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Developing_a_Winning_Ecommerce_Strategy
| Developing a Winning Ecommerce Strategy
One bright spot on the economic horizons around the world seems
to be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is clearly a
part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9
Billion in the next three months according to ACNielsen. But,
there is a dark cloud hovering over this sunny ecommerce
landscape called poor web site design. Let's explore some of the
reasons why consumers are not reaching for their credit cards
after perusing an ecommerce web site.
There is a huge knowledge gap about how the web is really
driving online and offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulse
survey of more than 33,000 surfers conducted by Nielsen/Net
ratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce sites are
driving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail store
sales) than online. Many consumers are using the web to
effortlessly compare features and pricing – then, calling the
company or visiting their local retail store to make a purchase.
Clearly many companies need to factor this information in when
analyzing their online and offline marketing expenditures and
related ROI.
According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Report
released earlier this summer over $25 Billion (USD) was lost in
ecommerce due to users abandoning the web site prior to a
purchase being made or during the process. The users just gave
up because the load times (the amount of time it takes a page to
be displayed in a browser) were painfully slow. Today's online
shoppers aren't a real patient group, they want information
presented in 12-18 seconds, or they are off to another site that
works
Unfortunately many firms have allocated a disproportionate
amount of resources for advertising and not enough on good web
site design and back end infrastructure. It's critical to make
the market aware of a site, but if the potential customers are
not presented with the right navigation and menus (read
information architecture) they will not buy. Case in point,
according to recent Dataquest surveys (and others) between
20-40% of most users don't purchase because they can't figure
out how to easily move around the web site.
Many firms fail to properly integrate their ecommerce components
with the overall site design. The in-house developers or outside
design firm concentrate on the sexy parts of the web site design
process (the graphics, branding, look and feel) and only focus
on the ecommerce process after the primary web site design is
completed – making ecommerce an afterthought.
A large number of ecommerce web sites don't even list a phone
number, arbitrarily forcing people to contact the company
electronically – this is a real problem, as many people don't
want to use e-mail or forms as their primary means of
communicating, they want the immediacy of the telephone.
It's very surprising, but approx 30% of ecommerce sites don't
have a search capability that actually works – in many cases it
just returns gobblygook. This is a real irritant for many online
shoppers who want to find goods and services quickly and
efficiently – the need for speed should be the ecommerce
merchants marketing mantra and a good search capability gives
users a way to quickly find products.
One of the most important parts of any web site is the home or
index page, as it aggregates the design elements and information
architecture. So many index page are cluttered and poorly
designed, loaded with poor graphics, bad menu structures,
oddball words or my absolute least favorite, 30-60 second Flash
animation sequences which force the user to sit and stare at a
blank screen while the animation loads.
Privacy statements are about as exciting as filing taxes (unless
you know your getting a refund) – they are out of necessity
filled with legal terminology that needs to be addressed
succinctly and in a way that makes a consumer feel comfortable
about doing business with an ecommerce web site. Unfortunately,
many ecommerce web site privacy statements look like an
afterthought, or, are so "attorney driven" (three pages – who
has time to read this?) people are turned off by them. It's very
important that a privacy statement be a compromise doc brokered
between legal and marketing.
We are a full service ad agency so I don't mind shooting arrows
in the direction of my peers – too much attention is being
placed on web site advertising metrics (clickthrough rates,
certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and not enough
on how people find and use an ecommerce web site. The industry
standard web site analysis tool is Web Trends, but one of the
least understood aspects of this product is tracking how people
find and move around a web site via reports which can be pulled
from the server log files; i.e. where did the visitors come
from, what pages do they visit, how long do they stay, what are
their traffic patterns, etc.? Ecommerce companies should be
analyzing these "digital customer tracks" to better understand
how to improve their front end marketing processes and back end
web site design.
About the author:
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is the
co- founder of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based,
privately held, Marketing Services and Software Company,
Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services to small
to medium sized companies that need strategic and tactical
marketing services. He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com
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