Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

This e-tailer has discovered a genius tactic to engage visitors and get them to click Google+ button–

Dynaspy.com gives visitors a $1 discount for liking dynaspy.com on Facebook–

HeartlandAmerica.com has a pretty persuasive call to action:

I took this screenshot on 6/8.

The Post-it note below ADD TO ORDER gives the impression this is a one day only deal, after all, it’s a graphical element.  Because it’s easy to edit HTML text skeptical shoppers might expect plain text version of 6/8 Order TODAY and receive FREE SHIPPING* to be computer generated.  Graphical elements, on the other hand, seem harder to manipulate, which is why the 6/8 offer looks special.  But here is a screenshot of the same page the next day:

And the day after that:

Here is the live ad today.  You get the picture.  This whole thing is automated.  But it seems pretty impressive.  Unlike me, most web shoppers aren’t returning multiple days to see if the day counter is automated.

Many e-tailers have a virtual greeter on their homepage:

What’s unique about how supportsockshop.com uses their virtual greeter is this: on your first visit the greeter reads a standard welcome script, lists brands carried by supportsockshop.com and assures lowest prices.  But if you exit and return her message changes to, “Still browsing? Confused about different compression levels and styles? Call us toll-free at (877) 330-5900.  Speak to our experienced certified fitters.  I’m very confident you will get all your questions answered.”

In the first visit the visitor is encouraged to buy via supportsockshop.com.  In the second visit the site assumes the visitor is experiencing some degree of uncertainty (maybe they’re uncomfortable buying online, maybe they’ve visited other sites and seen comparable prices or maybe they’re overwhelmed by the number of available options) so the greeter shifts her focus to getting the shopper to speak on the phone with their certified fitters.

Basically they set a cookie during the first visit.

What I don’t like is that the second message is triggered by a repeat visit, even if it happens immediately.  I would have set a cookie and triggered the second message only after a fixed time lapse (maybe 5 minutes or more).

Customer service is your most powerful department–

In the book Mind Programming author Eldon Taylor shares his experience selling sewing machines using bait-and-switch:

It started with an offer too good to be true.  In the 1960s credit depended upon a deposit– a down payment of 10% in those days.  Credit was freely available.  Getting the down payment became the most difficult part of making a sale, so the company I worked for designed a system to obtain this fee.

How was this done?  Prospects entered contests.  A drawing at the local grocery store, a “count the hidden faces” challenge in the Sunday paper, and various other media served this purpose.  Someone received a first prize.  Everyone else won second prize, a coupon worth $170 toward the purchase of a new sewing machine, nationally advertised for only $199.99.  We could show these “winners” the ad, usually in a popular home magazine.  For only $29.99 everyone in second place could enjoy the benefits of owning a new sewing machine.  Such a deal!

The machine available for purchase for $29.99 was a piece of junk.  In the trunk of my car, however, was a new, top-of-the-line machine, advertised nationally at $499.  If you were a second-place winner, by trading in the shoddy machine you’d just purchased, this superior model could be yours for an additional $299.  And you’d already paid the 10% deposit of $29.99.  Therefore, you’d only pay $10 per month until you’d paid off the additional $299.  Even though you only spent $29.99 for the first machine, you received its fully nationally advertised price as the trade-in value.  Wow- what a deal!

This means of selling worked so well that it became illegal.  You may have guessed that the national ads existed only for this purpose.  No one ever actually tried to buy one of these machines at the inflated price in the advertisement.

Google Analytics can segment traffic from social networks and show what % of new visitors arrive via that channel + how much revenue those visitors generate.  If for your site social network channel is profitable but brings in only a small % of new visitors then you should consider what renewlife.com is doing–

On click pop-up–

It’s a simple plug-in tool by socialannex.com.

I, and 15,000 other people, were winners–

Have you considered testing this idea on your site?

You are a gourmet chocolatier.  You open Google Analytics, access Map Overlay report and segment by Transactions.  On the screen appears a heat-map of purchase data.  States that are dark green have had heavy transactions and light green states have slow activity.  You can see Michigan is a strong base, Texas and California are fairly good but Utah and Indiana are poor.

Next you open your sales data and notice something interesting– when a new order happens in a city it often leads to more local customer orders.  This tells me word-of-mouth is spreading locally.

In the book Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell describes how phenomena grow slowly for a while and then explode.  The number of orders we’ve had in Michigan suggests we might have reached a tipping point there, but it’s clear we have ways to go in Utah.

Our chocolatier has a limited marketing budget and we want to get the most bang for the buck.  The company is willing to give a generous 50% discount for 1,000 new visitors.  We know Michigan has crossed inflection point so no need to give additional discounts here but I’d be willing to entice a visitor from Utah with a 50% discount.  Thanks for Geo IP we can target in this manner.

Have you heard of RipStiks?

For teenagers in my neighborhood this the rage.  I’ve probably seen 15 kids play around in them.  My hunch is this is a social phenomenon.  At some point four kids in the neighborhood got the board and then everyone had to have it.  The houses in my neighborhood fall within one zip code.  For the marketing manager at RipStik this is a gold mine.  She has access to the sales data and can sort that entire database by zip code.  Using this data along with available school district/income/family demographic data she can identify zip codes where they’ve sold less than three units.  That list of zip codes is where we need to offer visitors discounts using Geo IP.  Once we reach four orders from a zip code discount is turned off for that zip code.  The idea is to only offer the discount till we reach inflection point.

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