Making a purchase online, especially a substantial one, can be a nerve-wracking process for a consumer. The primary problem, aside from price, is trust. Shoppers negotiate their relationship with the vendor in much the same way they negotiate relationships with any stranger: by seeking information. What an online vendor lacks (and what becomes a disadvantage) is one-on-one interaction with the customer. As such, the customer must put forth additional effort to find out about a product for sale. Making this task easier can make all the difference in closing a sale.
Yes, online visits to retail sites have been up. Yes, retailers are seeing increases in transactions and visitors. What they’re not seeing, though, is more money spent per transaction, which could make things roughly square with last year. Though there were 2 million more shoppers whipping about online on Cyber Monday, a 22 percent increase over last year and a full 34 percent of the shopping population did their shopping online, Cyber Monday revenue went up a paltry one percent.
Let's start with the bad news, and there's kind of a lot of it, before we move on the good news of how to fix it. About three-quarters of online shoppers are unsatisfied with their online shopping experience. The other quarter are, flatly, satisfied, in that even bad pizza is good pizza kind of way. Sort of anticlimactic, isn't it? The good news is there's a lot of opportunity for satisfying customers, even making them very, very happy.
It was like pulling the plug while the stereo was still going – that droopy drop-off of sound and fury – two years ago when the first so-called "Cyber Monday" was conveniently labeled, leaked, and then debunked as hooey on Tuesday. And again this year, it just ain't so.
It's no secret to those of us who deal with paid search every day that managing campaigns can be a handful.
While much is known about retail store displays for physical stores, what about your ecommerce storefront?