Baby Steps
Few weeks ago I was having an informal chat on online strategy with the owner of Kidbean.com, which is a specialty etailer for organic baby clothes. The site already pulls in thousands of monthly visitors and Melissa (the owner) was not looking for a redesign so we brainstormed on ideas she could implement herself, right now.
As Melissa told me the story of KidBean I got really excited because this completely changed my opinion about the company. Anyone can set up an online store, few have an authentic story. A site visitor could visit “About Us” to hear snippets of her story but we wondered if we could summarize it (elevator pitch style) and place it right on the homepage for everyone to see. The other nugget to jump out was that kidbean.com doesn’t carry brands that fail their fair labor, environmental, veganism, and safety standards. This was a huge ‘aha’ moment because it completely changes the context of kidbean.com. It’s no longer just a store where people add products to a cart but rather a filtering system that hand picks products for a very specific customer profile (Vegans). Kidbean.com helps parents save time by performing the filter function for them. This adds a premium value to the store but a first time visitor has to dig to discover this differentiator. We decided to include this page link (in bold) as part of the homepage elevator pitch content. 10 minutes after our call Melissa had implemented the changes and the test was officially live. In essence, all she did was add a snippet of text to the homepage. One month later I inquired about results and received this email:
PS: I have the store owner’s permission to reproduce this email.
Brick & Mortar eCommerce
Yesterday the eBay Mobile Boutique pulled into Michigan Avenue to give brick and mortar shoppers a taste of eCommerce…
Front of eBay Mobile Boutique. People in green jackets are the friendly staff!
People shopping inside eBay Mobile Boutique
Back of the eBay Mobile Boutique truck
Back front
Capturing Intent
Like most e-tailers overstock.com suffers from the 3% conversion infection. I don’t actually know their conversion rate but let’s just go with the industry standard here.
We know everything about the 3% that transacted but very little about the 97% that didn’t. Yes, we could study their click trails but that’s indirect evidence.
Overstock’s solution- A big, prominent, inviting search box:
Now I don’t have access to their metrics but am willing to bet an impressive number use the search box. This might not improve conversion rates directly but now Overstock knows what a vast majority of visitors came looking for. They’ve extracted intent. Intent is not as valuable as a sale but definitely more valuable than $0.
Related articles: Discovering New Categories, What Do Customers Want?
A Special Retailer
I caught this video via Seth who caught it via David:
As a customer these are the experiences we crave.
Email Practices Top Retailers Shop.Org
Hat tip to Jason Billingsley for sharing and Loren McDonald for creating. Presentation below…
Steal Of The Day
What I like about this execution is that eBags lists how many other people are looking at the 15 remaining bags– 653.
Overstock.com Sponsored Links
I’m hoping my smart readers can help me out here. Why does Overstock.com carry Sponsored Links? Is it a good revenue stream? Do you think this is a good strategy?
A screenshot:
PS: I Love You. Get Your Free Email at Hotmail.
Viral Loop is a new book by Adam L. Penenberg. I’ve not read it yet but did go through the author’s guest post on TechCrunch.com (article link). The Hotmail story is relevant to BetterRetail. A summary:
Hotmail initially raised money through the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. While considering advertising Hotmail founder suggested billboards. Draper (founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson) suggested putting PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail at the bottom of every email. The Hotmail team did not like this approach and didn’t include it in launch. Hotmail.com launched Independence Day 1996 and was adding couple of hundred users a day. Draper still insisted on adding PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail. Finally, the Hotmail team agreed; though they dropped the PS: I love you bit.
The impact was almost instantaneous. Within hours Hotmail’s growth took on the shape of a classic hockey stick curve. They started averaging 3,000 users a day, compounded daily. By Labor Day they registered 750,000 users and within six months they were up to 1 million. Five weeks after that they hit the 2 million user mark, adding more than 20,000 signups a day.
The rest is history.
CASE STUDY: SeaEagle.com
There are hundreds of ecommerce best practices, and it’s hard to remember all of them.
SeaEagle.com embodies the spirit of BetterRetail. If you are new to BetterRetail no need to read archived posts– just head over to www.seaeagle.com. Five minutes on the site will give you new insights for your own store.
Features I like best
- “180 day trial & FREE SHIPPING ON ALL BOATS” available through 10/31/2009. Time limit on offer encourages visitors to take action. If they don’t want to add to cart they can easily call their toll free number:
- Header
- Allows customers to self-segment:
- Fantastic use of customer testimonials (written and video) and loads of customer submitted “in use” photos:
- Video confidence builder:
- Advertisement confidence builder:
- Multiple micro-conversion opportunities:
micro-conversion 2
Micro-conversion 1
- Amazing product pages. Let’s review this page as an example: http://www.seaeagle.com/MotorMountBoats.aspx?cl=HomePage.
1. Great tittle: “Ideal for Fishermen & weekend Boaters on a budget”
2. Quick bullets for competitive shoppers:
Quick Bullets
3. Emphasis on limited time sale offer for impulsive shoppers:
Instance 1
Instance 2
4. Lots of customer submitted “in use” pictures + testimonials for humanistic shoppers:
Testimonial
5. Lots of content + downloadable PDF spec sheets for methodical shoppers.
[Note: To learn more about humanistic, methodical, impulsive and competitive shoppers head over to grokdotcom.com ]
6. Product pages have been cleverly constructed for all kinds of potential buyers:
a.) SE 9 Startup Package for first time buyers
b.) SE 9 Fisherman’s Dream Package for the serious fisher
c.) SE 9 Motor Package for premium buyers
Let’s review the first time buyer experience. This is the product page:
Everything here is perfect but what I find particularly innovative is that Sea Eagle understands a first time buyer might be interested in a used boat. They even show how many they have in stock (3) and give great reason to buy one:
Why buy used?
7. Final reassurance on add to cart:
Final reassurance
Other Case Study: Moosejaw.com
Email Frequency
When people sign-up for a newsletter their biggest fear is getting too many emails. Safetystore.com does a good job addressing this concern:
betterretail