Getting shoppers that buy #2

Getting Started with E-commerce

Why People Buy Online & Getting shoppers that buy

Why people shop on line?

Creating an online store that gets orders at a price that allows for a profit, requires an understanding of why people shop online, how they shop online, how they search the web and what motivates them to buy. The success of your on line venture depends on how well your web site addresses the motivating factors that convert site visitors into buyers. Unless your site sells advertising space, your goal should be to attract buyers to your web site, not just the most visitors.

This page along with the pages that follow on choosing what products to sell and the section on product questions, will hopefully get you to thinking of how a customer who has decided what they want to buy will locate your web site and place an order with you.

In Search of Product Information

Customers go online to gather information about the products they are thinking of buying. Most web sites get hundreds of hits for each order that comes in. In addition to looking for product information people will visit your site, to help them solve a problem, when they are looking for parts, and to get help with warranty issues on the products they already own. You can expect to answer lots of E-mails and assist customers with information request as well as assisting with warranty information. All of these are part of the service you will be expected to provide. Think of this as cheap advertising and low cost market research. The customer feed back you gain from providing this free service to the public will allow you to grow and improve your web site. The customers, with their questions and problems present the seeds of opportunity.

To Save Money

The most often sited reason to shop on line is to save money. This is the primary motivating factor and the one, which will have the biggest effect on what you do with your site and how you conduct your web-based business. Online stores often have less to operating overhead cost then brick and mortar stores. This fact allows you to sell for less while making a respectable profit the customer will expect to save 20% or more. If the customer feels they are saving enough, they will wait for delivery. If the total dollar of savings is large enough they will even wait until you are available to take the order by phone. Think about it this way, a savings of 20% on a $20 item is fine if the customer can easily place the order on line without delay. If the savings is 20% on a $200 item, you will motivate a customer to call and deal with you over the phone, if they can reach you. If no one answers the phone you just might loose the customer to another web site with better customer service availability. If the savings is 20% of a $2,000 item, you will motivate the customer to call you during normal business hours. If the customer is trying to solve a problem that is frustrating them they will call you regardless of any savings.

Key Idea: The lower the price of the product, the more complete the on line product information has to be and the more streamlined and automated the order process has to be. The higher the dollar savings is, the more likely the customer will call the order in instead of ordering on line and the better informed about product features and benefits you and your staff have to be.

Saving money an important reason people choose to shop on line but not the only motivating factor. There will always be someone cheaper then you are. It is your job to put all the factors together in a concise package that gets the order. These motivating factors are, savings, product selection,, product quality, warranty, ease of use, convenience and trust. The customer is just as concerned about being cheated as they are about saving money. You must be believable, appear creditable and fare. You should ask yourself, if what you are doing is fair to you, to your company and to the customer? If you answer this question with a yes every time you make a decision, your credibility or seemingly lack there of will not hamper your success. Keep in mind that your offer must be perceived as fair, as well as being fair. For example, a savings of 75% is not very believable, your customer will be thinking, what's the catch? Having artificially high-suggested retail prices in order to offer a huge savings is not conducive to instilling consumer confidence. We will cover pricing and how to use it to get the consumer to buy in the pricing section. The more motivating factors, besides price that your products and web site convey, the higher your prices and profits can be.

Convenience

People shop on line for convenience. The Internet allows people to shop 24 hours a day from anywhere they can get connected. For some products, convenience may be more important then saving money. 1-800 Flowers is a good example of this. The Internet makes it convenient for a grand mother to order a gift and have it sent across country for a grand child's birthday. Convenience for some people means easy. The word easy is an important KEY to your online success. What does easy means as it relates to your online store? The next time you are on a web site and leave frustrated, chances are the web site owner violated the idea of user friendly. User friendly (easier) to the consumer means how many clicks does it take them to get to what they want to know, how intuitive is the site to navigate, and how easy is it to place an order. Web sites that violate the fundamental rules lose visitors and they do not in most cases even know it. After six clicks you began to loose the shopper.

I Can Not Find IT

Customers shop online because they cannot find what they want locally. You as an online merchant have a big advantage in that you can offer a companies complete product line. You are not hampered by the cost of carrying inventory. A couple of things can happen, a customer comes to your web site and finds that the item they are looking for is available in three models and four colors that they did not know about. Or they find a similar item for less on your web site then what the local store had available. Either way you have a chance of making the sale.

Companies will come to your web site looking for products that they cannot find locally. For example, customers living in small towns do not have a large selection of stores to shop at. People will come to the web looking for products to solve specific problems. None of these shoppers will have price as their primary motivation. The more your products fit these needs, the higher your profit margins can be.

To Solve A Problem

Some users of the Internet come looking to solve a problem. For example, if you sell pool supplies and a customer came to your site in search of pool care and maintenance information, you could possible sell that customer some supplies. If your product lines lend themselves to this type of selling you have another way to attract buyers. In the case of the pool store example, an online pool store should have a section on pool care and pool problem solving.

KEY IDEA: Information pages should be flat HTML coded pages, with a link back to your e-commerce pages. The flat HTML information or help pages should be promoted to search engines separately from the web site. That will make them doorway pages in to your web site. The more doorways into your web store the better your chances of attracting shoppers.

Next?Â

With this information in mind it is time to consider what to sell.
Choosing What To Sell

"It is the invincible spirit that wins success" Jim Glasgow