3 top priorities for optimizing mobile checkout

May 22, 2014 by Leave a Comment

In previous posts, we’ve surveyed top eCommerce web sites to gauge how merchants are optimizing the shopping cart and checkout to maximize sales. But as the latest MarketLive Performance Index revealed, the desktop experience is only part of the overall shopping picture: mobile devices now account for more than a third of all traffic to merchant sites and bring in nearly 20% of online revenues.

In last week’s blog post, we revealed how a deeper dive into those numbers exposed a lost opportunity: smartphone shopping. With 22% of traffic generating just 6% of total online revenues, it’s clear that merchants must do more to win sales on the small screen.

The Performance Index numbers confirmed our findings from the survey of mobile purchase experiences we undertook for our new whitepaper, which details path-to-purchase practices for 100 top sites on both desktop and smartphones. We found that in general, mobile purchasing is reminiscent of online shopping circa 2000 – basic, sometimes un-intuitive functionality often lacking crucial supporting content or creative offers. And on the extreme end, 13% of the sites we surveyed didn’t even offer a mobile-optimized version, while the purchase process on a few of the allegedly optimized sites was longer and more complicated than on the desktop/laptop browser version!

While the mobile add-to-cart and shopping cart steps had their own highs and lows, the most glaring deficiencies came in checkout. For starts, our tally revealed that close to 40% of mobile-optimized sites required at least five pages to complete checkout, compared with just 16% of desktop sites  – a counter-intuitive finding, since we assumed that merchants would streamline the process to the utmost for small screens with finicky touch keypads.

Checkout research from MarketLive

We hoped that the higher number of steps was merely due to a desire to limit the amount of scrolling mobile shoppers had to undertake. Unfortunately, that was not the case; rather, the high number of steps was due to clunky implementations that in some cases require more typed input than on the desktop sites.

To improve the mobile checkout experience, merchants should:

Provide guest checkout. We can’t say it enough: forcing shoppers to set up usernames and passwords in order to complete purchases is an unwise move — especially on mobile sites, where streamlining is the name of the game. So we were surprised that a higher percentage of mobile sites (11%)  than desktop sites (8%) required registration to complete purchases. Even more surprisingly, the discrepancy was partly due to instances where account creation was required on a brand’s mobile site, but not its desktop site – a jaw-dropping finding which made us wonder whether the eCommerce executives in charge had ever actually tried purchasing on their own mobile sites.

Instead, most mobile sites would do well to skip the “login vs. guest checkout” step altogether or relegate it to a secondary position, as MarketLive merchant Helzberg Diamonds does in its three-step mobile checkout process.  A link labeled “Sign In” at the top right gives registered users access to their saved information, while the majority of shoppers proceed directly to entering billing information, including the email address on the first screen.

Helzberg checkout

Implement alternative payments. The popularity of alternative payments continues to soar, as shoppers seek ways to skip entry of credit card data and eliminate checkout steps. Not only were more than a quarter of all online purchases in 2012 made using something other than a credit card – but a whopping 78% of mobile transactions were completed using an alternative payment method such as PayPal, according to technology provider ShopVisible.

Given that staggering figure, the percentage of merchants in our survey who promote the availability of alternative payments on their mobile sites seems low, at 44%. In another counter-intuitive finding, we discovered that a greater percentage of desktop sites promoted alternative payments (56%), meaning that some brands did highlight alternative payments for desktop users, but not mobile shoppers — a glaring oversight.

Go back to basics for checkout form design. With the prevalence of inefficient sequencing and usability problems in mobile checkout, we recommend that merchants start with a clean slate, developing a checkout process that caters specifically to mobile users and the challenges of the small-screen format. Merchants should:

  • Use shortcuts to streamline the number of fields. Merchants should attempt to reduce the number of keystrokes needed to complete purchase by eliminating as many non-essential fields as possible. They should:
    • Set form defaults to assume that the billing and shipping address are the same, unless the shoppers indicates otherwise.
    • Use the ZIP code to trigger the city and state, rather than requiring shoppers to select their state from a long drop-down list.
    • Eliminate the prompt to select a credit card type before entering its number, since different types of credit cards use different number sequences. Once the number has been entered, merchants need only display the card type so shoppers can confirm they’ve entered the right one.
    • Eliminate every non-essential field, including email subscription signups and collection of demographic data (yes, a site in the survey actually did this in mobile checkout). If merchants can convince mobile shoppers to purchase, post-purchase transactional emails provide plenty of opportunity to promote email, social media and the like.
  • Facilitate form entry by triggering input-specific keyboard layouts. That is, when shoppers click on a field that requires numerical entry, the mobile device’s touch “keyboard” should convert to a number pad; when a field requests an email address, the keyboard should display specific options for entering online data, such as an easily-accessible “@” sign.
  • Clearly label checkout steps. This advice seems like eCommerce 101, but a number of sites we reviewed failed to give mobile shoppers any inkling of how long the checkout process might take.
  • Encourage order completion by any means necessary. At a minimum, the global footer should include click-to-call and click-to-chat prompts for reaching customer service if checkout hurdles otherwise prove insurmountable.

