Few things on my radar this morning that I want to share:
Great post by Get Elastic that analyzes the checkout login process of several of the top converting sites. New users resist registering and want to check out without creating an account. Very good data and thoughts there for anyone working in e-commerce.
Not all the news about the retail industry should be bad. Seeking Alpha has a list of 10 retailers with stronger than expected first quarter sales. A slight glimmer of positive news in the midst of all the doom and gloom about the economy that is still lingering.
For the designers in the house, I really love going through the sites at Design Meltdown. Always an inspirational gallery site. Last week they posted a new collection of “super clean” websites. Just because the design is clean doesn’t mean it has to be bland. Good inspiration there.
Jeremiah Owyang is live blogging from the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam and has a recap of the panel on digital natives. Kids born after 1980, who grew up with the level of technology, should be looked at differently by businesses and brands. This is an important segment of consumers that retailers have to be aware of and cater to. Teen retailers have been forced to get it, but how will retailers react as this generation continues to grow older?
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Wednesday
November 19, 2008
The other day I talked about the use of educational content in e-mails versus the use of strict promotion/sale content. Customers may go to your site to find a specific product, but they are more often going to your site to fill a need or find a solution to a problem. Educational content is needed, especially on the web, to guide customers to the products that they seek based on the problems they are trying to solve.
With this in mind, I’m impressed by the simple homepage feature that Lands’ End has on their site. The concept is simple: customers are looking for outerwear and the site is guiding them to the type of outerwear they need based on the climate that they live in. It’s a real simple concept that works well, from the user perspective:
I think apparel retailers often over look the types of problems that they are actually solving with their clothing. Focusing on fashion, trends and styles is very important but don’t overlook the utility of what you sell.
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Results from the 2008 eHoliday Survey, conducted by Shop.org and Shopzilla, have been released. The results offer an intriguing look into the state of online retail as we enter the heart of the Holiday season. Seeking Alpha has all of the results of the survey, which is a very good read for anyone involved in the industry right now. The survey paints a picture of an industry that may have worry about the economic downturn and knows it is not immune from pain.
Among the items that interested me: it appears that retailers will continue to offer free shipping promotions, but either increase the requirements to trigger the promotion or cut promotions in other areas. Free shipping is still a big deal.
When it comes to site usability and features:
Many retailers have rolled out new website features to improve the customer experience. Features like improved site search, which 42.9% of retailers added or improved since last holiday season, will help customers navigate sites more easily.
Other features, like product video (42.6%) and customer reviews (32.7%) can give shoppers more information to make buying decisions.
For price-focused shoppers, retailers have added and enhanced both clearance-sale pages (27.1%) and featured-sale pages (31.3%).
In addition, retailers continue to experiment with social networking: Nearly one-fourth (25.0%) of online retailers added a Facebook page this year.
This season will see a lot of experimenting with social media and non-traditional product detail and category pages. I’m really eager to see what retailers roll out in 2009 if these limited engagement tests pay off during the holiday season.
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