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.
 

According to GetElastic, an online retailer should strive to answer these customer questions ahead of time to reduce purchase anxiety:

·    Quality of the product
·    Quality and reliability of your customer service
·    Will the item arrive on time?
·    Will the product be as described or as appears on screen? Is it the right color or size?
·    Will it fit? Is this item true to size?
·    What if the product needs to be returned?
·    Is this site secure (privacy, credit card information)?
·    Is this really the best price?

According to one survey, 76 percent of respondents cited insufficient product information as a reason not to purchase, 79 percent rarely or never purchase with incomplete information, and 72 percent will abandon a site for a competitor or further research, usually finding the product elsewhere.

GetElastic.com says the top ten aspects of the online purchase process rated as “very important” to consumers reflected just two prime consumer motivations: gathering information and customer support. The top five, in this order were Product Overview, Merchant’s Guarantee, Stock Availability, Quality of Image, Customer Service Links.

Consumers want complete specs, and they want to know the online vendor will be there for them if something goes wrong.

This isn’t unusual human behavior, of course. Communication scholars love to toss about Uncertainty Reduction Theory, which has been around for over 30 years. According to this theory, humans follow a predictable pattern of information gathering when they encounter a stranger.

Uncertainty about the stranger causes anxiety and distrust, and so seeking out information is a natural way of decreasing uncertainty and anxiety, and of building trust.

E-tailers, then, need to build trust by making sure information is available and easily accessed. Without face-to-face interaction and without the ability to compensate for that lack with complete information, the customer isn’t going to risk doing business.

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.

That’s because, though there were 14 percent more transactions than the previous Cyber Monday, total purchase amounts are down 12 percent, or $7.19 per purchase. But really, if they’re spending about the same or more overall in a weak economy, doesn’t that bode well for the future?

Well, one can hope.

Here’s the good news and why I wouldn’t sweat it:

1.    Spending did actually increase in a time of felt, known recession, even if just by one percent over last December, during our Recession-Denial period.

2.    Economic conditions no doubt were a major factor motivating people to come online and hunt for bargains. That means more exposure, brand building, and loyalty-building opportunities for online retailers.

3.    Part of the reason for the lower spend is that retailers got more aggressive with special promotions, which consumers rightly took advantage of. Searches for “coupons” increased 30 percent from November to December, and retailers obliged them in large number. This is competition. This is good.

4.    Again, consumers actually spent slightly more overall while saving money per transaction. This is either bad math or, more likely, stubborn holiday ideologues determined to make this Christmas as good or better than last year, even if they have scour every website on the Internet to accomplish that. We can all just be in the poor house next Christmas. This is optimism. This is also good.

5.    According to Nielsen, 76 percent of consumers still cited convenience as an important reason they shopped online, compared to 53 percent who cited price. This is laziness over penny-pinching. This is good? Well, if you’re an online retailer it is.

While some were pushing “Green Monday,” which I promise is going nowhere slowly (hard to go fast on two hybrid cylinders), the Monday following Cyber Monday, the Thanksgiving-less Brits (how does one know when to start shopping over there?) were pushing Mega Monday, and saw online sales jump 18 percent. How about piggybacking on that idea, combining the two for Mega Green Monday. Wouldn’t you love to see the Hulk running around the Web and smashing prices?
 

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.

But first, more bad news.  Three-quarters of online shoppers surveyed said website content is insufficient to complete research or purchase a product online always, most, or some of the time. Nearly 80 percent rarely or never purchase a product without complete information, and 72 percent will take off to a competitor that does supply that information.

It seems that consumers really want to buy online, but retailers aren’t making it easy for them. Sometimes, it seems like retailers go out of their way to lose customers.

My recent search for information about a Polaroid camera comes to mind. In that experience, Polaroid didn’t have top ranking for its own product (not even in the top ten), and didn’t have sponsored search ads targeting very product specific keywords. The retailers who seemed to pick up Polaroid’s slack in the paid results—big names like Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart—failed to offer a relevant landing page. When I did find product reviews or pages, the information I wanted (price and specs, mainly) were either garbled by nonsensical rhetoric or was nonexistent.

If researching for myself and not for an article, I would have long before that said, "Screw it. I’ll just go to the store myself." All of them lost a potential online customer.

Problems like these aren’t uncommon. In fact, it seems many sites are severely lacking in the customer service department. If customers don’t prefer online shopping to brick-and-mortar shopping, it’s because retail sites haven’t done enough to make the online shopping experience a good one.

Ready for more bad news? Here are ways many sites have failed to serve their customers:

Here are some more tips:

• Search is fundamental. Be there at every entry point possible.
• The landing page is crucial. You should have a landing page relevant to the search term. Yes, this is going to take some time to develop. But it doesn’t take any time for a potential customer to abandon you. In fact, it takes half a blink to form an impression, and if that page isn’t loaded in under four seconds, it takes less than half a blink to hit the back button. Just remember, information seekers scan from left to right, top to bottom, so keep those keywords, beginning with the search link, to the left and not buried in chunks of text. Make sure it’s clear where links lead, especially if navigating a customer away from a landing page.
• Product information should be complete, answering all the customer’s questions. A survey found 77 percent said "buying from a particular merchant is ‘very to somewhat’ influenced by the quality of content (descriptions, copy, images and tools) on a particular website.
• Images are vital. One day, when smell-o-vision, holographic imaging, and virtual reality tactile-experience suits are reality, we can better recreate the actual store-bought experience. Until then, we have pretty pictures, even video demonstrations. Get Elastic has a pretty comprehensive guide to making the photo experience better for customers.