MarketLive merchant Sport Chalet puts it all together with a sleek mobile checkout process that clearly labels the three steps involved – addresses, payment, and order review and submission. Login for registered customers is available via a link at top right, while optional loyalty club data entry is accessible via a collapsible menu. A second collapsible menu puts order contents within easy reach, while customer service contact information is listed via the global footer. Form data is kept to a minimum and uses field-specific keyboard entry.

Sport Chalet mobile checkout

 

Download the whitepaper for more path-to-purchase insights and best practices for both desktop and mobile commerce sites. How are you optimizing the mobile experience to maximize sales?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations, Mobile Commerce Tagged with Alternative Payments, checkout

Performance Index: Mobile takes center stage

May 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment

The latest MarketLive Performance Index, reporting first quarter results, contains heartening news: revenues continued their double-digit growth streak, climbing 18.7% year over year on traffic gains of 13.9%. Average order size also grew, by 4.4%, suggesting that merchants are finding ways to engage shoppers beyond rock-bottom discounts.

But the report also reveals that these gains, impressive as they are, could have been even more substantial. Merchants are missing a key opportunity to win sales, and that opportunity is mobile.

On the one hand, compared with last year, mobile commerce is growing, with revenue from smartphones up nearly 47% and revenue from tablets up more than 30%. But those large percentage gains mask the fact that mobile revenues are significantly underperforming compared with mobile traffic. Most glaringly, 22% of all eCommerce visits originates on a smartphone, but smartphone purchases account for just 6% of revenue — suggesting merchants have a long way to go to make the touchpoint a viable source of sales.

performance_index_vol24_devices

A deeper dive into the numbers reveals still other challenges:

  • The need for speed on smartphones. With nearly 1 in 2 smartphone visits ending after a single page, merchants are losing a vast number of potential shoppers before they even engage. As one possible remedy, merchants should conduct performance testing on their mobile sites; the majority of consumers now expect load times of less than three seconds, and are disinclined to return to sites that experienced load time problems, according to performance monitoring firm Gomez. And clumsily-implemented responsive design can drag down performance, so merchants contemplating site overhauls should be vigilant.
  • Near-misses on tablets. The add-to-cart rate on tablets is a healthy 11.9% — higher than on desktop sites — but then merchants fail to capitalize on this potential, with the tablet conversion rate lagging at 1.82%. In addition to cart and checkout optimization (more on which below), merchants should also consider the cross-touchpoint habits of their tablet shoppers and cater to those using their devices for research while potentially completing sales elsewhere. “Save cart” and “email cart” options are crucial; merchants should target tablet shoppers with messages incentivizing cross-device access as a benefit of account registration. Additionally, merchants should spotlight options to connect tablet browsers to in-store shopping, such as in-store inventory lookup or the ability to book a personal shopping appointment.
  • Major obstacles on the final steps of the path to purchase. The abandoned cart rate for smartphones is a whopping 83%, and 78% on tablets. While these numbers may partly be driven by shoppers using their devices purely for research, the checkout abandonment percentages are also shockingly high, at 65% for smartphones and 46% for tablets — suggesting that even for shoppers committed to making mobile purchases, the process is far from smooth. Our new whitepaper on path-to-purchase optimization, which we’ll cover in greater depth on the blog soon, contains a compendium of best practices related to mobile checkout we can’t recommend highly enough.

Download the full Performance Index report for more insights into mobile, including “day parting” and mobile performance by vertical. How does your mobile performance stack up?

 

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Analytics, Mobile Commerce Tagged with MarketLive Performance Index, Smartphones, Tablets

Social media watch: 3 tips for optimizing your new Twitter profile

May 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment

It’s been a month since Twitter began rolling out , which was made universally available a fortnight ago. Predictably, reaction has been mixed, with some lamenting the “Facebook-like” look and others lauding it. While the new design is still optional for now, merchants should make the transition soon — and not just because it’s inevitable.

In fact, the new design better showcases merchant content, while also affording more control over what profile viewers see. To optimize the new look, merchants should:

Use the new header to emphasize community. The most striking changes to the new profile are all about images — not surprising given that photo content drives the highest engagement on Twitter and the Web overall is increasingly visual. The new Twitter page features a large profile picture and anchors a link just beneath the header to photos and videos, which are presented in a large Pinterest-style format.

And while some have grumbled about the loss of the background image as an opportunity to anchor iconic images or even content such as customer service contact information, the fact of the matter is that visibility of the background image always depended on viewers’ browsers, screen resolution and window size — and the image wasn’t visible on mobile.

In any case, the new profile more than compensates with a massive new header, which at 1500×500 pixels gives merchants a vast new canvas on which to convey their brand. While single bold hero shots can be effective, the most engaging content puts the spotlight on brand community — whether by featuring user-contributed photos, featuring popular hash tags, or playing off a popular meme.  MarketLive merchant BeachBody showcases an images of hundreds of brand enthusiasts working out at twilight to emphasize the level of commitment of its active community.

Twitter example from Beachbody

Use “favorites” judiciously. With a link elevating “favorites” to an anchored position just below the header images, merchants would do well to use this tool carefully. Rather than clicking “favorite” on any tweet mentioning the brand, merchants should curate the collection to highlight testimonials, reviews and other third-party endorsements, as well as content links and retweets that demonstrate lifestyle affinity.

