Ecommerce Blog

Coremetrics has released some benchmark data in its Cyber Monday Report (.pdf) which breaks down Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2009 metrics vs. 2008 for retail as a whole and various industries.

Highlights from the study:

• Cyber Monday sales were 24% higher than Black Friday this year
• Cyber Monday items per order were 10% higher than Black Friday
• Consumers spent 5.8% more on Cyber Monday than Black Friday
• Compared to Cyber Monday 2008, sales were up 13.7% and average order value (AOV) up 38.2%
• Apparel and jewelry sites saw the biggest jump in AOV (26.4% and 14.3%)
• Department stores attracted 33% more new customers, though AOV dipped ~10%

If you download the report and check out the benchmarks, you’ll notice that items per order for all retail sites were 5.92 – not bad. But when you drill down to the industries listed, none are higher than Health and Beauty at 3.31. Even department stores were 3.05 on Cyber Monday.

Curious about which categories brought the average to nearly 6 items per order, I emailed Coremetrics. So here’s a Get Elastic exclusive…

• Office Supply/Electronics – 6.09 items per order
• Niche Retail – 11.57 items per order
• Pets – 16.42 items per order!

Fido’s getting spoiled this year.

While I can only speculate why pet stores averaged so high on items per order (perhaps it’s a combination of low dollar value items and high free shipping thresholds), I was surprised department stores were not moving more items, especially with the opportunity to position themselves as one-stop-shopping destinations.

Improving your items per order and AOV

How do you measure up to your industry and retail as a whole with regards to items per order?

If you’re looking for tips for increasing items per order and average order value, consider offering:

• Holiday bundles
• Free shipping offers above $X
• BillMeLater or PayPal 90 Days Same as Cash
• Gift finder tools in navigation and in cart summaries

And don’t forget to optimize your cross-sells and upsells. Here are some articles on product recommendations if you’ve missed them:

Measuring and Improving Cross Sell and Upsell
Merchandising Usability: Better Ways to Display Cross Sell and Upsell
Effective Merchandising: What Sells?
Cross-Selling Tips for Online Retailers

You may also like these similar posts:

• Holiday Marketing 2.007 – Nobody Waits for Black Friday Anymore
• Measuring and Improving Cross-Sell and Upsell
• Bloggers Digest 12/05/08
• Cross-Sells and Upsells: What is the Diff?
• Bloggers Digest 11/28/08 Black Friday Edition

Original post by Linda Bustos

It’s Black Friday and the 2009 holiday season is “officially” underway. Retailers are hoping for higher online sales, but paradoxically, will most likely see higher-than-average rates of cart abandonment. SeeWhy, a company that tracks shopping cart abandonment rates, reports the average across industries in October 2009 was 71%).

But if your abandonment rate is 71%, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost 71% for good.

We know that there’s no one reason a cart is abandoned. Forrester Research surveyed men and women who shop online and ranked the following reasons:

1. Sticker shock (tax and shipping charges revealed in cart too high)
2. Customer not ready to purchase
3. Comparison shopping
4. Second thoughts on price
5. Just wanted to save for later

(If you’re an email subscriber with images off, please turn them on to see the survey graph).

Whether the customer is comparison shopping, “sleeping on” the decision or using you cart as a lazy man’s (or woman’s) wish list (and who can blame them when most wish lists require account registration), it pays to hold the cart contents. An abandoned cart does not mean a lost sale. A ScanAlert study found 28% of shoppers took longer than a day to convert, and 14% longer than a week. Granted, the study is 5 years old, but decision making doesn’t necessarily change because ecommerce websites have advanced. The point is many conversions happen after 2 or more days or visits. And to complicate matters, many convert in a subsequent reporting period – a November visit converts in December, but is not accounted for in the November conversion report.

Support multi-session shoppers

Make sure you’re leaving persistent cookies for Santa customers that hold contents in the cart, and you’ll want to set these cookies to hang around for at least 30 days. You’ll have a better chance of converting customers who take longer to make their decision and who expect to find their carts in tact when they return to your site.

Holding a cart’s contents across sessions – sounds like a no-brainer, right? In 2007, the E-tailing Group found that 29% of top online retailers did not use persistent shopping carts. Has that number improved in 2 short years? I did a quick test on 50 of the Internet Retailer Hot 100 and 7 did not hold my cart overnight, or 14%. Still, that’s 14% too many!

One feature that I really appreciated as a customer was seeing the quantity or dollar amount of items in the cart, clearly. When returning to the site, I want to know without digging that my cart was saved.

