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April 13, 2009 |
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| Online Marketing Channels Commentary |
Can Consumers Trust my Online Store?
by Chris Barr
 Miami, FL (April 13, 2009) – For online shoppers, trust is everything. And for those consumers who won’t shop online, trust is the only thing. We know this instinctively – we even practice it in our own lives. But what does it actually add up to for an e-commerce merchant?
Here’s one measurement: according to a survey released last month, by Javelin Strategy and Research a general fear of online shopping and identity theft caused retailers to miss out on $21 BILLION in online sales in 2008, a chunk approximately equal to 10% of the total market. Especially in perilous economic times, getting your fair piece of that 10% can change the color of your bottom line.
Trust is a tricky thing: it can be lost in an instant, but attaining it in the first place is pretty complex and time-consuming. That’s no less true for the relationship between merchant and consumer than it is between spouses or business partners. So what’s an online retailer to do? Our purpose here is to identify some simple tools and techniques that can help inspire confidence among your customers (and potential customers.) You can use this as a checklist to evaluate how well your own operation is addressing and overcoming the inevitable skepticism that virtually all consumers have about shopping online.
We'll start with some characteristics of your website that will not be startling revelations to you – but which you may have come to take for granted. Are you doing the following things better than your competitors are?
- Provide a Privacy Policy. Inform online shoppers that you respect the privacy of their personal information through a written policy that is both easy to find and easy to understand. This is definitely not the place to unveil your fanciest legal mumbo jumbo; instead you want a crystal clear statement that you will protect their data. In the Javelin survey, forty percent of all online consumers believe you will sell their personal information, and fifty percent believe they will receive junk mail for the rest of their lives. Tell them very clearly that you don’t and they won’t. Smart retailers are also providing a “Statement of Ethics” that lays out their methods and policies for doing business. Include an unambiguous statement of your company’s Terms of Sale and Return Policies.
- Provide essential contact information. List your e-mail address, physical location, telephone number and fax number in an easy-to-find place on your website. If a live representative does not answer your phone 24 hours a day, leave a message that specifies the hours in which a customer can reach a live person. Make it a priority that customer contacts are responded to very quickly; the speed of your reply will be seen as an indicator of how important individual customer care is to your company. And try to avoid funneling customers into your FAQ section – it’s important and efficient to have a well-structured FAQ page (and your customer’s question probably is answered there), but someone who takes the time to write or call personally wants to be responded to personally. The sites most assertively servicing customer queries now offer “live chat” with an online representative who responds in real time to the questions and concerns of potential buyers. It’s a fact that establishing back-and-forth communication with a customer is a first big step in creating a long-lasting relationship with them. There are many resources for helping you provide a live chat mechanism on your site: to begin to get a feel, check out LivePerson.com, ZaZaChat.com, and LiveSalesman.com.
- Toll-Free Phone Number. Invest in a toll-free phone number and post it on your website. A toll-free number signifies that you’re easy to reach and extremely interested in your client’s concerns. It also increases the comfort level of those potential customers who are uneasy about making online purchases, because they know they can speak to a real person to complete the transaction if they want to.
- Highlight your affiliation with reputable third parties, like the Better Business Bureau or your local Chamber of Commerce; also mention your membership in ECMTA or trade associations specific to your industry, because these suggest that there are formal codes and standards with which you have chosen to comply. Whether you sell pool equipment or pet supplies, there’s a trade association just waiting for you to display their logo on your site. Another dimension of third party affiliation might be your decision to support a charitable effort, one with national recognition or one that’s specifically close to either your own heart or to the product category you provide. Pet products again? How about the Humane Society. Building Products? Habitat for Humanity. Women’s apparel? The Susan G. Koman Foundation. Giving back to the community IS a good thing, and it’s also PERCEIVED to be a good thing – your customers will like and trust you a little bit more.
- Security Certification. This one’s just a little more complicated but is a major step forward in reassuring your customers of their safety in your hands. What you’re looking for is a provider of SSL technology (secure sockets layer, now also called Transport Layer Security) so that the pages on your site which require sensitive customer information (like credit card numbers) are transmitted through an encrypted link so that the data cannot be stolen.
"If you collect ANY personal or confidential information, an SSL Certificate is vital for you and your customers because it encrypts the sensitive information," said GoDaddy.com President and COO Warren Adelman. "An SSL certificate helps build trust by showing your customers you care about their data."