The tool is especially handy now that replies are by default filtered from the main profile page, which means that viewers won’t see posts beginning with the @ symbol. Since these posts are usually intended as direct conversation with another user, for example a customer service inquiry and reply, the change is generally positive. But replies also sometimes contain brand-building kudos, which merchants can now highlight with a “favorite”.

MarketLive merchant Griot’s Garage features a diverse sampling of content in its “Favorites”, including praise from customers, pictures submitted by followers, and links relevant to its target audience.

Twitter example from Griot's Garage

Monitor “best” tweets, and pin as needed. One feature of the new profile merchants can’t control is the selection of “best” tweets, which are presented in a larger font on the page. These tweets, which are based on popularity as measured by retweets, favorites and replies, can be content merchants want to highlight — or they could be controversial posts that get retweeted with negative commentary, or even a gaffe that merchants would rather forget. Merchants should monitor the action on their profile pages closely to see how the “best” tweets pan out for them.

Merchants can also “pin” tweets they’d like to spotlight to the top of the page, much as in Facebook’s current design — giving them a potential avenue for counteracting the unwanted popularity of a particular tweet.

How are you using the new Twitter format to enhance engagement?

Filed under Client Innovations, Social Commerce Tagged with Twitter

Guest post: Don’t Fear Showrooming. Embrace It.

April 29, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Jim Young, Content Marketing Editor at Bronto Software, a member of the MarketLive Agency Network, contributed this post.

Showrooming isn’t the enemy. Showrooming is an opportunity

That might sound counter-intuitive, maybe even a little crazy. The past few years we’ve all seen countless tales of woe about brick-and-mortar retailers being raided by disingenuous shoppers who go in to try out items in person and then use their smart phones to shop for a cheaper price online and order it there.

showrooming

It’s led some stores to resort to retaliatory tactics that, while perhaps providing some short-term satisfaction, have negative long-term effects. Some retailers have banned smart phones from their stores. Some clothiers have required shoppers to pay a deposit to try on clothes, which they lose if they fail to make a purchase. Others have stopped selling products made by the nefarious online retailers who are part of the showrooming scourge.

The problem with all those moves? They make a customer less likely to shop at your store. Which is sort of, you know, important. These retailers would be much better off if they stopped stressing about showrooming, and learned to welcome it, instead.

Remember, you can’t have “showrooming” without, well, the showroom. Customers are coming into the store to check out the products because there’s still something about the in-person shopping experience that online shopping can’t provide.

“The thing about showrooming is it’s not the ideal experience to do research at home, go to the store, do more research, then hit pause, go home and order and hope it arrives on time,” Scott Moore, Senior VP of Marketing for Best Buy, told Ad Age in an Oct. 29, 2013 article. “There’s a better way.”

Indeed there is. It involves using digital marketing to complement the shopper’s in-store experience and thus, to drive more revenue.

An October 2013 survey published by Vibes revealed that “89 percent of consumers want some sort of personalized mobile communications from brands and retailers while in-store.” However, only 18 percent of respondents felt they were getting that personalization.

Then consider this valuable nugget of information from the same survey:

“Among those consumers who either texted or scanned a QR code to get more information or a special in-store deal, 42 percent said doing so made them feel better about the purchases they made. However, 40 percent – up from 14 percent in 2012 – made a purchase they had not planned on making beforehand because of this information. “

Let’s repeat that, because it’s an eye-opener.

A) Consumers in large numbers are saying they want retailers to send them personalized communications to their smart phones.

B) These communications help a significant number of those consumers to feel better about the purchases they’ve made.

C) A growing number of consumers are actually making additional, unplanned purchases that were triggered by that personalized communication.

That’s an enormous area of potential sales growth just waiting to be exploited by the savvy retailer with a targeted digital marketing approach.

A critical element is getting the shoppers’ email address. You can readily expand your customer email list by using in-store QR codes. In order to receive a special offer or discount, a customer would need to scan a QR code into their smart phone, which would take them to an email and/or text signup page. The customer signs up, receives the discount and also gives you valuable data you can use to build their future shopping loyalty. Remember, showroomers are people who are willing to use their smart phones to compare prices online. Chances are, they’d be more than willing to use that smartphone to scan a QR code as well.

In-store QR code

Once you’ve got that email address, you can then integrate your sales information with an automated marketing system to give yourself a powerful revenue-driving tool.

For example, you can get a leg up immediately on showrooming if you’ve already given the customer the initial incentive to be in your store. Let’s say you’re a clothing store that’s having a sale on jeans next weekend. Using sales data and customer segmentation, you could send emails or texts out to customers who have previously purchased jeans from you, alerting them to the exclusive, in-store shopping opportunity.

You can expand on that approach, using the information you have to email customers about available in-store products similar to ones they’ve previously purchased. Or you can use targeted emails and texts to call customers’ attention to products that are exclusive to your stores, i.e. the ones that are showrooming-proof.

If your store has an app, you can ask customers who download it to turn on location services for it on their smart phone. When they do, you now have the capability to send them an automated text when they walk through your store’s doors, welcoming them and alerting them to sales/special offers that day.

