How to Increase Customer Loyalty in Ecommerce

Acquiring new customers is hard enough, with acquisition costs increasing year on year for ecommerce companies. But keeping customers can prove even harder in saturated markets with new and competitive offerings. So what can you do, and how do you increase customer loyalty when shoppers have endless alternatives one click away? How will you measure your success?

We'll answer these questions and more. 

TL;DR

• Loyal customers spend more, cost less to retain and are more likely to recommend your brand.
• Repeat purchase rate is the main loyalty metric, with 20% to 30% a useful benchmark for many ecommerce businesses.
• Strong customer service builds trust, while poor delivery experiences can quickly drive customers elsewhere.
• Loyalty programmes, personalised experiences and an easier checkout process all encourage repeat purchases.
• Flexible shipping options give customers more control and reduce the risk of missed or stolen deliveries.
• A well-designed pickup experience should offer convenient locations, clear information and timely collection updates.
• HubBox adds pickup options directly to checkout and can help increase basket values while reducing cart abandonment.

What is customer loyalty?

Customer loyalty describes the behaviour of customers who repeatedly purchase products or services from a particular brand or company.

Why is customer loyalty important in ecommerce?

Loyal customers contribute more than half of every company's north star metric, which is, of course, revenue. But that's not the only reason you should be making customer loyalty a priority:

• Repeat customers spend more: Research reveals that repeat customers spend 67% more per order than new customers, and they have a higher customer lifetime value
• They rave about your brand: loyal customers tend to advocate for your brand through word-of-mouth, giving you free and organic exposure to new audiences
• Retention costs less: retaining existing customers typically costs less than acquiring new ones, providing a profitable source of sales and revenue
• Loyalty strengthens your reputation: repeat customers send a strong signal that your brand is trusted and consistently meets expectations, which makes the purchasing decision easier for new customers.

Personalisation feeds directly into this. Over half of consumers are likely to become repeat buyers after a personalised shopping experience, so the more tailored the journey feels, the more loyalty it builds.

How to measure customer loyalty and retention

The best way to measure customer loyalty and retention is by tracking the repeat purchase rate.

It’s the proportion or percentage of buyers that have bought from you again since their initial purchase within a certain timeframe. You can calculate this using the following formula:

[No. of return customers] / [No. of total customers] x 100 = Repeat customer rate (%)

It's important to remember that repeat customer rates look different for different ecommerce businesses. If you sell products with a longer lifespan and heftier price tag, you'll naturally have a lower repeat customer rate than an online store selling cheaper goods that are replaced more frequently, like fast-moving consumer goods.

Ecommerce businesses should aim for a repeat customer rate of between 20% to 30%. Anything higher suggests that you're not doing enough to expand your customer base, while a lower percentage indicates you're failing to re-engage and retarget one-time buyers.

To get the full picture on your brand's customer loyalty, it's also worth measuring other metrics like:

•       Purchase frequency: how many times a customer makes a purchase within a particular timeframe on average

•       Customer referral rate: the percentage of customers who are referred by existing customers

•       Time between purchases: the average number of days between two separate purchases made by the same customer

•       Churn rate: the percentage of customers that stop purchasing from your business over a specific period of time

When these are viewed collectively, you get a clearer and more accurate idea of how loyal your customers are, and how their loyalty evolves over time.

How to increase customer loyalty in ecommerce

Every ecommerce business wants to build a loyal customer base, but few know where to start. If you fall into that camp, we've got some tried and tested recommendations for retailers in 2026.

1. Deliver standout customer service

There's a strong correlation between customer loyalty and great customer service. Nearly nine in 10 customers are more likely to make another purchase following a positive customer service experience. On top of that, 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services.

No matter how much love and care you put into your products and delivery, complications can happen, even due to no fault of your own. Perhaps a customer entered the wrong shipping address at checkout, or they got their sizing wrong.

Whatever it is, you need to be there when it happens, ready to help them find an appropriate solution. More than anything, you need to show them you care about their experience post-purchase.

Excellent customer service compels them to trust your brand and reminds them that future purchases will be protected in the same way. If contacting your team and reaching a solution proves painful, trust depletes and customers look elsewhere.

Of course, the best way to deliver a standout customer experience is to reduce the number of customers reaching out to complain or receive support in the first place. That's why ecommerce businesses should focus on improving integral processes like shipping. With 58% of customers no longer purchasing from a retailer due to a bad delivery experience, ensuring successful, first-time deliveries should be just as important.

2. Build an emotional connection

On average, customers who claim to have an emotional connection with a brand have a 306% higher customer lifetime value than those who don't. This probably means they're repeat customers, too.

There are plenty of ways to build this connection, from telling more authentic and relatable stories to remembering the human behind the customer profile in your communications. But first, you need to identify their emotional triggers and how these relate to your product or brand. And this starts with knowing what your existing customers care about.

