Since you’re probably either still hunkering down to avoid the lingering effects of this year’s extreme August weather or basking in the glow of your summer vacation, it’s hard to muster more than lackluster holiday spirit. Regardless of your spirit, it’s never too early to begin considering an e-commerce strategy for the holidays.
All indicators predict that this year will be the biggest for e-commerce thus far. It follows a trend that sees online sales increasing from year to year and outpacing non-e-commerce growth (see chart below). The 2010 holiday season brought forth the singularly biggest day for online sales yet, topping $1 billion in online sales on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving). Consumers are also beginning to do their Black Friday shopping from the comfort of their couch, frustrated by jostling through crowds and waiting in long lines, only to find that what they wanted is already sold out.
In general, e-commerce outperforms same-store sales at many chains, thanks to shoppers choosing to research products online and then using the convenience of online shopping to complete the transaction. This trend holds for both business goods and consumer goods. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses such as Williams-Sonoma have online sales accounting for 33% of total sales, and Staples counts online as 40% of their total sales.
So how do you capitalize on this trend? You may be concerned an e-commerce presence will snipe traffic from your brick-and-mortar stores. But if you embrace both, the two venues can provide your customers the choice they demand while providing you sales traffic between the channels.
For instance, in-store pickup of products ordered online increases impulse add-on purchases in-store. Consumers who can’t find the options they want in-store can go online to order exactly what they want, ensuring that your brand gets the sale. As long as salespeople are well trained and there’s perhaps a kiosk in-store, brick-and-mortars may even be able to stock less inventory on shelves.
Simply put, ignore digital channels at the cost to your bottom line.
An article aptly titled “Online back-to-school shoppers to spend 40% more than those who only shop in stores” from July 28, 2011, offers, “Specifically, online back-to-school shoppers will spend a third more than all shoppers for shoes and school supplies, and fully 68% more for electronics and computer related goods. Like most everyone, online back-to-school shoppers have felt the economic pinch, and to that end plan to shop for sales more often, comparison shop online, find and use coupons, and buy more generic or store brands, among other money-saving strategies. Much of that research will be facilitated by smartphones and/or tablet devices that many online back-to-school shoppers already own.”
What Features Do Consumers Want in Their Online Shopping Experience?
- Free Shipping – comScore’s postmortem of the 2010 holiday season reports that free shipping was used in more than half of all 2010 holiday e-commerce transactions, up significantly from 2009.
- Gift Ideas – Help consumers figure out the perfect gift for a hard-to-buy-for person. See Amazon’s best-in-class gift ideas.
- Comparison Shopping – Users want to feel that they are getting the most bang for their buck. Review Forbes’ best in class.
- Research – Consumers want to know more about the products they’re considering. Specifications and trade write-ups help consumers understand what the professionals think, but ratings and reviews from other consumers also strongly influence purchasing decisions. In a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey, shoppers were asked about how the economy was changing their behavior: 30.7% planned to do more comparison shopping online and 12.3% planned to shop more online in general.
- Pick Up In-Store – Consumers who have waited until the last minute to purchase gifts appreciate the convenience of shopping online, but with the option to pick it up in-store so shipping isn’t a factor.
- Coupons – Budget-conscious consumers who are trying to save money can be driven to make a purchase, given digital coupon incentives delivered though the website, email or mobile channels. In the same NRF survey, over 36% of respondents were likely to use more coupons. According to an article in eMarketer about 2011 back-to-school shopping (a good predictor of holiday sales,) “…the internet is viewed as a valuable source for saving money. The leading reason why shoppers…planned to shop online was because they expected to find better discounts (70%), were able to research prices and products (63%) and avoid potential out-of-stock items in-store (40%).”
Create a Positive User Experience
Your user experience is the digital reflection of your brick-and-mortar; keep it friendly, stocked and easy to use.
To deliver the most impact to your busy holiday shoppers, simply maintaining an e-commerce site just isn’t enough. Usability is key.
- Users must be able to quickly find a specific item (like using an intelligent search), but the site itself must facilitate browsing with clearly defined categories and hierarchies.
- Upselling or cross-selling is also important, using “products like this” or “customers who bought this also bought this.”
- Clear product images with multiple views and the ability to enlarge the image give consumers the confidence to click the buy button.
- A detailed description of the product, including dimensions, colors and other key attributes, must be readily available.
- Lastly, a site must instill consumer trust by displaying guarantees, return policies and accurate shipping dates.
Promotional Channels
The more touchpoints that are available to consumers, the more likely they’ll find you and purchase from you.
An important factor to a successful e-commerce holiday season is driving high traffic to your online product offerings. Money is being left on the table if you don’t consider using multiple channels to deliver the most impact to your busy holiday shoppers:
- Mobile – Mobile couponing or QR codes to provide more detailed descriptions and/or ratings and reviews. It’s particularly helpful for on-the-go consumers to find your location.