Using those digital marketing tactics helps retailers to be informative, helpful and – most of all – personal. Combine that with the age-old benefits of being able to experience a product first-hand, and potential showroomers can be transformed into loyal in-store customers.

Filed under Uncategorized

How fluid content fuels successful online/offline transactions – MarketLive Summit report, II

April 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment

In our previous post on the MarketLive Summit, we examined the importance of fluid technologies that empower merchants to deliver individualized experiences across touchpoints and adapt quickly to consumers’ changing expectations for online shopping. But there’s another benefit of adopting a flexible approach: merchants who do have the opportunity to tap their online resources to inform in-store shopping — making for a truly seamless brand experience.

As our previous post mentioned, “web-influenced sales” are forecast to represent more than half of all retail transactions as of this year, according to technology forecaster Forrester — and plenty of the online research influencing offline sales takes place onsite in a store. Google found that And, lest merchants fear losing those shoppers to the deep discounts of online mass merchants, Google also found that heavy smartphone shoppers also tend to spend 25% more in-store than those who only occasionally use their devices for research.

So rather than dreading “showrooming” activity, merchants should view pervasive online connectivity in stores as a benefit, and proactively provide ample opportunities to access brand content. Merchants thereby earn the double benefit of not only knitting together touchpoints but also boosting the reputation of brands as innovators. For example, during his keynote address at the MarketLive Summit, CEO Ken Burke demonstrated how Burberry has incorporated jaw-dropping technology into its flagship London store, with theater-sized screens livecasting fashion shows, smaller displays throughout the store enabling access to information about products nearby equipped with RFID tags, and store associates equipped with tablets for one-to-one customer assistance.

Burberry digital store

To tap the potential of fluidly transforming online content into offline sales, merchants should consider:

Broaden the concept of “conversion” on-site to drive offline activity. Merchants should use the eCommerce site to encourage on-site visits as well as drive online sales, with conversion goals tied to site activities that lead to offline brand interactions. At the Summit, Pat Duncan of Helzberg Diamonds detailed how the brand’s flagship eCommerce site encourages shoppers to continue their shopping journey at physical store locations. The Helzberg product page includes no fewer than four offline-conversion options: in-store appointment scheduling, looking up store inventory, ending an “e-hint” to a potential in-store gift buyer, and viewing financing offers, including the ability to apply for credit online.

Helzberg product page

Use e-receipts as a gateway to comprehensive customer records. Far from being the final point of contact between merchants and customers, the point-of-sale interaction in physical stores can be just the beginning of continued online engagement. By offering to send a receipt via email, merchants gain the opportunity to invite further interaction. Along with the receipt, brands can deliver an invitation to subscribe to email marketing updates, friend and follow the brand on social networks, and re-engage offline through store events. And email addresses can connect offline transactions to online behaviors, giving merchants a comprehensive view of shopping activities and boosting ROI of online initiatives.

Enable self-service in-store access to comprehensive content.  Merchants struggling to justify content investments should look no further than their own stores, where the opportunity is ripe to introduce information-starved shoppers to the rich resources available online. Google found that one in three smartphone owners use their devices in lieu of seeking help from store staff, so it’s crucial for merchants to become the go-to resource for online information about their own offerings. Linking to buyers’ guides, product demonstration videos, and reviews gives in-store shoppers the opportunity to not only inform their purchases, but also builds confidence in the brand as a comprehensive resource.

Empower store associates to guide and transact on the spot. While reduced floor staff costs is an enticing potential outcome of making self-service content available in-store, merchants may find it more lucrative to put that content into the hands of their sales associates. Staffers empowered to consult online resources can combine the information gleaned from  one-on-one interactions with the comprehensive content available via their mobile devices. By giving them access to coupons and discount offers and enabling checkout for in-store items and online order placement for out-of-stock products, merchants can help build trust and credibility with shoppers. Demonstrating on-the-ground expertise with products and pricing is a potential brand differentiator: More than half of 2013 holiday shoppers said they’re more likely to buy in stores where store associates are knowledgeable, according to consulting services firm Deloitte — but 59% of those shoppers believed themselves to be better equipped than store staff with information about pricing and product availability.

MarketLive is developing new functionality for its merchants to enable fluent in-store/online experiences — stay tuned! Meantime, how are you tapping online resources to drive offline sales?

 

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations, Connected Commerce Tagged with Summit 2014

Guest post: Creating a seamless omnichannel loyalty experience

April 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Alinn Louv of Social Annex Marketing, a member of the MarketLive Agency Network,  contributed this post.

By now, most merchants know that consumers expect to shop across touchpoints. And they also recognize the importance of improving loyalty.   After all, it costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Perhaps that’s why from 2008-2012, loyalty programs grew by 10% each year.

But it’s not enough to award shoppers points for purchases; to meet the needs of the always-connected consumer, merchants must develop an omnichannel loyalty strategy that caters to customers – and entices them to make repeat purchases — wherever they interact with the brand. We’ve come up with a four- step plan to help you develop and implement your loyalty strategy across all channels for a seamless experience for your shoppers.

