E-commerce is an industry which revolves around people. Those people are online users, and they are often referred to as customers. They can be both previous and future customers, just as those who are just interested in your image.

However, to make sense of the approach and to completely understand the relationship with the online customer and how that relationship can help in growing your e-commerce business, it is best to segment the online users into several groups of customers.

Types of Customers

Being aware of the different customers you will understand, helps you with defining your goals and activities in a manner to get the most out of the relationship and keep growing the customer base. Different customers require a different strategy or a approach. Understanding customers and their needs help you optimize and provide a better experience for them, which, over the long haul, has tremendous benefits for your online business, starting from informal marketing, to recurring sales.

First-time customer

When someone purchases from you out of the blue, that person becomes your first-time customer. Once you recognize a potential customer, your goal is to complete a set of activities that will help you convert that guest. To improve the chances of achieving this goal, you could use alternatives, for example, lead sustaining, interaction with the customers through social media, etc. Offering special limits or free trials of the blue customers is also proven to be quite useful.

Processing the sale does not mean that the process is over. Keeping the customers faithful to your brand demands as much work as picking up the new ones. Actually, it is generally realized that it tends to be more practical to keep the existing customers than to organize activities that will enable you to draw in new ones who have not had earlier contact with your brand.

At long last, great experience through exploring your products and completing the purchase is the thing that will leave a positive impact on the first-time customer and eventually help you transform a first-time customer into a recurring customer.

Target group

Target group represents the group of people you plan on reaching with online advancement of your business. Those are the online customer who are potentially interested in your business due to some reason, for example, the way that they are inside a specific age group, that they are male or female, or even based on the way that they have searched for a related topic recently.

When you first begin setting up your business and plan limited time activities, considering the target group is helpful because it allows you to:

• Design your website such that it appeals to the target group
• Shape your entire business strategy in light of those users
• Create profoundly targeted campaigns which perform better
• Anticipate the need the online users will have and provide a solution.

When it comes to defining the types of customer, the target group is the largest group.

Potential customers

Unlike the target group, the potential customers are inside a smaller group which includes people interested in your brand. Potential customers are members of the target group who are more likely to become your customers due to a specific activity such as:

• Following you on social media
• Sharing your site link on social media
• Sending a request through your website structure
• Commenting on your website/blog content
• Visiting your website
• Agreeing to accept the newsletter
• Putting the products in the cart

In general, potential customers show greater interest in your brand. For you as a business, this means an opportunity. It is an opportunity to begin the interaction and establish a certain relationship with the potential customers in view of one goal – turning these potential customers your first-time customers.

Buyer Persona

This term is often used in e-commerce, and it represents your ideal customer. Determining a buyer persona helps you with marketing, sales, product development, fitting content, etc. Ultimately, this has a significant influence on your business and strategy you will use.

The representation of an ideal customer helps you get a deeper understanding of the persons you need to draw in. The best way to shape your buyer persona is to analyze your bits of knowledge. The data which can help you divide and categorize customers include:

• Location
• Patterns
• Goals
• Behavious
• Graphics

Try to analyze each of these areas and find as many details as you can about your customers. Collect every one of the details and endeavor to detect the characteristics of a buyer persona, i.e. characteristics of those online users who are well on the way to become your customer. These can include people inside the age group, people who visit your blog, etc. Understanding customers helps to:

• Organize your campaign
• Create an online strategy
• Relate with customer
• improve your approach

Opposite to a buyer persona, there is a negative persona. These are the customers you don’t want. When you analyze the customers to identify the buyer person, you will also discover which type of customers you don’t want, i.e. customers who are unlikely to purchase from you.

Either the product is too advanced for them, or they are a type of person who might not benefit from such product. Learning about the negative persona can help you slender down the group of potential customers and focus just on real buyer persona.

User experience

Person’s emotions and attitudes about buying and using a certain product or service are feelings collectively known as user experience. User experience includes every one of the emotions that start as a part of the underlying interaction of the person with the brand and last until the purchase is complete.

In fact, they go beyond the completed purchase, as the attitudes linger in customer’s mind a lot later than that. These attitudes also affect the following purchases or the recommendations the customer is likely to share with other online customers.

For a business, it is helpful to understand the customer, as this gives opportunities for improvement and development. It is also a chance to identify pitfalls that may be preventing your business from proceeding.

Explore the user experience through these methods:

• Website user experience – Analyze session span, page views, bounce rate, etc. to see if your website is user-friendly.
• Feedback from potential customers – Try to get feedback from potential customers to see what may be preventing them from completing the purchase, if they have any questions, etc.
• Feedback from customers – Customers can share their impressions about the buying process and what triggered them to complete the purchase.

Understand buying process

To help you optimize user experience and improve the overall success of your business, you need to understand the buying process.

Why do they buy from you?

Try to determine why do people purchase from you. This means you should check out the website examination and explore user behavior and detect any patterns. For example, you may have a landing page with a video which is converting more guests than some other page on your website.

So the reason for the conversions is on this page. You may also notice a large abandoned cart rate on the checkout page. This would mean that there is something that is driving them off, such as unexpected shipping costs or long delivery time.

First thing potential customers will notice

They state that the early introduction is the most lasting. You should have this in mind when you design your website, your limited time campaigns and in general when presenting your brand on the online market. Consider how the online visitors would feel:

• What will they see?
• What will intrigue them?
• Will there be enough information?
• Will they need to learn more?

These are just some of the questions you can analyze to figure out the impression you leave. You could always lead a survey to discover more details.

Who are your customers?

Find out about your customers helps with understanding your customer, user experience and ultimately with understanding the entire buying process. The goal of this is to make necessary adjustments and improvements to make your strategy even better.

How do they buy?

Learning how customer purchase from you is also helpful in understanding the process. There are several aspects to consider here:

• Redeeming an offer is another way to purchase from you, which is an excellent method for encouraging purchase
• Payment method the customers like to use as their preferred method
• The time needed for them to make a decision to purchase, which can be immediately, or after some reasoning

The ultimate goal is to find more about the customers to improve your business. Your business revolves around the customers and your relationship with them. Learning more about them and how they behave, what affects their buying propensities and how they experience the buying process is priceless data for a business searching for opportunities to develop its reach and success in the e-commerce world.