Many business owners struggle with their usage of social networking sites to bring new customers, or to keep existing ones. As a matter of fact, they try to use social media as an advertising tool. Social media can be a marketing tool if used the right way, but what is the right way? And how relevant is it to use social media for advertising?

The answer for the latter question is not at all; there is a much bigger image, a culture might I say, when it comes to social media. Understanding this culture and how it operates is essential to the understanding of ways to connect with consumers more effectively. Reading some statistics will help us understand some phenomena and trends in the usage of social networking sites.

Compete studied how consumers are embracing social media as an online marketing tool, and showed results that are interesting.

Businesses should not focus too much on selling their products via facebook or twitter because 60% of consumers never use social media for shopping. This tells us that businesses shouldn’t try to sell or advertise the product or service directly via social media; consumers are embracing change very slowly on this one.

However, 68% of respondents visit retailers’ facebook page to keep up to date with sales and promotions. Great!

Now we have a general image about how social media is a new whole culture for marketing that emphasises the human side. Following are a few tips to using social media for ecommerce:

1- To sell or not to sell? Just because 60% of consumers never use social media for shopping, does not always translate to forget about having a shop available on social media. This might be exactly what your business needs. As a matter of fact, 1-800-Flowers allows customers to purchase flowers by being the first to embrace the idea of having a shop on facebook. This is one direct way to promote your business, however, you can sell indirectly by updating customers about best-sellers and new products.

2- Don’t forget to be human. Business entities should keep in mind that customers are people, developing connections with other people rather than a business. This is where social media plays its role, and where business should forget about itself for a little bit and reflect on what the customers have to say. The subject of a business showing the human side is a long discussion, and to sum it all up in a few words, following are a few tactics to help show the human side of the business:

Use images of people (ie. customer service representatives, satisfied customers, etc.) on your social networking site rather than the business’s logo.

Use a human tone when trying to converse with customers.

Give feedback and comments in case a customer criticizes your business.

3- Stimulate senses with video. Adding videos to your social media strategy is an effective way to improve sales. Customers like to know a product personally and in action, and videos are a great way to demonstrate your products. By having videos on youtube, you also allow customers to share your videos and embed them on their social pages, increasing clicks and hopefully customer base.

4- Social time as part of the job. A business is now able to allocate sales revenue from social media, and once the business is hooked to social media, it must keep up with it. That is, a frequent and regular maintenance of your social pages is necessary for the success of your business. You can schedule time for yourself and your marketing staff to spend on social networking sites, converse with customers, and read their comments and reply to them. Distribute these times throughout the day so that you show customers that you care about them.

5- Don’t always try to sell. Customers are not always interested in buying your product, but especially on social media, they are more interested in hearing your story, reading about what makes you special, etc. Use social media to tell stories about your entity, stories about your products, news, statistics with regards to your business, and some other content related to your business.

6- Make the customer feel special. Glenn and Beal call it “exclusivity,” which refers to offering special coupons and discounts available only to those customers subscribed to your pages on social media. That is a great way to keep current customers, and it encourages new customers to join your social network.

Does your user interface lead nowhere?

I went Christmas shopping online for a computer armoire. I knew exactly what I wanted because I had done previous research on the manufacturer and pricing. The specific piece I wanted was sold out on every top brand department store that had advertised a low price for the item.

Next, I searched in Google for the item by brand name and product description. My expectation was that the company that makes the computer armoire would come up and Google would show me the actual product pages itself so I could get right to it. I was wrong. The manufacturer’s website not only didn’t appear in the natural search results, it also didn’t show up in any paid placement areas of the search results page. How odd for a name brand company not to have their own website rank well, I thought.

Google presented me with all the major department stores that sold the computer armoire that I had already spent an hour checking that were all dead ends. So, thinking this was strange, I searched directly by the name of the company who makes the furniture item I wanted to buy. Perhaps they still had some in stock.

No such luck! They don’t sell their own products! All their web site does is let you search for stores that do. I entered my zip code and their search results brought back no results. However, I already own this piece of furniture. I bought it down the road. I would have done so again, but they were sold out. Not only does this furniture company not sell their own merchandise, they don’t do any promotion of their resellers. There is no time savings device to take potential customers to any reseller who may still have the item in stock. This was a complete dead end. In the days of personalization and communication, this is unacceptable.