1. Create a seamless mobile experience. As of last year, more than half of all American adults own a smartphone (). More and more consumers are starting to shop online either through a mobile device or tablet, with the time spent on mobile surpassing time spent on desktops last year (eMarketer).Of those mobile users, nearly three-quarters say it’s important that websites are mobile-friendly (Search Engine Watch). So the first step in moving toward an omnichannel experience is creating a mobile experience. Make your site mobile friendly, with large visuals and simplified navigation to help mobile users quickly find what they are looking for. Integrate loyalty across all channels, including mobile apps, to ensure that customers are receiving points and rewards no matter how they shop.

2. Focus on the customer experience first. Forty percent of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels (Internet Retailer). So merchants should ersonalize the experience at every step possible. Utilize a social login tool in order to gather insights and create a more complete customer profile. Collect data from social network APIs for structured data, such as verified email addresses and birthdates, and unstructured data, such as interests, likes, friends, and more. Use this information to structure your loyalty program. Find out which rewards and perks will resonate with your shoppers and how active your users are on each social network. This information can help build your loyalty program with a focus on Facebook contests or “Pin to Win” Pinterest campaigns.

3. Manage user data. Fifty-four percent of marketers revealed that the biggest inhibitor in establishing a consistent omnichannel customer experience is not having a single view of customers across channels (Retail Systems Research Institute). Gathering data is only half the challenge; still more important is sorting through and organizing the ‘big data’ so merchants can actually derive useful strategies from the information. Standardize all information gathered from a variety of social networks in order to maximize the full potential of personalization. Ensure you have the right infrastructure in place to store massive amounts of data and the ability to access it quickly as well. Organized data makes it easier to scale marketing efforts and target the right customers, at the right time. Leverage this data to inform email marketing efforts, to target new buyers, repeat buyers or inactive buyers. Remind inactive buyers of their expiring rewards to drive them back onsite. Reward repeat buyers with bonus loyalty points or rewards for making their third purchase. Motivate new buyers to sign up for loyalty with large first-time incentives. Keep your loyalty program segmented with staggered rewards to keep your members excited about exclusive access to sales and perks.

4. Engage with customers across all channels. Actively engage with users to foster user generated content, boost SEO, increase referrals, time spent onsite and ultimately conversions. Implement loyalty across all channels and reward users for shopping on each one. Once the channels are in place, engage with users on each channel with social media to boost your loyalty program. Run social contests within social apps or onsite. Interact with users and build a branded community with ratings and reviews. Fully 90% of consumers would recommend a brand after interacting with it via social (IAB, 2013). Furthermore, 64% of Twitter users and 51% of Facebook users are more likely to buy the products of brands they follow online (Business2Community). Reward users for cross promotion to further drive engagement to every channel. Use point incentives to motivate shoppers to download mobile apps, or shop in store for bonus perks.

Leverage customer data and insights to personalize the omnichannel user experience and create an authentic, immersive customer experience that is sure to increase brand loyalty and lifetime customer value. All businesses and customers are unique; loyalty programs should be too.

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Analytics, Mobile Commerce, Social Commerce

Why flexibility is the key to on-site engagement – MarketLive Summit report, I

April 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

It’s been a couple of weeks since the 2014 MarketLive Summit, but we’re still abuzz over the strategies speakers and attendees discussed. While the statistics and trends were enlightening, the chief inspiration from this Summit came from the MarketLive merchants who shared their success stories — and challenges — in detail. Through them, it was possible to glimpse the real-life implications of the new commerce paradigm, where brands seek to engage always-connected consumers via a variety of touchpoints.

Just how omnipresent has the online shopping experience become? In his opening address, MarketLive CEO and Founder Ken Burke shared data from technology researcher Forrester predicting that more than 50% of all retail sales in 2014 would be influenced by the web, either through direct online sales or online research feeding offline transactions.

More dramatically, Pat Duncan of MarketLive merchant Helzberg Diamonds said that online initiatives have such a profound impact for multi-channel retailers that they account for five to seven times the amount of revenue directly attributed to sales through the web site.

Throughout the Summit, merchants demonstrated how that outsized impact plays out in the trenches of daily commerce. And while there was plenty of discussion about the perennial hot topics of social media and mobile devices, the dominant theme was more fundamental: merchants must become ever more flexible in their brand presentation, even as a strong foundational core of eCommerce content and products is more essential than ever.

Such a combination of solid substance and agile fluidity allows merchants to cater to always-connected consumers at every stage of the path to purchase via a variety of touchpoints. Among the strategies merchants discussed to achieve the right balance:

Use responsive design for the flexibility to focus on consumer needs — not devices. In his keynote address, Mark Hurst of Creative Good reminded merchants that they need to develop technology based on users’ needs, rather than by rote by device. While he did make specific recommendations for mobile platforms (develop a smartphone-friendly mobile site and a tablet-friendly desktop/browser site, and mostly eschew apps), the larger message was that merchants need to be prepared to address shoppers’ questions and unmet needs, even if they require a heretofore-unimagined combination of core functionality and content.

While responsive design isn’t a silver bullet for achieving this goal, with plenty of pitfalls to avoid, it’s a strategy merchants should seriously consider adopting, as it gives them maximum flexibility to tailor the site experience according to a shopper’s situation and device. We’ll be writing a lot more about responsive design in the months to come as MarketLive rolls out new functionality to support it, but meantime the 46% of merchants planning complete site overhauls this year should be incorporating the approach into their plans.

