Can you truly 'sell' online? Or does the online retailer simply facilitate a purchase and make customers aware of products and promotions?
The impact of selling is massive though. I've seen the most cynical and unpersuadable people walk away from an encounter with a shop floor sales assistant having spent more than they intended, and maybe even having switched away from what they went to buy in the first place.
So, does that scenario sound familiar to you? If so, have you ever experienced it online?
I doubt it, is my answer. Most online retailers don't sell, they simply push product, price and promotions and lower as many barriers to purchase as they can.
So, what does the online retailer have to do in order to have a true point of sale experience?
Well, having been there on the shop floor (I've sold Hi-Fi equipment, cameras, all sorts of electrical goods in fact, shoes, even spectacles, contact lenses and handbags), and having spent 10 years working with online retailers, I feel I may have some ideas.
So, what's my top 10?
Assuming that you've already done your 'inspire' work, in inspiring the customer to make a decision to purchase, when they walk into your online store, what's the process?
Make contact with the customer
Say hello, make the customer feel welcome, and that you'll help them if they need it. Make yourself approachable and accessible to them.
Find out the customer's needs
Not what features they want, but what the customer wants to use the product for
Find a suitable product, and explain the features
Simply make it clear what features the thing has. Don't confuse features with benefits. Customers want certain features, but they care about the beneifts of all the features, so...
Match the product's benefits to the customer's needs
It's pointless to sell the remote control feature of a fan (yes, they do exist!), unless the customer has mobility problems and finds it hard to get up to turn the fan on and off. You have to tailor the benefits, otherwise they're meaningless. Look on the side of a digital camera box for the benefits; "great for parties, holidays, work, home, underwater, in outer space... " it CAN'T be good for everything!! Come on! We don't believe the hype any more. We just want relevant benefits.
Include the add-ons early
Don't try to bolt on an extended warranty at the end! Start talking about it early on, and include it in any pricing you talk about. Make it seem an indispensible feature, not an optional add-on.
Give the customer a compelling, time-limited deal
So, you think you might want it? Well, if I told you that today only, we've got a great deal on...
Well, after all that, how could you say no?
So, does that all translate online easily? No, not all of it.
Is anyone doing this effectively? No. Definitely not.
So the opportunity to get it right is huge.
So what are the challenges?
First, customers are smart to the marketing hype - it's a common Web2.0 theme that today's consumer is much more savvy about what is just 'marketing hype'. Consequently, they filter out things like benefits in the way that they are presented today. It's that digital camera box again "great for batmitzvahs, christenings, funerals..."
One of the things that compounds this is that if I'm comparison shopping across websites, I'll see the same descriptions and images on site after site. It doesn't feel like I'm getting any expert opinions or advice from anyone... just parrot style repetition of the manufacturer's hype.
So what's going to make me pick one over the other? It's always going to be a mix of price and convenience, that's about it. No personality, no welcoming smile, no difference from retailer to retailer.
So how do we make this work?
Pick your categories carefully - it's not easy going to be cheap or easy to sell in a tailored way across a wide variety of different product types. Whereas, certain categories lend themselves to it well, and are relatively straightforward to implement, and so make a good starting point. For example; digital cameras and mobile phones work very well.
Make the needs analysis simple - you don't have to have a 'mobile phone wizard' with a dozen profile questions, but if you allow people to simply self select into categories, or to explore a number of categories they feel are close to what they need. Behind each category is a set of products that you feel suit a certain type of need. The categories are not mutually exclusive - it's ok to have a product in multiple categories, so long as it's not in all of them - "for state openings, first nights, surveillance missions..."
A simple set we came up with for a mobile phone company was;
"Textaholics, Happy Snappers, Phones that Flip, Bling me Up..." - what we then did was pick a range of phones that suited those who did a lot of texting, wanted a good quality camera, a certain style of phone, or a phone that was all about style... We tested it with dummy users and it worked really well.
Acknowledge that customers hate being sold to, but love selling to themselves - Allow customers to explore and understand features and their benefits. Make sure that they're intelligently up-sold - don't just present a more expensive product, instead present the features or benefits that they could buy into if they moved up a price bracket. "Want to see a phone that also has a camera for all those impromptu moments for just another £10?"
Acknowledge and play into multi-channel behaviour - if a customer is in the store and leaves having got some advice, how do you ensure they buy from you online if that's what they're going to do. Time after time my wife spends hours in Waterstones browsing books, before one of the children's demands means she has to get off home. When she thinks about it later in the day, what does she do? She goes to Amazon of course! Stores need a way of seeding their website into the minds of customers before they walk out of the store. Ideally then, they make it easier for the customer to buy from them, or give them an additional incentive - "Type in our store number from this card, and get half price delivery" (and the store gets the credit for the sale) - or even "I'll reserve one on the website for you. If you order tonight, you'll get an extra £5 off".
Which brings me neatly around to the last point - making a time-limited offer - This is where the technology lets us down right now. The promotions and deal types available without a manual intervention or a voucher, on most eCommerce offerings is at best a poor relation to what's available in store. There are also no serious mechanisms to easily identify customers in order to make these tailored offers without asking them to register - who knows, maybe Windows CardSpaces (formerly Infocard) is the answer?
Come on retail! Now's the most exciting time to be developing customer propositions on the Internet, and if you don't get stuck in right now, you'll get left behind quicker than ever!