{"id":3063,"date":"2010-03-28T19:30:34","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T23:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.local\/?p=3063"},"modified":"2010-03-28T19:30:34","modified_gmt":"2010-03-28T23:30:34","slug":"the-completely-biased-unwritten-but-now-written-rules-of-ecommerce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.local\/the-completely-biased-unwritten-but-now-written-rules-of-ecommerce\/","title":{"rendered":"The completely biased unwritten (but now written) rules of ecommerce"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And they are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Do not make me register before purchasing<\/strong>.  This is like me going into a store, picking up a t-shirt, trying it on, showing it to my fiance, deciding to purchase it, then you ask me to fill out a form before I can buy the dam thing.  <strong>By the time people want to buy products let them buy it! <\/strong>Use some special magic to turn their first order into an account but do not ever make me register to give you dollars.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Show me what I&#8217;m buying! <\/strong>Tiny pictures are useless. What if I want to show my grandma? She will just say go to the store buy it there.  Give users all the media you can (without overwhelming them).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Don&#8217;t show me stuff that I&#8217;m not interested in<\/strong>.  Set a cookie on the visitors computer and show me stuff I&#8217;m interested in when I return.  Show related items.  Upsells.  Things that improve my life (or the product I&#8217;m buying).  That leads to the next one<\/li>\n<li><strong>ALWAYS HAVE A MOST POPULAR SECTION<\/strong>.  People like to be reassured, why do we buy fashionable clothes? It&#8217;s what everyone else has.  Make it easy for someone who needs reassurance, oh that&#8217;s the most popular speakers maybe I should look at them.  Not rocket science.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Make it interesting!<\/strong> Give categorisations, tags and <strong>lists that are meaningful<\/strong>.  Girlfriend Gifts, Valentines, Ways to say your sorry, Keep your guy happy, Nieces, Difficult Teenagers lists. You get the idea &#8211; don&#8217;t make me question whether my little sister will need this.  Tell me, show me and then convince me she needs it (difficult teenage girl list).<\/li>\n<li>Provide <strong>diverse (and easy) payment options<\/strong>.  Credit Cards #1.  Paypal.<\/li>\n<li><strong>SSL<\/strong>.  Tired argument, but protect my data! Even 8 year olds can tell a website isn&#8217;t secure.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Do not show dollar signs<\/strong> (where you don&#8217;t have to), stick to digits, $50.00 looks more painful than 50.00 (restaurants do this all the time).<\/li>\n<li>Also <strong>ALWAYS indicate currency<\/strong>.  Even if you assume USD do not give anyone nasty surprises.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep shipping to an absolute minimum<\/strong>, set expectations, free shipping with x spend.  People don&#8217;t like to be surprised, the last thing you want is them to leave because shipping is unexpectedly high.  <strong>Give FREE shipping wherever you can.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Return Policies<\/strong>.  Like the informercials widely offered never used.  Return policies allow people to overcome the &#8216;I don&#8217;t know if that hoodie is nice in real life&#8217;.  If it isn&#8217;t I can send it back.  Works a dream for Zappos will work a dream for you.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tell me when you ship! <\/strong>And give a tracking code.  It keeps you honest and me in the loop.<\/li>\n<li><strong>ALWAYS SEND YOUR PRODUCTS IN UNIQUELY YOU PACKAGING<\/strong>.  Let me say that again, when I receive my products from you (unless this is a discrete industry) everyone in the office or who walks by my desk should be able to identify it was sent by you.  If they don&#8217;t, they will ask, this gives me the opportunity to share my story.  <strong>Who doesn&#8217;t like showing off what they just bought?<\/strong> Each and every shipment is the opportunity for your best sales people (your existing customers) to sell to new customers.  Facebook is built on this and it&#8217;s been a backbone of Amazon since the start.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Newsletters<\/strong>.  Newsletters are a must &#8211; how do I know when you get the new product in? Or there is a line extension? Or hey Ben you have the t-shirt why not get the hoodie? <strong>Remember my sizes.  Follow up<\/strong>.  Remember your customers are a club, a family, respect them and you will grow with them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ask for permission<\/strong>.  