company elects to provide only their phone number so that the customer’s needs can be addressed immediately and directly by a live human being. While contact forms are not likely to disappear completely anytime soon, what is going away is the practice of relying on these forms as the sole vehicle for communication with customers and prospects.

7. Third-person narratives

Your website should embody the voice and personality of your brand. As such, it simply makes no sense for the content to be written from a third-person perspective, as if it’s being read to the user by a distant omniscient narrator. Instead, writing in the first-person creates a softer, more approachable tone that puts a human face on your company. It’s the difference between saying, “At Sanford & Son Remodeling, their goal is to ensure your satisfaction.” and “At Sanford & Son Remodeling, our goal is to ensure your satisfaction.” Which one feels more authentic? More warm and personable?

Beyond keeping up with the Jonses

Remember: keeping pace with the latest trends in website design is more than skin-deep. It’s not about having more bells and whistles than your competition; it’s about providing the best experience for all users, no matter how or where they’re accessing your site. By staying ahead of the curve, you’ll ensure that your site continually evolves to meet the needs and expectations of users who are constantly adapting to new devices and technologies.

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