UKNM: Customer retention

[Phil Barrett]

Whether it's more economical to retain customers than to churn and burn your

customer base depends, in the short term, on how much your website and your

business will cost to fix versus how expensive your marketing campaign needs

to be.


In the long term, you have to concentrate on repeat buyers or you wont HAVE

a business to fix.


If you do sensible, user-focussed design and testing as you build your site,

you won't need to fix it, of course because you'll have got it much closer

to being right first time. It's not rocket science.


There's a book called Cost-justifying Usability by Randolph G. Bias and

Deborah J. Mayhew. The cost of the book itself may appear to need some

justificiation. It is excellent and may be of some help...


http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0120958104/026-2911838-0211662


--Phil Barrett--

Flow Interactive Ltd

p: +44 (0)20 7288 0884

m: +44 (0)7979 902 878

e:

philflow-interactive [dot] com

> Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 15:21:01 +0100

>

From: Ben Thompson <benbabyhippo [dot] com>

> Subject: UKNM: Customer retention

>

> A question based on something we're working on (its finished and ready to

> run, we're crossing t's and dotting i's on legal stuff) and two articles

> this week (one saying only 500,000 people in the UK have bought goods

> online, the other announcing Amazon.co.uk's 2millionth customer).

>

> Anyway, ignoring the obvious weekly emails last minute, QXL et al send out

> are many firms actually focussing on retaining their customers? We

> continually hear of viral marketing and refer a friend schemes that

> encourage new customers to "appear" but are many firms following

> the advice

> in the post offices adverts on trying to retain the customers they already

> have.  If so any ideas where to look for figures or why firms aren't doing

> it?

>

> Thanks in advance,

>

> Ben



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