Don&#8217;t have anything in stock, let me tick a box or get an email when it&#8217;s back in stock.  I will give you my permission &#8211; if only you asked.  If in doubt ask permission.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Engaging copy<\/strong>.  I don&#8217;t want the stock standard copy.  Let me know what it is, why I should buy it and how to do so.  If this product is useless without another component, say so, and give me a link to buy that too (or better yet sell as a pack).  <strong>Do not ever copy\/paste the suppliers descriptions<\/strong>.  That sells to people price comparing not to those who don&#8217;t understand what a 32gb ssd is.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Avoid jargon <\/strong>wherever possible.  Using intimidating words like &#8216;rephrase&#8217; and &#8216;synonyms&#8217; severely hurt MSN search engines early uptake.  Use language that a 12 year old can understand and you&#8217;ll be fine.  <strong>Expecting all your users to have degree level English is insanity.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Remember what I looked at before! <\/strong>Amazon does this.  I might have forgotten that last time I was looking at a surprise gift for my fiance.  If you remind me I&#8217;ll probably grab it now that I&#8217;ve had time to think it over.   It also engages your users very very quickly.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ship everywhere.<\/strong> Even if it&#8217;s extremely expensive.  <strong>For the right product to the right place people will spend more on the shipping than the product<\/strong> (I know I&#8217;m from New Zealand and everything is expensive to be shipped here).<\/li>\n<li>Have less in your catalogs.  Yes <strong>the cost of adding a new product is zero.  But the cost of clutter is everything<\/strong>.  If something is a dog don&#8217;t sell it.  Sell less, sell the best.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Have a blog<\/strong>.  Take products, trial them yourselves, unbox them, make videos.  Break them, construct them, deconstruct them.  Whatever.  <strong>Give me an angle on the products <\/strong>which I haven&#8217;t seen before or which answer my initial fears about the product.  Be honest.<\/li>\n<li>Allow<strong> product feedback<\/strong>.  <strong>People will buy (or be convinced to buy) just off the feedback<\/strong>.  Don&#8217;t fret if it&#8217;s bad, your customers can read between the lines if that bad review was biased or unbalanced.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Do not, I repeat not, ever have adverts to other websites<\/strong>.  You&#8217;re wasting real estate.  If you think you can make more money pushing visitors to others websites where they then purchase, close down your shop, you&#8217;re doing it wrong.  <strong>The google ads tells me you don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re doing<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Do something unexpected.  <strong>Give me a nice little surpise<\/strong>.  Maybe a thank you note in the order, a gift voucher or some free stickers.  I&#8217;ll probably talk more about that than what you actually sent!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exclusives! <\/strong>Have exclusive members areas, maybe people pay for them (ie $50 for 10% discount on everything) or newsletter only specials.  <strong>Make me feel like I&#8217;m special<\/strong> (aka status).  I might not order but I&#8217;ll buy for someone else.  #1 Rule in sales is the easiest sales are to your existing customers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Finally most of all obsess about your customers<\/strong>.  Give them a call if there are any hick ups, let them know, the last thing people expect from ecommerce is a real life transaction (other than the end product) but when it happens it means the world.  They&#8217;re really there and they really care.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>ps<br \/>\n<strong> Track, measure, slice\/dice data every which way<\/strong>. Analyse, interpret, make changes. Measure again. \u00a0Learn to adapt from what your users tell you through their actions.  <strong>the answers are already there you just need to find them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And they are as follows: Do not make me register before purchasing. This is like me going into a store, picking up a t-shirt, trying it on, showing it to my fiance, deciding to purchase it, then you ask me to fill out a form before I can buy the dam thing. By the time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[420,450,573,588,747,876,997,1201],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}