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

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

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

How to boost engagement on Twitter beyond discounts

March 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

There’s plenty of data out there showing that people follow brands on social media trolling for the discounts. Indeed, it’s the top reason given in a recent of 8,000+ consumers. And according to Twitter itself, of it’s legions of users, 94 percent reported they follow brands for the discounts and promotions. Not far behind, at 88 percent, are those who follow brands for the “free stuff.”

So how’s a merchant supposed to boost engagement on Twitter without giving away the store? Try a little eye-candy. Embedding eye-catching photos into your Tweets is one of the most effective ways to grab people’s attention, like this one from Armani last month.

Armani Valentine's Day Tweet

No discounts necessary

The data demonstrating that images boost Twitter engagement is undeniable. Tweets for brands offering links through pic.twitter.com, Twitter’s image service, are the highest performing type of link when it comes to engagement, according to a survey by social media analytics firm, Simply Measured. Tweets that embedded an image through Twitter received an average of 210 engagements, defined as a reply, retweet or mention. No other links come close.

Visual content is key on Twitter

The next two highest performers, tumblr.com and pinterest.com, also include photo sharing services, while the third was micro-video service, Vine.co, also owned by Twitter. All further confirm the point that visual elements are a crucial engagement drivers.

Consider creating a hashtag-based picture-sharing campaign that stimulates follower contributions. Here’s one from Armani responding to and sharing a follower’s pic/tweet. This is smart because it asked a question and invited a return response.

Don’t be afraid to share works in progress or products in development, either. They can heighten anticipation and give customers a sense of having an inside track on what’s just over the horizon.

Griot’s Garage, a car care products supplier based in Tacoma, Wash., offered this sneak peak at the classic car — a 1957 Buick Special Estate Wagon — to be featured on it’s upcoming catalog cover connecting its Twitter users to Instagram.

No worries if you don’t have images of classic cars or sultry models lying around. Fans of brands like to see what’s going on behind the scenes, too. Design Within Reach, the innovative New York-based furniture and accessories retailer Tweeted this image of it’s animated and stylish staff in its new San Francisco office.

A few other pointers for making sure your Tweets are well-received, according to the social enterprise software firm, , include:

– Keep it short. 140 characters may seem short enough, but Tweets with less than 100 characters see a 17 percent increase in engagement.

– Use hashtags, but sparingly. One to two hashtags equals a 21% increase in engagement, more than two sees a 17% decrease in engagement.

– Ask followers to retweet. 99% of brands don’t do this, but the analysis suggests doing so increases “amplification” by 12 times. If you spell out “retweet,” it jumps to 23 times higher.

As for content, it’s limited only by your creativity. Links to articles and stories of interest to your target audience are a great method of keeping the conversation going, as is retweeting follower contributions.

Participating in popular social media memes, like “Throwback Thursday,” is another way connect with your highly social audience. Or, start your own meme. Skin care retailer H2o Plus shared this alluring photo on what it dubbed Water Wednesday.

What Twitter strategies have you found drive engagement?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Connected Commerce, Social Commerce Tagged with images, Twitter tips, Video

Filling Gaps in your Email Marketing Campaign

March 5, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Reaching out with relevant, timely emails can help merchants forge stronger connections with shoppers

We’ve all read the statistics about how email marketing remains one of the most effective and reliable tools for merchants to reach their customers. The Direct Marketing Association, for one, claims that email marketing campaigns have a return on investment of 4,300 percent.

If your ROI doesn’t quite seem to hitting such stratospheric figures, it could be because you’re one of many merchants with a few gaps their email marketing efforts.

Recent data from Exact Target reveals that many merchants still aren’t using some of the most effective email tactics out there.

exacttarget_emaildata

Of the five email tactics rated most effective by merchants who’ve implemented them, two — loyalty and welcome messages – are in wide usage, with 65 percent and 71 percent respectively.

But the other three showed far lower usage. Just 51 percent used browse retargeting, 38 percent used birthday emails, and a mere 35 percent followed up on abandoned carts with emails. Yet more than 40% of merchants who do use those tactics report that they produce “excellent” results.

Those are huge missed opportunities. When it comes to abandoned carts alone, for example, industry researcher Forrester reports that a whopping 88% of U.S. consumers have abandoned a purchase for one reason or another, so reaching them with effective enticements to return to the site and complete purchases is crucial.

