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.

10 One-of-a-Kind E-commerce Websites That Put Ordinary Sites to Shame

This collection of creative e-commerce websites includes those that take a unique approach to creating a storefront, and each are discussed in light of what makes their creative designs work so well.

Hopefully, you too can find some inspiration in the collection below to help you in your own e-commerce website designs. Which of these made a big impression on you?

Mom and Popcorn

This vintage website is a very unique experience in that it jumps off the page and makes you forget what decade you are really in. Although not the typical clean cut design of most popular e-commerce sites, it remains easy to use and bursts with creativity. It is very easy to find what you are looking for and the prices are prominent. You don't have to click around aimlessly to figure out what to do next. Five stars for Mom & Popcorn!

The Affair

The Affair is a UK based, offbeat clothing company that makes no apologies; neither for its darkness and morbid atmosphere, nor for its unique shopping design. Although simple and uncluttered, it is anything but standard. For one thing it has a discreet but impossible to miss shopping cart link in the corner. When an item is added to the cart, there is an animation of the selected item dropping into the shopping cart. This is a great touch because so often people click several times to be sure their selection was made and end up with too much in the cart at the end. With The Affair's unique concept, there is no confusion. Another useful feature is that each product's thumbnail offers a 360 degree view so you can examine it from all angles. It's these details that make all the difference.

Storenvy

Storenvy is ingenious, both in concept and in execution. It takes social networking, Etsy, and Pinterest and combines them all into one with an interface as easy to use as Blogspot. It allows users to create their own store to sell stuff, or to buy by browsing hundreds of items from different sellers at once. It is able to pack a lot of information and products into a small space without getting cluttered or confusing. It comes with a built-in store creation wizard to make it super easy to get out there and sell your goodies. I only wish I had thought of it first!

Saddleback

Saddleback is a beautifully and meticulously designed website that sells all types of leather products. Every element of the site contributes to its design, which is a breath of fresh air from other designs that can be weighty and cluttered, even if nice looking. The attention to detail is what makes this rich site still completely practical and usable. One particularly nice touch is that it includes a list of the sites of their business rivals, making it easy to see that Saddleback is the complete package.

Heartbreaker Fashion

Heartbreaker has a pleasant design with a good use of patterns and textures, which is what makes it different from other creative e-commerce websites. The trend has been to avoid patterns because they can distract shoppers from the product. When done right, however, it can really enhance the store front. Heartbreaker also has a handy shopping cart box in the footer of the site as well as the top. Even though it breaks the mold, it is still very user friendly, and even stronger for it.

Oi Polloi

Oi Polloi is a retro site that sells clothes and footwear. It is surprising to find that it does not have a shopping cart immediately available - only once an item is selected does a shopping cart (here called a "Basket") descend as an overlay to the site, showing exactly what you bought, what size, and how much it is, as well as a subtotal. So there is not a separate page for the checkout, which is quite efficient in my opinion. Never be afraid to reinvent the wheel!

A Modern Eden

A Modern Eden sells prints, decals, and stuffed animals with strange angular designs. It makes use of trendy colors, and where normally the bright green background would be tacky or distracting, in this usage it is not only appropriate but adds greatly to the fun and feel of the site. The ribbon highlighting the shopping basket icon is a very nice touch as well.

Patrick Ervell

Patrik Ervell sells fashionable men's clothing with a really cool twist. Where expensive men's clothes can often appear stiff or uncomfortable, this site helps guys envision themselves wearing the clothing, with use of live moving models with every product! Normally this is a huge no-no. Animations can quickly become a very bad idea, especially if there is more than one moving item per page. But Patrik Ervell accomplishes it beautifully, with a sterile white background and simple, concise text only interspersed where necessary.

Marie Catrib's

Marie Catrib's uses vivid pastel colors; friendly, bold text; and interesting dotted lines and patterns to make the pastry and bread products come alive. Some unique elements include the ability to search by vegan or gluten-free, a toggle button to hide half the website to focus on browsing, most information in the footer, and having ALL the offered products on the home page of the site. Simple, easy to use, and captivating.

Brand Neusense

Brand Neusense breaks a lot of rules by being too crowded, having too many colors, and incorporating too many animations - yet, somehow it all works. First of all, the models look like real people, not - for lack of a better word - models. Even more so, though, this creative e-commerce website stands out because the homepage focuses more on the various brands it sells and on ads than it does on its product. It is designed thoughtfully for its target market, and that's all you can ask of a web designer.

So whether you have an upcoming creative e-commerce website design project coming up or you need to revamp your e-commerce site design, use the examples above in your decisions. Doing your research and noting what others do right (or wrong) is one of the best ways to create a website that puts ordinary to shame.

Is Your Website Ready for the Tablet Revolution?

The revolution is here.

When Apple launched the iPad last year, it carved out a new category in the mobile device marketplace. With the release of the iPad 2 and newer challengers like the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy now joining the fray, the market continues to heat up as more and more users opt to perform everyday tasks like browsing the Web, sending email, watching videos and playing games on tablet devices rather than their desktops, laptops or netbooks.

In fact, according to a recent study conducted by Nielsen, 35 percent of tablet owners polled said they now use their desktop computer less or not at all while 32 percent of respondents said the same of their laptop. The top five reasons cited for preferring the tablet over a desktop or laptop were portability (31 percent), easier interface (21), start-up speed (15), convenience (12) and size (12).