You will want to display the logo of the Certificate Authority you select on your site, and the consumer will also see the padlock icon in the lower right corner of the page. Clicking on the lock will display your company’s SSL certificate and the details about it. There are dozens of Certificate Authorities to choose from – comparison shopping is easy on the internet. Check out GoDaddy, VeriSign, Thawte, GeoTrust, Comodo, Globalsign, and/or Network Solutions, among others.
- Bond Guarantee. Another “seal” that boosts a customer’s confidence level is available by becoming part of the buySAFE network of bonded merchants. The seal can only be used by merchants who have been “verified;” clicking on the seal validates its authenticity as well as the merchant’s trustworthiness. The consumer knows they are buying merchandise backed by a bond guarantee from the Bonded Merchants group.
- Product Reviews. Consumers respond enthusiastically to feedback from other "regular people" who have purchased products like the ones they’re considering on your site. Increased conversion, traffic and average order value are direct benefits of posting product reviews on your site – all of which are simply by-products of increased trust and comfort level. There are a number of Product Review Solutions available to make this process easy to implement; start by taking a look at PowerReviews. Darby Williams, VP of Marketing for Power Reviews, tells MerchantAdvantage: “Our research shows that shoppers have significantly more confidence in online purchases when they can read 5 or more customer reviews, know that these customers actually bought the product (e.g. PowerReviews’ “Verified Buyer” certification), and see a few “cons” or negative comments in some of the reviews.”
So trust us on this: addressing the widespread concerns about the security of online shopping is a terrific opportunity for you to shine. None of these ideas and solutions are rocket science, and none are prohibitively expensive. Most if not all of them apply to you, and implementing this kind of program (or verifying that your current program is in good shape) can only have positive, tangible benefits for your business.
Two pieces of good news: many of you are doing a decent job of this already, and the “step up” to doing a really good job is not complicated. Take a look at the bottom of the homepage for B&H Photo & Video and count how many of the above issues are addressed here, then do the same at Blinds.com. Neither is perfect, of course – can you identify potential improvements based on this discussion? – but they are excellent examples to be guided by.
Next time we’re on the topic of customer relationships, we’ll be looking at the tools that can turn the expression “we listen to our customers” into more than just lip service. You want them to believe you are listening, but there are even better reasons for you to pay attention to what they might be telling you. Trust us on that too.
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| Advice, Tips & Tricks |
Technology Bells and Whistles
by B. Thomas Romeo
 Miami, FL (April 13, 2009)— This month let's talk a bit about bells and whistles. For technology that which is "extra" is not necessarily the latest or greatest; rather it is what is intuitive and time saving. The adage is that technology is a tool not a genre. As hardware and software are developed, we find that many companies’ advances really are not about shifts in the paradigm of our workflow but are actually easier ways to do things. Web 2.0, which is more of a catch phrase than an exact moment in time when the World Wide Web was upgraded from 1.0 to 2.0, defines a subtle transition into Web based services. Now that most industries are considered online and connected to the Internet (as opposed to, let's say, 15 years ago where Internet connectivity was considered itself as a bell and a whistle) not only are there new ways of using the Internet but that very connectivity creates the posibility that these new technologies can actually catch on. Early on in the Internet days, companies survived by having a critical mass of users savvy enough to figure out a dial up connection and their software. Those who made it easiest (read: most intuitive) survived. AOL. Those who drudged along, even with good technology but poor interfaces, died off. Compuserve. Prodigy. Was it the bells and whistles that AOL offered or the clean interface and intuitiveness that helped them survive.
Right now, connectivity itself is being redefined. Not only has bandwidth been mainstreamed by DSL and Cable connectivity, but cellular companies are also changing the dynamic of access. We can now be online without dependency on our "home" network via widespread hotspots, like those offered by AT&T and Starbucks, and the mainstream emergence of 3G data modems. Now instead of seeing more and more laptops show up in coffee shops and airports, we're starting to see more and more laptops showing up with little black or white 3G modems sticking out of the side of them. And let me tell you - these things are great! You can be anywhere and be connected. The obvious travel situations, in the car (stopped not driving), on a boat, in a doctor's office - any type of "waiting" situation - including if you are moving and are waiting for your DSL line to be installed. (This one I know about!) Also a cool thing that is coming is for these little 3G modems to work with routers. This means you can stick the gadget in a router and build a network around them. Imagine having a house wireless network based on a 3G modem - multiple machines running wirelessly from a single cellular connection. Imagine having a little network in your car where your passenger carrying a wireless laptop or smartphone has a good solid Internet connection. This is definitely a bell and a whistle.
