4 types of customers: who to keep and who to break-up with

What you think is happening:

Visitors → prospects. Prospects → qualified leads. Leads → buying customers. Buying customers → loyal repeat customers…

What actually is happening:

Visitors → lingering visitors. Lingering visitors → still indecisive visitors. Indecisive visitors → drop-offs. Drop-offs → people who (out of the blue) remember your site and come back to browse and may buy one little thing. Those people → never-returned-again customers.]You will find that almost all your customers fit into one of four categories. Of course there would be many permutations and combinations within those categories, but broadly speaking, these are the four:

• Visitors who never make a purchase
• Converters who only make one purchase
• Return visitors who purchase in no predictable time patterns
• Loyal customers

Why is it important to identify customers under these labels? So that you understand who is never coming back and who is, and mark up a strategy to bait the latter (and, obviously, more worthwhile) type. You want to focus on investing in repeat customers a little more than burning through funds to acquire new ones.

The thing is, conversions can’t always be trusted. You add a discount and many people will buy, but you really have lost money absorbing the discounted amount. So conversions become useful only when there is a profit being churned out at the end. Not increased conversion rates or gross revenue.

When you understand the different kinds of people visiting your e-commerce website, you will be able to convert web surfers into loyal mobile app customers, and monetize those visitors properly. You save your energy trying to hook customers who aren’t ever going to return.

Besides, you already know that it’s roughly 7 times more expensive acquiring new customers as opposed to pouring your efforts into customer retention strategies (which comparatively generate substantially higher sales volumes). So while acquisition is important, loyalty is superior.