You open the small box to reveal a guitar pick.

“Great. Just what I wanted”

I can tell you are lying, but I appreciate your vague attempt at gratitude.

So I start to explain that this is no ordinary pick. Oh, no. Far from it in fact.

This is the pick that Jimmy Page threw into the crowd during the recent Led Zeppelin reunion gig.

Enlightened with this knowledge you’re now viewing your gift in a whole different light. But it’s still the same nondescript pick you dismissed 2 minutes ago. So what’s changed?

It’s simple. This small, flat piece of plastic now has a story. It has been given a character. It’s become far more than the object itself.

And because of that, you won’t forget about it. You won’t leave it to gather dust at the back of a shelf. You won’t let your kids play with it. It’s also highly likely you will tell your friends all about it.

By giving an object a story you will, in turn, give it a character and people would much rather buy stories and characters over objects any day.

So what stories do your products have?

Photo credit to Aidan Jones

Who are we looking at?
Ebuyer | Asos | Argos | Boden | B&Q | MyDeco | Apple | Tesco | Ebay | Amazon | John Lewis

1. Layout

Its appears to be true that there is now a way e-commerce should look and feel. There are standardised design elements throughout big brand e-commerce

The Header

Consistently menus now reside on the top, with logo on the left, search & shopping basket on the right.

Home Page

Always featuring a big picture of some kind, normally full width with no side navigation

Category Pages

Sidebars to narrow searches are commonplace and getting more intelligent.

Products – full width

Once you get to a products page its now mostly full width, with no side navigation, and heavily product focused above the fold.

2.  Video

Video is a trend that seems to be cropping up regularly and I love it! Video provides masses of extra emotion and trust on any product it appears on. For me the best use of this is at ASOS, fantastically emotional salesmanship on the kids cloths and great runway videos for the products in adult fashion. Its also in use at  Ebuyer with selected lines giving QVC style buying guides. Do your videos have to be flawless to get a response? If you take a look at this youtube clip of somebody unboxing his new ipod with over 650,000 views you’ll see that real user videos are also a massively powerful customer conversion tool.

3. Quality of photography

If your retailing online and want to roll with the big guys there no excuse for an under exposed 50×50 jpg anymore.

I see a few consistencies from my chosen retailers:

• Giant images are OK for homepages (see examples below)
• Branded commodity items image quality isn’t so important (have a look at Argos, Tesco and John Lewis sites for examples of this)
• Providing more that 1 image if possible is most definitely better
• Modern e-commerce layouts absolutely place focus on product shots
• At each of the sites I looked at there was no genuinely poor images.
• On a number of sites I saw standard product images teamed up with “in use” pictures with people in them

4. Search tools

Search results on all the sites I looked at were pretty good. I loved the search on ebuyer, it was intuitive and helpful. Apples search was awesome, extremely polished I’d recommend you try it.

Second stage filtering of search results was an absolute requirement for all stores for me mydeco ruled on this one, the colour chooser was a nice touch. Despite Apple having a great search it was one of the few stores were I didn’t feel a need to search as the navigation was incredibly clear.

5. Delivery

A constant frustration for me with online shopping is poor delivery information. I started out in Automotive parts and its shocking how poor many of  the distributors of these parts are compared to leading online shops.

ebuyer and asos stood out as excellent examples of going above and beyond for customers.

• Ebuyer offers next day delivery on orders up to 11.00 at night. WOW!
• ASOS offers same day delivery in London. WOW
• Zappos in America stood out with its free delivery both ways promise

2 consistent elements cropped up.

• Free delivery is commonplace (and so it should be, it removes all confusion)
• Delivery on a nominated day is gaining traction

Conclusion

If there is one thing that’s clear above all else is that the strength of modern platforms means its all about high quality content. Many of the sites I used looked and functioned in pretty much the same manner.

Selling online now is more about the determining why somebody should buy it from you. Is it the quality of the service, the great video help, the  awesome delivery or something else.

I wouldn’t use any of the companies because they have a great site, but because they are great companies. Good sites are just a  tool to that may provide enough extras to push customers in your direction rather than some other retailer.

If you have favorite sites you think I should be checking in on I’d love to hear them.

The joys of modern e-commerce platforms allow you to target you customers very nicely by setting up specialist sites pitched at very tight knit groups of customers. As far as the internet is concerned your chances are better as the master of one trade and not the jack of all.

There are some key advantages to this method:

• You can use language on the site that empathises with your target customers needs
• Adwords are generally cheaper and link building is easier at the niche level
• The appearance of a store devoted to a particular thing builds confidence
• Finding the right products is much easier for the customer

The net result of this is an improved sales conversion rate.