- Geolocating – Offer specials for check-in with Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Locations.
- Facebook – Integrated shopping, sales alerts, specials, recommendations, single sign-on to reduce cart abandonment.
- Twitter – An ideal channel for promoting sales alerts, specials, recommendations that can generate social media buzz.
- Online – Sales, free shipping, printable/online coupons, product comparisons, consumer ratings and reviews, in-store pickup (to increase impulse purchases), adequate inventory, callouts and/or billboards.
- Email – Hold “secret sales” or a “deal of the day” and offer other incentives for email sign-up.
Test It for Success
Unavailable or broken sites are like locking your doors on Black Friday.
By far, the single most important preparation for a successful holiday season is testing to ensure your servers and e-commerce engines can handle the huge volume. Nothing frustrates a consumer more than getting a busy server error or spending time browsing and shopping only to discover they cannot check out. All your investments and innovations for successful online holiday sales can be ruined by poor server performance. Make it a priority to ensure your technical infrastructure is in place to support the demand from your varied advertising channels.
A personal anecdote: There is a certain big-box retailer that offers fantastic Black Friday deals. I’ve been at their doors at 6 a.m. twice, shopped their sales, only to discover the slow-moving checkout line extends all the way around the store, guaranteeing a two-hour wait. I abandoned my basket the first year, and the second year, I checked the state of the impossible checkout line before even bothering to shop. I never returned to that retailer to purchase holiday gifts. Last year, I decided to try their online shop and see if I could get some of those amazing deals. Their site was incredibly slow, but I persevered, only to have my cart time out and empty at checkout. At this point, I won’t shop that retailer ever again. And yes, I tell my friends about those experiences, increasing the probability that they also will not shop that retailer during the holidays.
Remember, when your eye is on the bottom line, online and offline shopping can be complementary experiences providing great service to your consumers. Do you want happy brand advocates or vocal brand dissenters?
So while the leaves may not yet have begun to change, it’s time to plan your e-commerce strategy and spiff up your online store for the holidays. Your brick-and-mortar stores would never advance into the holiday season without adequate preparation. Your online presence should be no different.
In September’s issue of Wired magazine, journalists Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff declare the death of the Web. In the cover story, they claim that people have begun to jettison the complexity of the World Wide Web for simpler, more effective online experiences via the app.
“One of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.”
Leading the charge is the following graph:
They go on to explain how just 10 years ago, web traffic accounted for roughly half of all online activity. Today, however, that figure has dropped to 23%. Taking its place are peer-to-peer services (23%), video (51%) and other apps. These statistics led the writers to envision “a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule.”
Problems
The argument that the authors are making rests on a controversial method of presenting the figures. First, the graph uses bandwidth to measure consumption, which is not the ideal metric for gauging how the typical user spends their time. This is because online activities take up different amounts of bandwidth. If someone spends five minutes on YouTube watching a video clip, it will take up more bandwidth than the hour they spend surfing the Web.
The graph’s illustration of the decline of web traffic is also misleading because it doesn’t take into account the overall growth of the Internet over the same time period. According to Cisco, the same source Wired used for its projections, total Internet traffic rose from about 1 exabyte (1,000,000,000 gigabytes) to 7 exabytes between 2005 and 2010. To incorporate this growth, Rob Beschizza from Boing Boing re-created the following graph, with the Y-axis representing exabytes of traffic.
Once total Internet traffic is taken into account, it becomes more difficult to make a case for the death of the Web (represented in red). In fact, the Web is growing faster than it ever has. It’s just been joined by even more explosive growth in file sharing and video, which is often embedded in the Web in any case.
Which brings me to my next point: The Wired article uses a narrow definition of the Web that doesn’t give it enough credit. It excludes some video, including Flash-based video on websites such as YouTube and Hulu, as well as social networking sites such as the 500-million-member-strong Facebook. If these key categories of Internet traffic were included under the umbrella of the Web, surely the graph would look much different.
Aside from these issues, however, the general trend of moving toward apps is accurate. And as more consumers make the leap to smart phones, they will continue to demand simpler, more effective ways to navigate the Internet remotely. For now, at least, apps seem to most effectively fulfill that need.
Don’t Count Out the Web Just Yet
The authors claim that at this particular moment in the brief history of the Internet, consumers are opting for the more controlled, perhaps more effective environment of apps. True, but it’s important to keep in mind that these technologies move in shifts. The browser had been king for most of the Internet’s history, until developers and consumers started craving the functionalities offered by apps. But it’s possible that the browser will eventually catch up and absorb most of the features that popular apps offer today.
If these features can be integrated into the browser, web-based applications may then take over. These apps have advantages of their own compared to those offered by Apple, Android or Blackberry. For one, they are not subject to Apple’s terms of use clauses. This means that users can still access their desired content in an environment in which they are comfortable and still retain the freedom offered by the Web. Also, web-based applications don’t need to be rewritten for different smart phone platforms, which cuts down dramatically on production costs.