It’s right to be cautious about inundating customers’ inboxes with generic email blasts. But emails that are relevant and timely can not only grab customers’ attention, but earn their appreciation as well. New data from digital marketing firm Listrak shows just how much shoppers value emails tailored to their shopping preferences:

- 84 percent of online shoppers report it helpful if products in emails are based on their shopping habits or preferences, with 69 percent willing to share personal information with retailers to receive more relevant emails.

- 90 percent of shoppers who sign up for promotional emails want to be alerted when products they frequently buy go on sale, and 72 percent are willing to receive more emails that make shopping easier, such as weekly sales, top sellers and new products.

- 77 percent of shoppers who signed up for promotional emails said they are more likely to purchase items online or in store if emails feature products based on their shopping habits and preferences.

Figures like these should give merchants confidence that their customers will welcome additional emails from them under the right circumstances. Here’s how to implement the top three underused tactics for maximum effectiveness:

Abandoned Carts

Abandoned shopping carts present one of the best opportunities for merchants to reach out to their customers by email.

Getting the emails in the first place requires some delicacy. Forcing customers to create an account in order to check out is a major cause of cart abandonment. Instead, encourage them to sign up for email updates early on, and then use behavioral tracking technology to flag you if they’ve ditched their cart. Or consider collecting email address at the beginning of the checkout process, with a clear message that it will be used to contact them about their order.

However you obtain the email address, once the cart is abandoned, be ready to act fast. Send a cart reminder within the first 24 hours, and then follow up.

Vail, Colo.-based luxury ski and apparel retailer Gorsuch reaches out quickly to would-be customers, giving them a second look at what they left behind as well as some other attractive options to lure them back.

gorsuch_abandonedcart

One thing this high-end retailer doesn’t do is follow-up with a discount. As reasonable as discounting at this juncture might seem, it can backfire by “training” customers to abandon their carts expecting you’ll sweeten the deal.

Instead, offer to help them. Ask how you can help them complete their order. Offer on-line chat, a customer service number or other products they might find attractive.

Browse Retargeting

Email follow-ups don’t have to be limited to items that made it into customers’ carts. Everything they’ve viewed while on your site is data that can help you lure them back.

Of the merchants surveyed by Exact Target, 42 percent report of those using browse retargeting emails report “excellent” results. And yet 49 percent of online merchants say have no plans to utilize the tool.

Email subscribers who visit the site and don’t act can be lured back with alerts when items they viewed go on sale, or by showcasing similar products at different price points – giving them a number of alternatives to consider. It’s an opportunity to increase brand awareness and remind shoppers of items they viewed before just as they might be having trouble finding them elsewhere.

Jewelry retailer Helzberg flags recently-viewed items on sale in this personalized email, along with best sellers and new items.

Happy Birthday!

Everyone loves birthday presents. So why not offer your customers one? Most likely it’s because you don’t know when their birthdays are or haven’t figured out the right way to ask them.

In an age of heightened concern about the privacy of personal data on the Internet, asking shoppers for that information without the proper context can be off-putting.

The key is to give context for the request so that shoppers know they’ll receive a benefit for sharing their personal information. Look at how Old Navy asked the question. It’s on the second page of the email signup process, after subscribers have already supplied their email address. It’s optional. And its “Happy Birthday to You” graphic and offer of “a gift” on your special day make it hard to pass up.

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Email Marketing Tagged with Abandoned carts, Email Marketing, Retargeting

The shopping cart: Popular vs. overlooked features

March 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment

As our prior post on the MarketLive Performance Index revealed, merchants need to optimize their sites to the utmost to improve performance in 2014 — especially when it comes to converting engaged shoppers who’ve added items to the cart into committed buyers. A survey of sites reveals one area to prioritize when it comes to fine-tuning: the shopping cart itself.

The importance and function of the cart has changed since the early days of e-Commerce, when featuring complementary items as upsells was considered cutting-edge cart technology. Features such as estimated shipping costs are more or less considered standard. At the same time, as we chronicled in an earlier post, the very path to purchase has changed, so that only 22% of shoppers now proceed to the “cart page” of old after clicking the “add to cart” button; on some sites, it’s possible to skip the cart altogether and proceed straight to checkout from the drop-down global cart display or a pop-up window.