Many technologies like this have existed and have simply sat idle waiting for mainstream acceptance. A little analogous history for example might be when Apple released iTunes in January of 2001 setting the stage for their iPod. Later that year when the iPod was initially introduced, mainstream use of iTunes expanded. A few years later the iTunes store existed, then the AppleTV, and now if you talk about renting a movie you might be doing it from Blockbuster, Netflix or iTunes. This is not even to mention the fact that iPods are considered the equivalent of microwaves in just a few years of existence. Other examples can include how we manage photos or videos. Let's forget about iPhoto and iMovie for a second and talk about Picasa and YouTube. It took awhile for digital cameras and videocameras to become mainstream but now that many people have access to them, Google has created some of the most intuitive ways to get those photos and videos onto the web. Now it's common to refer to YouTube videos or share a Picasa library, or even upload photos to a Flickr site using Picasa. There are even some cameras like the Flip that have "YouTube" built right in.
Now of course in regards to online marketing - our industry has also had it's “critical mass points” historically. In 1990 the first web browser was released, yet the Internet prohibited commercial transactions until 1991. In 1992 the first book was sold online and the protocols to buy and sell were being developed and deployed. In 1995, Amazon.com was born along with AuctionWeb (later to become eBay). Ten years later we've seen the stability of shopping cart technologies, online transaction capabilities and order management components. It would be accurate to say, at this point, that Shopping 2.0 is emerging. What more can online merchants deliver? Social components like those at Ciao, mobile apps like those from Amazon, theFind and Like, and video reviews like those on Smarter all speak to the bells and whistles that our industry is beginning to offer. We are seeing blogs and wikis and audio visual interactivity at a level of sleek implementation replacing the previously spotty, browser-crashing options we had before. Realplayer has been replaced with YouTube. Blogging is an occupation and merchants are bloggers on their own storefronts talking directly to their consumers. Craigslist, Facebook and Wikipedia are mainstream words that we'll use as as a noun or even as a verb in sentences.
This is exciting stuff, and for me it's fascinating to look at both a little of history and a little of the future of technology and think about its implications not only for the media enjoyment we get out of the gadgets we have access to, but for the workflow implications that allow us to work faster and more efficiently. Even inside our industry we have the bells and whistles that allow our storefronts and channels to be more exciting and more robust, e.g Web and Shopping 2.0. We also have bells and whistles like the fancy ways to be connected wherever we are, faster than ever before - and with more critical mass to come, which always leads to greater stability and intuitiveness. |
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The Blueprint for Multichannel Success
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How to Afford Comparison Shopping Engines
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White Paper:
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| Industry News |
| Industry News |
U.S. Online Sales Grew 11% in First Quarter, Survey Shows
ProStores 9.2.1 Launch Sustains the Momentum and Keeps Getting Better
Online Retail Makes Gains In March
Online Retail Rpending Booms
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About MerchantAdvantage
MerchantAdvantage (www.MerchantAdvantage.com) is an ecommerce software solutions company committed to championing and helping the small to midsized online merchant address complicated online and mobile commerce issues. MerchantAdvantage takes a systematic, controlled and proactive approach to online product marketing by providing long-term, cost effective, Web-based software tools that enable an online business to grow by reaching the widest audience possible via online, broadband, and wireless devices.
MerchantAdvantage's applications are designed to connect the online retailer to their marketplace partners in a seamless motion of communication, allowing online merchants to take control of their e-Commerce and m-Commerce channels, marketing strategies and IT solutions. MerchantAdvantage currently markets over $3 billion worth of product value daily, representing over 900 online storefronts and is changing the macrocosm of ecommerce by staying ahead of the curve in providing business solutions to the growing online retail marketplace. They are here because your commerce future is online and wireless. For more information, please visit MerchantAdvantage.com, e-mail us at sales@MerchantAdvantage.com or call us at 1.800.550.9466.
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May 4-6, 2009
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June 15-18, 2009
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July 13-15, 2009
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September 21-23, 2009
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