Customize views of brand-building content and functionality. Now more than ever, merchants have the ability to tailor the site experience, presenting a different array of products, content and features according to criteria that range from the shoppers’ location to the length of their tenure as customers. In so doing, they boost convenience and relevance, and create positive associations with the brand.

For new visitors, manifesting the essence of the brand throughout the experience is essential, as merchants battle to differentiate themselves and . Lori Edmonds of Peruvian Connection urged merchants to consider the Web site their premier flagship store, a showcase for the brand’s story and the source of continuity among multi-touchpoint experiences. She detailed how brand identity can be consistently manifested — not only through text tone and voice and design elements like colors and fonts, but through technical specifications and functionality. Such consistency not only conveys a singular brand vision, but also boosts shoppers’ confidence in the site and facilitates movement along the path to purchase.For example, Peruvian’s use of consistent images on index page listings through to the product page instantly provides visual confirmation and brand reinforcement.

Image from Peruvian Connection

peruvian_productpageimage

For returning customers, these brand signifiers remain important — but merchants should also appeal to potential repeat buyers by spotlighting convenience and efficiency. For example, they could present complementary items likely to be relevant based on past purchasing history, send  timely refill or replenishment reminders, or populate content sections with advanced topics rather than introductory brand-building information. Kyle Janssens of Greatland Corp. detailed how the site experience for returning customers was streamlined to include a custom reorder page, while bypassing introductory content. The tailored reordering experience, which was promoted via an email campaign highlighting past buyers’ “personal order history,” helped Greatland achieve a 28% lift in sales.

In our next post, we’ll look at how the guiding principal of fluidity applies to online/offline interactions. Meantime, how are you maximizing flexibility of your eCommerce assets?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations Tagged with Summit 2014

Social media watch: Mobile messaging apps – the new frontier

April 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Just as merchants are learning to adapt to the ever-proliferating and fragmenting social media landscape, with new communities springing up tailoring to ever more niche interests and demographics, a whole new frontier has opened up: social messaging apps.

These platforms, which use the mobile web to deliver messaging, picture exchanges and even voice calls “over the top”, without having to pay mobile carrier messaging or call fees, are proliferating even faster than browser-based social networking sites. And a flurry of recent headlines signal that major technology players believe these apps hold plenty of revenue potential.

First came the news that SnapChat, which enables one-to-one and group sharing of photos that disappear after viewing, turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook late last year. That figure was dwarfed in February when Facebook shelled out $19 billion for WhatsApp, which provides one-to-one and group messaging capabilities as well as photo sharing and video and voice calls. And some of the biggest brands are getting into the game, with Rakuten (Buy.com) acquiring Viber for $900 million in February and Chinese commerce giant Alibaba investing $215 million for a minority stake in Tango.

The reason for such heady valuations is the potential to tap an exponentially-growing audience. Technology researcher Forrester estimates that more than one in five U.S. online consumers use a mobile messaging app daily, and globally the picture is even bigger, with WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber all claiming audiences to rival Twitter’s, according to analyst Benedict Evans. More than 500 million photos are exchanged via WhatsApp daily — 150 million more than Facebook and several orders of magnitude more than on Instagram.

Furthermore, users are highly engaged with these apps, with the minutes spent in-app globally dwarfing usage of Facebook’s messaging service, Forrester reports.

Forrester data on mobile messaging apps

But while the high valuations mark strong potential, actual revenues so far are scant — and the apps present a host of challenges for merchants. First, the services are intended for private or semi-private use among individuals — making commercial messages more potentially intrusive than a status update on Twitter. Perhaps for that reason, the apps currently feature no advertising units; brands must seek permission for users to receive their messages, much like with an SMS campaign. Finally, if the proliferation of social networkng platforms seems dizzying, that’s nothing compared with the array of mobile messaging apps — more than 50 of which have more than a million downloads on Google Play, and a dozen of which have more than 50 million downloads, according to Evans.

So how should merchants proceed? A couple of guidelines:

Take an experimental approach — with exceptions. For most, mobile messaging apps represent an intriguing frontier to explore, rather than an urgent mandate; they shouldn’t unseat mobile Web site optimization as a priority, for example. But as always, there are exceptions, depending on the brand’s target audience. A couple of notable ones:

  • Merchants doing business (or planning to) in Asia. With mobile phones serving as many consumers’ primary connection to the Internet in Asia, mobile messaging apps are especially popular, with top apps Line, Kakao and WeChat originating in Japan, South Korea and China, respectively. Merchants seeking to engage shoppers in Asian markets need to invest in these services sooner rather than later, and to consider participating in nascent eCommerce messaging efforts, such as Line’s flash sale program. Response to the flash sale alerts has been strong, such as with this promotion for Maybelline, which sold out in 13 minutes.

Maybelline Line campaign

(image from TheNextWeb)

 Social media data from GlobalWebIndex

Plan for complementary SMS and messaging app strategies. Recently we recommended that merchants consider developing an SMS marketing strategy — and that advice still holds. But merchants should delve into their target audience’s behavior to determine whether mobile messaging apps are likely to overtake the messaging services native to their devices, and plan accordingly.