Rather than give up, I searched Google with the exact product number and manufacturer as my search phrase. My expectation was that someone, somewhere on the planet, must have this piece of furniture for sale. I was even willing to pay a higher price if someone could prove they had one in stock. I would even DRIVE to pick it up if it was at a store nearby.

Google brought up many excellent search results for me. It didn’t take me long to realize they were all distributors of this particular piece of furniture. I was delighted to discover the first site I visited had what I wanted. Or did they?

They couldn’t tell me whether or not it was in stock. Taking a chance, I began to go down the purchase path to order it. It allowed me to proceed as a “guest”. I was able to add the product to a shopping cart. However, it never told me if they had it. Since everyone else was sold out, I didn’t feel confident they had the item in stock either. I got as far as the address and billing phase, but stopped because not only did I not know if they had the item, they weren’t about to inform me if it would arrive before Christmas or could be expedited to do so. When I looked around for other clues, I realized there was no log in area for customers, no way to track orders and no payment method offered ahead of time. There was no indication whatsoever they even knew I was there trying to place an order. This is because there were no user instructions, no welcoming content, no confirmation of data received and no online presence that anyone was behind the curtain.

I left that site and tried 4 others. In each case, it was a distributor. In every single case, they used the same third party shopping cart process, suggesting to me that the manufacturer supplies it to their resellers. Not a single one of these resellers could tell me if the product would or could be delivered by Christmas, was in stock or could be tracked. I never bought the item. For the major department stores that did sell the item, they never established whether or not they would re-stock the item. There was no way for me to be notified if they did. So here I am. A customer shopping online, prepared with money and the exact item I want, and I’m unable to buy it from the manufacturer themselves or any of their resellers.

What Are Some Lessons Here?

1. Searchers are smart. They do their research before searching and will search by exact product descriptions, model numbers, manufacturer, brand name, and even down to exact measurements and other specifications. Make sure your web site is optimized accordingly.
2. If you offer any third party application, be it a shopping cart or travel reservations, you MUST test it to be sure it works functionally and is designed to sell. Just because a manufacturer gives you a free cart in no way means they gave you one that will earn you revenue.
3. If your order process shows an “Out of Stock” message, and you want the customer to return again or have any faith in your business whatsoever, show them how to find out when it will be re-stocked. If any of these stores would have re-stocked in a week, I still could have ordered and picked it up at a nearby physical store in time for Christmas.
4. No guidance, no interaction, no sale.
5. Remember your target market and especially the “Last minute holiday shopper” user persona.
6. Don’t rely on resellers to sell for you if you don’t support them with usable applications and a well ranked web site of your own.

I did have good experiences with NetShops and Amazon. I’ll return to them again because they made purchasing online a pleasure and hassle free. And, they were prepared for last minute holiday shoppers like me with ship date deadlines, last minute crunch time specials and alternatives to out of stock items.

In other words, they knew I was coming and they were ready for me. That’s the best usability lesson of all.

Comments

Why?

Well, for many people, shopping online is still dabbling in the unknown. If they buy something from a High Street store, they can speak with staff, see the product, pay for it and take it away there and then.

But shopping online is a completely different experience:

•    There is no one to ask questions of immediately
•    The can see a picture of the product but not the real thing
•    They can’t touch the product
•    Although they can pay for it, they have to wait for it to be delivered

Effectively, they are giving a faceless company their hard earned cash for something they’ve not yet received.

It’s hardly surprising so many online transactions are never completed.

Don’t lose sales through ‘what if…’ syndrome

What do I mean?

•    What if I can’t get back to the webpage I want if I click this link?
•    What if I don’t like the product when it arrives?
•    What if the company goes bust?
•    What if they sell my details on to another company?

These are just a few of the ‘what ifs…’ that could be flying through your customers’ heads right now.

So how can you alleviate their fears?

How can you make them feel safe while shopping with you?

Give reassurance every step of the way

The key is to reassure them at every stage of the buying process – from the moment they land on your website, right through to their sale confirmation email.

1. Testimonials

An old one, but a good one. Showing real customer testimonials on your website will help reassure your customers. If they can see other people were satisfied with your products and service, they are more likely to buy.