Track your visits to purchase and days to purchase

Google Analytics’ Avinash Kaushik explains how you can and why you should measure days to purchase and visits to purchase in your Web analytics tool. (Too bad Google Analytics’ Benchmarks feature, which if you opt in can give you benchmarks for sites in your category/industry doesn’t track those metrics though it will show you benchmarks for visits, bounce rates, page views, average time on site, page views per visit and percent new visits). Santa Avinash, benchmarked days and visits to purchase are on our Christmas 2010 Google Analytics wish list.

Measure customer behavior across time periods

Another tip is to measure your customer behavior including repeat visits and conversions across reporting periods. Longer cookie durations help you track that accurately. MineThatData’s Kevin Hillstrom shares his tips on how to measure conversion rates across time on his blog.

The takeaway

To get the best picture of what your true holiday performance is, you need to factor in customer behavior, provide the usability to support multi-session shoppers (persistent cookies) and understand what metrics to track and how to track them.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Persistent Shopping Carts vs. Perpetual Shopping Carts
• A Better Way to Measure Conversion Rate
• Have You Mystery Shopped Your Site Lately?
• Mystery Shop Your Site Before The Holidays
• Bloggers Digest 1/9/09

Original post by Linda Bustos

This week I had the pleasure of sitting down (virtually) with Shawna Fennell of One Choice for Your Store for an interview on her Webmaster Radio show, Ecom Experts titled Holiday Preparations for Online Retailers (on-demand link).

One of the questions Shawna asked was What should retailers be doing during the holiday season now that it’s too late to be working on the site or strategy? This post is a recap of what I believe retailers should be doing now to really be “in the game” rather than a benchwarmer this season.

Monitor and Optimize Performance

Even the largest, most famous online stores have gone down on Black Friday and other peak traffic days, or at least slowed down significantly. We know that page load speed affects whether a person is going to stick around on your site. It is the “first impressions” that count, because if your first page loads slow, the customer expects the rest of the experience to be painful. This affects your bounce and abandonment rates and ultimately your conversion rates.

If you’ve seen Forrester Research and Akamai’s latest report, almost half of broadband shoppers expect your pages to load in 2 seconds or less, and top retailers are setting the bar at sub-second loads.

While your site may not crash, other performance problems like slower page loads often fly under the radar because you’re still making more sales than the rest of the year. But when these performance problems happen, you have no way to quantify the sales you could have made if your site was tip-top.

You need to be aware that performance typically suffers most in the checkout. Your payment gateway may be very slow, or your tax and shipping tables live on other servers or on another website. So it’s really important that you know what to monitor. And don’t give yourself a false sense of security by testing only your home page.

Sometimes your performance takes a hit because IT and marketing haven’t been communicating. So marketing deploys a major midnight madness sale by email – and the site isn’t prepared. Did you know our next webinar is on IT-marketing relations in January? (/End shameless plug for upcoming webinar).

There are lots of services that can help you with performance monitoring like Akamai, Gomez and Keynote. Our site performance webinar recap is full of tips you can do to reduce your load.

Use Your Web Analytics

How ridiculous would it be for a football team to only bring in a coach at the end of the season, and all the coach does is drop off a video tape of all the playoff games and says: “Here you go.” That would be insane but it’s how a lot of online retailers are doing web analytics. They wait until the season is over to see what happened, rather than using that data to make better decisions while the games are on. (This is especially sad when the web analyst does nothing but send reports without any analysis or actionable insights).

Perhaps it’s because web analytics tools spit out so much data – ecommerce managers are not sure what to care about. I have 3 suggestions to get you thinking:

1. Use your site overlay reports. These can show you where people are clicking, right now, this season, every day. Which offers and calls to action are working? Which navigation categories are clicked most? Gifts? Sale? Top rated? New arrivals? Brands? These are all clues to what your customers are interested in, and this can give you ideas of what to promote more heavily on your home page.

2. Look for high bounce rate pages. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors that abandon your site in under 5 or 10 seconds (depending on your analytics tool). Are the top bounce pages different than the rest of the year? Is there a problem you were unaware of? For example, you may discover that a paid search ad for Tickle Me Elmo uses the wrong destination URL and is sending traffic to Tickle Me Cookie Monster and it’s bleeding money ten times faster than it did during the rest of the year.

3. Segment your traffic sources. Your site conversion rate may be 4%, but look under the hood you may discover your pay-per-click campaign converts at 0.5%, your email at 20% and your affiliates at 10%. You may take that money from your PPC campaign and turn off underperforming ad groups, and instead reach out to your top performing affiliates and offer higher commissions to promote you more heavily.

4. Boost your intelligence. Google Analytics has a new feature called Intelligence (rolling out in Beta and not available to all markets yet). Intelligence has a feature that sends you an alert when there’s a sudden statistically significant increase or dropoff in traffic, conversion or any metric you’re tracking. Avinash Kaushik has a nice explanation of Google Analytics’ new intelligent features.

