Archive for Ecommerce
Taking the Long View - Are You In Business?
Posted by: | CommentsOne of my ecommerce sites was contacted by a major television network today for an overnight order. They need it there by tomorrow - and they are on the other side of the country.
Overnight orders are stressful, somewhat complicated, and expensive if mistakes are made. For a while, I didn’t offer “overnight” for those exact reasons.
Then, I decided to take the long view, and focus on what’s best for the customer instead of what’s most convenient for me.
If I weren’t offering overnight / expedited shipping, I would miss out on many first time orders, and any potential repeat orders from customers who needed or wanted their merchandise quickly. And, more important to the subject at hand, today’s order would not have happened at all.
It’s worth it to trade a little convenience on my part for the sake of my customers (and ultimately my business). The long view in action.
To take it a step further - I shipped two complete orders to them, via two different carriers, at my own expense. (My experience with overnight shipping reliability is somewhat spotty - enough so that I don’t have 100% confidence in it). I’m hedging my bets, spending out of my own pocket so that I don’t miss this golden opportunity.
To what end?
I want to make sure that this major TV show gets my merchandise in time so they can use it on their show as intended… and then I can say “As seen on [major TV show]” on my site. That level of credibility and publicity is worth far more than the extra product and shipping costs.
The short-term view would be that the extra money has been wasted, and that it’s impossible to know whether it ever directly results in future sales. (This inclination is a close relative of the sensation I experience whenever my alarm clock goes off).
The long view recognizes this “expense” as an investment for the future. That if the first package doesn’t make it in time - and there is no backup plan — it will cost far more in lost sales than it costs to send two packages.
The difference really comes down to why I’m doing ecommerce in the first place. The short view would be fine if this were just a hobby. But I’m in business - therefore, the long view must prevail.
What do you think?
7 Ways to Screw Up Your Sales This Holiday Season
Posted by: | CommentsThe 2007 Holiday season is poised to be yet another record-breaker for ecommerce. This could lead to a flood of orders, late nights for you and more work for your accountant. Never fear, here are 7 simple ways to miss out on your share of this year’s online holiday spending and avoid the headaches altogether:
- Limit the ways your customers can pay you. Let’s face it, some payment methods will cost you a percentage of each sale to accept them, and it’s a lot of trouble to set up more than one payment method.Assume that your customers will adapt to your needs.
- Refuse to offer Gift Certificates. Your customers shouldn’t be allowed to take the easy way out – make them choose that gift right now!
- Don’t bother reassuring visitors that your site is safe. Hackersafe, Geotrust, BBBOnline… come on. This is the “Internet Age” – doesn’t everyone know by now to look for the little “lock” icon in the browser?
- Treat each customer as a “one-time sale”. Email marketing is hard.Besides, you don’t need to maintain relationships with customers – this is the Internet, there’s always another buyer right around the corner.
- Make it hard to order. If a shopper wants it bad enough, they’ll figure out on their own how to navigate your site and place an order. Call it “customer quality control.”
- Ship only to the billing address. Sure, you’ll have to answer emails day in and day out asking “Can you please ship my order as a gift?” Gently remind them that it’s not your job to manage their gift-giving – it’s your job to protect yourself from a possibly fraudulent order. In fact, consider making customers fax in their credit card number and signature before you’ll ship at all.
- Ship on YOUR timetable. Your business is your business… ship when it’s convenient for you. Your customer had all year to order – it’s not your fault they waited until the “week before”! Also, don’t worry about offering faster shipping methods… they only serve to set delivery expectations too high.
Congratulations, you can now rest easy knowing that this holiday season will have little impact on your bottom line. And don’t worry about the customers you’ll miss – your competitors will take good care of them for you. :)
How to Avoid Chargebacks
Posted by: | CommentsChargebacks are a fact of life of doing business online, but it can help to know how to minimize them (and what to do if/when you get them). Here’s a free 30-page report (PDF format) for you on Avoiding Chargebacks (click to view, or right-click to “save as” and download).
ShopSite + WordPress Blog - Can it be Done?
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve just put the finishing touches on integrating a blog with my ShopSite store. Yes, it can be done!
But why would I want to do such a thing? Well, there are a few reasons:
- It was a very fast way to get the site up and running
- Search engines LOVE BLOGS
- Blogs are an excellent content-management system - and I will have more content than “products” to manage with this site
- To see how hard it would be (not too hard, as it turns out)
- Access to a lot of different WordPress themes (for free)
- Did I mention that search engines love blogs?
The connection between blog post and shopping cart will be accomplished through the implementation of ShopSite’s “Order Anywhere” functionality, but as my “product” count will be fairly low, this will prove much easier than trying to code an entire set of ShopSite-WordPress hybrid custom templates. (Although that does sound like an intriguing project to tackle sometime, eh?)
If there’s interest in how I went about it, I may write up a quick “how-to” guide. But first things first - click the “Cart” tab at the top of the page (or this shopping cart link) to see the cart integrated into the blog design. What do you think?