Matt Mantey from The Internet is Just a Fad has some examples of the weaknesses with Nordstrom’s online retail experience. While Nordstrom’s has an incredibly recognizable and respected offline brand, it doesn’t necessarily translate into comparable online success.
If I was to guess, I think the problem faced by many large retailers trying to succeed online is one of front-door mindset.
They come from a mindset of build a strong brand experience, get people in the door, take care of them, watch the cash register ring.
But online, it’s not about getting people in THE door. It’s about EVERY door. You’re no longer competing at the store level. You’re competing at the product level.
The doors into your store are every single product and category page.
If people can’t find the appropriate door into your store when searching for a specific product, you lose. It doesn’t matter how strong your brand is, how generous your return policies are, or how big you are in the offline world. If you’re not found on specific product searches on Google, you’re losing money.
Once you get someone in one of your thousands and thousands of doors, you have the potential to leverage your brand’s power to increase the size of your consumer’s shopping cart. But first, you have to get them there.
Sadly, it seems that many strong offline brands are still focused on the front door of their online presence. They stare at homepage mock-ups in boardrooms and make group consensus decisions on how to make every stakeholder happy instead of focusing on the thousands and thousands of other doors into their online store where the real money is made (or should be).
Does online shopping always beat offline? Absolutely not. Here are a few examples of where offline trumps online shopping today.
But first, a shout-out to online: While shopping for new running shoes on Amazon last night, I was able to filter by size so I didn’t waste time comparing shoes that didn’t fit me. That is ALL I need to see since everything else is completely irrelevant for me. Sure, some shoe warehouse type stores display all of their inventory by size but that’s the exception today. What a waste of time it is to have to ask humans whether they could check their stock to see if they have a particular model in your size?
Offline Beating Online Shopping
1. Dealing with Disappointment: What happens when a product is out of stock online? You’ll often find a page telling you the product is out of stock, or worse yet, you may hit a 404 error page. Not good. Compare that to offline where you can probably glance left or right to find comparable products that are in stock.
2. Negotiable Pricing: Offline stores are great for cutting deals. Explain to a salesperson that you’re willing to buy a lot of something for a fair discount and you’ll have a good chance of getting it. Online negotiation is nearly impossible today beyond buying enough to receive free shipping.
3. Proactive help: Few things are more frustrating than being in a store that you know carries a specific item that you can’t seem to find. Personally, I run into this most often at the grocery store when picking up recipe items. In the offline world, a staff member can usually point me in the right direction in a matter of seconds. Beyond that, great staff members will identify frustrated shoppers and proactively help them through their buying mission. This is an experience that, so far, hasn’t translated well to the web where it may be needed even more than offline.
4. Bundling: If you go into Best Buy and pick out a digital camera, a salesperson will surely ask you whether you’d like to pick up a case, extra battery, extra storage, tripod, extended service plan, photo printer, laptop, Photoshop, etc. Why? For one, because they make more money if you spend more. But it’s also a service to the customer to make sure they leave with everything they’re going to need to truly enjoy their new camera. Some retail sites offer bundles, such as Amazon, but few have been able to translate the “Why?” of buying bundles to the web that come naturally in an offline transaction.
Of course, the majority of the offline wins above depend on dealing with helpful and well-trained employees, which seems to be the exception rather than the norm these days.
What’s your take? Are there any that you’d add or remove from this list?
My Capital One credit card’s online account management service includes a customer service feature called, “Send us a Secure Message” that sounded like the perfect way to communicate with the credit card company before traveling to Uruguay and Argentina.
While it isn’t required, I have run into issues in the past with credit cards when traveling overseas without providing prior notice. Better safe than sorry, I figure.
So, I found the appropriate area of the site:
And shot them a quick note. I was in an out a fraction of the time it would have taken me to get in touch with a human on the phone. Why waste my time, Capital One’s phone bill, and a Capital One employee’s time communicating such a simple message?
So, I left on my trip and while I was gone, I received the following response telling me that I had to call to tell them what I just told them in my message:
Huh?
Notice that the bottom of the message contains my message to them. Considering that this was sent through a secure message center on their site, they had my credit card number, dates, and destination of travel right there.
Isn’t a secure online message more secure than a phone call?
Isn’t forwarding me message back to me in a normal email less secure than how I sent the same message to them in the first place?
Doesn’t Capital One have the ability to forward messages like this to a different department if necessary?
Capital One: What’s in your wallet?
My Capital One credit card’s online account management service includes a customer service feature called, “Send us a Secure Message” that sounded like the perfect way to communicate with the credit card company before traveling to Uruguay and Argentina.
While it isn’t required, I have run into issues in the past with credit cards when traveling overseas without providing prior notice. Better safe than sorry, I figure.
So, I found the appropriate area of the site:
And shot them a quick note. I was in an out a fraction of the time it would have taken me to get in touch with a human on the phone. Why waste my time, Capital One’s phone bill, and a Capital One employee’s time communicating such a simple message?
So, I left on my trip and while I was gone, I received the following response telling me that I had to call to tell them what I just told them in my message:
Huh?
