Knowing your customers is extremely important! They are the lifeblood of your business. With a lot of big online retailers. vying for their attention, it may feel impossible to compete against them. But you really can! You don't do it with trying to have an ad bidding war or by spending a lot of money outsourcing services or by trying to sell the exact same things. You can never compete with your money against their money. You've got to be more creative and customer service oriented in order to succeed.

Customer Data

Large companies have extensive data on their customers. What they are buying, when they buy it, where the customer is located, and other demographics. You have access to a lot of this type of information too with services like Analytics. But they don't know WHY someone purchased something. With the volume of customers they get, the WHY doesn't really matter to them - just that the product sells.

But as a smaller retailer with more focused niches, you can cater more to your customers needs and wants because you understand them better and the WHY they purchase your products.

Knowing Your Customers with Surveys

It's not that hard to get the WHY. It is easy to perform a survey to get feedback after someone purchases from you. When is the last time Amazon sent you a survey? Or Wal-Mart? As a small business, you can place more attention on your customers because you don't have employees and extensive overhead to manage.

Get as much invaluable information that you can from your customers. This will really help you with deciding to offer different products, change prices, make adjustments to your site and more.

Ask questions like; Why they purchased from you... What else would they buy from you... Were your prices competitive? And any other relevant questions.

Some customers are more willing to offer their opinion than others. So if you don't get the amount of replies that you want, then you can offer them a discount or a coupon for your site after they answer. 

Many customers need incentive in order to go above and beyond, and a store discount will only make them come back and buy something else from you!