If you don’t have any, get some. Ask past customers to rate your service.

2. Privacy policy

People are, quite rightly, concerned about the possibility of their details being passed on to third parties.

Reassure them this won’t happen by telling them and providing a prominent link to your privacy policy.

3. Simple ordering

If you want someone to buy from you, your ordering process must be simple. And I don’t just mean so you can understand it.

People of all IT abilities are going to be potential customers, so when you design your ordering process, get your Aunt or other member of the family (non-tech savvy) to do a dry run for you. This ‘test drive’ will help you iron out any ambiguities.

4. Reputable payment

People don’t like to input their sensitive information online, such as bank details and card numbers. Give reassurance by only using reputable payment partners.

5. Guarantee

Everyone loves a guarantee, especially the ‘100% of your money back, no questions asked’ type. It shows your commitment to your customers and your faith in your products.

6. Let them know where you are

There’s nothing more off putting than seeing a website without an address.

If you are genuine, surely there’s no reason to hide your postal address.

7. Click points

All over your website there’ll be various ‘click’ points for navigation. Do a full review of them (call in your Aunt again) and make sure they are all clear. If not, add a line of text to explain what your customer needs to do.

8. Awards

If you have won awards for customer service or for your products, display them on your website. Sight of those will provide an extra layer of confidence for your customers, making them more likely to buy.

There you go, 8 very simple ways you can avoid the ‘what if…’ syndrome.

Comments

First, and foremost, your site’s general focus should be around your deals. If people have to go digging for savings on your site, there’s a good chance they’ll simply go elsewhere. Change your headers, titles, and banners to reflect the huge savings consumers can enjoy by shopping at your site.

Keep in mind landing pages when optimizing your site as well. People will most likely be searching for specific items, and associated deals. If you have specific items people are mostly searching for when visiting your site, be sure you give these pages extra attention. Again, if they have to go beyond one or two pages to search for a deal then they’ll most likely leave.

Along with optimization, highlight the convenience of purchasing from your website. “Saving time” was the prime motivator for 77% of consumers who purchase online. “Avoiding crowds” followed closely behind. Use these small bits of psychological advantages to close sales on your website.

More and more, people are using social media networks to search for deals. It makes sense when you think about it; the most up-to-date news can generally be found on Twitter. It’s vital that you make your deals for Black Friday/Cyber Monday known among the social networks. If you have an email newsletter setup, send out specific deals to targeted subscribers.

Another small nugget to go along with the general social media presence, is to highlight specific deals on different platforms. It’s difficult to receive a visit from a social media platform, let alone close a sale. Try and devise special deals which provide even more cost-saving benefits to consumers coming from the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Your website is going to see a large uptick in sales. How big this increase is will be dependent no how you’re able to leverage your deals, and let them be known to the online consumer base. Following these small set of tips is a good start.

Disappointed? I mean what can you do with groceries? Turns out that if you think about, there are some interesting ideas. The ideas I want to show you today are from Peapod, the online grocery service owned by the brick and mortar Stop ‘n Shop chain of supermarkets.

I won’t show you all of the interesting ideas in that Peapod shopping experience–just two. The first one is something that many businesses could do. In fact, any business that has regular, repeat business–kind of a supplies replenishment business:

Think about all the companies that could do this. Any company for whom customers build up a regular order history could use this. Amazon has an ability to do a standing order for supplies so that they come every two months or whatever, but it handles each item separately and I have always found it hard to use. The Peapod approach works much better for me.

And here is one that works well for the grocery business, but I could imagine using it for restaurants or take-out orders, too:

To me, this is genius. Now, it has to actually deliver on the promise, and you could see it being expected a great deal to cover other situations, such as or vegetarian (which right now you deal with by creating your own custom plan), but you get the idea.  This is a powerful way to make shopping easier and keeps people coming to Peapod.

So, what about you? Have you thought about how you make your customer’s experience so easy that they never think about going anywhere else? If you don’t, your competitor will.

Comments

There are over 300 web sites providing daily deals and Bing Deals will not be directly competing with Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers because they know too well that the competition is fierce. What Bing have chosen to do to set them apart from the competition is influence their current base to achieve their ultimate goal. In a recent survey, 87% of consumers indicated they would purchase more daily deals if all of the deals were conveniently located on one site. Seems, Bing has this down pat.