Keep Testing

You may be in a code freeze, but this winter’s no time for a testing freeze. Shopping behavior is different during the holidays. The shopper’s purchase role is geared to others, and there’s more at stake. Customers may be more interested in customer reviews when buying for someone of the opposite gender or a different age group. Or, they might be on tight budgets and are more persuaded by your sales promotions than at other times. You really can’t rely on headline and offer tests you did in May.

You can also take advantage of the high traffic volume which means shorter test durations.

We discussed a lot more in the 35 minute interview, please check it out if you haven’t had the chance. There are a few other ecommerce episodes you can listen to, and watch out for more ecommerce tips from Shawna and her ecommerce expert guests.

You may also like these similar posts:

• The Importance of Site Performance
• Do Hacker Safe / McAfee Secure Badges Increase Sales?
• Take the Load Off Slow Page Loads
• Displaying Search Results: Grid View or List View?
• Last Chance to Win a Copy of Always Be Testing

Original post by Linda Bustos

Wanna do some extremely cheap (free) and fast market research? As lovely as Google Trends, Google Insights and Google’s Keyword Tool are - they are not as valuable as Amazon for commercial keyword research. They can’t tell you which products are most wished for and most gifted.

Though it’s hidden amongst a jungle of other links, products and calls to action - Amazon has a Bestsellers department. On the Amazon.com home page, scroll down to Features & Services / Amazon Exclusives / Amazon Bestsellers (or just click our link).

You’ll find every category that Amazon offers (which is pretty much everything) and even sub-categories.

And you’ll notice you can select the Most Gifted and Most Wished For items, based on Amazon’s tsunami of customer tracking and purchase data.

For example, if you’re in the beauty category, you can see the top 3 wished for fragrances are Vera Wang Princess, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue and Marc Jacobs Daisy.

Comparing to Sephora’s best seller list, this is pretty good data.

So What?

When you understand what customers’ most desired and most gifted items are, you know where to focus your SEO efforts at the product page level as we approach the holiday season. And by SEO efforts, I mean link building.

If I were Sephora, I would head over to the search engine and scope out the ranking situation (making sure I’m signed out of my Gmail account so my rankings aren’t skewed by my frequent visits to the Sephora site). Now it doesn’t really matter what position you are in the results - results may vary based on a searcher’s location, browsing history (personalized search) and exact keyword term (rankings may differ for “vera wang princess” vs “princess vera wang”). And there’s always room for improvement when it comes to link building.

But you want to get an idea of which pages you are competing against. Is it Amazon? The manufacturer’s site? A popular blog review or shopping engine? Also, you want to know if you have a hope in the North Pole to actually rank for the product. If you’re not on page one or two, you may want to think realistically about your chances. Or, aim for a less competitive search like “buy vera wang princess” or “princess by vera wang.”

Okay, keeping with our hypothetical Sephora case:

Sephora is doing really well, and it’s tough to outrank the manufacturer site but we’ve seen it happen. Also, assuming Sephora’s competition reads Get Elastic and is embarking on link building campaignage as we speak, Sephora must protect its position. The key will be to build links (and start soon), and here are some ideas to accomplish this.

Leverage the Blog

Sephora has, in my opinion, one of the better retailer blogs out there. It actually has several posts linking to its Marc Jacobs Daisy page. But linking from a new blog post that includes “Marc Jacobs Daisy” in the title tag and URL will give extra topical relevance to the link. I’d go ahead and write a post on how it’s one of the top sellers, what customers have to say about it or which celebrities wear it.

Blogger Outreach

Why not make a list of influential beauty bloggers and send them a free Vera Wang Princess bottle or sample to review? As long as the review is appreciated but not required, I don’t see how this would violate the “don’t buy links” rule. Of course, I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments.

It works for quirky lounge chair maker Sumo. Top Internet marketing and advertising blogger B.L. Ochman calls Sumo’s blogger outreach smart marketing:

Sumo has used blogger outreach to get their furniture reviewed, and it’s smart marketing. Sending chairs to bloggers is cheap; effective because you feel like you need to review something that costs more than $100; and, unlike a book, way too big to ignore once it gets to your house. They didn’t send some stupid press release, or cutesy pitch. They just sent an email asking if I’d like to try the chair and review it, with a link to the site.

Sumo ranks quite nicely for terms like “lounge chair” and “bean bag chair,” thank you very much.

Search for Conversations

Who’s been blogging about Vera Wang Princess? Two tools I like to use to find out are blog search engine Technorati and reputation monitoring tool Trackur. These both have advantages over Google Blogs search.

Technorati shows you an authority score (higher is better), so you don’t waste time checking out low-quality blogs:

And Trackur lets you bookmark items with “Add to Favorites.”

