Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

All online marketers want to make their ecommerce sites better but before embarking on improvements here are a few things worth considering:

If you are looking at your online channel as an extension to your store you are seeing half the picture. Use the online channel for what it is best, use it to do things that were impossible to do offline. Nixonnow.com is my favorite watch site. I recently bought a new watch and would love to know of other people who bought that same model. Here was an opportunity for nixonnow.com to do something online that is impossible offline.

If you think visuals only play a role in making your site pretty you are still looking at half the picture. Visuals also play a role in slowing down users as they move to close their browser window and in the process give your product page few more crucial seconds to make an impression. This is incredibly powerful.

The world of online commerce is changing way too fast and you are understaffed and finite. So instead of spending all your money on one gigantic strategy spend a little on hundred smart ideas. As Guy Kawasaki would say “let a thousand flowers bloom”

Phase 1 – information gathering

- Identify lead users: lead users can be broken into 3 behavioral groups:
— Spenders (in terms of $ spend)
— Influencers (access to other customers/potential customers)
— Evangelists (people who send thank-you notes to you)

- Review eCommerce landscape – look at all the wheels that have already been invented

- Answer the questions:

What is the value of shopping at our site?
Does my site allow customers to manipulate product listings in every possible way?
Are we capturing intent through every action? e.g. forward a friend, email sign-ups etc
Are we presenting products in every possible way? multiple pictures, video etc.
Is our digital store a mere channel extension or a completely new way to shop? What’s unique about woot.com is that they’ve used it to do something that’s impossible offline, thus guaranteeing immunity against hostile offline competitors with deeper pockets.
Are customers aware of all the cool features on our site?
Why would a shopper ever recommend a friend to our site? what are the steps involved in making that recommendation?

Phase 2 – setup

- Setup an experimentation lab – Jeff Bezos believes if a company reduces the cost of experimentation to pennies then it can experiment freely, all day long. I agree.

- Leverage infrastructure strengths – which means if you are a multi channel retailer with retail stores, warehouses, real time inventory systems, robust BI and ERP tools then use them to differentiate/enhance your online strategy.

Phase 3 – ground work

- Initiate dialog: GrokDotCom points out users have low BS tolerance so it’s important to have a dialog that is genuine and respectful of their time:
—What do you like best about X?
—What unadvertised features did you discover?
—Why did you buy through catalog/store/website?

- Unearth key points of differentiation

- Review site analytics data

Phase 4 – brainstorm

- Generate insight – this is the stage when we crunch data. I believe insight lies at the extremities of data: at the individual level (single customer interaction) and at very large numbers level (e.g.: 35% of visitors clicked on ‘add to wish-list’ and then hit back button)

Phase 5 – implementation

- Build a story around customer buying patterns

- Re-filter entire site with the story by updating copy, architecture and even design

Every day I visit one eCommerce site to do a quick audit (against a list of best practices). This morning I visited Bissell.com and found absolutely no shortcomings on their site:

Site traffic: 223,451 unique monthly hits – Good
Site navigation: above average
Product page: has product video – Great
Larger images: check
Features page: well designed numbered feature list
Widgets: compare list – Good
Documentation: positioned at a visible screen location – Good
Outgoing links: I noticed a small error here – product is listed at $169.99 on bissell.com but at $149 at the recommended online retailer – but this is a quick fix

Essentially the site is good, but is matching best practices good enough?

The marketing manager responsible for bissell.com probably does not own their ‘Pet Hair Eraser’ cleaner, nor does the designer who built this page, yet they are responsible for adding features that convert browsers to shoppers.

If I were the marketing manager I’d call or email customers who own the ‘Pet Hair Eraser’ and ask questions like: What about the store/website influenced the sale? – product description, price or a knowledgeable sales person.

I’d also enquire about features they found and liked after making the purchase. Finally, I’d thank them for their time by giving a generous discount on an accessory for their Pet Hair Eraser.

If a retailer wants to see how people are ‘tagging’ their site all they need to do is go to del.icio.us and search for their website. Some interesting examples:

Bluenile.com – This designer believes the site is ‘riff’ worthy. Quite a compliment.

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It’s the end of the year and time for my first Top Online-Offline performers of ‘07 listing.

Criteria – To be on the list companies had to:

- Have ‘07 revenues more than $50 million
- Revenue should have grown more than 15% in the year
- Should have their own offline and online stores

Here are the winners (in random order):

Zumiez Inc. – 235 stores + zumiez.com
Under Armour – 1 store + underarmour.com
Tween Brands Inc. – 730 stores + tweenbrands.com/
Trans World Entertainment Corporation – 950 stores + FYE.com
Toys ”R” Us, Inc. – 840 stores + toysrus.com
Talbots – 1,380 stores + talbots.com and jjill.com

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Holly Buchanan over at grokdotcom.com shared a keen observation in her post today. When she went to Amazon.com the kindle being promoted on her homepage was held by a woman. On my homepage my kindle was held by a man. Fu@$king brilliant.

If you understand your customer’s unarticulated needs new ideas will arise effortlessly. But in order to understand intent one first needs to capture it. Zappos has managed to convert the humble ‘forward to a friend’ into an intent capturing machine. In the example below, by selecting a subject line browsers are identifying their intent:

Low to high, high to low, list by name are all standard product refinement filter options. But for listing sale items an additional option is needed: Discount. The discount option should re-sort the list on the basis of discount, either $ or %.

An example from limitedtoo.com:

Gift shoppers are different. They just want to buy popular products.  So when you lead your gift buying audience to your gift page only list well document, extensively reviewed products.

Golf Galaxy has transformed their homepage to squarely target women shopping for boyfriends and spouses.

I wanted to see how different retailers sold the same product, and so, for the sake of this study, randomly picked the Alpine CDE-9870 car CD system and compared it with 2 retailers specializing in car stereo systems:

- Crutchfield
- Car Toys

Both Crutchfield and Car Toys are established multi-channel players. Crutchfield mails out 6 million catalogs (Source: Hoovers.com) and Car Toys has 50 retail locations (Source: Hoovers.com).

But when it comes to shopping experience the sites could not be more divergent.

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