Posts Tagged ‘ecommerce’
January 16th, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
The holiday shopping season resulted in as much as $43.4 billion in sales for online retailers. But a study performed by The Adcom Group for Virtual Hold Technology (VHT) suggests that number could have been much higher if consumers hadn’t struggled with a variety of obstacles to completing the online sale.
The study found that more than three-fourths of online shoppers ran into shopping roadblocks when they had a problem completing the purchase, but couldn’t find help online. A similar number reported that this frustration led them to give up entirely and abandon their online shopping cart.
What specific issues were causing problems?
- Problems correctly reading and using the captcha – 80.3 percent
- Trouble using promo codes, gift card redemption, or with other discount – 46 percent
- Product was back-ordered – 32.5 percent
- Had questions about product features and had difficulty finding answers - 31 percent
- The site timed out (or appeared to) – 30.5 percent
- Had problems logging onto the site, setting up your account or remembering your password – 29.3 percent
- Had questions about shipping and had difficulty finding answers – 24.7 percent
- Had problems entering credit card data or with credit card acceptance -22.6 percent
- Had questions about product availability and had difficulty finding answers – 20.1 percent
- Had problems re-setting your password – 18.9 percent
- Had questions about the return policy and had difficulty finding answers – 15.9 percent
Here’s the really scary part: When faced with these problems, more than 37 percent of customers just give up, and 25.5 percent head to a competitor.
How could online retailers help combat the problem of abandoned shopping carts? Rapidly resolving the problems that get in the way of buying was the number-one answer. Customers overwhelmingly said they would buy more from a site that offered the ability to click or tap to get immediate customer service assistance. In fact, more than three-fourths said they would prefer a site that offered this convenience to a competing site that didn’t.
Providing better customer service would not only drive customers to complete purchases, but also inspire new business. Over half of survey respondents said they would become promoters of brands that offered the ability to click or tap for customer service, and that they would refer others to the brand, website or mobile app.
Of course, many of the issues mentioned above could be solved with a robust set of FAQs that’s easy to find on your site. Make sure FAQs about issues such as shipping, return policies and more are clearly visible on every page of your site navigation.
You can download the full results of the study at www.virtualhold.com/onlineshopping.
Image by Flickr user zion fiction (Creative Commons)
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Tags: ecommerce, sales process, small business, Technology, website design
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January 8th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
Clipix
Black Friday online sales numbers prove ecommerce is alive and thriving, but why would consumers pick your website over a competitor’s? Clipix can help consumers remember your site and keep them coming back to shop again. For consumers, Clipix is a private bookmarking tool that lets consumers set Price Drop Alerts, an innovative feature that monitors real-time discounts on the items sold on your website. By adding the Clipix icon to your site, you’re encouraging shoppers to bookmark your page to their personal shopping lists. And if a Price Drop Alert is received, the customer is linked directly to your checkout page at no cost to you (the online retailer).
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January 8th, 2013 :: Karen Axelton
By Karen Axelton
While social media may get all the buzz in the marketing world, when it comes to boosting ecommerce sales, statistics show that email is still more effective. Data from trade organization the Direct Marketing Association show that email outperforms social media advertising by three to one when measured in sales per advertising dollar spent. This year alone, during the key Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, the number of online shoppers who bought something after visiting an ecommerce site from a social networking site declined by 26 percent compared to 2011, IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark reported. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, “social sales” accounted for less than 0.5 percent of all online sales.
How can you make your email marketing messages more effective?
- Target your messages. A generic email blast about a sale won’t be as effective as specific emails targeted to different consumer groups based on their behavior. You can target emails based on what consumers have done in the past (such as past purchases) or what they’ve browsed on your site recently.
- Whet shoppers’ appetites. Limited-time offers still work well to drive shoppers from your email message to your website. “Today Only,” “Just 3 Hours Left” or other subject lines that convince customers they’d better act now are a good way to get shoppers to click through.
- Use landing pages. Be sure when shoppers click through your emails they don’t just go to your home page. Create a landing page designed for that specific email that includes strong calls to action to persuade customers to act. For instance, an email touting a sale on children’s clothing should go directly to your children’s clothing sale page.
- Don’t let shopping carts sit abandoned. Many customers put items in their shopping carts, then don’t check out. Set triggered emails to remind customers of their waiting items or update them when a price has changed on something in their cart.
