Online Retailers: Are the Rich Just Getting Richer?

Nearly all consumers are familiar with — and often prefer — online shopping. Seventy percent of U.S. Internet users made at least one online purchase during the second quarter of 2011,1 and Forrester projects that U.S. e-retail sales will grow by 10 percent each year, reaching $279 billion by 2015.

[Download PDF to see Bar Chart]

As online sales grow, the biggest names in retail are taking a bigger piece of the pie. Amazon alone accounted for more than 10 percent of online retail sales in North America in 2010,3 and the 25 largest e-retailers were responsible for almost all of the sales growth during the 2010 holiday season

Clearly, the online retail landscape offers incredible opportunity, but also greater competition and increasing clout among the top retailers. How can you distinguish yourself from the pack?

Consumers Want “Me-Commerce”

Top retailers like Walmart will almost always be able to win the price game. That’s because they benefit from unprecedented economies of scale — an advantage that many smaller retailers simply can’t duplicate.

[Download PDF to see Pie Charts]

Fortunately, gaining a competitive edge isn’t always about offering the lowest price.

Shoppers expect more and more from their online retail experiences. They want a deeper, more personal interaction. They want to feel as if retailers know and remember them. From their perspective, they’re not engaging in e-commerce. They’re engaging in “me-commerce”.

In this eBook, you’ll discover how to take a customer’s-eye view of your website. You’ll learn how to enhance the online shopping experience so that visitors get the richly interactive online experience that they crave. And with those enhancements in place, you’ll be in an excellent position to take full advantage of the online retail revolution.

Your Virtual Storefront Needs to Entice Shoppers to Come In

Your homepage and campaign landing pages are your virtual storefront. Mystery is not your objective here. Visitors should be able to tell what you’re selling right away.

[Download PDF to see Image]

After a Usability Redesign, Business Metrics Improve by an Average of 83 Percent

A few guidelines to keep in mind:

• Your homepage plays a key role in establishing your brand identity. It should be memorable, yes. But more importantly, it should be consistent with your product offering and with the rest of your site.
• Don’t overload your homepage/landing pages with text. Note how Stokke, a Sitecore customer, wisely chooses to leave plenty of white space, letting product images do most of the talking. If customers want a more thorough explanation of what you have to offer, they can always choose to take a deeper dive.
• Usability drives conversions. A well-designed site isn’t simply about making things pretty. It’s about making things usable, and greater usability leads to more conversions. If you make it easier for customers to find what they want and proceed to checkout, you’re more likely to close sales.

Make Your Products Irresistible

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When featuring product information, keep two things in mind:

1. Consumers want to get a close look at merchandise, just as they would in a brick-and-mortar store.
2. If you don’t offer a close enough look, consumers will likely find one elsewhere.

Thule, a Sitecore customer, offers a great deal of well-organized information on its product pages. A few things to note:

• Images. Don’t make them too small. Enable shoppers to zoom or enlarge so that they can get a good look at the details.
• Text. Descriptions should be as thorough and accurate as possible. Include measurements.
• Quick View. A “Quick View” capability enables shoppers to get the basic details on a product without leaving their current page. [Example: when you hover over a product on the Thule page, a text box gives you a bit more detail about it.]
• Reviews. Shoppers want to know what their peers think about a product. Make sure to offer easy access to consumer ratings and reviews.

Give Shoppers What They’re Looking For

As long as your product information is clear and well-organized, most customers won’t complain about having too many details at their disposal.

[Download PDF to see Images]

Me-Commerce Is all about Personalization

Personalization drives sales. Personalized e-commerce sites can increase conversions by 70 percent while reducing ad campaign costs by as much as 50 percent.7 It should be no surprise, then, that 61 percent of retailers say that personalization is among the most important merchandising tactics in web retailing.

Better yet, customers like it. According to Forrester, 62 percent of consumers find personalization useful while shopping online.

[Download PDF to see Image and Pie Chart]

Help Your Happy Customers Spread the Word

These days, everything is social, and everything is shared. Social networking isn’t simply a buzzword or a fad — it’s how more and more consumers do research, make purchasing decisions, and share experiences. The Facebook page for Thomas Cook (a Sitecore customer) is an especially compelling example of a well-executed social media presence.

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Everywhere Commerce – Go Mobile

Mobile commerce is not mini-commerce. In 2011, 9.8 percent of Thanksgiving Weekend’s $150.53 million online spend came via mobile devices.14 And according to Barclays Capital, mobile commerce is projected to grow from $8.8 billion in 2012 to $28.7 billion in 2015.

[Download PDF to see bar chart and image]

Don’t Shrink. Rethink.

Your mobile presence shouldn’t be an afterthought. Nor should it simply be a miniaturized version of your website. Instead, all pages and product displays should be optimized specifically for mobile viewing, as demonstrated by BMW’s iPhone site. A few things to note:

• On the BMW mobile site, the homepage is a simple menu — almost nothing else. With the limited real estate available to you on a mobile device, it’s important to let shoppers know exactly where they can get the information they’re looking for.
• On the product information pages, note how BMW provides all of the details you’d find on their website. But here the text is formatted specifically for readability on the iPhone — no need to zoom in.
• Notice that one of the top-level navigation elements is “Locate a Dealer.” The site automatically detects which dealerships are closest to the mobile device, thus getting a prospect that much closer to a brick-and-mortar location — and a purchase.

Make Checkout a Breeze

Many online retailers do a beautiful job of engaging shoppers, only to lose them at checkout. Here are a few tips to keep shoppers on track until they’ve made a purchase.

• Provide a guest checkout. 23 percent of shoppers will abandon their purchase when asked to register before checking out.
• Don’t punish your guest checkout customer. Provide the ability for guests to track and get order status just as you would for a registered customer.
• Don’t make a purchaser jump through too many hoops. Aim for no more than 4 steps at checkout.
• • Do everything you can to emphasize the security of the transaction. Display SSL (secure sockets layer) certificates, security badges, and BBB certification links to encourage customer trust.
• Know how your customers are paying. Are they using a credit card? A debit card? PayPal? By adding more flexibility in how a customer pays, you might be able to land more transactions. In fact, the latest research by Javelin Strategy reveals that online merchants may lose more than $100 billion in annual revenue when they fail to offer payment alternatives.

Take Action

Effective me-commerce is no small order. But by taking a customer’s-eye view of your website, you can take clear steps toward personalizing the online shopping experience and driving sales.

Six steps to empowered e-commerce:

1. Engage in a consistent dialogue across channels. Even as you optimize for different platforms and devices, make sure that your voice and look remain consistent.
2. Guide the shopper with contextual offers at exactly the right time. A well-timed, personalized offer can translate into an instant cross-sell or upsell.
3. Prompt their route with suggested next steps. A gentle nudge here or there can help reduce cart abandonment — and increase AOVs.
4. Identify and overcome customer interaction challenges. This applies particularly to user-generated content. If a loyal customer writes a negative review of your product, how will you engage, if at all? Know your engagement strategy and stick to it.
5. Understand customer experience at an individual and segment level. Who is the individual customer, and how has he or she engaged with you in the past? What does he or she have in common with other customers? The more quickly and accurately you can answer those questions, the better you’ll be at effective personalization.
6. Regularly test and refine offers and promotions. With more targeted offers, you can attract and engage more shoppers across more channels.