One more list and we’re done. The e-tailing group reports these ten features and functionalities as the most important to customers, according to a survey.

1.    Product overview
2.    Merchant’s guarantee
3.    Stock status/availability
4.    Quality of image
5.    Customer service links
6.    Product specific information
7.    Long description
8.    Size chart
9.    Toll-free number
10.    Ratings and reviews

The most recent reality check comes from Compete.com’s Max Freiert, who says it’s time to "stick a fork in the notion of Cyber Monday." Somebody break it to Max that once the marketing machine gets a hold of something, there’s no turning back – think Valentine’s Day.

How else you going to sell more chocolate in February?

Ah, well. The people need (and love) their myths. Moving on.

Max crunched some numbers to show that both traffic and the amount of time spent at the top 50 online retailers actually decreases a bit on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Overall, both peaked on Thanksgiving Day. "On Thanksgiving," writes Matt, nearly 30% of every U.S internet browser visited one of the top 50 online retailers."

For major retailers with brick-and-mortar presences throughout the country, like Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy, traffic spiked on Thanksgiving, presumably as shoppers researched Doorbuster specials.

For retailers with just an online presence, like Amazon.com or Overstock.com, traffic peaked on November 24, the day after Black Friday, when everybody’s sick and tired of getting up, getting out and getting pushed around.

Oh well. See you again next year, when the Cyber Monday myth is debunked again.

There are lots of moving parts to a paid search campaign and for clients who put all their eggs (e.g., media dollars) into the paid search basket, riding the PPC rollercoaster means lots of hands on monitoring, maintenance and optimization so that flow of sales and/or leads doesn’t slow to a trickle.

In November 2006, The e-tailing group conducted a survey of 100 e-commerce executives to gauge how they handle the growing challenge of managing paid search. Statistics were revealing. Dubbed the “First Annual E-tailer PPC Stress Study,” the study contained some very interesting statistics.

Here’s a highlight of some of the juicier ones.

• 66% of respondants have been investing in PPC for more than two years
• 54% rank their teams at 7 or higher in terms of PPC sophistication (in a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest)
• Marketer’s spread their PPC dollars between Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask with 100% of e-tailers advertising on Google and a mere 27% advertising on Ask (think “opportunity” here)
• 40% of respondants manage over 5000 keywords
• Staffing for PPC management is handled in-house by the vast majority of marketers with 59% internal, 18% outsourced and 23% a combination of both
• 32% of respondants spent less than 5 hours per week managing their campaigns
• 33% of respondants spent more than 21 or more hours per week managing their campaigns
• 40% of respondants were satifisifed with insourcing PPC while 11% were considering outsourcing and 19% were very satisfied with their outsourced PPC management

There are a lot more statistics available from the study’s Executive Summary which you can download for free from the e-tailing group’s website.

A key learning from the survey was that PPC management for e-commerce merchants is work intensive and takes expertise. The paradox of paid search is that it’s so “quick and easy” to put a campaign up, but the complexities of managing the live campaign and obtaining sustainable sales or leads at a favorable ROI is the hard part.

Lauren Freeman, the e-tailing group’s president, sums up the issue succinctly. Ms. Freeman stated that many e-tailers in the study indicated that limited time to manage PPC campaigns and the availability of skilled personnel were key frustrations.

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Michael Pedone is the President / CEO of eTrafficJams.com, a search engine optimization and website marketing company <http://www.etrafficjams.com> located in Clearwater, Florida that specializes in getting targeted, eager-to-buy traffic to your site. You can catch him blogging at: <http://www.etrafficjams.com/blog/>.

The consumer shopping experience is entirely different online that it is in a retail store, so we are going to examine some good practices for the visual merchandising of your products on the web.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Internet shopping as compared to shopping in a retail store is the fact that the product is not physically available for the customer to examine when it is presented online. Customer behavior, therefore, is notably different.

Products in your physical retail store speak for themselves. It is often sufficient to present the product in an attractive retail store display and simply allow the customer to touch, feel, even try on the product. None of these options are available on the web.

Therefore, it is necessary to provide more information to consumers within your ecommerce storefront. While you would probably never think of including extended product descriptions within your physical store, such descriptions are an absolute must in ecommerce. While it has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, pictures are not enough. You must include a text description of each product. It is usually not sufficent to keep it simple in this case. A description that provided no more information than “large red shirt” would not be likely to entice many customers to purchase the product. A more effective description would be along the lines of “This attractive red pullover is made of 100% cotton and breathes easily. It is machine washable and comfortable to wear. It is perfect for a business casual environment or a day at the lake.”

I’m sure that a marketing professional could write a better description, but you get the idea.

Additionally, it is important to include clickable thumbnail images, which enlarge when clicked, so as to give the customer a better view. It is also a good idea to provide several views of the product from different angles, so the customer gets the entire picture (no pun intended).

Finally, as it is important in your physical storefront, the architectural layout of your ecommerce storefront should be clean, appealing, intuitive, and easy to navigate. It should include your logo for branding purposes, and it should be easy for the customer to check out, edit his or her shopping cart, read store policies such as terms and conditions and refund policies, and individual pages should not require excessive load time. Customer support contacts such as toll free numbers and email addresses should be readily and easily identifiable and not hidden in some obscure portion of the web site. And, as is also the case in physical store layout, your online store should be organized into logical categories, allowing the customer to easily navigate to a desired product. For purposes of upselling, an ecommerce system that supports a suggested product feature is desirable. Such functionality would take the form of additional, related products appearing on individual product pages, with easy linking to each of the suggested items.

An excellent ecommerce software that is search engine friendly is available at http://www.primecart.com.

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Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online provider of retail store displays and store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.