A good website will help you build ongoing relationships with customers to develop repeat business. Most of the time, people like to do business with people they like and trust.

In trying to keep an ongoing relationship with a customer it’s good to remember that there are two kinds of customers. Transactional and Relational.

The Transactional Customer:

• Thinks short term.

• Cares only about today’s transaction.

• Enjoys the process of shopping and negotiating.

• Fears only “paying more than they had to pay.”

• Is willing to spend lots of time investigating.

• Considers themselves the expert.

• Hinges every transaction on price. 

• Is a good source of word-of-mouth advertising.

The Relational Customer:

• Thinks long term.

• Considers today’s transaction to be one in a series of many. 

• Does not enjoy comparison shopping or negotiating.

• Fears only “making a poor choice.” 

• Hopes to find an expert they can trust.

• Considers their time spent shopping to be part of the purchase price

• Is likely to become a repeat customer.

The goal of the Transactional shopper is for you to make no profit on them.

Transactional shoppers will go to whichever store is advertising the lowest prices.

Then they’ll brag to their friends about how they got it at such a deal.

Contrast that with the Relational shopper. She is happy for you to make a profit as long as she feels you are meeting her needs. Try to convince her with your website that you indeed will meet her needs.

It is very true that a customer can be a Relational Shopper in one product category and a Transactional Shopper in another.

I needed a multi media projector and a laptop. I was very transactional in the manner I shopped for those. After doing a lot of looking, I finally bought at Tiger Direct, because they had the cheapest price.

On the other hand I like godaddy.com and I buy my domain names there and use their services. I get a newsletter from Bob Parsons and I like it, and I always read it. It has good content that is helpful to me as a business owner. I have godaddy.com on my list of favorites. I know of other places that have the same services for less money, but I just like godaddy and I like Bob’s newsletters.

I also get emails every week or so with “very special unbelievable spectacular deals!” from Tiger Direct and always delete them. I don’t even look at them. I only bought from them because they had the lowest price and I don’t want their “Great Deals” emails. I almost view them with contempt.

So one website visitor may be relational and enjoy reading an “about us” page and your company history or getting a friendly newsletter from you. Another visitor may be transactional and could care less about you but may really like a page of discounted coupons or a monthly newsletter with “special discounted prices”.

You can have a better website and get a better bang for your buck if you understand better how the transactional and the relational shoppers think.

So,  for this new year, a couple questions: Are you happy with your advertising? Are you wanting to attract the relational customer but your advertising is bringing you the transactional customer?

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