But with consumer research activities more intensive than ever, there’s no denying the importance of the cart page — which we define as being the page preceding the first step of checkout that’s accessible from the “cart” link in global navigation. The cart can both serve as a comprehensive order information resource, and offer enticements to spur shoppers onward into checkout and purchase. In short, it remains a vital decision point on the path to purchase, and one merchants should ignore at their peril.

Our survey of some 70 sites from among the top 100 merchants on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list revealed how the biggest brands with the biggest resources at their disposal are positioning their shopping carts for maximum sales. Even among these cutting-edge brands, some information was being effectively conveyed — while some surprising areas were overlooked.

Shopping cart feature survey by MarketLive

Specific contrasts that caught our eye:

Shipping vs. promo codes vs. tax. Merchants are rightfully catering to consumers’ obsession with shipping. As we’ve detailed on numerous occasions before, shipping costs are the prime cause of purchase abandonment, while free shipping promotions are by far the most popular discount shoppers seek, especially during the crucial holiday season.

As a result, merchants are doing well when it comes to using the cart to convey shipping costs and free shipping opportunities. Close to three-quarters of the carts we viewed include an estimated shipping cost, while 60% display the free shipping threshold, free shipping promo codes, or even the amount shoppers should add to meet the threshold.

Fewer merchants, however, back up these two key pieces of information with a description of timeframes for each tier of delivery service; just 54% list the options or even link to them via a popup window. While that’s still over half, there are plenty of carts displaying shipping costs without letting shoppers know what, exactly, the charge buys them. More merchants, 56%, are enabling shoppers to enter promo codes and view the associated discounts in the cart — a welcome feature, but one that serves just a subset of shoppers. Shipping, by contrast, is a universal concern, and one merchants should address with details that should be relatively straightforward to display.

Similarly, whether sales tax will be assessed is a question affecting every potential order — yet just 43% of merchants display this information, with most sites stating tax will be calculated iin checkout (or, worse, failing to mention it at all). While implementing estimated tax by ZIP code within the cart requires more technological moxie than displaying a table of shipping timeframes, the information is a crucial component  of the total order costs, and therefore should be a priority.

Convenience boosters vs. basic customer service vs. in-store shopping support. The good news is that merchants are responding to shifting consumer behaviors and implementing key features that smooth the path to purchase, especially across touchpoints. We’ve long recommended implementation of alternative payments, as they’re increasingly popular (and downright crucial when it comes to mobile). So it was a relief to see the sites we surveyed positively festooned with alternative payment buttons, with close to 60% of merchants highlighting the availability of Paypal or another service enabling shoppers to skip entry of credit card data and other checkout steps.

Similarly, it was gratifying to see that more than half of merchants enable transfer of items from the cart to the wish list or other repository of saved products. This functionality not only caters to researchers who would otherwise use the cart — and likely abandon it at some point in their travels — but it signals an attempt to cater to cross-touchpoint activity, such as researching online and then looking up products selected earlier via smartphone while in-store to complete purchases.

But when compared with the startlingly low percentage of merchants displaying the most basic customer service information, these innovations seem like putting the cart (as it were) before the horse. Fewer than half of merchants displayed an 800 number or chat link within the main cart content area (as opposed to in global navigation) — and less than 40% included links to product guarantees or information about returns, information consumers deem crucial to the purchase decision.  As with delivery timeframe details, this information requires little technical prowess to incorporate, and should be a priority for every merchant to display at the cart level.

Similarly, while not every merchant can offer site-to-store shipping, it’s relatively easy to provide a “print cart” link so that shoppers can carry product information with them — and yet fewer than one in five merchants offer it.

The upshot? When it comes to optimizing the cart, there’s some low-hanging fruit even the largest merchants have yet to seize — and small- to mid-sized merchants should follow suit. In an upcoming post, we’ll survey how the cart experience appears on mobile devices. But meantime, tell us: what cart features do you deem essential, and which are merely nice-to-haves?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain Tagged with Cart abandonment

Performance Index: Lessons from the fourth-quarter crucible

February 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment

When it comes to seasonal cycles, most merchants acknowledge that the pivotal fourth quarter requires special focus. The latest data from the MarketLive Performance Index demonstrates that the fourth quarter is indeed a crucible. While traffic spikes and conversion rates get a boost, the ruthless mindset of the holiday shopper leaves no room for error — translating into metrics that reveal top areas for improvement in the year ahead.