Here is a screenshot of Bing Deals in action:

The new version of Bing Deals brings with it some exciting features like one stop shop, which is likely to benefit shoppers the most as we head into the holiday shopping season. Using this feature will allow you to see only what you are looking for as the search results will be filtered to bring you only relevant content. Microsoft has already told customers to expect more money saving features in the coming few weeks.

More details about Bing Deals can be found here.

Comments

Visa Corporation is finally figuring out that our collective anxiety about shopping online, identity theft, theft of credit and card balance, etc, can be tapped from a business perspective and has introduced their Visa Online Shopping Card.

Smarter yet, it’s a debit card which means that even if someone does steal the card number and CVV number the maximum charge they can run up is only as much as you actually have in that account’s balance.

I’m actually a big fan of debit cards anyway, because having credit cards that are limited to money on hand means you can’t get into debt. In my opinion there are too many people that live with so much debt that they end up working and earning money to service their debt (e.g., pay interest and fees) rather than saving or actually buying the stuff they want. In my wallet is one credit card and one debit card, the latter of which I use far more often. That, however, is probably a different topic.

Back to the Online Shopping Card!

What’s interesting to me is that your credit card, Visa or MasterCard, already has guarantees against online fraud. In Visa’s Zero Liability promise, for example, the company assures you:

Shop worry-free at millions of merchants: You can use your card to shop with confidence. That’s because Visa protects your card information 24/7 and you won’t be held liable for unauthorized purchases made with your card or account information.

Nonetheless the fact that we consumers are worried about online fraud and liability — and we clearly are — is reason enough to justify the release of the Visa Online Shopping Debit Card. It’s smart and if you’re worried, why not pick one up? For a one-time fee of $4.95, it’s a smart way to manage things, and 10x if you have a parent or child who is profligate in their online spending.

And if you’re a marketing person like me, marvel at how Visa can simultaneously have a Zero Liability promise to its customers and still figure out a way to generate additional corporate revenue based on the very same customer fear. That’s just good marketing.

Comments

ITS will integrate Shopatron’s global eCommerce platform with ITS’ distribution and fulfillment infrastructure to provide processing, fulfillment, distribution, and return services. The duo promises real-time integration of fulfillment orders with order management systems for instant feedback on in-stock / out-of-stock items.

According to the official announcement: “The collaboration boasts real-time integration of fulfillment processes with order management systems for instant feedback on in-stock/out-of-stock product availability and customer order shipment notification with tracking information.”

With this collaboration, Shopatron will provide a robust eCommerce solution which includes online stores, order management, online marketing, payment processing and fraud management, while ITS handles the order fulfillment and distribution operations.

Moderator:

• Paul Madden, Owner, Automica Limited

Speakers:

• Matt Lawson, Vice President of Marketing, Marin Software
• Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear
• Rob Leathern, CEO, XA.net

The first speaker of the session was Matt Lawson from Marin Software. He addresses the delegates by congratulating for making it to Day 2 of SES San Francisco and begins by discussing about some of the best practices for Facebook.  Matt Lawson then compares Facebook and Google and says that in 2010, FB surpassed Google in terms of driving traffic. He further says that Fcaebook has different metrics and the cost is lower on FB. In Facebook, there is a lower CPC and the conversion rates varies. Also, he focuses that ROI is not the best means to measure the success if you think of paid search and facebook. Rather, it depends on the influence that you have on your downstream conversions.

After discussing the above mentioned facts, Matt Lawson, presents a study, which reveals that people who are engaged in a social media campaign, were 50% more likely to click on paid search ads from that same company. He then points out few of the best practices to get started with Facebook. Some of these are as follows:

• Always start with friends and begin by targeting with connections of your own brand. The reasons is that people already have affiliation with your brand. The success here is to get an endorsement from your friends “Like” your brand.
• Expand to fans of related brands.
• Use stemming to find interests
• Micro-segment your audience
• If you break that down by age, gender, education.. it helps you to more targeted.
• Test images before copy.

