While they may be expert at store layout and catalog design, many retailers slip up when designing the shopping experience for customers visiting their Web sites.
A panel of Web critics met at the Annual Catalog Conference in Orlando in May to suggest improvements to the sites of a handful of brave volunteer retailers. (The conference was co-sponsored by MultiChannel Merchant magazine, formerly Catalog Age, a sister publication to PROMO.)
First up: Valley Vet Supply, which offers its full line of pet and farm animal supplies online. “My bosses aren’t sure if we’re doing the right thing with our home page,” says Lisa Schotte, Internet coordinator, adding that her colleagues thought too many links confused shoppers in the e-store.
On the contrary, says critic Jennifer Wells, senior marketing manager-deployment for Cincinnati-based online consultancy DMinSite. Valley Vet should create a navigation bar on the left side of its homepage, listing all its product categories. Also, make the search box more prominent on each page. This is essential since users who search are “two to four times more likely to buy” than those who don’t bother searching.
Given that, Wells also recommends offering advanced search capability right from the home page. And let customers buy product off the home page: Wells suggests that Valley Vet feature at least nine items on the home page in a grid format.
Seattle-based retailer Brooks Sports, which is rebuilding its Web site for e-commerce, has some work to do before the site is truly user-friendly, says critic Mike Krypel, senior analyst for New York-based Creative Good. “It’s not clear to me that you sell running shoes,” Krypel told designer Shawn Herron. A home page visual shows runners in a marathon, then phases into an image of one runner handing another a cup of water. Don’t be afraid to state the company’s mission plainly, Krypel advises.
Make product copy concise, Krypel says. The kinds of activities for which each shoe is intended should be succinctly explained.
Make text more user-friendly with bulleted points rather than blocks of description, advised Creative Good’s Andy Feldman. “Users don’t read,” he noted. “They’re just scanning for a link that’s going to get them closer to their goal.”
Which happens to be buying.
What Web? Survey says retailers neglecting online
According to a new survey by ForeSee Results and FGI Research, many top retailers in the USA are under-utilizing the online channel, even as consumer spending on Internet shopping sites has been increasing by double digits each year.
The study polled visitors to the 40 highest-grossing e-retail sites, and asked them to score the sites on navigation, selection, ease of purchase and other factors. Scores showed that traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers are failing to exploit their online opportunities.
CompUSA, Costco and Kmart came in with some of the lowest scores, while Old Navy and Barnes & Noble ranked near the top, in league with more “virtual” retailers like Netflix, Amazon and QVC.
“A low satisfaction score means that there are lots of browsers who do not become buyers,” says Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results. “Of the five top-scoring e-retailers, likelihood of browsers to take the next step and make an online purchase is 36% higher than those at the bottom of the list. There is huge potential for companies like Costco. People love Costco, but they don’t like what they find online and so how much they shop there is very limited.”
For a copy of the survey results, visit ForeSeeResults.com.
Network
