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Developing A Winning Ecommerce Strategy
By Lee Traupel, Sat Dec 10th
One bright spot on the economic horizons around the world seemsto be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is clearly apart of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9Billion in the next three months according to ACNielsen. But,there is a dark cloud hovering over this sunny ecommercelandscape called poor web site design. Let's explore some of thereasons why consumers are not reaching for their credit cardsafter perusing an ecommerce web site. There is a huge knowledge gap about how the web is reallydriving online and offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulsesurvey of more than 33,000 surfers conducted by Nielsen/Netratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce sites aredriving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail storesales) than online. Many consumers are using the web toeffortlessly compare features and pricing – then, calling thecompany or visiting their local retail store to make a purchase.Clearly many companies need to factor this information in whenanalyzing their online and offline marketing expenditures andrelated ROI. According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Reportreleased earlier this summer over $25 Billion (USD) was lost inecommerce due to users abandoning the web site prior to apurchase being made or during the process. The users just gaveup because the load times (the amount of time it takes a page tobe displayed in a browser) were painfully slow. Today's onlineshoppers aren't a real patient group, they want informationpresented in 12-18 seconds, or they are off to another site thatworks
Unfortunately many firms have allocated a disproportionateamount of resources for advertising and not enough on good website design and back end infrastructure. It's critical to makethe market aware of a site, but if the potential customers arenot presented with the right navigation and menus (readinformation architecture) they will not buy. Case in point,according to recent Dataquest surveys (and others) between20-40% of most users don't purchase because they can't figureout how to easily move around the web site. Many firms fail to properly integrate their ecommerce componentswith the overall site design. The in-house developers or outsidedesign firm concentrate on the sexy parts of the web site designprocess (the graphics, branding, look and feel) and only focuson the ecommerce process after the primary web site design iscompleted – making ecommerce an afterthought. A large number of ecommerce web sites don't even list a phonenumber, arbitrarily forcing people to contact the companyelectronically – this is a real problem, as many people
don'twant to use e-mail or forms as their primary means ofcommunicating, they want the immediacy of the telephone. It's very surprising, but approx 30% of ecommerce sites don'thave a search capability that actually works – in many cases itjust returns gobblygook. This is a real irritant for many onlineshoppers who want to find goods and services quickly andefficiently – the need for speed should be the ecommercemerchants marketing mantra and a good search capability givesusers a way to quickly find products. One of the most important parts of any web site is the home orindex page, as it aggregates the design elements and informationarchitecture. So many index page are cluttered and poorlydesigned, loaded with poor graphics, bad menu structures,oddball words or my absolute least favorite, 30-60 second Flashanimation sequences which force the user to sit and stare at ablank screen while the animation loads. Privacy statements are about as exciting as filing taxes (unlessyou know your getting a refund) – they are out of necessityfilled with legal terminology that needs to be addressedsuccinctly and in a way that makes a consumer feel comfortableabout doing business with an ecommerce web site. Unfortunately,many ecommerce web site privacy statements look like anafterthought, or, are so "attorney driven" (three pages – whohas time to read this?) people are turned off by them. It's veryimportant that a privacy statement be a compromise doc brokeredbetween legal and marketing. We are a full service ad agency so I don't mind shooting arrowsin the direction of my peers – too much attention is beingplaced on web site advertising metrics (clickthrough rates,certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and not enoughon how people find and use an ecommerce web site. The industrystandard web site analysis tool is Web Trends, but one of theleast understood aspects of this product is tracking how peoplefind and move around a web site via reports which can be pulledfrom the server log files; i.e. where did the visitors comefrom, what pages do they visit, how long do they stay, what aretheir traffic patterns, etc.? Ecommerce companies should beanalyzing these "digital customer tracks" to better understandhow to improve their front end marketing processes and back endweb site design. About the author:Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is theco- founder of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based,privately held, Marketing Services and Software Company,Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.comIntelective focuses exclusively on providing services to smallto medium sized companies that need strategic and tacticalmarketing services. He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com
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