Notice that the bottom of the message contains my message to them. Considering that this was sent through a secure message center on their site, they had my credit card number, dates, and destination of travel right there.
Isn’t a secure online message more secure than a phone call?
Isn’t forwarding me message back to me in a normal email less secure than how I sent the same message to them in the first place?
Doesn’t Capital One have the ability to forward messages like this to a different department if necessary?
Capital One: What’s in your wallet?
After shopping for a dishwasher online earlier this week, I’m thoroughly convinced that nobody is really taking this market seriously.
The two biggest problems I found were a lack of consistent specs, and no highlighting or differentiating or key features and benefits.
I ended up getting into this market after the motherboard fried in my current dishwasher (LOL, try saying that to someone 100 years ago) and it isn’t worth replacing.
I’ve decided that I’m willing to spend pretty much any amount on a dishwasher that I can justify since over the life of the product, it isn’t really that big of a difference.
So, I set out to research what’s available on the market. Home Depot is my first stop, where I drill down to standard size models in white. Then I’m stuck. There’s no good way to figure out the difference between a $300 and an $1100 model.
I then bounced around to other retailers, including Best Buy, Amazon, and Sears. Shopping.com provides a link to an article that actually helps explain some of the features available at different price points.
Over time, I get a feel for features:
- A heat booster seems to be a good idea since it will wash the dishes with hotter water without jacking up my home’s water heater.
- The quieter the better.
- A time delayed start sounds nice.
- EnergyStar compliant seems like a must.
- A built in garbage disposal that can grind up food I’m too lazy to pre-rinse off sounds like a time saver.
- A soap tub that lets you dump an entire bottle into the thing so the machine can handle things from there? Sounds cool.
- Stainless steel tub? Hmmm, does that matter?
I eventually figure out that dishwashers seem to hover in $200 incremental price points starting at $300 and working up to $1100. So, you think there might be an easy way to figure out which features are added with each price jump You’d be wrong.
Like I said above, I’m willing to spend any amount that I can justify, so I was simply looking for a site that would help me understand what I’m getting for every $200 additional I spend.
Where do the retail sites fail?
1. They provide product comparisons, but only of the most rudimentary specs.
2. They don’t tell you which specs are actually worth paying attention to.
3. They don’t standardize the specs into human friendly terms. For example, I don’t really care what GE’s trademarked term is for their soap dispenser system.
4. They don’t humanize specs. Should I care than one unit creates 57 decibels of noise while another creates 55? Would I even notice? Can I talk over that? Watch a movie?
5. They don’t debunk (or simply hide) specs that don’t matter.
6. They don’t explain what’s involved in installing a dishwasher. Is this something I should attempt to do myself (probably not). If not, how do I get it installed and what will it cost?
Overall, I don’t think any of the sites I looked through were designed with the consumer in mind. A consumer, in my case (and most) who rarely shops for appliances, so needs to be educated on what actually matters when making a purchase. Specs alone - even when consistently provided - don’t help tell the story of why higher price points are justified.
Cocktail napkin this stuff.
I imagine there are plenty of qualified dishwasher salespeople working for each of the companies mentioned above. Have them break down why one would spend more for a dishwasher at each of the key price points on a single cocktail napkin. Translate that into the web and they’ll have a winner.
Offering live chat on websites can be a great way to connect with customers, but like most tools, it’s only as good as the people using it.
Take, for example, a recent experience I had with Home Depot where I decided to use the live chat feature to get answers to a few questions that should have been included in their product listings.
Clicking the live chat link brought up this screen, where I was told a “Specialist” would be with me shortly:
I waited. And waited. Like a phone queue, it occasionally repeated the hold message for my reading pleasure. I don’t remember how long it was between messages, but it was at least a couple minutes.
Mind you, I wasn’t staring intently at this chat window, since there are plenty of other distractions on my computer to help kill time waiting for Home Depot to care about the $800 worth of stuff in my shopping cart.
Eventually, I toggled back over to find this message waiting for me:
My “specialist” Dineshia decided that, after holding for probably 15 minutes, that I wasn’t really interested in chatting?
Why did this happen? My guess is that Dineshia’s performance is measured based on completed chats, and possibly how fast chats are completed. Had Dineshia simple waited for me to respond his or her stats would have been skewed (but I would have gotten my questions answered).
In my opinion, this is a horrible use of live chat since the cost of waiting for my response is near zero. Unlike a phone call, a chat support person can manage many simultaneous conversations so keeping my chat live in the background would have been a better option from a customer support perspective.
This was not a technical problem, but a poor use of technology.
Make sure your customer support incentives are aligned with your customer’s needs to avoid situations like this.
Tomorrow is the unofficial kick-off of the holiday shopping season.
What technology gifts are you hoping to receive this year?
Do you have your eyes on a Kindle?
Have you made it 5 months without an iPhone?
Also, what tech gifts would you recommend for others?
I have a theory that the two best audiences for online retail stores are the urban core and rural areas.
Urban core areas do well because people living in high density areas tend to get everything delivered. Not just pizza, but groceries, beer, and hardware. Parking, commuting, or even owning a car can be difficult, so it’s easier to hop on the web, whip out the plastic, and watch stuff show up at your door.