You may discover some interesting things, like this blog that actually did link to Sephora:

But as you can see in the status bar, the blogger buggered up the link with a cut-and-paste so it reads http://http//www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P212915&shouldPaginate=true&categoryId=5625 which sends people and search engines to a dead page.

Sephora should send this blogger a heads up, and some form of thank you for linking (coupon or free gift). And to build a relationship, ask if she’d like to be an official reviewer for Sephora products on her own blog.

Help a Reporter Out

Get on Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help A Reporter Out), a thrice-daily mailing list of press opportunities. I’ve seen requests for sources from reporters from major news papers, magazines and even network TV morning shows. Several calls for products for gift ideas have come through. Getting on the list to receive the notices is easy, sign up here. You could get a link or great word-of-print marketing.

Don’t Forget Value Propositions

Sephora not only ships for free over $50, but also has free return shipping.

This should be in the title tag / meta description. Especially for searches like this:

This will also improve click through for searches without “free shipping” as we discussed yesterday.

So try out Amazon Bestsellers for the category/ies you sell - and remember, you can apply this insight to email marketing campaigns and merchandising strategies too. If you have additional link building tricks, you may want to keep them close to your chest. If you’re brave and already in the holiday spirit, you may want to share them in the comments here *wink.*

You may also like these similar posts:

• Amazon Bestsellers for Keyword Research
• Ecommerce SEO: How To Preserve Your Deep Link Juice
• Ecommerce SEO Hack: Free Tool to Hone Your SEO Strategy
• SEO Tips for Special Holidays
• Bloggers Digest 10/17/08

Original post by Linda Bustos

When you think of keyword research, you likely associate it with search engine optimization and the importance of including keywords in various tags and body copy to appear higher in search results. But keyword research is essential to your entire online marketing strategy, and has applications beyond SEO, including:

Information Architecture

When you first set out to organize your site structure and decide on how to label your categories, you may have to make decisions between synonyms - especially for e-commerce sites. For example, you might have to choose between “athletic shoes,” “runners,” “running shoes,” “trainers” and “sneakers.”

How do you make your best guess which is most popular? Head off to Google Trends and compare each term, and make sure you set which geographic market you operate in, as there can be regional differences in preferred terms:

One thing to watch out for is some terms have more than one meaning - like “runners” (table runners, stair runners, wedding runners, runners knee, etc) or “trainers” (personal trainers, game trainers, dog trainers). You may, from this graph, conclude your best label is “running shoes” as it far outperforms “athletic shoes.”

If your site has been up for a while and you’re considering a restructure, you may also check on your pay-per-click data, comparing these keywords for impressions and clicks to your site, which would indicate that the search performed had intent to find information on products you sell. A searcher looking for “dog trainers” is not likely to click on an ad for “Nike Trainers.” If you get far more traffic for “runners” than “running shoes” then you may reconsider your current category label.

Using the customer-preferred term also aids in usability. People scan for “trigger words” that match exactly how they describe the product themselves. Customer thinks “where are the running shoes?” and scans the menus for that term, and may miss the lonely “athletic shoes” at the top.

Internal Site Search Optimization

Your site search may not be returning results (or the results you want) for user searches because your customers describe your products in ways you never thought of - including mis-spellings.

There are several ways you can research terms to tweak your search tool. An obvious one is your internal site search logs - mine them for frequent searches and test what results appear. Proactively, you can use the Buzzillions reviews site which employs customer tagging, Amazon tags, a thesaurus or the Google Keyword Research Tool to look for synonyms.

Sourcing New Products

Does your internal site search log reveal customers are looking for Nike First Touch II Astro Turf Trainers en masse? You might consider adding it to your product mix if it’s a hot item. You can also surf Amazon Bestsellers and use the Google Keyword Tool and segment your keyword results by last month’s search volume (to identify current winners).

Pay Per Click Advertising

Of course, keyword research is essential to PPC advertising. But many marketers stop at the Google Keyword Tool or an enterprise tool like Keyword Discovery.

One of the tedious aspects of PPC keyword research, and most difficult to thoroughly perform with just the traditional tools is negative keyword research use eBay for negative keyword research and hack Google Analytics to expose the exact search phrases for your broad matched PPC keywords.

Email Offers

You can identify hot products using Google Trends, Amazon Bestsellers lists or your Analytics, search and sales reports and use them in your email campaigns.

You may also like these similar posts:

• What Do Customers Really, Really Want?
• How To Apply Google Search-Based Keyword Research
• Hack Week Part 1 - Optimize Internal Site Search With Free Tool
• Using Google Alerts for Keyword Research
• Why You Should Turn On Google Analytics Site Search Today

Original post by Linda Bustos

A few months ago I went through the process of configuring a custom wheelchair at Spinlife.com. I needed help understanding the options and called customer service. Lisa walked me through the process like a knowledgeable saleswoman and prepared a custom quotation for me which I received by email.