- Use cookies and online advertising. Use cookies to track customer activity on your site. Then when customers browse your site, you can serve up ads later on unrelated sites for the products they viewed on yours. This is a great tactic to keep your website and your products top-of-mind until customers are ready to buy.
- Be aggressive about retaining your email list. Instead of a simple “unsubscribe” option, consider offering a range of choices on your unsubscribe page. For instance, some e-tailers ask customers if they’d like to see the emails less often, such as once a month instead of once a week. You can even set up your unsubscribe to ask customers if they want to take a break (such as three months off) from emails before receiving them again.
Image by Flickr user Jonathon Narvey (Creative Commons)
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Tags: ecommerce, Email marketing, Marketing, small business, Technology
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January 7th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
Google Translate
Les tailles sont sur le petit côté. If you plan to sell products or services overseas, don’t assume all your customers speak English or you could be turning away a lot of interested customers. (The phrase means “Sizes run on the small side,” by the way.) Google Translate is a free translation service that provides instant translations between 64 different languages. By looking at patterns in hundreds of millions of documents, it decides on the best translation and can translate words, sentences and Web pages. By simply adding a Google Translate embed code to your website, you make it easy for customers to choose the language they would like your website translated to.
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January 7th, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
It used to be that if you had a brick-and-mortar retail store, you eventually added ecommerce capabilities. But now that so many retail businesses are starting out as online-only, a new trend is taking place. The New York Times recently reported that a growing number of online-only retailers are opening brick-and-mortar stores to capture more business and enhance their brands. Should you consider this move?
Obviously, this approach isn’t right for every company. Here are some questions to ask if you’re considering whether a brick-and-mortar store is right for you:
- Is your product tactile or unique? Clothing and apparel stores are naturals for this type of brand extension, as shoppers want to touch, feel and try on the merchandise.
- Can you find a small space? Most ecommerce sites that open brick-and-mortar stores aren’t going big, but are considering the retail space as a brand extension or showroom. Others are creating pop-up stores that open temporarily for special occasions such as the holiday shopping season.
- Can you make it special? A real-world store needs to offer an “experience” to resonate with shoppers, so think about what you can offer in your physical store that you can’t do online.
- Do you have an avid customer base? If most of your shoppers come from one part of the country, such as New York City, it might make sense to open a shop there.
- Are my sales strong enough to support a retail store? A track record of online sales success will give you an edge in getting a lease and financing for opening a store.
While most of the companies mentioned in the Times article are big chains with deep pockets (such as Gap’s Piperlime division and eBay), there are others that started with entrepreneurial roots, such as eyeglasses retailer Warby Parker and apparel company Bonobos. The Times notes that companies that starting out as an online-only retailer gives you a different perspective on brick-and-mortar sales. For instance, at the Bonobos stores, customers make appointments to come in so the shop can operate with very limited staff. Stores operate as “showrooms” with clothes in all styles, but limited sizes and colors. Customers try items on for size, then clerks order the product online for them and have it delivered the next day.
Increasingly, consumers are expecting online and offline retail to blend together in a seamless experience, and that’s what this new breed of brick-and-mortar stores is doing.
Image by Flickr user jheffreyswidTM Design (Creative Commons)
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December 31st, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
Are you a brick-and-mortar retailer who also has a website to sell your products? Wouldn’t it be great if you could get more customers shopping at both your physical store and your website? You can. Just learn a lesson from what some of the nation’s most successful retailers are doing to market their products in multiple channels.
Internet Retailer recently examined the habits of some of the nation’s top retail chains and here are the most common tactics they found:
Promote in-store only discounts or deals on your website or via email marketing. For instance, you can email a coupon good only in your store (but include links to your website so customers can shop both ways).
Offer online ordering with in-store pickup. This appeals to customers who are in a rush to get the product or don’t want to pay for shipping. More retailers are offering shorter time frames for in-store pickup, such as Staples, which promises to have shoppers’ orders ready in two hours. If you make such a promise, be sure you have the manpower to fulfill it.
Offer online ordering and in-store payment. Some consumers still don’t feel comfortable using credit cards online or prefer to pay in person for other reasons. You can attract those users by enabling them to reserve a product online, then pick it up and pay in-store.
Do a subtle upsell. Apple, for instance, urges customers to shop online but then come into a store to pick up the product and get “personal assistance.” If your product, like Apple’s, is one where customers could benefit from additional assistance, this approach can get them to come in and spend more in-store than they might have online.
