How Direct to Consumer Brands Can Nurture Loyalty

Brand loyalty is when a customer continues to purchase from your company, not because you’re the only option, but because they trust your company.

In the age of online commerce where Amazon sets the bar, anyone can import products from countries all around the globe and slap a brand name on them – diluting the authenticity of the original brand in the process. On the other hand, there are brands with cult-like followings they’ve amassed over the years.

Why People leave Brands? We tend to grow out of brands, not just because of our age but for other reasons, too. Maybe you want to try something new, or what you’re wearing is suddenly out of style. Maybe you had a negative store experience, or a brand just stopped meeting your needs.

Examples of Exceptional Brand Loyalty

1. Apple is the epitome of a cult brand. Since the beginning, they've built machines that are designed around their customers needs. They're constantly seeking feedback and engaging in conversations with customers about new products. As a result, Apple provides users with the features they want and has built a loyal community.

2.IKEA designs products based on deep understanding of their customers needs. They visit people's homes to see how they live. For example, after visiting customers in Italy and the U.S., IKEA saw that U.S. customers rely on drawers for clothing storage more than in Italy. The result? They designed deeper drawers in their American products.

When thinking about how your online brand store can stand out from the crowd of millions of other stores, look into the digital user experience or journey for inspiration. Here are the steps we use in building user experience at Gret:

1. Understand the the psychological needs and emotional triggers that dictate how to get into positive engagement with our target audience

2. Understand how they decide to purchase products or services they need.

3. What are our business key performance measures. List out desired actions.

4. Prioritize desired actions

5. Design gamification elements to motivate these desired actions.

Finally, above UX design and a feedback loop to learn from this. Today AI/ML allow brands do this in a much better way. When all this is put together, works very well for the users - delivering increased user engagement to the direct to consumer brands.

Defining Gamification

Different sources define gamification in different ways. Let's take a look.

"the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service."

"the process of adding games or gamelike elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation" Source

"Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organisations, and activities in order to create similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users" Source

"Gamification techniques are intended to leverage people's natural desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, or closure, or simply their response to the framing of a situation as game or play." Source

Gamification in all of the above definitions mention two important components:

- Motivating Player with different fun elements

- Application of these elements to context where players/users are not expecting it

At Gret, we believe that gamification in ecommerce context is all about the user flow.

The journey of the user in a typical ecommerce after landing on the store is "Explore - Choose - Pay - Receive "

In Gamification, the users can expect more. The interplay of motivational opportunities - engagement - rewards.

This is what makes it a memorable journey.

Why Gamification is Important Tool for Brands

It is no more about just products, it is about offering user experiences

Users are getting bombarded today with online options like never before. Amazon, the World largest online store have over 50,000 products in various sub categories. Is it possible to find a right choice within such a crowded store? This shows that access is getting more and more limited if your brand recall is low. The mindshare is what matters now.

Mindshare is defined as the popularity of the brand. In the digital spaces, the challenge of growing popularity is met by offering great user experiences. Great user experiences are designed by keeping in mind the core human drives. It is important to keep up with the expectation of our users and to keep them motivated.

Human focused designs are not a choice now, it is a must. Gret offers human focused designs to motivate users for keep coming back.