Rural people benefit from online retail due to a lack of choice. There are few interesting stores within easy driving distance. When faced with a choice of making a list of things to pick up on a shopping excursion, or simply buying the same stuff online, the choice of moving online becomes pretty obvious. There are some exceptions for people who’s bandwidth is so slow they’d still rather drive 20 minutes to shop at Target.
I’ve attempted to illustrate this with a color coded map of the greater Chicago area:
The red zone is what I call the online retail dead zone. That’s obviously going a bit too far, but the point here is that suburban families have relatively easy access to a wide array of shopping options and easy parking, so are less reliant on retail delivery than those further in or further out.
If you’re an online retailer with a finite amount of money to spend on advertising, it’s possible than you may see higher conversions from outside the red donut. This assumes that you ignore all other variables, such as which market is the best fit for the products you’re trying to sell.
Actually targeting this type of an audience online is something I haven’t fully worked out yet. Any suggestions?
I’ve been in Las Vegas this week at the Electronic Retailer’s Association’s annual conference. One of the sessions I attended called, “Increase your ROI with New Technologies” took at look at emerging (or already emerged, depending on your perspective) technologies that can driving business for retailers.
One of the presenters, Todd Narwid from Narrowstep, brought up some interesting points about how the retail industry is changing:
Marketers are not keeping up with shifting changes. He sees marketers as slow adopters of social networking and online video as marketing solutions. As I see it, there are two reasons for this: 1. It’s easy to stick with what’s worked; 2. Metrics are in place for older marketing strategies; 3. Companies billing based on a percentage of ad spend have no interest in advertising strategies that are more labor than cost intensive.
Narwid suggests that first mover advantages are huge in areas like online video, which makes sense since any new marketing strategy will reward first movers.
Broadband penetration and online video continue to grow. Is this still an effective marketing talking point? Are businesses really clueless enough to think, “I suppose people aren’t dialing-up that much anymore?”
Anecdotal data can win over empirical data in many cases when it comes to justifying ad spends. In no way unique to this discussion, but clearly an interesting point. I could see pitches being developed around the concept of, “Your kids are on YouTube all night, right? So why aren’t you advertising there and creating company videos for YouTube?” A compelling, but not necessarily rational, argument.
Narwid’s most interesting nugget came when he mentioned this:
Online conversions increased 5x for a client among people who watched a video associated with the product.
Video is powerful stuff. Having a video that helps explain the features and benefits of a product is clearly going to help close more business than a web page without video. In a sense, we’re seeing the creating of an entirely new division of the infomercial industry around on-demand web-based infomercials.
Narwid built upon that by explaining the relationship between online and offline advertising, explaining that advertisers should, “Drive people to a more compelling argument.”
And that’s really the point. The web allows people to go deep in their research of products and services that interest them. Their interest may not have started online, but that’s where the research is done. Effective use of advertising - online or off - drives people to a website where people can hear your most compelling arguments on why they should buy from you or work with you.
I’ve been in Las Vegas this week at the Electronic Retailer’s Association’s annual conference. One of the sessions I attended called, “Increase your ROI with New Technologies” took at look at emerging (or already emerged, depending on your perspective) technologies that can driving business for retailers.
One of the presenters, Todd Narwid from Narrowstep, brought up some interesting points about how the retail industry is changing:
Marketers are not keeping up with shifting changes. He sees marketers as slow adopters of social networking and online video as marketing solutions. As I see it, there are two reasons for this: 1. It’s easy to stick with what’s worked; 2. Metrics are in place for older marketing strategies; 3. Companies billing based on a percentage of ad spend have no interest in advertising strategies that are more labor than cost intensive.
Narwid suggests that first mover advantages are huge in areas like online video, which makes sense since any new marketing strategy will reward first movers.
Broadband penetration and online video continue to grow. Is this still an effective marketing talking point? Are businesses really clueless enough to think, “I suppose people aren’t dialing-up that much anymore?”
Anecdotal data can win over empirical data in many cases when it comes to justifying ad spends. In no way unique to this discussion, but clearly an interesting point. I could see pitches being developed around the concept of, “Your kids are on YouTube all night, right? So why aren’t you advertising there and creating company videos for YouTube?” A compelling, but not necessarily rational, argument.
Narwid’s most interesting nugget came when he mentioned this:
Online conversions increased 5x for a client among people who watched a video associated with the product.
Video is powerful stuff. Having a video that helps explain the features and benefits of a product is clearly going to help close more business than a web page without video. In a sense, we’re seeing the creating of an entirely new division of the infomercial industry around on-demand web-based infomercials.
Narwid built upon that by explaining the relationship between online and offline advertising, explaining that advertisers should, “Drive people to a more compelling argument.”
And that’s really the point. The web allows people to go deep in their research of products and services that interest them. Their interest may not have started online, but that’s where the research is done. Effective use of advertising - online or off - drives people to a website where people can hear your most compelling arguments on why they should buy from you or work with you.
Recent Comments