One of the biggest nuisances online shoppers face is missing or hidden information. Sometimes, sites simply fail to provide needed information. Other times, the information is too difficult to find or isn't handy when shoppers need it. This situation is particularly absurd in a medium whose chief selling points are convenience and information.
The end result is predictable: lost sales. Even after going to the trouble of finding and selecting products they want, shoppers frequently click away before completing the transaction--a phenomenon known as "shopping cart abandonment." Industry studies estimate that up to 75 percent of online consumers abandon their shopping carts before they complete the checkout process.
If you're managing an e-commerce site, you can improve it substantially by having all the right information on your site and by making sure it is easy to find. Geri Spieler, research director at the Gartner Group, offers some general advice. "Design the site as though your customer had never been to your store before. All pages must have three things on them, no matter how many times the user clicks: a search window, link to customer service, and contents of the shopping basket at any time."
Here are seven types of information every e-commerce site should provide to help convert more shoppers into buyers:
1. Product details: If you're selling apparel, it's not enough to tell shoppers that the product is a snow parka and list the price. Potential customers also want to know about fabrics, colors, sizes, waterproofing, temperature thresholds, weight, and other details as well as see one or more images of the product. Matthew Berk, an analyst of site technologies and operations at Jupiter Media Metrix, says online retailers often fail to understand the distinction between managing electronic catalogs and managing content. "Consumers want a product's gestalt," he says. "Not just prices, discounts, and when it will arrive, but how it compares with other products. In short, they want content."
2. Privacy policy: Since they need to give all sorts of personal data to complete the sale, consumers are understandably sensitive as to how this information will be used. For that reason, every site should have a privacy policy that's readily accessible. Steve Talleen, Giga Information Group's vice president for Web Site ScoreCard Services, says every site should have a clearly labeled link to its privacy policy. "At a minimum, this link should be on the home page and any page that requests the customer to input data," he says. "The best sites have it on every page--usually as one of the text links at the bottom."
Privacy policies need to cover a lot of ground--the type of data being collected, its intended use, and the conditions, if any, under which it will be disclosed to a third party. Avoid legalese--opaque language can make it look like you're more interested in protecting your own interests. Cover the main points of the privacy policy as forthrightly as possible in a summary paragraph before launching into details.
3. Shipping information: Unclear shipping information is one of the single biggest sources of consternation among online shoppers. It's particularly irritating for consumers when they can't discover shipping options and pricing until they are in the middle of the checkout process. Shipping information is an important consideration for shoppers. A Vividence study found that high shipping prices are the No. 1 reason customers abandon their shopping carts, cited as the reason for abandonment among 72 percent of those surveyed. A Yankee Group survey found that 52 percent of online consumers who research products online don't purchase online because they have to wait too long to receive the product from an online retailer. Paul Ritter, Yankee Group's program manager for Internet market strategies, says, "Clearly, merchants that make it easy for shoppers to find out how long it will take to get their merchandise and that offer overnight shipping as an option will win out in converting these non-buyers to buyers."
4. Complete pricing information: Consumers should have easy access to complete price information before checkout. "This is one of the classic 'baiting' habits of online merchants," says Gartner's Spieler. "They don't tell you about taxes and shipping until [you get] to checkout. This is often where the shopping basket gets dumped." The consumer should be alerted to local sales tax and other fees and where they apply before getting a rude awakening at the end of the process. Something as simple as this can determine whether a customer is willing to buy from you in the future. A reader who wrote me about discovering that he had been charged sales tax after completing a transaction said he will never do business with that company again.
5. Warranty information: Warranties help create buying confidence, especially among shoppers who are accustomed to going to a store and looking a merchant in the eye. Yet few companies provide decent warranty information. In a recent evaluation of 110 online retail sites, the Federal Trade Commission found that 52 of the sites selling warranted products didn't provide adequate information about the warranties.
6. Return policy: Like warranties, consumers may want information on return policies both before and after making a purchase. You should have links to a return policy alongside pricing, warranty, shipping, and order confirmation information. The return policy should spell out whether refunds are issued and under what conditions, how long consumers have to return an item after purchase, how long it takes to process the return and provide remittance, what customers need to provide (such as a receipt or returning the goods), who pays for the return shipment, and the form of remittance (a check, charge credit, or merchandise credit).
7. Customer support: Don't hide your company's contact information. Customers get confused, need information you didn't anticipate, and get angry and need some form of recourse. Make sure customers have an avenue to ask questions and resolve difficulties--whether it's e-mail, a toll-free phone number, live chat, or some combination of these. If you use e-mail, make sure you give customers a clear picture of how soon they can expect an answer. Also make sure you have a reliable process in place for getting them timely answers.
E-commerce is growing up. Having a competitive site means filling in the information gaps so customers have the knowledge they need to make decisions at key milestones in the shopping process. You should be able to boost sales and increase customer satisfaction by making sure that your site has complete information that's easy to find. Perhaps most important of all, it can help you keep customers coming back for more.
Adrian Mello has covered the technology business for nearly two decades and is a former editor-in-chief of Line56, Macworld, and Upside.
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