It’s also crucial to recognize the distinct qualities of SMS versus messaging apps, and build campaigns accordingly. Plain-text delivery of transactional updates might better be suited to SMS, for example, while video snippets and images more seamlessly integrate within a messaging app.

And then there are the stickers. The decorative icons are used pervasively in mobile messaging apps; some cost users a small fee, while others are provided by brands, who pay for the service to offer them free to users. The stickers can help brands introduce themselves to users across mobile messaging app networks — a strategy that worked for musician Paul McCartney, whose series of stickers on Line helped build a following of over 3 million (compared with 1.87 million on Twitter).

Paul McCartney Line campaign

(image from TheNextWeb)

Are you investing in mobile messaging apps, and if so, which one(s)?

Filed under Mobile Commerce, Social Commerce

When disaster strikes – best practices for problems large and small

March 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Over the holidays Target and Nieman Marcus experienced security breaches – proving that even the largest mass merchants aren’t immune to hacking. Even if you avoid massive security problems, there are bound to be web site problems, product recalls or even email errors that need correcting … it’s not a matter of if, but when.

It’s imperative to be prepared with plans and transparent policies that reassure customers and spotlight proactive service. Here are a few of our favorite disaster recovery tools:

1) Full and fast disclosure

In this age of information, full and early disclosure quickly followed by steps to move forward is crucial. While most agree that Target eventually came through with a comprehensive program to salve customer trust, the company waited far too long: rumors of the breach first surfaced on December 12, yet the company’s wasn’t released until December 19. A millenia in Internet communications time. Nieman Marcus didn’t chart bold new territory in its disclosure either, waiting 2 weeks before it alerted customers.

“…Target was behind when this first broke,” Levick strategic communications firm’s Jason Maloni told the Minneapolis StarTribune. “Anytime you are not controlling the release of information, you lose the opportunity to cast yourself in the role of the hero rather than the villain.”

Forbes reported in February that Target’s sales figures fell in the second half of the fourth quarter by as much as 46% attributed to lack of consumer trust.

We hope your errors aren’t as big, but no matter the size, getting out in front and leading the parade of information is huge.

2) Work that web site and email list

Now is the time to capitalize on your web real estate and coveted email list. In addition to admitting an error or disclosing a problem, find ways to help your customers, with links, videos, or other resources. Here are some damage control examples:

Catching up at Target

Target highlighted the security breach on its home page during the busy holiday season, and a midpage reference to a “data incident” can still be found today, three months later. Some complained that the plain black and white banner was too subtle, but the retail giant also emailed customers and offered free credit monitoring for a year.

Target Home Page Dec 26

Target’s web site now also offers a on their security misfortune, with information and resources including a video with CEO Gregg Steinhafel discussing the handling of the breach.

Product Recalls at Diapers.com

Diapers.com takes a proactive stance about product issues and spreads the word on behalf of a manufacturer with an email notifying buyers of new information about recalled car seats. The email, whose plain format distinguishes it from potentially skippable marketing messages, links buyers to resources found at both the online retailer’s and the manufacturer’s web sites. Such “pre-emptive” service can not only stave off calls to customer service, but helps time-starved customers connect immediately to the resources they need to act on the recall — thereby establishing Diapers.com as a brand that delivers convenience and efficiency as well as products.

Diapers.com Graco Product Recall Email

Email marketing oops at Sur la Table

The kitchenware aficionado Sur la Table even cleans up mistakes with panache. What do they do when the subject line of the a promotional email announcing a special dinnerware sale doesn’t match the content featuring in-store cooking classes? They make it right by sending out another message that uses both humility and humor. Let’s try again … “sometimes emails are like souffles – they don’t turn out. Here’s the dinnerware sale email we meant to send you.” Note that the tone is appropriate for the relative lack of severity of the glitch; no one would want to receive as breezy a message if identity theft were the issue.

Sur La Table Ooops Email

The Sur la Table email gaff is minor in relation to the Target and Nieman Marcus public relations nightmares, but true character is often revealed under pressure and handling mistakes with forthrightness can even be an opportunity to boost brand image because customers know details matter always.

3) Step up social media response

Now that social media is an integral part of the culture, a daily (or hourly) ritual for many, using it for customer care is moving from cutting-edge concept to business necessity according to experts at the recent Wharton School of Business Social Media Best Practices Conference. There’s a good chance your customers will take their grievances to social media — whether you’re monitoring there or not.

A Target Facebook reply during security breach

While they have since been tidied up, on Target’s and pages, many incensed shoppers complained about still not being able to access their accounts, being on hold for hours or not being able to call into the customer service line. To its credit, Target’s social media staff responded to posts in a timely manner, but often didn’t have much advice to give other than to apologize.

It is important to respond to every Tweet and Facebook comment that mentions your brand and its problems. Wharton’s social media panelists agreed, responses must be personal, and it’s essential to strike the right tone. This requires constant adjustments based upon your customer’s reactions. It can be a huge undertaking with more and more social media outlets making inroads into the daily lives of countless Americans, but social media is now a mandatory communications tool.

