Developing a Winning Ecommerce Strategy
One bright spot on the economic horizons around
the world seems to be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is clearly a
part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9 Billion in the next
three months according to ACNielsen. But, there is a dark cloud hovering over
this sunny ecommerce landscape called poor web site design. Let's explore some
of the reasons why consumers are not reaching for their credit cards after
perusing an ecommerce web site.
There is a huge knowledge gap about how the web is really driving online and
offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulse survey of more than 33,000 surfers
conducted by Nielsen/Net ratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce
sites are driving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail store sales)
than online. Many consumers are using the web to effortlessly compare features
and pricing - then, calling the company or visiting their local retail store to
make a purchase. Clearly many companies need to factor this information in when
analyzing their online and offline marketing expenditures and related ROI.
According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Report released earlier
this summer over $25 Billion (USD) was lost in ecommerce due to users abandoning
the web site prior to a purchase being made or during the process. The users
just gave up because the load times (the amount of time it takes a page to be
displayed in a browser) were painfully slow. Today's online shoppers aren't a
real patient group, they want information presented in 12-18 seconds, or they
are off to another site that works
Unfortunately many firms have allocated a disproportionate amount of resources
for advertising and not enough on good web site design and back end
infrastructure. It's critical to make the market aware of a site, but if the
potential customers are not presented with the right navigation and menus (read
information architecture) they will not buy. Case in point, according to recent
Dataquest surveys (and others) between 20-40% of most users don't purchase
because they can't figure out how to easily move around the web site.
Many firms fail to properly integrate their ecommerce components with the
overall site design. The in-house developers or outside design firm concentrate
on the sexy parts of the web site design process (the graphics, branding, look
and feel) and only focus on the ecommerce process after the primary web site
design is completed - making ecommerce an afterthought.
A large number of ecommerce web sites don't even list a phone number,
arbitrarily forcing people to contact the company electronically - this is a
real problem, as many people don't want to use e-mail or forms as their primary
means of communicating, they want the immediacy of the telephone.
It's very surprising, but approx 30% of ecommerce sites don't have a search
capability that actually works - in many cases it just returns gobblygook. This
is a real irritant for many online shoppers who want to find goods and services
quickly and efficiently - the need for speed should be the ecommerce merchants
marketing mantra and a good search capability gives users a way to quickly find
products.
One of the most important parts of any web site is the home or index page, as it
aggregates the design elements and information architecture. So many index page
are cluttered and poorly designed, loaded with poor graphics, bad menu
structures, oddball words or my absolute least favorite, 30-60 second Flash
animation sequences which force the user to sit and stare at a blank screen
while the animation loads.
Privacy statements are about as exciting as filing taxes (unless you know your
getting a refund) - they are out of necessity filled with legal terminology that
needs to be addressed succinctly and in a way that makes a consumer feel
comfortable about doing business with an ecommerce web site. Unfortunately, many
ecommerce web site privacy statements look like an afterthought, or, are so
"attorney driven" (three pages - who has time to read this?) people
are turned off by them. It's very important that a privacy statement be a
compromise doc brokered between legal and marketing.
We are a full service ad agency so I don't mind shooting arrows in the direction
of my peers - too much attention is being placed on web site advertising metrics
(clickthrough rates, certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and not
enough on how people find and use an ecommerce web site. The industry standard
web site analysis tool is Web Trends, but one of the least understood aspects of
this product is tracking how people find and move around a web site via reports
which can be pulled from the server log files; i.e. where did the visitors come
from, what pages do they visit, how long do they stay, what are their traffic
patterns, etc.? Ecommerce companies should be analyzing these "digital
customer tracks" to better understand how to improve their front end
marketing processes and back end web site design.
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is the co-founder of a
Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately held, Marketing
Services and Software Company, Intelective Communications, Inc. Intelective
focuses exclusively on providing services to small to medium sized companies
that need strategic and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com
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