Turns out I decided not to buy a new wheelchair and never returned to Spinlife to complete my order. Spinlife sent me a reminder email that’s done so well I had to share it on Get Elastic.

Why is this so great?

1. Designed for images off.

Except for the logo, 110% Price Guarantee and cross-sells, the content is displayed properly in Gmail which by default turns images off.

My only suggestion is to add alternative image text mentioning the 110% Price Guarantee which is a strong value proposition. This is also a good practice for visually impaired users.

2. Prominent value proposition.

The email is attempting to get me to convert from Spinlife though I have other purchase options including local stores (more than double the price). The Price Guarantee is appropriate and effective.

3. Clearly states this is a quote, not a bill.

I think it would be better to mention this is a quote, not an invoice directly above the Order Details as anything in the top right hand corner may be missed depending on how the customer scans the page. Otherwise, this is very well done.

4. The 3 action options are clearly explained.

The customer understands that the cart can be edited, the purchase can be deferred a bit longer with another reminder sent, or the customer can opt out of future notification.

5. Suggests other products.

“Looking for something else?” A great question to ask to make some money off the trigger, even if the customer no longer wants the quoted package.

After opting out, I was met with this message:

“Thanks for responding to our email.

Sorry this product didn’t work out for you. Your quote has been cancelled but is still stored in our system under the same number, so if you change your mind you can always call us at 1-800-850-0335 and provide either the quote number or your name.

The quote can be re-activated at anytime (although the price may change). Thanks for working with SpinLife, and we look forward to serving you at another time.”

Fantastic customer service.

You may also like these similar posts:

• 4 Tips for Order Tracking Usability
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• Amazon M-Commerce: Introducing Text-Buy-It

Original post by Linda Bustos

Sucharita Mulpuru and Forrester Research recently released a report called Myths And Truths About Online Customer Reviews. The report covers a lot of ground, but I want to hone in on customer behavior after reading negative reviews. Many retailers have avoided adding reviews for fear negative reviews will hurt sales, despite the proven conversion benefits they deliver.

From the report, here are 7 actions consumers take after reading not-so-shining reviews (customers may take more than one action)

“After reading negative customer ratings/reviews about a specific product on a retailer’s Web site, how do you respond?”

• 47% search for an alternative product
• 37% read professional/editor-written reviews of the product
• 26% continue to shop for the product regardless of the negative ratings/reviews
• 18% look for a retailer/manufacturer that offers a money-back guarantee
• 7% contact the retailer for clarification of the issues raised in the negative review
• 7% contact the manufacturer for clarification of the issues raised in the negative review
• 6% post a follow-up question for the author of the negative review

Base: 2,890 US Web buyers who read and/or post online customer ratings/reviews on retail sites (multiple responses accepted)

Source: Myths And Truths About Online Customer Reviews Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester Research December 2008

How does your website address the actions customers take after encountering a negative review?

9 Ways to Save Sales from Negative Customer Reviews

1. Add link back to category that allows sort-by-customer-review.

Link to category (Diapers.com):

Sort by Customer Review on category page (Backcountry.com):

2. Include star ratings on cross-sells.

When showing alternative items (cross-sells and similar items), it may be helpful for the customer to sort similar items by star rating if you show more than a few suggestions on the product page.

Before / After:

3. Use Expert / Staff Reviews

Including an official staff/expert review and marking it as such builds trust with the product AND your call center. Make it “sticky” as part of your product page so it doesn’t get lost in the haystack of customer reviews.

If you don’t have an official staff review, you can have staff submit reviews and be identified as such with the Power Reviews product (below) or with your own custom build:

Bonus for expert video reviews, like Crutchfield:

Crutchfield also includes a “Customer Favorite” and the “Staff Favorite” on category pages above product results:

5. Show money back guarantees right on product page when available

Backcountry already links to a 100% Guarantee, but the link is not very conspicuous. The guarantee badge is not so pretty, but it stands out being more proximal to the product image.

Before:

After:

6. Allow customers to ask and answer questions on your page. Like Bazaarvoice offers or Backcountry built in-house:

7. Include manufacturer’s website URL and contact number on the product page.

Before:

After:

Make sure the link opens in a new window so you don’t lose your customer, and warn about the new window.

8. Enable comments on customer reviews.

According to the research, 6% post follow up questions for the reviewer (Amazon allows you to leave a comment on a review which may include a question). But there is no guarantee the review writer will ever come back to answer the question.

If you set up a system in your community where a reviewer gets alerted of comments on their reviews, these may become spammy/annoying — unless your incentives for community participation are attractive enough to that reviewer to come back and answer the question(s).

