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What Consumers Have to Say About The Online Shopping Experience
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One of the best articles I have read about online retailing is called Customer Experience: Lessons for Loyalty. Commissioned by Adobe 7 and conducted by a market research firm called the BRS Group, the study surveyed over 600 US online shoppers earlier this year. The self-proclaimed “savvy” subjects gave their feedback about what they find important, pleasing, and frustrating about the online shopping experience. They talked about what helps them buy, what makes them abandon their carts, and revealed other information about the consumer experience that should make online retailers pay close attention.
Today, I want to cover the first section of the study that brings to light the truth about brick and mortar retailers who head online. While it may seem advantageous, having a well known, established brick and mortar store does not translate to a better chance at quick success with an ecommerce website.
When the survey group was asked to name three online websites they frequent online, only 4 brick and mortar stores received more than 6 percent of the responses (Target with 16 percent, Wal-Mart with 12 percent, Best Buy with 11 percent and Macy’s with 6 percent). On the other hand, the two retailers that scored more than 20 percent were the famous online only sites Amazon.com (72 percent) and eBay (45 percent). Basically, besides a select few major companies, all retailers--brick and mortar or online only-- face the same challenges when it comes to building brand awareness online.
Tomorrow I will write more about these challenges and how retailers can model their site to provide the best online shopping experience for consumers. Stay tuned...
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The Untapped Potential of Coupons
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For consumers, online shopping has benefits such as convenience and comparison. For companies, it gives the advantage of a national reach, builds loyalty and credibility and increases revenue. But how do companies maximize that revenue when it is easy to get lost on the web under the vast number of companies? Well, the easy answer is to become a client of ShopVisible and use our technology to optimize your location on the web, streamline the navigation of your website, effectively promote your products and simplify the check out process. But if you don’t have time for such a large commitment (you should reconsider), you might consider posting coupon codes.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain a bit more about online coupons. Recall the last time you purchased something online. Remember at checkout that box that read “Gift card/Coupon code,” or something along those lines? Did you know that you could search for these codes and get discounts such as free shipping or 20% off your order? Well, you can! And for me, that makes online shopping better because then I don’t worry about the extra cost of shipping.
Now, to the point…Companies should willingly post coupons codes on the Internet. Not only will this increase the number of in-bound links (which helps your search ranking), it will amplify the amount of traffic to your site and the number of orders. If you received 20% off, wouldn’t you buy more? Plus, people already try to Google search for coupons and are sometimes successful. If customers were aware of your, albeit temporary, competitive advantage it might even increase loyalty.
My friends at ShopVisible understand the success with coupon codes and have designed the e-commerce platform to easily allow coupon codes and other discounts at checkout. But if you still aren’t ready for a major commitment, try posting a coupon code and see if it increases your traffic and sales.
Be sure to let me know your results!
Webster J Frogg
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