This is not the first time that Wired has tried to bury the Web. In 1997, Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf wrote a feature called “Push! Kiss Your Browser Goodbye,” which predicted the complete obsolescence of the browser before the turn of the millennium. When the browser failed to die, Wolf, for his part, said it was the worst story ever published by Wired and has since apologized for his role in it.
Only time will tell where the Internet will end up, but if Wired’s track record of predictions plays a role, something tells me we’ll still be using the same old series of tubes.
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The best way to make sure a Web design and development project goes smoothly is to ensure everyone is working toward the same goals. The only way to ensure they’re working toward the same goals is to, early in the project, express the goals in clear, concrete terms and get agreement on them. An effective way to accomplish this is through the creation of use cases.
What is a use case?
Historically, software developers created use cases to define how individuals were expected to interact with a system. They expressed an interaction between users and the software, but from the perspective of the users rather than the system, the programmers, or the programming language itself.
A single use case represented a single task or goal – usually from the perspective of a single user role (called “actors” in geek-speak). However, a single use case could contain several scenarios, which represent variations that could occur in how the system behaves, depending on a specific action or condition of the actor.
An example
For instance, let’s take a look at a simple use case for a word processing application. Say we want to define the printing process. The use case can be expressed in the form of a diagram or in plain text, but either way, it identifies key operations and attributes of the system:
- Who or what is using the operation? (In use cases, the actor isn’t always a person)
- What is the actor’s goal?
- What must the actor do to initiate the process we’re defining?
- What does the system provide in return…
- …when everything is done and set up properly?
…when everything is not done and set up properly?
Consider the implications of the failure to go through this exercise. It would be very easy to overlook the need for the system to identify the conditions necessary for the successful completion of this task, and, if those conditions aren’t met, to provide adequate feedback that lets the user know:
- That an error has occurred,
- What the error was, and
- What steps the user must take to correct it
Ideally, the system would help in this recovery process (e.g., providing a button or wizard to install a printer), but in some cases, it must suffice to tell the user what is wrong in clear language, such as “Your printer is out of paper.”
Don’t laugh. It beats the pants off of some strange error messages we still get from time to time that tell us nothing at all.
Use cases for the Web
Over time, web development teams started to consider a similar approach to website design. They understood that clients were demanding their websites accomplish more. Partially because there were more opportunities for more severe task failure, usability engineers, experience planners, and developers saw the value of introducing use cases for their projects.
With use cases, system designers can define what an actor expects when he comes to a website, what the he must do in order to get the result he expects, and what the system must do, in turn, to deliver that expected result.
And they also must provide for the means to recover from an error. An example of this is in an online shopping cart, where the user has not filled in all the fields or has entered obviously false credit information.
What does the system show in return? Use cases help teams to identify the optimal workflow, provide safeguards that make that workflow the most likely outcome, and anticipate – in spite of those safeguards – what the likely errors are and how to recover from them.
The goals of use cases
Building a book of use cases during the planning stages of creating a website provides several important benefits:
- Helps prioritize. It helps to identify features that provide the highest business value. This is of particular importance, as it helps companies decide what features are most critical to the successful implementation of the overarching business strategy.
- Reduces risk. Each feature takes a certain amount of time to develop. With use cases, it’s easier to estimate how much time (and money) it will take to build a feature. Joined with the budget for the project and the estimate of the value of that feature, it makes it easier to decide which high-risk features are expendable, and which are worth the effort.
- Improves usability. Because tasks are explicitly defined and assigned a business value early in the process, it is easier to anticipate possible obstacles as well as plan an iterative usability test plan. Each iterative chunk should be designed, as much as practical to reduce effort duplication, to test the highest value use cases first, to give the team more time to make improvements.
Web projects will always have a finite budget and a deadline. Use cases help teams establish a common understanding of what user goals are of the highest value to the business and what level of effort is necessary to deliver on the goals. Then it is up to the team to make sure, through their development processes, that the design and interface successfully communicate to the user what they can expect to do and how they can do it.
Ultimately this process helps build better websites that meet the needs of the users and the organization and, through the act of meeting (if not exceeding) audience expectations, endear the brand to the individuals who come to the site.
For more information about use cases:
Use Cases information from usability.gov
Use Case Design for Websites
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The iPhone has been moving and shaking the mobile world, completely changing what consumers can and do expect from their mobile devices. Since Apple has opened up the power the phone offers to outside developers, brands have begun to ask themselves, “what could, or should, my brand be doing in this space?”
Here to answer that question is the first edition of our monthly POVs: A Marketer’s Approach to iPhone Applications. Follow the link below to watch the presentation.
http://www.slideshare.net/clickhere/iphone-application-pov-presentation/
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