But there’s still value to comments. With a comment thread, even if the reviewer doesn’t answer the question, other community members can. And even better, a negative review may be clarified by a comment.

For example, a common complaint for GPS systems is slow satellite acquisition. A commenter on a review at Amazon replied: “Our satellite acquisition problems on the [model] were completely solved via a software update, which the CSR walked us through.”

Another responded “Unfortunately, it sounds like the receiver chip in your unit is probably the **** chip (not well received) instead of the *** chip (highly received). Hopefully a firmware update will help.”

Now shoppers reading reviews can understand there is a solution to the problem with the product, and decide whether it’s an acceptable problem and solution.

9. Know when to offer live chat. Here’s where you can get creative. Consider tagging customers who sort by average customer review on the category page with an attribute that associates them with an interest in customer reviews. If they linger on the product page for more than X minutes, invite them to chat.

This can also help you control live chat costs. You don’t want to offer your CSR services to every single customer. Customers who always sort by lowest price are likely A) less profitable and B) not concerned with chatting about the qualitative virtues of a product. They rely on your search and sort features to tell them if a product/price is attractive or not. Pop-ups interrupt this process and may irritate customers.

Think Positively About Negative Reviews

The recent Belkin fiasco is a perfect example of why you should welcome negative reviews - without a few negatives the reviews seem inauthentic. Customers want to see a mix of positive and negative reviews - so offer them, but make sure you support the customer who wants additional information, alternative suggestions or personal assistance.

And don’t forget, accepting negative reviews also helps your copywriting.

Next Free Ecommerce Webinar…

The ecommerce platform of the future

When: February 18th, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Presenter:
Brian K. Walker, senior analyst for ecommerce technology, Forrester Research
Register to Attend…

You may also like these similar posts:

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Original post by Linda Bustos

I’ve written before how showing products in context with product images can help increase conversion. Showing a product in use, on a model or its relative size reduces customer anxiety about the appropriateness of a product. Of course, video can be even more effective (just ask Shoeline.com who achieved a 44% increase in conversion with video).

But creative retailers also describe products in context. Outdoor gear retailer Backcountry.com injects some humor into its Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer product (where customers ask a question about an item and a customer service rep responds on the site) for a Timbuk2 Messenger Bag.

Customer question: Whats the volume of the extra large?

Answer:

The extra large bag has a TPRCV of 20.

What is TPRCV you ask?

The geniuses at Timbuk2 explain it best:

We know you don’t have time to buy the wrong size bag. We also know you’re imaginative and visually oriented problem solvers living in a three dimensional world where toilet paper is routinely available.

Soft, stackable and building block-like, toilet paper rolls can be easily arranged to simulate the internal dimensions of any bag.

Working in tandem with our R&D department, our marketing team recently completed an assessment of each bag. We have identified, down to the roll, the maximum capacity for each bag we tested. The resulting TPRCV (Toilet Paper Roll Capacity Value) can be used in a simple, at-home comparison of corresponding stacks of TPR, helping you make an informed decision about what size bag best suits your purposes.

You will need a flat, level surface, a maximum of twenty-one toilet paper rolls (TPRs), your imagination, and your design and rendering skills.

For best results, use two-ply.

By: Matt Fuller
August 9, 2008

This is a “cheeky” example of how to put a product in-context. For some, “20 toilet paper rolls” is more helpful than 26.25 x 14 x 9in.

In this case, the context was provided in response to a customer question, but including this information in the regular product description has even more impact, as shoppers are more likely to read the product description than every single review and staff response.

Exercise: For the products you carry, anticipate what kinds of use or sizing questions customers may have, and what information is not made obvious by the current image and description. (Hint: read a lot of customer reviews - from your site and competitors).

PS: Backcountry has a leaderboard for user-generated content to recognize the contributions of photos, reviews, questions and answers. “Gear Gurus” are encouraged to use their real names to build real community. Check it out here.

Original post by Linda Bustos

Every year Lauren Freedman and the e-tailing group conduct a Mystery Shopping Study of the top 100 online retailers. The researchers go through the process of selecting one product for ground delivery on each of the 100 sites, contact the merchant via telephone, live chat or email and return the product either in-store or on-site, depending on the options available.

You can check out the press release for the e-tailing group’s 11th Annual Mystery Shopping Study
to see which online retailers made the top 9 for customer experience and how they scored on various scoring criteria compared to averages across retailers. There are also a number of tips and a customer service checklist that you can use as a guide when mystery shopping your own online store.

