Ecommerce Blog

We talk about Amazon often here on Get Elastic, because you’ll always find some innovation, design or usability improvement to blog about there.

Amazon sometimes attracts more reviews than customers want to read. So Amazon provides tools to filter reviews by star rating and displays the “most helpful” positive and negative review as determined by Amazon’s community.

Plus, you can also search reviews by keyword.

Which is helpful, because you don’t want to buy a product that sucks unless it’s a vacuum or a Flowbee.

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Original post by Linda Bustos

File this one under “why didn’t I think of that?”

Shoes.com enables customers to ask and answer each others’ questions right on product pages using the Ask & Answer tool from Bazaarvoice.

Considering the popularity of both online forums and product reviews, it makes sense that customers ask and answer questions of each other about a product right on the product page. Shoes.com provides Q&A for every product it carries.

To encourage participation, Shoes.com requests it in a post-purchase email. The questions in the email are specific to the product and based on what would be most helpful to a shoe-buyer: “Do they run wide or small?” or “Are these heels formal enough for the prom?”

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Original post by Linda Bustos

As customer reviews become more and more common on ecommerce sites, we can expect innovations to emerge in design, usability and quality.

It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on Amazon for usability innovations. Today we’ll look at an example of how Amazon helps customers filter product reviews when there are literally hundreds of them. Not only does Amazon help customers hone in on specific types of reviews, it also takes the opportunity to show relevant merchandising based on the customer reviews themselves. In this post I’ll also suggest something that Amazon isn’t doing yet that could help you save sales when review content actually discourages a customer to purchase the item in question.

I’m going to use the example of a book that’s going to be a top-seller on Amazon simply because it’s endorsed by perhaps the most influential television personality in the world - Oprah Winfrey. Most people will not feel the need to read reviews because they trust her opinion so much. Others will be so excited about the book they will read the reviews just to tide them over until the book arrives at their door.

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Original post by Linda Bustos

Here’s a tip on how to turn your customers into blogging evangelists: make it very easy for them to post customer reviews written for your site to their own blogs. Elastic Path is doing this with the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store.

After a customer has filled in his review, there is an option to blog the review, which is a simple process that takes about 30 seconds to port the review right to the blog.

I decided to do the bulk of my Christmas shopping for the family through Olympic Store last year. So I’m going to use an example of one of my own reviews to show you how this works:

After you complete your review you see this screen:

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Original post by Linda Bustos

Kelly Mooney from Resource Interactive recently shared an email her friend received from apparel retailer Boden.

Soliciting customer reviews is a challenge because you want to tread carefully in asking for them. Including an incentive with your request is a good strategy, but some experts advise against offering discounts on future purchases. Jay Shaffer from Power Reviews recommends offering a chance to win something, rather than a $ or % discount which may serve as paid user reviews.

Boden uses this strategy in follow-up emails after a customer has made a purchase.

(click to enlarge image)

Here’s what I believe Boden does well:

• Good subject line. Review your Boden order and enter our prize draw. The subject line communicates exactly what is being asked for, with an incentive to encourage click through. Using the store name in the subject line indicates this is not a “thank-you-for-your-order-that-you-didn’t-make-please-enter-your-credit-card-information-again-to-avoid-deleting-your-account” spam scam.

• Opening the email copy with a “A big hearty thank you” sets a warm tone, and the choice of font sizes add character to the message.

• “Did you know that underneath my ginger head of hair lurks two unusually large ears, which are all the better for listening with?” This is a fantastic intro. The reader gets a humorous image of the writer of the email, while communicating that the sender of the email is personable and genuinely interested in customer feedback.

• “…starting with a chance to win $200 to spend at Boden…” That ain’t a bad prize at all. The link to the terms and conditions is also a good idea.

• “…it takes no time at all…” Reassuring the customer that this is not a labor-intensive task. We know that time is a huge deterrent for signing up for anything or contributing to anything.

• “…it will also help other lovely customers…” Appealing to the altruism of the customer is a good idea, and studies suggest customers love to help each other out.

• The personal signature is a nice touch. It’s coming from a real person, Boden founder Johnnie Boden.

• Images of purchased products and links to where to write a review is great usability and looks nice too.

Boden also solicits customer feedback from its website for a crack at a $500 spree.

Do we give you satisfaction?

We know the Rolling Stones couldn’t get any – but that’s probably because they weren’t shopping at Boden.

We’d really love to know what you think of our website. Please help us improve our service by taking this quick 10-minute survey.

And as a thank you we’ll enter you into a free prize draw to win $500 of Boden clothes.

Thanks very much for your time.

The page links through to a survey customers can do right on the website, using a tool from eCustomerOpinions. Again, Boden injects personality into its web copy, and adds the personal touch from the head of the company. Including the average length of time to complete the survey is another best-practice.

In fact, there’s a lot of light-hearted information about Johnnie Boden on the site. It’s nice to see a family business branded in such a friendly way. There is consistency between web copy and email communication. This warm and fuzzy email might appear less authentic if the website wasn’t the same way.

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Original post by Linda Bustos

Today, we all know how important customer reviews are to retailers and customers alike. They help convert buyers by building trust and confidence in the product, they reduce returns, draw long-tail search traffic and are a simple entry into on-site communities for ecommerce websites.

But there was a time when no one had them. It makes you wonder what we’re missing today that we don’t know we’re missing.

Let’s take another effective merchandising tool: cross-selling. Currently, ecommerce marketers are banking that their personal cross-sell suggestions or algorithmic-based recommendations will be relevant and attractive to shoppers. This *can* be really hit and miss. But what if we gave customers a crack at cross-selling?

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Original post by Linda Bustos

I recently sat in on a Webinar with Lauren Freedman of The Etailing Group and Power Reviews. The Webinar covered a lot of ground, and a companion white paper is available for download if you’d like to drill down into the Webinar’s content.

The Webinar and white paper are based on a study conducted by the Etailing Group involving 1,200 consumers who shop online at least four times per year, and spend $500 or more annually.

We all know review content has many benefits – customer trust, long tail search engine benefits, reduced returns and so on. Customer reviews are a sensible entry into social shopping – the review thread is like an online forum. But populating your site with review content is a challenge for most if not all online retailers. Most customers are annoyed by entering credit card information. How can you motivate them to take time contribute product reviews?

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Original post by Linda Bustos

From Amazon.co.uk:

941 of 947 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good if you need to write on paper, 7 Mar 2007
By M. Williams “Matt Williams” (Essex, England) - See all my reviews

Since taking delivery of my pen I have been very happy with the quality of ink deposition on the various types of paper that I have used. On the first day when I excitedly unwrapped my pen (thanks for the high quality packaging Amazon!) I just couldn’t contain my excitement and went around finding things to write on, like the shopping list on the notice board in our kitchen, the Post-it notes next to the phone, and on my favourite lined ʎ pad at the side of my desk.

My pen is the transparent type with a blue lid. I selected this one in preference to the orange type because I like to be able to see how much ink I have left so that I can put in another order before I finally run out.

When the initial excitement of taking delivery of my new pen started to wear off I realised that I shouldn’t just write for the fun of it, this should be a serious enterprise, so by the second day of ownership I started to take a little more care of what I wrote. I used it to sign three letters, and in each case was perfectly happy with the neatness of handwriting that I was able to achieve.

I have a helpful tip for you that you might not know about - if you let the ink dry for a few seconds you can avoid the smudging that sometimes happens if you rub the ink immediately after writing. Fortunately the ink used in this particular Bic pen seems to dry very quickly.

Via Lonny Paul, who’s posted a couple other good examples of bright Brit Bic reviews.

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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Paul Kapustka