How User Accounts Can Boost Sales and Strengthen Customer Relationships

One of the downsides in consumers’ collective shift to spending more time online is the loss of a “personal touch” — that inimitable quality that comes from dealing with someone face to face. In fact, the unavoidable anonymity that results from the web can leave consumers feeling dissociated, taken for granted or even overlooked. Nowhere is this more apparent than when shopping online.

It therefore becomes important for retailers to provide consumers with a means to stake their flag, to map the terrain and to create some sort of home in these new, impersonal surroundings. One way to do this is by allowing consumers to register on your web store, providing them with new ways to purchase, store information and record their shopping histories for reasons both consultative and utilitarian.

One immediate benefit to consumers who register a user account on an e-commerce site is not having to re-enter their contact information for future purchases. Simply by entering a username and password, they can save significant amounts of time, particularly if it's a web store from which they buy frequently. And for those consumers who are afraid of collecting too many accounts and their requisite passwords, there are many tools available free of charge that will organize this information for you.

However, the benefits of registering for a user account don't end there. Over time, it's inevitable that one would want the ability to look over previous purchases for a variety of reasons: to compare with financial records; gauge purchasing trends; reorder particular products; and so on. Having an individual user account creates a “home” with which to associate past web orders, making them searchable and retrievable.

Some newer web store solutions even allow the ability to inquire about the status of outstanding orders in a retail store associated with a web solution, all based on customer login. In other words, a customer can back order a product at their local store, then track its progress from home through the store’s website. This allows retailers to communicate with customers in a way that's convenient for both parties. Again, a registered user account provides a home where pertinent information may be posted and read.