Matt Lawson, further mentions below mentioned best practices to draw attention to ads along with contrasting colors:

• Link images to audience to increase relevance. Faces of people do well. For example: law enforcement degree with pictures of a cop. He says one way to test is to your pictures of kittens or puppies to compare with images you want to use.
• Keep Ads Fresh. People quickly become use to seeing your ad.
• Rotate your ads every 2-3 days or as impressions drop..By rotating you can increase your impressions, increase click through rates, and it lowers the cost per like.
• Maintain the Facebook experience
• Put a like button on your page, sharing options, keep the facebook experience on your landing page. You will decrease the bounce rate, etc.

Next up was Marty Weintaub, from AimClear who begins by announcing the official release of his new book Killer Facebook Ads. He says he loves traveling across the globe and talks about various contextual ads. To put forth his statement, he gives an example of an SES ad that was targeted to 3900 users. Marty Weintaub, further says that in Facebook the hash tag is not about trending topics but its about rolling in all other topics.

While targeting the facebook, you can actually think of going to Facebook to see where they are in the real world. Going to the real world is considered much more effective to find Facebook.Marty Weintaub says that FB is just a conglomerate of what is going on around the world. You can go to the Boy Scouts, magazines, papers and find where people cluster. Google is considered the best utility for facebook demographics. For example, if you want to sell cosmetics, you search for cosmetics and find Sephora. Now, you can target those people who like that company.

Other examples for targeting with interference:

• Persona modeling: You can find what kind of personal traits and about the professional characteristics. LinkedIn is pioneering persona modeling and this is moving into Facebook.
• Climb inside User psyche: Body building supplements to 17 year old guys.

Following points should be kept in mind while targeting:

• To target your audience, you should understand your customers’ pysche. Are you good enough marketer to sell people who have a Porsche a rolex watch?
• In your heart, do you really want to target a 64 year old lady to get her to donate to a local hospital.
• Occupation targeting is huge! There are tons of B2B B2C products that are consumed.For example real estate agents, catch them on their off time when they go home. Sell them snow plows, etc.
• Facebook has been telling us Job titles plays a part in the targeting algorithm.Just type in a few words and see what facebook suggests to you.
• So market budget things to people who have budget jobs or heavy metal concerts to auto mechanics.
• Smart phones to inside sales reps.
• Free internet listings to personal trainers.

Rob Leathern, from xa.net  was the last speaker in the session. He owns a company that helps find audience segments for agencies, etc. He begins by saying that the big picture of the facebook targeting is that is skews to people who are in college or just passed out of college.

Rob Leathern, highlights the following points:

• Younger people share and like things more than older people. A 14 year old is twice as likely to share something than a 45 year old.
• Women are more addressable than men. 19% more likely to share interests. 13% are more likely to be married. 6% more liked to be engaged.
• He says that people who share a lot, that over time this is a consistent behavior.
• The other big things to keep in mind is that when you target Likes, you will overwhelming get a larger group of younger people30 and under is this group.
• Another thing you sell with Likes and interest targeting is you see a lot of overlap.
• Younger people are much easier to address with keywords than older people.
• Few keywords have very large audiences, and many keywords have small audiences.
• One of the thing you can do with geo targeting is using Zip Code targeting. If you compare the actual population in a zip code, to the number of list that zip code as their location. It’s a big difference. It is not accurate, up to 50% off.
• Zip code targeting is going to get better, but its still in the early stages.
• You can move your adwords kewyord list to Facebook and use tokenization stemming to facilitate facebook keyword discovery.
• You get better results when you target more precise interests.

The session ends with some Q & A in San Francisco.

Comments

Although your site will see its share of different shopper demographics, there are a number of consistencies they all prefer and that should be in place if you are to have any chance of them buying from you. In this article I’ll outline a few consistencies all shoppers look for in the ‘perfect cart experience.’

The Perfect Cart Experience Checklist

1. Make sure customers have a clear view of how to access their shopping cart from every page on your website. This means making a ‘shopping cart’ link or even showing them a summary of their cart contents at all times—not just if something is in their basket.

2. Always display shipping costs and any tax applicable as soon as possible. Don’t make them wait to find that information out after they have already gone through a few steps in the checkout process. Doing this will yield frustrated customers and higher abandon rates.

