Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

The purpose of a Pay Per Click (PPC) landing page is to incentivize visitors to get deeper into the site.  Let’s say you want to optimize a PPC landing page and design a completely new layout which you A/B test.  The results show that conversion rates went down a little but 12% more visitors reached product pages.  Should we draw the conclusion that the landing page failed because it didn’t lift sales or should we say it was a success because it brought visitors deeper into the site?  If the landing page brought people deeper but those visitors didn’t convert it means the steps after landing page need to be optimized.

Let’s look at another example.  You want to increase sales of a particular product so you rewrite product description and run an A/B test.  For such a test we should set conversion goal as visits to cart page.  The primary job of the test product description is to inspire visitors to add this item to their shopping cart.

My point is that each test has a very specific purpose and test success should be measured based on how well the variation page is able to complete that purpose.

Everyone knows that when you walk into a casino odds are stacked in favor of the house.   Sure, you could win your first couple of hands but over the long run the house always wins.  The same is true for testing where,

Casino == testing
Casino customer == not testing

How is an ecommerce site like uglyotter.com able to attract 20,000+ unique monthly visitors?

I know it’s a serious business because website inventory is being constantly updated.  Why haven’t they updated their site in 3 years (that’s how long I’ve been tracking them)?  Does their checkout page (https://www.uglyotter.com/secure/sorder.htm) inspire confidence?

My theory– They’re too scared to change anything.  Their web store design has worked for so long that now it’s become sacred.

Every time a visitor enters your site he/she runs through a mental checklist.  Some of the items on this list are:

1. Do I really need to buy this item?
2. Should I buy it now?
3. Is the item priced fairly?
4. Is this retailer credible?
5. Are the terms of purchase favorable?

Even a single “I’m not sure” to a question above could derail the sale.

As marketers we need to ensure:

1. These questions are answered satisfactorily.  Note: Just because the answers are acceptable to you doesn’t mean your potential customers think they’re acceptable.

2. These answers are easily accessible.  Note: Just because these questions are answered somewhere on your site doesn’t mean people are seeing it.  Use analytics to verify accessibility.

I believe these 5 questions are so important that every 2 months you need to draw up a list of reasons why people may answer “I’m not sure” and then enhance your messaging to fix it.

I’ve mentioned in the past that retargeting/remarketing is a big deal.  There is, however, one thing I don’t like about it–  if the ad shows up all the time it starts blending into the background (it becomes noise).  This AWeber ad has been retargeted to me 27 times…

We know shoppers react to urgency.  Infomercials show countdown timers.  This concept needs to be applied to retargeted ads.  Here is a mock-up-

Next time I see this ad 4 (in the message above) will become 3, and then 2 and finally 1.  My hunch is that by adding the countdown AWeber will see higher clickthrough rates.

Note: this isn’t something AWeber could add (even if they wanted to), Google and other retargeting platforms have to add the feature.

Nankin Battery is a one location car/motorcycle battery shop in my neighborhood–

This small business has some serious disadvantages:

1. Higher costs (because of higher per item overhead)
2. Smaller selection (small shop)
3. Limited reach (1 location)

If the business owner spends her entire day stressing over her much larger online competitors she’ll want to shut shop.  But Nankin Battery has some serious advantages too:

1. They can offer free battery status inspection for people who aren’t quite sure if they need a replacement.  Online retailers can’t offer this.
2. They can install the battery for a small fee.  Online retailers can’t offer this.
3. They can greet walk-in customers with a warm smile.
4. They can listen to the customer’s questions and provide customized responses.  Online retailers can only list the product description and hope it answers all shopper questions.
5. They can send their customers a postcard at the 3 year mark asking them to come in for a free battery status inspection.
6. They can handle old battery recycling for customers that purchase a new battery.  Online retailers will need to charge for shipping the heavy battery, which will make the offer unattractive.

Bottom line– If you are exceptional it doesn’t matter if you’re big or small.

1. When a shopper walks into a brick-and-mortar store in their head they’ve pre-allocated time and money investment.  The same phenomenon happens online.

