Better ROI Guaranteed- Pay Attention to What Shoppers Want

Okay, so what does my previous post on Google, Sesame Street and diminishing (or adapting) attention spans have to do with eCommerce?

Well, for starters, I’d say Google’s always a relevant topic. Google is interesting and innovative, and it’s always fun to watch what the big G is up to.

And on a practical level, which eTailer doesn’t have an Adwords account? Doesn’t spend resources on SEO techniques to get to the top of Google’s organic listings? Google is infinitely relevant to online retailers.

As for diminishing attention spans, being able to recognize the different ways humans adapt to absorbing and interpreting information is key for retailers who want to succeed.

When building an online store, you have to think about how shoppers think AND act, both in the physical and virtual domain. You can start with self-inquiry. How do I notice an item in a bricks-and-mortar store? What draws my attention? What makes me more likely to buy?

Now, online, how do I recreate that level of interest, interaction and engagement? What more can I give my customers in a virtual world?

Sure in a mall, there’s the risk that shoppers can physically transport themselves from store to store if they don’t find what they want or are unhappy with the service, but this requires some actual effort.

Online it’s super easy to leave a store. Another store is just a click away. There is almost no investment required for an individual to jump from store to store (the person does not have to physically move, does not have to say no to an inquiring salesperson, feel personally bad about not making a purchase, etc.). That’s why you need to keep your online shop interesting, engaging and easy-to-navigate.

Force shoppers to pay attention to your wares by making them easy to find. Allow spontaneous purchases with one-click shopping. Keep your site fresh and relevant. Adjust with the times, seasons and your inventory. Incorporate interactivity into your site.

In short, make your online store the kind of place you’d like to be. Or as the title says, pay attention to what shoppers want.

Selling Virtually Nothing for Literally A Lot

How brilliant are the facebook virtual gifts?

Not only do they sell the absolute most random “things”, but they’re all only $1. Who doesn’t think $1’s worth a bit of a laugh at least? It’s the perfect impulse buy.

And apparently, it’s darned lucrative. The gift application is estimated to bring in between $28,500,000 and $43,500,000 in revenues to facebook per year. And since it requires no physical inventory and no actual shipping, it’s pretty much all profit.

But as in any online search and/or shopping scenario, somethings always stay true. As I recently read on CNET News:

“The vast majority of Facebook gifts are bought from the first screen of gifts in the directory–almost 80 percent of the total sales come from the group of the first 20 gifts. This points to the self-reinforcing nature of popularity (the crowdiness of crowds rather than the wisdom of crowds) when popularity data is made public.”

The first sentence is obviously true in any search engine. People tend not to click past the first page of google query results, for example, or purchase items “hidden” further in a store’s online inventory.

Re the attraction of “the crowdiness of crowds” vs. “the wisdom of crowds,” well that’s a philosohpy of its own.

It’s quite likely that facebook virtual gifts do not feature dynamic adjustment to reflect shoppers’ actual purchases. It’s more likely, certainly for the homepage gift offering, that the recommended “product” is one suggested internally by the big brains behind facebook. So this would of course support the crowdiness theory.

On the other hand, google, as far as we know, is more wisdom based, with a fine tuning of display results between links, clicks and relevance.

Either way, it turns out, it’s good to be on top.

The Ultimate Purchase

Retailers have websites for numerous reasons.

Some stores exist only online. Others are in addition to their brick-and-mortars parent company.

Online stores, of all types, should ideally be built to sell. Products should be presented clearly, the site should be searchable, checkout should be painless.

The selling of products is a measurable matrix. You can see how many of each product was sold, how much revenue was generated, the conversion rate, average order size. Bottom-line sales, in other words, are easy to assess based on statistics.

But, as all retailers know, there is more to sales than exactly what is sold. Brand awareness, customer experience, the more esoteric dimensions, are also important.

In fact, as it turns out, particularly so in the world of online shopping.

A recent Neilson Online Study found that 80% buy from a store whose site they previously visited. That is a HUGE conversion rate.

The online/offline connection is especially driven by the fact that nowadays, many consumers do initial research on the web. They may ultimately make a purchase in a bricks-and-mortar store, but it is very likely that the final purchase will be based on information gathered online.

So aside from the fact that you want to be straight-up selling online, if you are indeed a multi-channel retailer, you may want to make sure that your web portal is as informative as possible, providing potential customers with all the types of information they desire, prior to making a purchase.

This includes up-to-date inventory, good product descriptions, interactivity and customer feedback functionality.

Your website is at minimal, another face to your business, if not your business in its entirety.

More can sometimes be too much

While new features can be fun, sometimes all they do is create clutter. As in the offline world, just because a new gadget’s available, it doesn’t mean you necessarily need it. While many add-on products do indeed increase value to your online store, you have to stay aware of your customers’ basic needs and concerns.

While this multichannel merchant article is not new, I think it is still a valuable read. Basically, online shoppers want to find all the information they are looking for in an easily accessible manner. I found Gripe #3 particularly interesting.

And under other gripes, I was pleased to see something for which we have a solution. As the respondent said, “Another thing that makes me leave a Website is if there is no search box, or if the search box says ’search for products’. Sometimes I’m trying to find information other than product information…like shipping rates! Again, the search box should be very visible.” Hey, WE know it!

Au Naturel

I know you already know it, but let’s say it again – natural traffic trumps paid traffic any day, everyday. Not that I needed any further convincing, but saw a nice article about this very matter in InternetRetailing this week. There doesn’t seem to be any way to link directly to the article, so look for a piece entitled “Natural Beats Paid” (May 16, 2008).

And since we’re in the Traffic Builder business….

Only 92% of online stores use paid search?

Usually the words only and 92% don’t work together in a sentence, but I actually find it surprising that only 92% of online retailers use paid search to acquire new customers. It just seems weird to be an online store and not advertising in THE most obvious online way – SEO and paid listings with the major search engines.

The ebusiness article, where I got this stat from, based on a report released by Shop.org and conducted by Forrester Research, goes on to predict huge increases in online retail sales over the next five years.