If you’re offering the pickup or pay-in-store option, make sure the area where customers go to pick up their products is merchandised attractively. For example, you could display items related to commonly ordered products (such as cords or accessories if you sell electronics) or impulse buys such as gift wrap or small-ticket items.
Make sure your website has multiple ways for users to find your physical store/s, such as a map and directions, address, and a phone number to contact you. Also make certain that information about days and hours you’re open is prominently displayed.
Increasingly, consumers expect a seamless experience that allows them to shop how and when they want, so make sure your website encourages shopping in any possible sales channel.
Image by Flickr user Jamison_Judd (Creative Commons)
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Tags: ecommerce, Marketing, online marketing, sales process, small business
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November 12th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
Good news for ecommerce retailers: This holiday season, more Americans plan to shop online than will shop at brick-and-mortar stores. While 92 percent of Americans will do holiday shopping, according to SOASTA’s 2012 Holiday Readiness survey, 75 percent of those say they will shop online and 69 percent will shop in physical stores (of course, there’s some overlap here).
Of the 75 percent who say they plan to shop online, here’s how they’ll do it:
- through their home computer (69 percent)
- through their work computer (17 percent)
- through an app or website through their tablet (44 percent)
- through their smartphone (34 percent)
Shoppers have high expectations of ecommerce sites. Three-fourths of adults in the survey think stores should have specific “Cyber Monday” websites, able to handle tons of holiday shopping traffic, and 73 percent say that stores should have a dependable smartphone or tablet shopping app that makes mobile shopping reliable and easy.
The weak economy is one key reason Americans will be shopping more online this year, according to another recent survey from SOASTA. Some 51 percent of respondents in that poll said the economy is motivating them to shop online more often than in physical stores. Respondents aged 18 to 44 and women were most likely to say this.
Why are shoppers heading online? More than two-thirds (71 percent) of respondents believe they can find better and/or more deals online than they can in physical stores. With rising gas prices, 53 percent say they don’t want to spend money on gas to drive from store to store. Thirty-two percent of holiday shoppers say shopping online makes it easier for them to track spending and stay within their holiday budget; 20 percent want to use cash-back websites like Ebates to save even more money. One in five say they’re working such long hours, they have no time to visit physical stores. Finally, nearly one-third (31 percent) are worried that the bad economy will “bring out the crazy” in shoppers at physical stores, and want to avoid dealing with this.
Clearly, shoppers have plenty of reasons for heading online—good news for ecommerce merchants this holiday season. To prepare:
- Make sure your site is ready to handle heavy traffic. Test now to avoid problems later.
- Offer deals and discounts, since even online, shoppers are still cost-conscious.
- Use marketing emails to highlight key reasons shoppers indicate they’re heading online, such as convenient 24/7 shopping.
- If you haven’t already done so, consider developing a mobile app to drive even more traffic to your site.
Image by Flickr user Anastassia (Creative Commons)
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November 9th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
U.S. retailers have high hopes for the upcoming holiday shopping season, and are spending accordingly on their marketing programs to make sure they grab their share. According to a new survey from Retail Systems Research and Bronto Software, more than 20 percent of U.S. retailers say they plan to significantly increase their spending on mobile, social or email marketing channels this year. An additional 22 percent will slightly increase their marketing budgets.
Overall, retailers are very optimistic about the coming holiday, with 68 percent projecting their sales to increase compared to last year. Of those, almost one-fourth believe that their sales will increase by over 50 percent.
Email, mobile and social media marketing channels are all top concerns for retailers this year, with a full 20 percent of respondents planning to allocate more than half of this year’s holiday marketing budget to one or more of these channels. However, out of the three, email is by far the most important for retailers, with a whopping 87 percent using it and more than 50 percent saying they will send more marketing emails this year than they did in 2011.
To prepare for this massive email marketing push, retailers have been spending money on:
- Subscriber acquisition (46 percent)
- Automated/triggered messages (43 percent)
- Personalization (36 percent)
- Segmentation (21 percent)
Other areas where retailers have invested in the past year to improve their service and operations include:
- New email service provider (50 percent)
- Mobile applications (49 percent)
- New ecommerce platform (46 percent)
- Mobile website optimization (43 percent)
“While email is a more established channel and has inherent technologic advantages for communicating with consumers, marketers are getting ready to use mobile and social to break out of the pack,” said Joe Colopy, CEO of Bronto Software, in announcing the results.
Free shipping is the main promotional tool that retailers will use this holiday season; all of the companies surveyed say they will offer some form of free shipping. How will ecommerce retailers lure customers back to abandoned shopping carts? Some 43 percent say they will use an email message offering free shipping, and 35 percent will use percentage-off or dollar-off emails.