2. Etailer X launched his site in 2003 with 37 pages.  These included product pages, category pages, checkout pages, shipping info, return policy, about us and newsletter sign-up.  With time etailer X learns more about ecommerce and adds a few more pages and widgets (like shipping calculator on product page).  He receives feedback from customers and adds more content on product pages.  He attends a marketing conference, makes a ton of notes and ends up adding pages like customer testimonials, press page, specials page, privacy policy, affiliates page, pop-up homepage offers, etc.  His site now as 75 pages and widgets.  Not only that but pages are getting longer- the product pages have bloated content, return policy page has a growing list of conditions, etc.  Since the initial content was a labor of love it’s hard for etailer X to remove it.  As time goes by more pages and widgets get added (Twitter, Facebook, top sellers, product comparison, etc.).

In point 1 we said shoppers pre-allocate a fixed amount of time and money investment.  This time investment hasn’t increased even though site content has.  The fact is many of these pages and widgets add very little value; some even subtract value through site Exits.  One way to determine the value of a page or widget is by looking at its $ Index (definition).  Pages with extremely low $ Index are like empty calories, they’re no good and should be pruned/tweaked.  If you’ve been adding new content to product pages you can gauge new content effectiveness by studying look-to-book ratio (how many saw product Y page versus units of Y sold) trends.  If look-to-book ratio of the old page is lower that would indicate freshly added content is hurting conversions.  Note: be sure to look at a long enough time horizon when doing such analysis.

I know you love your site, I know it’s a labor of love, but these empty calories are killing conversions.

Most e-tailers understand the power of testing.  The problem is that they hate tests that fail and love those that win.  What they fail to understand is that failing and winning tests in combination make a healthy testing strategy.  I learn more from failing tests because these are the ones where I’m trying truly novel ideas.

I’m currently reading the book The Road Ahead.  Bill Gates wrote the book in 1995.  On page 105 where Bill is peering into the future he says, “Mobile devices will be able to send and receive messages, but it will be expensive and unusual to use them to receive an individual video stream.”

Bill was wrong.  On his journey to becoming the world’s richest man he made 100s of misjudgments.  Had be been hyper focused on avoiding all mistakes I doubt he would have achieved his full potential.

So stop worrying and start celebrating both winners and losers.

Windycityparrot.com is an e-tailer specializing in exotic bird supplies.  Their site is popular but their visit volume represents a tiny sliver of US bird supplies market.  I am sure they would love introducing more customers to their site.

Here is a potential solution.  Who do exotic bird owners know?  That’s right, other exotic bird owners.  Windycityparrot.com should run a small scale experiment-

1. Pull up email addresses of their 100 most loyal customers (ranked by average order value, buying frequency and length of relationship).

2. Around early November send this list an email with a message that boils down to: because you are a valued customer we would like to send a box of 50 complimentary holiday cards.  Click here to pick your favorite design.

3. On click customers are taken to a page with 3 holiday card formats.  Card cover has a beautiful high quality picture of a bird (holiday themed) with a message on the inside.  Message choices vary from generic to funny.  Customers can even mix and match their selection of 50 cards.  The card itself has no branding except for the phrase bit.ly/exoticbird in small font on the back.

4. By the 3rd week of November these customers receive a box of bird holiday cards.

5. They now send their cards to friends and family.

I’m not a printing expert.  I believe bulk buying 5,000 (assuming 100 shortlisted customers) + mailing the card box costs $7,000.  People who visit bit.ly/exoticbird are redirected to http://www.windycityparrot.com/?utm_source=card&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=holiday%2Bcards.  <—This long url tracks card marketing campaign in Google Analytics.  To customize for your site visit http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

200 days later the company logs into Google Analytics, accesses Traffic Sources –> Campaigns report and measures revenue, transaction, conversion and per visit value numbers.  The company already knows new converts have a lifetime value of 3 transactions.  Using this they calculate card campaign net profits.  If ROI is greater than 3x the program is expanded.

Related article: KuKuRuZa Gourmet Popcorn

Fear the *.  One has to wonder, why even have a 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed Return Policy?