Here is my summary of the e-tailing group’s recommendations along with some Get Elastic tips and comments:

Essential Features and Functionality

• Have an 800-Number, but also display it visibly on every page of your site so the customer doesn’t have to go digging (Tip: show the 800 Number close to your add to cart button and throughout your checkout process in case there’s an issue with the order)
• Provide an FAQ page for customer self-service (Tip: if a customer lingers on an FAQ page this is a good time to deliver a live chat prompt)
• Show “real-time inventory” (a clear “IN STOCK” on the product page, or “ITEM NOT AVAILABLE”) (Tip: disable the add to cart button when an item is not in stock, and provide an “email me when item is back in stock” link, with estimated re-stock date if possible)
• Show a “stepped checkout” to show the customer how far along in the process they are (Tip: Split-path test your checkout with 4 or less steps to see which has higher conversion)

I would add sending a shipping confirmation email as 100% essential, and watch the sender name!

A Cut Above The Basics

• List customer service hours on-site
• Stand behind your products, offer a 100% guarantee
• Use a perpetual shopping cart (show quantity of items in the cart and display on every page of the site). (Tip: make it very obvious when the cart has been updated)
• Display thumbnail images in the shopping cart review page (Tip: also show the exact color added, especially for apparel)
• Recap the cart contents on the thank-you page

I would add providing a shipping cost calculator based on zipcode on the product page and showing an estimated arrival date rather than number of business days to ship.

And don’t forget to include shipping cutoff dates for holidays.

Express/Customer Conveniences - Giving Customers More Control

• Allow customer to check-out without creating an account (Tip: do explain benefits of sign up when giving customers the option)
• Consider direct to cart buying from category page (depending on your market)
• Consider one-click settings for faster checkout, customer convenience (and incentive to create an account)
• Use a “persistent shopping cart” which stores the contents of the customer’s cart for a future visit (Tip: check your web analytics for your typical “days to purchase” when deciding how long to set your persistent cookie)
• Make online return forms available for customer convenience

Don’t forget to make your non-product information accessible from your search box so customers can locate policies quickly.

If customers are using your site to research offline purchases, you should also mystery-shop your store locator.

If you really want to go above and beyond to stand out in customer service, be like Zappos and hire CSRs for culture and empower them to go the extra mile for customers. I’ll say it’s paid off for Zappos.

Sell across the border? You may also be interested in these international ecommerce usability tips.

Next Free Ecommerce Webinar…

Selecting the Right Ecommerce Software in Six Weeks or Less

When: January 21st, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelists:
Bill Mirabito, Founder and Principal Analyst, B2C Partners
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend…

You may also like these similar posts:

• Reducing Anxiety on Cart Review Page: Show SKU Thumbnails
• Manufacturer Saves Stock-Out Sales With Partner Referrals
• In-Store Pickup Tips for Multi-Channel Retailers
• Optimizing Your E-Store for Last Minute Shoppers
• Putting Customer Telephone Numbers to Good Use

Original post by Linda Bustos

Picking up where we left off in the Marketing Experiments Conversion Sequence C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) -2a, the last couple posts covered “m” for Motivation discussing optimizing your ecommerce sites for “hunters” on home pages and search and navigation.

Today I want to look at motivation from a different angle. I want you to choose a landing page that is top priority for you to optimize. For example, your most profitable product with the highest abandonment rate. I want to get you thinking about which customer motivations are most likely to match your business, your products, your typical customer and your landing page presentation.

If you haven’t read the posts on value propositions yet, you might want to start there as this follows the same line of thought.

Ready?

Alright. First I want you to think why someone would buy online (not just browse and research products), then think about your landing page in light of the product category/industry. “Check all that may apply.”

Why a customer chooses to make a purchase online

• Belief you can find cheaper prices online than in stores
• Convenience, can shop in pyjamas
• Better selection, online stores carry larger inventories, more choices with the click of a mouse
• Uniqueness, can find something rare or hard to find
• Product unavailable in store, may be sold out or discontinued (or a size/color not available in store)

At the store level

What is your strength as a store considering your value proposition? Examples:

• GAP items are only sold through GAP retail stores and online. The GAP.com customer is likely a “convenience” shopper loyal to the brand, or looking to find product not available in store.
• UncommonGoods and Threadless are examples of e-stores that carry exclusive products.
• Peapod’s strength is convenience. The customer knows he can get frozen vegetables cheaper at the supermarket but will pay a premium for to-your-door service.
• Zappos and Crutchfield’s focus on customer service rather than rock bottom prices. Their design, marketing and landing page copy doesn’t emulate bargain sites like Classic Closeouts or Tiger Direct.

At the category level

Think about how people shop for different categories. Why would someone purchase this product category online?

Victoria’s Secret sells a mix of lingerie and loungewear available only in Victoria’s Secret stores, its clothing and accessories are only available online through VictoriasSecret.com, and it sells cosmetic items like Clarins self tanner that are available anywhere.

