How To Keep Buyers From Going to the Store - Web Hosting Tips

Yahoo! Search Marketing just released a report that showed consumers who shop online spend 10% more in brick-and-mortar outlets nearby than they do online. In other words, many buyers use your commercial site to do the research and then run off to Wal-Mart or Best Buy to make the actual purchase. And what do you, the site owner, get for this service?

Web Hosting Tips for Ecommerce Site Owners

Web hosting provider, Website Source, will address the issues that ecommerce store owners need to address to keep buyers at their online store.

Nothing. The fact is, your commercial online outlet may well be competing with many of the “big box” stores for sales with customers performing price comparisons and product reviews online before driving off to make their purchases. And you know that’s hurting your bottom line.

Multi-Channel Shopping: the Problem and the Solution

Multi-channel shopping (web/store, for example) has always been a problem. Just not a very big one. Site owners can tell browsers collecting product data from buyers ready to make a purchase simply by tracking on-site visitor activities. The visitor who spends 10 minutes reading reviews of digital cameras before logging off is, most likely, being a good consumer, conducting research before making a purchase at the local electronics outlet. The problem is, that consumer research is costing you money and sales.

You pay hosting fees, whether your venture uses a dedicated or shared server. Your customer care employees may even receive query calls from buyers who have no intention of making an online purchase. They just want more information about the product before heading off to the mall.

The reasons for multi-channel purchases are numerous:

• Box stores and other local retailers offer coupons to entice buyers to “come on down.”

• Brick and mortar outlets employ cross-channel marketing through the use of catalogs, newspaper advertisements, TV and radio spots to bring them in. The fact is, cross-channel marketing is the norm for both big and small businesses in the real world.

• People don’t want to wait – even for overnight delivery. If they want that digital camera now, they’ll run out to buy it (after conducting research on your electronics website).

• Buyers want to see and touch the product before they buy. Does it have the look of quality? Does it feel solid? Right shape and size? This enables shoppers to buy what they want without the hassles of having to return products for replacement. Oh, and let’s not forget that 25% “restocking” fee many online stores add. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

• It’s convenient to research globally and buy locally.

• Many people are uncomfortable providing credit card numbers online, even in this day of SSL security, multi-passwords and other protections. Even with all of these safeguards in place, the news is filled with stories of supposedly secure data being hacked. And not just one sucker at a time, either. These hackers are walking off with thousands of names, addresses and credit card numbers – valuable commodities in the world of black hat tactics.

Beating Them at Their Own Game - Ecommerce Hosting

Multi-channel shopping doesn’t have to be a one-way street with buyers researching products on line and then buying at the local big box. In fact, a small but growing minority of buyers are doing their research in the stores – looking, kicking the tires and asking for advice from a customer service representative (if they can find one) – and then logging on to make the purchase, hopefully from you.

So, how do you turn multi-channel shopping to your advantage? There’s an old saying in marketing: If you can’t fix it, feature it.

The fact is, you can’t stop visitors from using your site as a consumer resource and then buying elsewhere. However, you can recommend that they test the products at the local K-Mart, see that it has all of the features they want and then buy from you. Turn the scenario around.

Offer Sales, Coupons and Discounts and Your Ecommerce Store

That’s what brings them in to the brick-and-mortar stores. Buyers receive flyers in their daily newspaper, they see 30-second spots on TV and hear them during morning drive time.

So, do the same thing. Offer a 20% off coupon if the visitor makes a purchase before leaving your site. Put up sales banners and add an overstock/closeout link off of the products or home page. Buyers love closeouts.

“Eliminate” Extra Costs

Offer low or no shipping costs. (Don’t worry, the shipping costs are built into the product price and the whole world knows it. Nothing is FREE. Really FREE.) Buyers in retail stores don’t pay a shipping and handling fee, unless they’re buying a humongous refrigerator or a dining room set, so don’t add charges to the purchase price. And be sure to point out that all shipping is FREE, FREE, FREE on every page of your site.

And whatever you do, drop the restocking charge. Even your grandmother knows that’s a righteous scam if ever there was one.

