A first order is expensive to win: ads, discounts, a lot of WhatsApp back-and-forth. The second order should be nearly free. Most Indian small sellers already have repeat buyers, but they depend on the customer remembering the shop. An online store can do that remembering for you, with an offer worth coming back for, points that build up, and a nudge that reaches the customer's phone.
What brings customers back to a small online store?
Five things do most of the work. You do not need all of them on day one, but each one fixes a different reason a customer drifts away:
- An offer they can see, applied at checkout without a code.
- Points that build up on every delivered order.
- A reason to share: refer-a-friend that rewards both people.
- A way back to their phone: the store installed like an app, order-update notifications and offer announcements.
- Proof and convenience: verified reviews, a wishlist and filters.
All five are built into a Storzu store, and Storzu takes no per-order commission, so the only cost of an offer is the discount you choose to give.
Which offers can I run, and when does each one make sense?
Storzu offers come in seven kinds. They do different jobs, and they cost your margin very differently:
| Offer | Example | Use it when | Margin risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy X Get Y | "Buy 2 T-shirts, get 1 free", mixing sizes and colours | Items people buy in multiples; clearing a range | High on costly items: each free unit costs you its full cost price |
| % or flat discount | "15% off kurtas" or "₹100 off" | A launch, a festival week, a slow-moving range | High: buyers who would have paid full price get it too |
| Buy more, save more | "Buy 4 or more, get 10% off each" | Consumables, refills, team and bulk orders | Low to medium: it only applies to bigger baskets |
| Combo price | "Any two for ₹1,450" | Gift sets, outfits, snack boxes; lifting order value | Low to medium: you set the combo price |
| Spend and save | "₹150 off above ₹2,000" | Nudging a basket over a round number | Low: only orders above the line get it |
| Free delivery | "Free delivery above ₹1,500" | Delivery charges are why carts get abandoned | Predictable: you know what delivery costs you |
| Custom | "Free gift wrap in Diwali week" | Anything checkout cannot calculate | You honour it by hand, so keep it simple |
Offers are visual. They appear on your store as an offer strip or slideshow and as tags on product photos, so a customer sees the saving before they reach the cart. Then they apply automatically at checkout, with no code to type. An offer can cover the whole store or only the products you choose. Buy X Get Y mixes across sizes and colours, and the cheapest units are the free ones. A custom offer is shown on the store only: checkout does not calculate it, and you honour it yourself.
Coupons still work alongside offers and apply after them. Every order and invoice shows an Offer savings line, which keeps your accounts clean. Our GST invoice guide covers the rest of the invoice.
Which offer should I run first?
Start with an offer that rewards a bigger basket, not one that cuts the price for everyone:
- Free delivery above an amount set 20 to 30% above your typical order. If most orders are around ₹1,200, try ₹1,500. Many customers add one more item to reach it, and you know exactly what delivery costs you.
- Buy X Get Y on things bought in multiples (socks, bangles, sweets, stationery), where the free unit is cheap for you.
- A combo price for natural pairs: kurta and dupatta, cake and candles, phone case and screen guard.
Keep storewide percentage discounts for real moments: your launch, Diwali, an end-of-season clearance. Run one offer at a time for a couple of weeks, then compare your average order value before and after.
How much discount can I actually afford?
Do the sums before you announce anything. Say you sell a cotton kurta at ₹800, and it costs you ₹450 including fabric, stitching and packing. That is ₹350 profit on a full-price sale.
- 20% off everything: the kurta sells at ₹640 and your profit drops to ₹190. You now need almost two sales (350 ÷ 190 ≈ 1.8) to earn what one full-price sale earned.
- Buy 2, get 1 free: the customer pays ₹1,600 for three kurtas that cost you ₹1,350, so you make ₹250 on the order. That is less than one full-price kurta, so on a product like this it only makes sense for stock you would otherwise sit on.
- Any two for ₹1,450: two kurtas cost you ₹900, so you make ₹550. If the combo turns one-kurta buyers into two-kurta buyers, each order earns ₹200 more than before.
- Free delivery above ₹1,500: if delivery costs you ₹70, a customer who adds a second kurta to reach the line leaves you ₹630 profit, against ₹350 for a single kurta.
The rule of thumb: divide your full-price profit by your profit after the discount. The answer is how many times more orders you need just to stand still. Loyalty points pass the same test well. A programme that gives back about 5% of spend is a 5% discount that only your repeat customers get, which is much cheaper than 20% off for everyone.
How do loyalty points work on my store?
- Earned on delivered orders, so cancelled orders never earn anything.
- Redeemed at checkouton the customer's next order, as part of the payment.
- Capped by you. You set the maximum share of an order, as a percentage, that points can pay for, so a big balance never wipes out your margin on one sale.
- Visible to the customeron your store's rewards page. Points people can see are points they come back to spend.
How does refer-a-friend work?
In India, most new customers for a small shop come from someone they know: a family WhatsApp group, a colleague, a neighbour. Refer-a-friend pays for that. When a customer brings a friend, both of them are rewardedwhen the friend's first order is delivered. Nobody earns anything for a sign-up that never buys or an order that gets cancelled, so the programme is hard to game. Mention it in your WhatsApp replies and on a small card in the parcel. A happy customer is most likely to share right after the parcel arrives.
How do I reach customers again without spamming WhatsApp?
Customers can install your store on their phone like an app, so it opens from the home screen instead of getting lost in a chat. They get order updates as notifications, and you can send a push announcement about a new offer or new arrivals to every customer who opted in. Treat announcements like a shop window, not a loudspeaker: send one when something is genuinely new, at most once or twice a week. Customers who feel spammed switch notifications off, and then the channel is gone.
Do reviews, wishlists and filters really help repeat sales?
Yes, because they make a returning customer trust you and find things fast. Any verified, signed-in customer can review your store and its products, and you can reply, or hide a review with a stated reason. When a product has reviews, its page carries the star rating in structured data, so it can show stars in Google results (Google decides whether it does). Customers can save products for later and like them on product cards, then return on payday or before a festival. Filtersfor brand, size, colour, price and in-stock take them to "medium, blue, under ₹1,000" in two taps.
How do I avoid training customers to wait for a sale?
- Reward buying, not waiting. Points and referrals reward people who buy and share; a permanent sale rewards people who hold out.
- Prefer thresholds to price cuts. Spend-and-save, buy more save more and free delivery all ask for a bigger order in return.
- Run each offer for a set period and rotate the kind of offer, so nobody learns to expect the same discount every month.
- Keep your bestseller at full price and use offers to move the range around it.
What should I know before I set this up?
- Custom offers are not calculated at checkout; you keep them by hand.
- Offers are for products. Rentals and stays do not take them.
- Points and referral rewards arrive after delivery, not when the order is placed. Tell customers so they are not surprised.
- Push announcements only reach customers who opted in, on phones that allow notifications.
- No offer fixes a weak product page. Clear photos, honest prices and a delivery estimate do more for repeat sales than any discount, and so does a store that looks trustworthy: see our guide to online store designs.
What to do next
Pick one offer from the table above, work out its margin with your own numbers, and run it for two weeks. Create your free Storzu store, add your products, and put your first offer live. Then add loyalty points and refer-a-friend so customers who bought once have a reason to come back.