The online channel has to understand the FUDDs (fears, uncertainties, doubts and deal-breakers) for each category may be different. It’s easy to buy lingerie you’ve tried in-store already, much more risky to purchase clothing sight-unseen which may not fit well, or be true to size or color on the screen.

Why a customer is on your site

• By mistake
• For inspiration / fantasy (thinking of redecorating in 3 months, looking at clothes to purchase once one loses weight)
• To research and compare products to purchase (early in buying stage, researching category or specific models)
• To research online for purchase offline (ROPO)
• To compare prices
• To receive a discount through 3rd party (co-marketing, affiliate site)
• To use a coupon code or redeem a gift card
• Loyalty to store, email subscriber
• Buy something today, online, from you (bookmarked or direct type in)

You can’t control or influence why a customer is on your site, but you can attempt to segment them as best you can. For example, you may create different landing pages for affiliates or referrals through coupons and deals sites than for PPC or email offers.

They way you speak to different types of visitors will also depend on why they are at your site. You might consider having a unique landing page for gift card holders, or use a personalization tool recognize a repeat visitor and show recently viewed items on the home page (like Amazon):

How a customer arrived at your site (channel)

• Price comparison engine
• Reviews site
• Affiliate, pre-sold on the virtues of the product
• SEO
• PPC ad
• Email subscriber
• Email forwarded by friend (may not be familiar with your brand)
• Social shopping, browsing Polyvore, for example
• Direct type-in, aware of store already
• Catalog referral
• Television/print

Look at your web analytics for the landing page in question. What’s the top referring channel? Does this channel attract a certain type of shopper? For instance, Microsoft Live search engine offers cash back — is this a bargain shopper? Does this shopper convert higher because they are more likely to be researching an online purchase than researching online to purchase locally?

Even shopping engine users can have different demographics: SHOP.com users are 70% female, and CNet shoppers are more often male. Perhaps landing page copy geared to different sexes would perform better?

Another thing to think about — what’s the poorest performing channel? If your PPC conversion for this page is brutal, it could be your keywords or ad copy are not relevant to the page, or you have a price in the ad copy that is incorrect. It’s also important to look at how the keywords you are bidding on match where a searcher is in the buying process. Bryan Eisenberg had a great article on PPC optimization on GrokDotCom yesterday.

Why the customer wants this product

• Purchase role: gift giver
• Industrial buyer
• Personal
• Necessity vs. Luxury
• Pre-sold, through friend’s recommendation or article, word of mouth
• Read reviews and otherwise came to the conclusion on their own

At certain times of the year (Christmas, Valentine’s, Mother’s Day) you can assume a larger proportion of visitors are buying gifts and you may emphasize gift finders, gift wrap options and shipping cutoff dates more prominently than other times of the year. Or, you may have buying guides for men on a jewelry or women’s clothing store all year round, understanding they may feel lost on your site.

Buyer personality (intrinsic motivators) matched to purchase situation

Based on Future Now’s persuasion architecture, there are 4 general buying modalities customers may fall into based on their personality or based on the nature of a given purchase decision:

• Competitive
• Humanistic
• Methodical
• Spontaneous

Now we’re getting into persona development, understanding different customer segments and covering all your bases with persuasive copy for the different buying modalities. It’s near impossible if not completely impossible to predict an individual visitor’s purchase role and customer personality (with technologies ever improving, we might be able to shortly). But you can optimize your landing pages to “cover all the bases” if you understand what different customer types respond to.

You may be interested in posts we’ve done relating to marketing to various customer types:

Optimizing Product Reviews by Customer Personality

Making Email Creative Enticing to Everyone

Email Subject Lines and Customer Personality

Crutchfield Email Covers 4 Buyer Personalities

Using Twitter for Persona Development

Persuasive optimization is valuable, but I suggest you think about your basics first. Start with your value proposition and present it clearly on your site. Get comfortable with web analytics and use them to extract insights about customer behavior through various channels. Then get down to the final details of testing, tweaking and persuading.

Next Free Ecommerce Webinar…

Selecting the Right Ecommerce Software in Six Weeks or Less

When: January 21st, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelists:
Bill Mirabito, Founder and Principal Analyst, B2C Partners
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend…

You may also like these similar posts:

• Optimizing Product Reviews for Different Buyer Personalities
• Improving Search Results for Research-Online-Purchase-Offline Customers
• In-Store Pickup Tips for Multi-Channel Retailers
• Tips For Converting Last Minute Shoppers
• Crutchfield Email Covers 4 Buyer Personalities

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Lately with the way the economy has been going Americans are trying to cut costs. The first things to go have been the personal luxuries- entertainment subscriptions, dining out, and frivolous shopping just to name a few. But with the holidays just around the corner, this frugal spending is about to […]

Original post by Kate