Although this survey focused on large retailers, knowing what tactics the “big guys” are planning for the holidays can help you determine your own business’s marketing strategy. How will you beat the giants this holiday shopping season?
Image by Flickr user ccarlstead (Creative Commons)
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Tags: ecommerce, Email marketing, holiday 2012, retailers, small business, social media
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October 22nd, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
While the surging cost of gasoline and the upcoming presidential election are still wild cards that could affect holiday spending, so far the retail outlook for 2012 is positive, according to a Deloitte forecast.
Total holiday sales are projected to reach between $920 billion and $925 billion, a 3.5 to 4 percent increase in holiday sales (November through January) compared to last year. Although that forecast is below last year’s increase of 5.9 percent, Deloitte is also predicting an increase of 15 to 17 percent in non-store sales. Three-fourths of that is online; the rest are from TV and mail order catalogs.
Not only are nonstore sales outpacing overall retail growth, Deloitte says, but they are increasingly influencing what consumers do in-store. “From trip planning, to in-store product research, [to] post-purchase reviews and sharing, this holiday season, retailers’ most lucrative customers may be the ones they engage across physical and virtual storefronts,” said Alison Paul, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and retail and distribution sector leader.
Consumers will still be price-conscious this year, making your digital marketing and retailing strategy even more important. What do you need to know?
- Offer more price transparency. Your pricing should be the same across mobile, online and in-store channels.
- Get mobile. Deloitte says mobile-influenced retail store sales will account for 5.1 percent, or $36 billion, in retail store sales this year during the holiday season. Even if you don’t yet offer m-commerce, make sure consumers can find your store on local search, ratings and review sites, and that your website is mobile-friendly so customers can find the information they need.
- Don’t fear showrooming. Deloitte reports that shoppers who have smartphones are actually 14 percent more likely to make a purchase in the store than those who don’t use smartphones in-store. Make sure you engage with smartphone-toting shoppers to answer any questions they have and provide relevant information.
- Use analytics. Pay more attention than ever to how customers are getting to your business website, where they’re coming from and what they’re doing while they’re there. Tweak your site as needed to drive purchasing and respond to customer needs.
Image by Flickr user Steve Snodgrass (Creative Commons)
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October 15th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
Good news for ecommerce retailers: Online shopping is projected to grow by 20 percent this holiday season as compared to 2011, according to a Citi Research study reported by AllThingsD. But before you rub your hands together in glee, know that the reason for the increase is because there are two more days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year—so Americans will have more time to shop.
Of course, that doesn’t mean ecommerce isn’t growing. Citi says ecommerce is seeing significant increases, as more consumer spending moves from offline to online. However, the report did offer a reality check: As of last year, ecommerce made up just 8 percent of overall retail sales, with 90 percent or more of retail sales taking place offline.
While the effect of social media and mobile devices on consumers’ holiday shopping habits is making news this year, Citi’s report reminded retailers that these areas are still growing slowly. For instance, it cites Forrester data that smartphones will account for 3 percent of e-commerce this year, then grow to 7 percent by 2016. Given that mobile and social are still emerging areas of shopping, Citi urges ecommerce companies not to get distracted by mobile and social at the expense of their core technologies.
What should you do to make sure your ecommerce house is in order?
- Test your site. Make sure the nuts and bolts are working and that load speeds are up to par.
- Help ‘em out. Can consumers quickly see how to contact you (by email, phone or chat) in case of a question or problem? Can they easily find shipping rates, tax info and other things they want to know before they buy? Shoppers are busy, so keep it simple.
- Integrate. If you have a brick-and-mortar location in addition to your ecommerce site, make sure the two are integrated. Do consumers see the same prices in-store as online? Make sure your databases sync properly so they don’t see price variations.
- Offer choice. Consumers have myriad shopping options this season, so make sure you offer them lots of choices. Can they order online and return or pick up in-store? Can they search your site in-store for a product that’s not on the shelf, and have it shipped?
A separate Deloitte forecast predicts holiday sales of $920 billion to $925 billion, or a 3.5 to 4 percent increase compared to last year, but warns that rising gas prices could put a crimp in sales. With customers still watching their wallets, the key to retail and e-tail success this season is what it’s always been: Make it as easy as possible for customers to buy from you, not from the other guy.
Image by Flickr user Mae Armstrong (Creative Commons)
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