For online merchants operating in today’s hypercompetitive environment, fostering customer relationships and brand loyalty is critical for successful long-term revenue growth. Returning customers spend, on average, 67% more than first-time customers.
In such a crowded, competitive space, differentiation can be particularly challenging for merchants. The secret sauce is in creating relationships with consumers that focus on trust — those are the relationships that keep consumers coming back, again and again.
Satisfaction In The Age Of eCommerce: How Online Merchants Are Cultivating Long-Term Customer Ties, a PYMNTS and Riskified collaboration, explores consumer preferences when buying from online retailers. As consumers embrace the digital economy and go online for an increasing number of activities that are part of their everyday lives, their habits are changing — few other areas of the economy are experiencing this shift more than retail. We surveyed 2,153 consumers to learn more about how and why they make the key decisions around which retailers they choose to build relationships with.
More key findings from the report include:
• More than half of c
onsumers who purchased groceries or other retail products online in the past year increased their online purchases. Forty-six percent of consumers surveyed purchased retail goods, and 31% bought groceries online in the month before the survey. Shopping is increasingly becoming a digital affair, and online shopping is, for many consumers, a necessity of everyday life. Merchants that can quickly identify and respond to customer preferences will position themselves to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• High levels of customer satisfaction are central to merchants’ ability to increase customer trust and retention. Working to improve customer satisfaction and build trust can put merchants in a position to increase long-term loyalty and the value of their customer bases. Thirty-six percent of customers who say they have a “very” or “extremely” trusting relationship with an online retailer of products other than groceries have been shopping with that merchant for at least five years.
• Merchants that invest in the services customers expect, especially those that make 
shopping easy and convenient, increase the likelihood of their customers coming back for future purchases. Two-thirds of retail shoppers say an easy experience that always goes as expected is important to them, and 27% say this ease and reliability is the most important factor for them when deciding where to shop.
To learn more about how online retailers can grow trusting relationships with their clients, download the report.