As online retailers jostle for consumers' attention this holiday season, most are focusing on discounts, sales, and other flashy promotions to drive traffic to their Websites. But Diane Buzzeo, CEO of Ability Commerce and Marketing Concepts, believes that more marketers should highlight their site’s ease of use—provided, of course, that their site really is easy to use.
"If you tell people you have an easy-to-use Website, you'd be amazed at how many people will come to your site," Buzzeo insists.
The reason: Most Websites fall short when it comes to basic usability. Broken links, dead-end navigational paths, and impossible-to-follow directions can make it difficult if not impossible for shoppers to complete a purchase. And that's because retailers "don't place orders on their own Websites to see what their customers see," says Buzzeo, who believes failing to periodically shop their own site is the number-one mistake online merchants make. "It's absolutely amazing the dollars that could be saved if people just paid attention to their Website."
Beyond regularly shopping from their sites, online sellers should every morning review the most frequently searched-for terms on their site, so that they know what visitors are looking for and can tweak their merchandising accordingly. They should try searching for terms as well, to be sure of the effectiveness of the search function. The vast majority of consumers use the search function as their primary navigational tool, Buzzeo says, which is why it's important that, say, the phrase "shipping rates" results in a link to the delivery information page.
Effective merchandising goes hand in hand with ease of shopping. As far as Buzzeo is concerned, "The critical part of merchandising is being able to do promotions quickly." If, for instance, your daily analysis of on-site search terms shows that a large number of visitors are searching for "blue widgets," you may want to give blue widgets prominent placement on your landing pages. By making it simpler for visitors to find what is apparently a popular item, you're reinforcing your site's ease of use.
Similarly, if you're a hardware store and a sudden snowstorm blankets your region, you want to be able to get shovels onto your home page within minutes, Buzzeo says, as well as promote salt and other compatible upsell items. "If a company has the kind of site where it has to wait for the IS team to upload the promotions, that's a company that's going out of business," she says.
Making sure that your site operates smoothly and is easy to navigate obviously reduces cart abandonment and increases conversion rates. But you may still be wondering how running a flawlessly operating site—or to put it another way, a site that does exactly what it's supposed to do—can help attract shoppers in the first place, especially when so many competitors are tossing about discounts and shipping offers with abandon.
One way, Buzzeo says, is to promote your guarantee, customer service, and returns policy. Some businesses shy away from offering free returns or lenient terms, for fear of increasing their return rates and losing margin. But Buzzeo says that, by and large, the better your return policy, the fewer returns you'll actually see. Shoppers are more likely to make a purchase, however, if they feel they have the safety net of a fair returns policy protecting them. (Besides, what's more likely to eat into profits: a liberal returns policy or deep discounts?)
And if you're a smaller business, Buzzeo advises promoting how you differ from the megachains and big-box retailers. "Really upsell the fact that you're small, that a human being answers the phone," she says. "Show a picture of a big-box store's returns area"—a huge, frantic warehouse—"vs. yours, with a smiling local kid handling one or two boxes." You also can't go wrong by highlighting customer testimonials in your marketing emails, flyers, and other promotional materials.
The Christmas season is supposed to be about, among other things, engendering goodwill. Yet so many retailers, by way of impersonal service and frustrating Websites, fail to do so. If you can deliver a friendly and efficient shopping, you'll have a unique selling proposition that you can profitably promote.