Ill give you an example of  how we work in the world of Motorsport Clothing.  It will give you a taste of how you can apply this process to product highly targeted specialist sites.  Using this process can help to give you improved conversions.

The Motorsport Clothing Network.

OutletF1
A site specialising in end of season f1 merchandise
It gets promoted once a year – at the end of season, for bargain hunters looking for a great deal. Visit outletf1

Ford Rally Clothing
Rally fans are a very partisan bunch, they love the teams and more importantly the drivers. By devoting an entire site to the teamthe products they want are easy to find and cross promotion becomes easier. Visit Ford Rally Clothing

Mclarenf1
Mclaren is a very British affair this year with two British world champions leading the way. Based on takes full opportunity of the xenophobic tendencies of its supporters. The product descriptions have been written by a genuine Mclaren fan helping to build trust. Visit Mclaren Clothing

Williams F1 Clothing

Aston Martin Clothing
A super desirable brand with a site designed to highlight the emotions associated with owning a piece of a supercar legend. Visit Aston Martin clothing

]]> http://www.supplyant.com/2010/03/do-you-think-tottenham-shirts-would-sell-well-outside-to-the-arsenal-stadium/feed/ 0 http://www.supplyant.com/2010/02/a-lesson-in-bad-reviews-who-is-the-best-courier/ http://www.supplyant.com/2010/02/a-lesson-in-bad-reviews-who-is-the-best-courier/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:54:43 +0000 Simon Morton http://www.supplyant.com/?p=1361 I was speaking to somebody the other day about the pro’s and cons of particular couriers.  I gave my opinion on a courier called Home Delivery Network. I thought might be a good fit for the products they were shipping as they had a reputation for low delivery damage.

At the next meeting I was told  “we’ve done some research online and found out that HDNL are rubbish”

I searched for “Home Delivery Network Reviews” and came up with this truly awful review.

So I use DHL for our internal deliveries… how did they fare?

So what about ParcelForce the preferred carrier of the person I was speaking to.

So were do we go from here.

Management of online reviews is set to become a hot topic in the next few years.  Strong brands can get away with bad reviews to a certain extent, but a bad review can signal the death of a weak product or service.

Equally as a consumer, to state the obvious,  make sure you look at similar products before jumping to bad review conclusions.

As the saying goes “Everybody shouts if your drains smell but nobody takes the time to tell you your drains smell great”

Whats the best review you have ever seen?

The new year is always a great time to refocus your efforts and polish up your marketing plan. I spent a lot of time over Christmas pondering what e-tailers must do in order to have a successful project. Here’s my thoughts:

Do every one of these 4 things well and you cannot fail

• Have a truly great product,  unique service,  or a notable offer (the last resort is lowest price).
• Provide good quality listings and a simple checkout. Good enough to not put people off.
• Get found. Don’t wait for customers, go and find them.
• Provide awesome customer service whatever the cost.

To be clear, if you mess up any one of these you will fail. Do these right and you will win.

Are you covering each of these rules?

I am going to be helping a bunch more people in the new year as I am speaking at the eBootcamp event on February 25th.  You could be one of those people.

If you know you want to do more business online but feel ill equipped to make it happen this course is tailor made for you.

If your business has more than 5 staff then Business Link has made funding available, up to £1000.

e-Bootcamp – Leading your business online


This is not a conference. It’s an in-depth, fast-paced, training seminar designed to give you the tools you need to move to the next level. Full of candid, no-holds-barred content from experts in online business, you will walk away empowered to use your website for real business.
e-bootcamp.co.uk

As a special treat if you use the promotional code SUPP1 when you contact the bootcamp team and book  you will receive 3 books from my favourite online marketing guru Seth  Godin.

• Seth Godin: The Dip
• Seth Godin: Permission Marketing
• Seth Godin: Tribes

Give me a call or email me and I’ll be happy to give you more details.

Along with sites like Play.com, ASOS.com, MyDeco and more recently Argos they provide a  real source of inspiration and ideas.

These sites are first on my list when it comes to best practice in e-commerce and looking at which features need adding to our own e-commerce platform.

As I ordered I saw a few interesting things:

A fantastically well written review

I always check countless reviews before purchasing. In this case every single review was a 5 star (all 176 of them). The best review I saw contained the words.

There’s only 2 things that should make a man cry. The first being seeing your first child being born, the second being the moment you plug these speakers in and turn on the music.

This sort of phrase is something you just dont get in fake reviews, and filled me with enormous confidence in my purchase.

