Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

Saw a great video interview on Dr. Ralph Wilson’s site with Brad Geddes.  Brad talks about using search queries to discern user intent and provides a fantastic example:

A search for “candle burning times” indicates a person who needs more infomation before making a purchase. Instead of sending them to a product page, provide the information they need, then send them to the appropriate product. Take time to provide needed information before asking for the sale.

The specific suggestion not included in this quote is to create a landing page with a table that shows different burn times for different types of candles in your inventory.  This content can then be linked to your various product pages.

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?

While on the oakley.com I wanted to check out what they had for prescription glasses so I went to their search box and keyed in “prescription”.  The results page highlighted a related New Release, Top Seller and Featured Item.  Brilliant idea.  Below that they also presented a result set of 96 items:

Much later, after several other clicks, I discovered Oakley also has a homepage for prescription glasses, see below:

What I don’t understand is why my search couldn’t just take me to this page.

The oddest thing happened today. I was looking up traffic data for vosgeschocolate.com on compete.com and happened to notice the top 5 keywords that drive traffic to the site (look under Search Analytics in the image below).

I did a double take on noticing two of the most popular terms were chocolate + “hacker safe” and boxed chocolate + “hacker safe”. Though initially shocked I quickly realized people really are smart, this search term speaks volumes about factors people consider when searching online. Just a gentle reminder to never assume anything.

My girlfriend complains that I nitpick a lot, and she is right, but as an observer in the world of eCommerce I see many instances where marketers fail to take money from eager customers.

Today I came across a documentary called “Pitch People” and after seeing the trailer I decided to see if Netflix carried it. They didn’t. But even if they didn’t carry the movie I feel this was an opportunity for NetFlix to say “Hey Rishi, while we don’t carry Pitch People we think you might like this other documentary on the history of selling”. Or something like that.

Is it complicated to set up such a system? Sure. Would it make me buy more? Definitely.

Alternative: “We expect to get this title soon.  Please drop your email address to be the first to know when it becomes available.”

While I’m nitpicking, I might as well do some more. According to Internet Retailer limogesjewelry.com is a top 10 jewelry site. I performed a search for ‘blank bracelet’ (and other related terms) and received a ‘no matches’ message. Bracelets is a big category on their site and while I understand they don’t carry non-inscribed bracelets I feel they could have handled my query better. For example, they could have said “While we don’t carry blank bracelets we do have some pretty cool inscribed ones, shown here” or “while we don’t carry non-inscribed bracelets other online retailers like x.com and y.com do. For any future need for personalized jewelry do give us a visit”

In his book Meatball Sundae Seth Godin lists a list:

Anti-bush
Army wife
Autism
Costume alternatives
Dance
Kakopelli
Marines
Nuclear
Vegetarian
Weenies

These (in alphabetical order) are the top 10 searches on cafepress.com, the 284th most popular website in the world.

No tee shirt retailer could have predicted this is what customers wanted.

What cafe press has done is flip the product development model. Instead of guessing what customers want and then promoting it like crazy cafepress.com can sit back and listen to their customers long before sending orders to their printing shop.

So what lesson does this list have for retailers?

Retailers that just want to use their online store to sell more of what they sell offline are completely missing out on the new paradigm of commerce. They need to look at the web as an opportunity because this is the first time they can listen to their customers, not just focus groups and survey respondents, but their entire customer base. Those who make sense of their customer chatter will be the giants of tomorrow.

Related post: Discovering New Categories

Marketers review searches on their eCommerce sites fairly regularly. The modus operandi is to redirect ‘0 results found’ terms to appropriate pages. While this is a good strategy it does not leverage on the wisdom of crowds. To really get a sense of what the query intended I would take that search term and paste it on Google to see what pops up.

I bought convertible mittens (this is how I describe them) from my local Macy’s but when I performed that search on their site got no results. Click on the images below to see the ‘live’ pages:

I certainly cannot expect Macys.com to know the meaning of my made up term convertible mittens but I knew some smart online marketer would understand it so I performed the same search on Google and instantaneously found multiple exact results:

Retailers could greatly improve sites search results if they ran ‘0 results found’ on Google before pointing them to specific product pages.

PS: Just in case you were wondering what convertible mittens are here is an image:

Other articles about onsite search: Top sellers, Top seller lists

Recently, Hallmark started promoting their ‘Cards With Sound’ line. I happened to be at a Hallmark store so I opened the 40 year old virgin and Napoleon dynamite cards and found them so hilarious I bought both. This is astonishing because I completely fall out of the card buying demographic. When checking out I casually asked if regular postage would work but was told I’d have to go to the post office for postage. Why can’t hallmark pre-stamp cards or at least indicate postage? I would be happy to pay for additional postage, I’m just not a huge fan of walking to the post-office in the snow.

PS: The cards I bought at the store are not available online, why is that Hallmark?

Fact 1: 40% of all visitors use insite search

Fact 2: Shoppers are concerned about return policy of retailers

Therefore, at least a few shoppers use onsite search to review a retailers return policy.

Lets see how most eTailers performed…….

- Bed Bath and Beyond
- Sears.com
- Backcountry.com
- Dell.com
- BestBuy.com
- Staples.com
- Cafepress.com
- Barnes and Noble
- Shoes.com
- CircuitCity.com

When a customer searches for the term ‘top sellers’ take them to the top seller section, don’t throw a random list, it does not inspire me to buy.

Related example: Top sellers lists, Re-pointing bad results