Making The
Most Of The Holiday Season
Before you can position your website to take advantage of the
upcoming holiday shopping season, you need to know why people
are buying on-line. The top three reasons are to: save time,
avoid the crowds, and shop at off hours. Surprisingly, price is
a distant number four. However, 73% of on-line shoppers will
choose one offer over another because of price. So don't think
price is not important.
Is your website ready to make your business money?
Is your Web site functional?
Do all the links work? Is there more then one product in each
category? What about payment options? Do you accept credit cards
or PayPal or do you rely on people calling or mailing in an
order? If it is the ladder, you might as well put a lock on the
door and go home. Other then in a few rare cases, if you are not
accepting some sort of on-line payment, you will not get enough
orders to pay for the site.
Can buyers find your site?
You need to be marketing your site both on and off line. Off
line includes print, radio, TV as well as direct mailings.
On-line includes search engines, emails and pay-per-clicks. Now
would be a good time to review your search terms and make sure
they are incorporated into your META tags and web pages. Your
search terms need to be terms that your consumers would use, not
what you may use.
What incentives are you offering? If you do not know what
to offer, shop your competition and see what they are offering.
Then do something different and better. Don't just copy them, be
creative and offer more without spending more.
Once you have determined what incentive you are going to use,
advertise it. Don't keep it a secret... much like companies that
buy t-shirts to advertise their business, but then keep them in
the closet because they don't want to just give them away. Ugh!
The whole idea of an incentive is to get people to buy your
product or service.
How does your website look?
When was the last time you looked at your site from a consumer's
point of view? If you haven't in awhile then; get a cup of tea
or coffee (eggnog is appropriate too), dress in comfortable
clothes and go shopping online. Pretend you know nothing about
your product or service. Now ask yourself the following
questions:
- What is the product
or service this website offers?
- Do the colors and
text encourage me to look around, or to run?
- How will this
product or service make my life better?
- Is the site easy to
navigate or am I confused as to where I need to
click?
- Are there annoying
"pop-up" windows that I have to keep closing?
- Purchase a few
items.
- Is it easy to
add an item to my basket?
- Is it easy to
review my basket?
- Is it easy to
remove items from my basket?
- Is the
"checkout" button easy to find?
- Do I need to
answer a lot of unnecessary questions?
|
Once you have completed your
order, how do you feel? Pleased with your experience and that
you would shop there again, or frustrated and hope to never see
that website again?
If you are unable to totally step
back from your website and view it as a consumer, then I would
suggest hiring a mystery shopper.
Can your customers trust you?
Guarantees, return policies and testimonials will build trust,
as long as they are believable. Something as simply as "We
believe that you will be completely satisfied with all of your
purchases and we want to ensure that you have a satisfactory
shopping experience. Therefore, if you are not completely
satisfied, we will gladly accept returns within 15 days from
receipt of merchandise." Why wouldn't I buy from them? I have
nothing to lose! If I don't like the product, I can just return
it.
Are your shipping costs fair?
Often times people will place items in their shopping basket and
proceed to the checkout only to find that the shipping and
handling costs are more then the items they are purchasing. 56%
of on-line shoppers say that low-cost shipping is a factor when
determining which store they purchase from. Shipping is a cost
of business just as advertising is. The only difference is that
with shipping you can make the buyer pay for it directly. But be
careful. People that shop on-line or from a catalog have a
pretty good idea of what it costs to ship an item and they will
know if you are trying to make money on shipping. When figuring
shipping costs, figure that on some orders you will lose money
but on others you will make money. The trick is at the end of
the year your shipping costs come out even. |