If you buy something and you love it always right a review… Its great karma.

Uber Delivery

Order up until 11pm for next day delivery, that is an incredible service.  I pretty sure that delivery flexibility is going to play and increasing part in the e-commerce wars. Look no further than ASOS who recently announced a same day delivery service to customers in London.

Buyer Remorse?

When I purchased the set they showed only 1 set left in stock. The moment I ordered they didn’t go out of stock, in fact the price went up by £70 and showed over 200 in stock.

I guessed that one of two things must have happened, which are both great tactics.

1.When they run out of stock they move to a drop shipping setup where a wholesaler ships on there behalf

2.Is this a very clever tool for removing buyers remorse? 

Buyer’s remorse is an emotional condition whereby a person feels remorse or regret after a purchase. It is frequently associated with the purchase of higher value items which could be considered unnecessary although it may also stem from a sense of not wishing to be “wrong”. (wikipedia)

All of a sudden I haven’t brought something expensive, but got a bargain. This is not a tactic I have seen before but may be one worth considering.

They turned up undamaged & ontime

This simple fact is enough to keep me coming back to Ebuyer again.

What do you think the best tools are for combating buyers remorse?

Louis Vuitton has a  problem with the google adwords results. They hate the fact that google is profiting from allowing people to use the Louis Vuitton brand name in adwords. They also feel that Google is profiting from giving people who infringe trademarks, with fakes, the ability to promote.

Google generates $21 Billion a year from adwords so as you can guess they dont really want to change anything unless they have to.

What you will notice is that the words Louis Vuitton doesnt appear in the title. As you can see there are plenty of way to circumvent that if you need to.

Unfortunately for Louis Vuitton the European Court of Justice has ruled against them, so its business as usual. This issue is far from dead though with appeals already in place.

If you need help with working these methods into your adwords contact us today

Seeing as google pretty much owns the world of internet searches and those searches may be bringing you 100% of your visitors its pretty important when they change something.

Google is about to roll out a significant update to its search engine, the biggest change since 2005. Its been christened “Caffiene” and its available for the public to try out right now. So what is changing that you need to worry about?

Speed

The speed it returns your results is going to get twice as fast. In reality its always been pretty quick so not a big one for us users.

Autocomplete

You may well have seen this in action on googles existing search as it can be turned on. In simple terms autocomplete guesses what your searching for as your typing and gives you suggestions based on that.

Social & Realtime

Its no big secret in search engine circles that Google has a little bit of Twitter envy. The new search engine will be looking much closer at the twitter and facebook . Realtime search results are one of the significant missing parts of the current google setup.

My personal feeling here is that some kind of social ranking will be measured. People who have more follwers than they are following shows authority and google will take note of that.

Theres never been a more important time to setup and manage your twitter and facebook pages.

Potentially big changes in your position

The likelihood is that you may well be moving up or down in the search engine rankings. So far all my clients appear to have been effected by the updates positively.  Google has been waging a war since day one with the search engine optimisers and every year google gets cleverer at pushing out the spam.  Good quality backlinks, strong internet brand recognition and authority are all fundamental in keeping up top.

Try the update now

If theres anything else you’d like to know theres a great post about the changes here

Strachan and Windram have just released there new e-promo website and its been designed with a very simple goal in mind; “Get wealthy people to call us”.

Wealth Management is an incredibly broad area of business but what was really clear that the best way they could grow was to go after customers that could help the best.

I’ll tell you the methods they used to accomplish this in the following article.

Step 1 – Clearly identifying the audience

They had some very clear groups of people they wanted to target; A1 customers who they could always provide maximum benefit to. They have great experience working with Entrepreneurs and Sports Pro’s and had some great products for Company Directors on making much much more from existing pensions.

Step 2 – Its about you

The copy is completely customer focused. Its clear from the first sentence that they are offering services that will help you make the most of what you have, rather than telling customers how great they are. Each of the key groups identified as important are given there own bespoke content.

Step 3 – Building Trust

The site is littered with symbols of trust, including industry logos and case studies from existing clients.

Step 4 – The call to action

Its tough selling high value intangible products like investments over the Internet. A key strategy was to show the “Life Plan” service as  a boxed product. This simple product became the focus of the call to action which was clearly by phone.

Step 5 – Continual marketing

New articles are produced and published by the Strachan Windram team. Each time an article or case study is produced it is emailed to the entire Strachan Windram customer base automatically. Because the articles are tightly targeted they rank very well in search engines. Regular coaching of the team in writing good articles ensures the standard remains high.

Want to find out how you can get your site working hard?

Contact us today for a free consultation.