Make Returns Simple

Yes, you’ll run into the occasional clown who runs over his 42” plasma screen TV backing out of the garage, and claims that the product arrived that way. But most buyers are straight shooters when it comes to returns.

It doesn’t fit. It wasn’t the color I thought it would be. Mega-catalog retailers Land’s End and LL Bean learned long ago that no-hassle returns may cost in the short term but in the long term, these simplified return policies are reputation builders, aka, money makers.

Include a return shipping label with each order. Provide your return policy both on site and with each shipped order. Keep the directions simple and whatever you do, delete the fine print. No one reads it but everyone believes it’s where the loopholes are kept.

Provide 360° Displays

With the deep penetration of online DSL and cable, you can do a lot more in less time. Many online sellers are offering their buyers multiple views of products, showing the back connections, open and closed, rotate 180°, back 45°. Make the shopping experience as close to the “real” thing as possible.

Instant Customer Support

When a buyer enters a store – a good store, any way – there’s customer support available. It could be the sales person or a special customer service desk but, somewhere in that box, there’s someone who can answer your questions about a product.

Offer the same service online. Provide a toll-free, customer care line. Sure, some people will take advantage of it to gather price- and feature-comparison data, but a lot more will have the answers they need to make the buying decision. And that’s going to cut down on your client care and product return costs big time.

Make Your Site Lock Tite with Security

Display the SSL logo and other trust building logos, like Verisign, right on the home or landing page. Creating buyer confidence is one of the toughest jobs an e-tailor faces but these security measures do build confidence. More importantly, the number of people buying online is growing at a brisk pace so people are becoming more comfortable with supplying personal information – as long as they feel the site is secure.

Point Out the Advantages of Online Shopping

You know what they are but do potential buyers? Point out how easy it is to do business with you and how the customer’s satisfaction comes first.

Here are some selling points to manage prospective buyer objections:

• No driving. Saves time and gas.

• You don’t have to pack up the kids.

• Shop in your PJs if you want to. Who cares?

• Point out your wide selection of items.

• Never back order. (Buyers hate back orders, which means your warehouse needs to have product on hand or remove the product from the site until inventory arrives.)

• Point out your generous, fool-proof return policy. “WE EVEN PAY FOR RETURN SHIPPING! IT COSTS YOU NOTHING! AND THERE’S NEVER A RESTOCKING FEE!”

• No long checkout lines. This is especially important during the holiday shopping season when some businesses generate 50% of their annual sales. Make it easy and they will shop.

• Flash that toll-free, customer service number on every page.

• If you have the budget or the talent, create a demonstration video showing how to assemble the product, or show happy consumers using the product. Take advantage of every medium you have available. Motion sells.

• Personalize your site. When you walk into a box store, no one calls you by name (and those Wal-Mart greeters are kind of creepy). However, with the data stored in your site’s database, MySQL for example, you can welcome every visitor by name: “Hi, Bob. We have some recommendations for you.” These recommendations are based on Bob’s previous buying history and it adds that personal touch so often absent online. Visit Amazon for examples of how this personalization works.

• Keep the checkout simple. 70% of all visitors abandon their shopping carts before the sale is made. Some of that is due to the multiple clicks and form fields required before an order is processed. Again, check out Amazon. They offer a one-click checkout feature. Nothing could be more convenient.

You won’t convert every visitor to your site who plans to drive off to the mall to make a purchase, but you will capture more than you are now if you can more closely replicate the in-store buying experience. Hey, how about “20% off every purchase made within the next hour.” Just add a countdown timer and you’ve created that urgency that often drives sales.

Change the sale item of the hour and create site stickiness. It’s worked for the Home Shopping Network and QVC and it’ll work for you. Change sale items daily – hourly if you have the time and know-how.

There’s a lot you can do with multi-channel marketing and buying, beating the box stores at their own game. Think like a shopper. Even if you have the best items at the lowest prices, there will still be buyers who want to see the item from different angles. Okay, provide that service.

Use multi-channel marketing to your advantage and watch your conversion ratio increase. And be prepared for those repeat buyers. Once they’ve discovered how easy you make online shopping, they’ll be back again and again…and again.

Stay tuned to this website hosting blog for more information and helpful tips for making your website successful!