Both Target and Nieman Marcus tweeted about their hacking debacles, but too late and unprepared for the onslaught. Customer service responses were canned, and Target’s service web site even went down. Ouch.

4) Be ready to respond to your customers

According to most reports, even once Target began disclose, communication with customers was far from adequate. The online pages customers were being sent to were down, call centers were overwhelmed and staff at store locations did not have answers, as the Facebook response above indicates.

Your entire customer service team needs to be fully informed and on the same page. Make sure your offline human resources are at the ready. Staff up. There is nothing that adds insult to injury like misinformation, long lines, being on indefinite hold or suffering through multiple transfers or redirections on the telephone.

Don’t force staff to rely on scripts or cardboard public relations statements either. Critics commenting on Target’s shortcomings pointed out . Your customers are more likely to accept your mistakes and move on if you are earnest and sound human.

Then you are on the road to building relationships, regaining trust and resuming business as usual.

What are some challenges your brand has faced with damage control? What worked?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Email Marketing, Social Commerce Tagged with best practices, customer service, Email Marketing, public relations, social media, Target

Site-to-Store: Tightening the link between in-store and online

March 19, 2014 by Leave a Comment

What if you could find a way to boost online sales and drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar stores at the same time?

That’s exactly what site-to-store shipping and in-store pick-up promises merchants who undertake it and execute it right.

Site-to-store accomplishes several important objectives:

  • It boosts in-store sales – of those using site-to-store pickup, 38% have purchased other items while in the store.
  • It gives merchants another avenue for holiday order fulfillment, potentially heading off embarrassing logjams such as those that occurred during the 2013 holiday season.

Offering free shipping to those willing to pick packages up at their local store can convert browsers hesitant to pay shipping charges into buyers. And when they arrive to collect their merchandise, merchants have a whole other set of opportunities for additional shopping or other customer engagement.

It sounds simple, but site-to-store can be a big undertaking. Just 52 of the Top 500 Internet Retailers offer the service, 38 in the second 500. Macy’s currently only offers the option at nine of its stores, but is rolling it out to 500 stores around the nation.

To date ship-to-store has been the domain of larger merchants for good reason. They have enough physical stores to make it practical for their customers, and the mature and efficient supply chains to make the service possible. Both are necessary to justify the investment in managing fulfillment logistics and the development of site functionality.

Walmart rolled its site-to-store service out in 2011 in response to the growing threat from two-day shipping, as well as to drive traffic to stores. Best Buy sees such benefit in it as a generator of store traffic that the company offered $10 for every $100 customers spent on site-to-store last holiday shopping season.

But even smaller merchants may be able to benefit from a site-to-store program. Utilizing your own distribution network will in most cases prove less expensive than paying third-parties for residential shipping and offers customers relief from increasing parcel delivery costs.

So if you’re interested in instituting the site-to-store services there a two options to consider:

Pick-Up In Store

One option relies on in-store inventory visibility – shoppers can see if items are in-stock locally and “reserve” one for themselves to pickup. This option can be attractive to shoppers seeking the instant gratification of an in-store shopping experience without the risk that their preferred styles or hard-to-find sizes will be out of stock.

The Gap just began offering the service and markets it as “See it. Love it. Have it held in a store – with one quick click!”

The Gap - Reserve at Store

Ship to Store

The other option is to actually ship items to the store from a distribution center, taking advantage of the efficiency and lower cost of the existing supply chain.

The first page of REI’s online checkout asks shoppers whether they want home delivery or to ship to a tore for free. The company warns customers early of the “not so great news” that shipping to the store can take longer than directly to residential addresses. But it also stresses that shipping is free, which can amount to a significant savings for larger items. A canoe would cost $160 and an adult bicycle $75 to ship to a residence. To sweeten the deal further, store mechanics promise to assemble bicycles shipped to the store and have them ready-to-ride when customers arrive.

 

REI Ship to Store

If offering both the reserve-in-store and ship-to-store options, merchants need to make sure they distinguish between the two services. uses tabs to show items available in your local store, then also lists ship-to-store availability.

Promote It

Whichever option merchants offer, those who make the significant investment in site-to-store should promote it effectively throughout the path to purchase, including:

On the product page

The Container Store offers shoppers a convenient “Click and Pickup” box to enter their zip code, which instantly checks inventory in local stores and displays availability.

 

Container Store Click & Pickup

Meijer prominently displays a red graphic beside items available for shipping to stores, a service it calls “Order to Store.” Entering a zip code finds the closest store and entering a cellphone numbers offers instant shipping updates.

 

Meijer Order to Store

Alongside any promotion of free shipping

Best Buy has a promotion for free shipping with a $25 threshold on the home page, but ship to store is always free.

On the cart page

Payless Shoes reminds shoppers they can utilize the free ship to store option by making it an option in the check-out process.

 

Payless Shoes Ship to Store Option in Cart

In abandoned cart emails

follows up with registered customers via emails triggered by abandoned carts. It highlights the pick-up in store option and gives the address of the customer’s closest store.

 

 

What are some of your challenges and aspirations for site-to-store services for your brand?

Filed under Connected Commerce Tagged with Boosting sales, Free Shipping, Pick up in store, Ship to store, Site to store

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