3. Give customers a choice of shipping options. Even if an order qualifies for free shipping (ground for example) based on some criteria you set, give the customer the opportunity to upgrade the shipping to a faster method (for an added charge) if desired.
   Free shipping is an excellent incentive and a powerful motivator, but don’t force a customer who qualifies for it to take it—they may want the item faster. Likewise, if they choose another shipping option, update the cart total to reflect that.

4. Let the customer update and edit their cart directly from the shopping cart page. This has become pretty standard on all carts now, but I have run across a few that still make a customer click a link of a particular product, go to the product page, make your edits, and then updated.

   A ‘friendly’ shopping cart lets customers edit item quantities, remove items, alter attributes (product options), and more … all without leaving the actual shopping cart page.

5. Prominently display any guarantees, privacy and security policies, throughout the site and frequently during the checkout process to build trust. Don’t just display them however; make sure you put them within plain view, especially in areas of POA (points of action.) Putting a secure shopping seal directly to the right of the space you ask your customer to enter their credit card information is far more effective than placing it at the bottom of the page.

6. Implement a follow up system for abandoned carts. Abandoned carts are something that simply can’t be avoided all together. All ecommerce sites will experience them to varying degrees—no matter what they try. However, do not become satisfied that abandoned carts are ‘a part of doing business’ as some like to put it. Rather, institute a system to contact customers who abandon their cart and attempt to save the sale.

   A system like this offers several benefits. a) It offers you the ability to cash in on previously lost sales. b) If you approach it correctly and don’t recover the sale, you still may receive valuable feedback from the potential customer as to why they chose not to complete the sale—and it is this information you can use to better the cart experience for those that follow.

7. Have at the very least, the following additional information (outside of the normal product price, photos, description, etc… that are expected) readily available on the product page. Stock / availability, shipping information (rates and times if possible), customer reviews, returns policies, any guarantees offered, payment methods accepted, live (or phone) help, security seals, ability to zoom in or see clear close-ups of product images.

8. A customer service phone number (not just email) that is answered by a real human to provide assistance if needed.

9. Provide the customer with the ability to save their cart and return later if desired (sometimes called a ‘wish list’.) Customers who may be shopping but not quite ready to buy for one reason or another will want to come back and easily find the item(s) the placed in the cart on their previous visit.

   Although at this point you may not have their information available yet to follow up with, it would be a good idea if you do have that information to implement a ‘wish list’ follow up type system to help nudge them toward the checkout if they do not purchase for a period of time.

10. Offer some type of loyalty or rewards program.

11. Has a simple yet intuitive categorical structure and associated navigation. Narrow your top level categories so that they provide a solid framework for listing sub-categories below them. For example, rather than use the following top level navigation on a site that sells electronics:

    • TVs
    • Digital TV Converters
    • Portable TVs
    • Phones
    • Stereo Receivers
    • Stereo Antennas

    It would be better to narrow the top level categories to read as follows with the sublevels under them:

    • TVs
      • Digital TV Converters
      • Portable TVs
    • Phones
    • Audio
      • Stereo Receivers
      • Stereo Antennas

12. Provide the customer with multiple methods of accessing (searching for) the same product data from various angles on the site and allow them to access it in as few clicks as possible. Here’s an example.

    If you sold coffee on the internet and one of the coffees you sold was a dark bold roast flavor by brand “XXX” then it would be smart to allow customers to access this particular coffee using the following groupings: Shop Bold Coffees, Shop Dark Roasts, Shop by Brand.

    People search for items different ways and catering to those habits helps them shop with you.

13. Prominently display any sales, offers, or discounts that may be of interest to your shoppers.

14. Offer multiple payment methods for the customer to choose from when ordering, including PayPal.

15. Send out instant notifications upon the customer successfully completing an order (order receipt) as well as a notification when the item has shipped (including tracking information.)

16. Offer the ability to checkout as a guest for those that may want to do so.

At the end of the day it’s all about making it easy for shoppers to do business with you and keeping your customers happy. Lowering cart abandonment rates and increasing sales starts with realizing what consistencies are desired—no matter the age, gender, or preference—among all shoppers. It’s human nature to want these items of ‘comfort’ and making them accessible to your visitors is what creates the ‘perfect cart experience.’

Check out eCommerce Optimization for more articles by Eric Leuenberger