Additionally, Forrester Research forecasts that tablet sales in the U.S. will continue to climb sharply, from 10.3 million in 2010 to 24.1 million in 2011 to 44 million in 2015. The firm also projects that by 2015, 82 million people in the U.S. will own a tablet, a figure which represents one third of the total online population.

What do these numbers mean for you? With each passing day, the likelihood that consumers will be interacting with your brand via a tablet rather than a desktop or laptop is increasing. As we demonstrated previously, not all brands can or should release a native app, and even if you do, you shouldn’t neglect those users who will be surfing your primary site on a tablet-based browser.

As a result, it’s up to you to make sure that your website evolves to provide these users with a high-quality, hassle-free experience, or else you’ll risk losing them to competitors that do.

Here are nine critical elements you must examine now to make sure your site will continue to serve the needs of your customers and support the growth of your business in the era of the tablet:

Balance of content vs. interface

Tablet screens are much smaller than desktop or laptop screens, yet the primary use of tablets is for consuming content. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that your website’s interface is clean and clutter-free so that you make optimal use of the available real estate and allow your content to take center stage.

Typography

The type on your website must strike a happy medium for tablet users. If it’s too small or condensed, it will be illegible without zooming in. If it’s too big, users will be forced to scroll more than necessary.

You must find the ideal balance of font face, font size, line spacing and line length so that your content is pleasant and comfortable to read at the distance at which a user would naturally hold a tablet.

Color and texture

Color and texture are more than cosmetic niceties. When applied in strategic ways, they can go a long way toward improving the usability of your site for tablet users. For example, a subtle gradient on top of a button can provide a visual cue to users that it is an actionable object.

Keep in mind as well that with tablet users, you’re fighting finger smudges and glare for visibility. Bright background colors and patterns can reduce interference from these elements, while solid black tends to make them more distracting.

Buttons and links

When it comes to the tools your visitors use to travel around your website, size matters.

For tablet users, the clicking and scrolling of a mouse are replaced by touching and swiping gestures. As a result, navigation actions are less precise on touchscreens. You must allow a greater margin of error by creating buttons that are the size of a fingertip rather than a cursor.

Also, make sure to allow a little breathing room around your buttons and links, especially those that live in your site’s main navigation. Nothing will frustrate a user faster than being directed to a different page than the one they wanted because your links are crammed together too tightly.

Interface cues

If your website’s interface currently relies heavily on rollover effects, you’re going to be in trouble on a tablet. In the world of the touchscreen, there is no such thing as a hover state. If, for example, you have “previous” and “next” buttons that appear only when the mouse is nearby, those elements will be unavailable to your tablet users.

To create finger-friendly navigation, all elements must be big, bold and obvious. Replace buttons that require users to mouse over them to get a sense of action with style enhancements that draw attention to their “pressability.”

Menus

If your site contains drop-down menus, make sure there are visual cues (such as small up and down arrows) to indicate that the menu is expandable and that the menu remains open on tap.

Alternatively, you might consider streamlining your navigation to eliminate the need for drop-down menus altogether. Instead, you can create a showcase page for each main section of your site that acts as a gateway to the subpages contained within.

Scrolling

Screens on the tablet devices that are currently on the market range from approximately 7 to 10 inches and allow viewing in both vertical and horizontal orientation. As a result, there’s no way to be able to accurately predict what a tablet surfer will see without having to scroll.

The good news here is that tablet device users expect to scroll – not just vertically but horizontally as well. There’s no need to worry about trying to force all your important information to fit “above the fold.” Clean, streamlined design that promotes easy content consumption is the name of the game.

Forms

Many of the most critical interactions between your website and your customers occur through forms, whether it’s subscribing to email updates, requesting more information, logging into a secure account or completing a purchase.

Examine your forms closely to ensure that all fields render clearly. Also, make sure your forms are as streamlined as possible. Trying to complete a long form with many fields on a tablet is cumbersome. While the marketer in you wants to collect as much data as possible from your site visitors, the danger of requiring users to complete too many fields is that they’ll get frustrated and give up, leaving you with no data at all or, even worse, a potential sale lost.

Flash

Apple’s iOS does not – and probably never will – support Flash. Android does support Flash, but the performance of Flash content on Android devices thus far has been less than ideal.

If you have Flash anywhere on your site – whether it’s in the introduction to your site, your navigation menus or video – get rid of it now, or else your tablet users will be plagued with problems. Today there are better, more tablet-friendly options available, such as HTML5 and JavaScript, that can replicate the same effects that once required Flash.

When in doubt, test it out.

The only way to be confident about how well your site performs on a tablet is to put it through the paces on actual tablet devices. While there are some web-based simulators, they aren’t 100 percent reliable since they are ultimately limited by using your desktop browser to render your site.

If you don’t already own a tablet, borrow one or – if all else fails – make a trip to your local retailer and use the display models there.

Be sure to evaluate every element and every page of your site carefully. If possible, recruit other friends, colleagues or family members to do the same, and observe them as they navigate through your site. Because they aren’t as intimately familiar with your site and its nuances as you are, they may uncover stumbling blocks that you might have overlooked.

If you identify any problem areas, seek out the help of a trusted website design firm to address them. While you may have to make an investment in upgrading the infrastructure of your site, it will be money well spent to make sure current and prospective customers can access your site on their device of choice – which is more and more likely to be a tablet.