Overall, the fourth-quarter and annual metrics in the Index report bring good news: merchants achieved year-over-year revenue gains of 26% for the year and 16% for the fourth quarter — beating industry standards by significant margins in both cases. Moreover, those revenue gains were achieved without resorting to race-to-the-bottom discounting, as average order size for both periods also rose year over year. The feat is especially impressive for the  fourth quarter, when merchants saw average order size rise 6.2% despite consumers’ quests for holiday shopping discounts.

MarketLive Performance Index data

But there are performance discrepancies, too. For the year, a significant increase in the add-to-cart, or engagement, rate helped boost revenue gains; once shoppers had placed items in the cart, merchants held the line on “purchase fallout,” with the conversion, abandoned cart, and abandoned checkout rates holding their gain or loss to within roughly 1% compared with 2012.

By contrast, in the fourth quarter, the boost in revenue was tied more directly to the increase in traffic; conversion and add-to-cart rates increased by almost the same percentage, and those gains were undercut by increases in both the abandoned cart rate and the abandoned checkout rate. Breaking down fourth-quarter results even more to focus on the holiday period (November 1 – Jan. 5), the gap widens further, with the both the add-to-cart and conversion rate slipping year over year, in addition to the abandoned cart rate rising.

MarketLive Performance Index holiday data

The numbers from the fourth-quarter crucible suggest one possible pivot point around which to organizing priorities: the all-important add-to-cart rate, which signals intent on the part of shoppers and whose improvement during the other quarters of the year contrasts with the holiday season, when it declined.

Prior to the add-to-cart: develop content to engage shoppers. When it comes to connecting shoppers with relevant products and content and convincing them to add items to the cart, the annual Index data shows that merchants are making marked improvement. But the holiday numbers suggest that they must redouble their efforts if they’re to compete in the battle for holiday shoppers’ engagement. Among the strategies to consider:

  • Service-centric content. As we discussed in our recent post regarding Google’s “Hummingbird” algorithm update, content that focuses on proactively addressing shoppers’ questions about products, service and pricing is more crucial than ever — and needn’t be relegated to the “about us” section. During the holiday season, when shoppers relentlessly research products and hunt for service extras, this content is even more likely to help drive sales.

  • Videos focusing on utility. Product demonstrations, installation tips, and video buying guides add significant value for shoppers, as we discussed previously in our post covering key video content. During the holidays, videos can give shoppers the reassurance they need to commit to purchasing gifts without first touching or trying them.

After the add-to-cart: eliminate roadblocks to purchase — across touchpoints. While merchants maintained a relatively steady state when it came to conversion, cart abandonment and checkout abandonment the rest of the year, the holiday season saw slippage across all three metrics — suggesting that merchants can do more to compel shoppers who’ve already added items to the cart to complete purchases, whether via the touchpoint where they started their shopping journey or not. Merchants should:

  • Use the cart for more than estimated shipping and tax. More than just a cost calculator, the shopping cart should give consumers comprehensive information to support their order, from product upsells to information about product guarantees, returns and exchanges. Free shipping promotions and loyalty club benefits should also be prominent, giving shoppers a bevy of options to successfully complete their transactions. And the ability to print and save cart items for later smooth the path to purchase from online browsing to offline buying.

  • Consider single-page checkout. While we’ve written before about how no single checkout format dominates among the largest of merchants,  prior Performance Index data suggests single-page checkout is becoming more prevalent among specialty and boutique sellers, with 75% of Index transactions taking place via one-page checkout. Furthermore, a streamlined single-page checkout can provide a viable starting point for mobile implementations, which need to be even more frictionless. Whatever the format, merchants should dive deep into their analytics to ferret out checkout problems across touchpoints and devices, and deploy A/B tests to put potential solutions through their paces.

  • Implement alternative payments. We’ve repeatedly addressed the importance of adopting alternative payments, to enable both desktop and mobile purchasing. Of course merchants should take into consideration their target audience and the prevailing standards for their category — for example, BillMeLater is more of a priority to implement for sellers of big-ticket items such as furniture or jewelry than merchants offering fast-fashion T-shirts — but in all likelihood, offering at least one alternative payment option should be a top priority for 2014.

Download the latest Performance Index report for in-depth metrics, including mobile data and KPIs by vertical, and further strategic recommendations. How do your 2013 metrics compare with the MarketLive Index benchmarks, and how are the numbers influencing your 2014 plans?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Analytics Tagged with MarketLive Performance Index

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