What motivates them? Which causes matter to them? What keeps them up at night?

These are all questions that'll help you dig deeper to deliver marketing campaigns and communications that resonate with customers and keep you front of mind when it's time to buy again.

3. Reward and incentivise loyalty

Customer loyalty programs and schemes are a tried and tested way to encourage repeat purchases, with the top-performing loyalty programs boosting revenue from customers by between 15 to 25% each year.

These initiatives typically reward customers with points, discounts, free products and early access to new collections, in exchange for their continued custom.

Popular schemes include:

• Sephora's point-based system where members can exchange points earned through purchases for trial-size products and experiences
• Astrid & Miyu's tier-based program that allows customers to graduate into new membership levels (and receive new rewards) by increasing their spend with the company
• Adidas' adiClub scheme with its exclusive early access to new product drops to loyal customers, among other things
• Macy's loyalty program became so successful in 2021 that 70% of the transactions were associated with it.

By incentivising repeat purchases with rewards that have a financial value, you not only encourage customer loyalty but also increase average spend from these customers, especially when there's a correlation between points awarded and spend.

4. Remove friction from the purchasing process

Another effective way to build customer loyalty is to remove barriers to repurchasing. This usually means finding ways to remove friction from the purchasing process.

Below are some quick and easy wins to help ecommerce businesses do that:

•       Reduce the number of fields customers need to fill in by simplifying your checkout form and only asking for the data points that actually matter

•       Give shoppers a guest checkout option for those who want to skip the sign-up process and progress to purchase faster

•       Add a progress bar to show customers exactly where they are in the checkout process, and what they can expect next

•       Provide a wide range of payment options so customers can pay using the method that's most convenient to them.

If you're not sure where to start, survey a handful of customers about their experience navigating your website and checkout process, and then fix their core frustrations.

5. Offer flexible shipping options

Shipping preferences are one of the last things new and existing customers see before they hit either “Buy” or abandon their cart. This means omnichannel shipping options are an effective way to secure purchases and build customer loyalty. Around 81% of shoppers are more likely to choose a retailer that offers convenient options.

Omnichannel shipping provides customers with more options around how they want their goods to be delivered. For example, they can choose from home delivery, store collection, locker collections, or pickup points.

Offering customers more shipping options reduces delivery anxiety on high-ticket purchases and gives them greater autonomy over how they want to receive them. 

Missed deliveries and stolen parcels leave shoppers with a poor experience and eat into retailer margins, and both problems have grown as parcel volumes have risen. Parcel theft cost UK shoppers £666.5 million in 2025, and every stolen or missed parcel usually means a refund or a replacement shipment for the retailer, plus a support ticket and a customer who thinks twice before ordering again.

Competition is the other half of it. Shoppers who've had a parcel go missing rarely blame the carrier, they blame the retailer, and switching to a rival that offers a collection point takes one search. Giving people somewhere secure to collect removes the risk before it turns into a complaint.`

6. Personalise the pickup experience

Delivery choice is a form of personalisation in its own right. A well-executed pickup experience tells the customer that the retailer values their time and preferences, and that feeling is what brings people back.

Getting it right comes down to a handful of things. 

Build in a varied network of pickup locations near homes, workplaces and daily routes, with extended hours for busy schedules. 

Show customers real-time information about each location, its type, opening hours and amenities, so they can choose what suits them. 

Then remove the guesswork with proactive notifications when the order arrives, clear collection instructions, and reminders before pickup deadlines.

Selfridges shows how this works in practice. The retailer presents its own stores alongside local pickup options at checkout, so wherever customers are, they have a convenient way to collect.

Build customer loyalty with HubBox

HubBox integrates with all major ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and WooCommerce. Retailers on those platforms install a plugin. Custom-built sites connect through the HubBox SDK or JavaScript library, with full documentation available in the developer portal.

Standard plugin integrations typically go live from 24 hours. Custom builds take a little longer depending on the retailer's checkout architecture and testing requirements. Once the integration is live, a pickup option appears automatically at the shipping step of the checkout.

Customers add items to their baskets as usual. When selecting local pickup, they can choose the nearest or most convenient pickup location for them.

As our customer from Lucy & Yak puts it: “The integration was really easy. Our account manager at HubBox was brilliant, she gave us all the information we needed to make it work.”

The result was a 20% increase in average basket values, and fewer customers abandoning carts when home delivery isn’t convenient. You'll also have the edge over competitors by serving the 70% of US shoppers who want the option to choose pickup at checkout, according to HubBox research of over 1,000 shoppers (2025).

Want to increase customer loyalty?

Speak to the HubBox team about adding flexible delivery options to your checkout.