When you consider the competitive advantages of an online retailer, customer service is usually not the first thing that comes to mind. Many e-commerce sites, even the large well-known ones, are known for impersonal, mediocre customer service practices. And yet, the few e-tailors that differentiate themselves on serving their customers such as Zappos become well-known case studies in client care. In this post, I’ll share some of the unique best practices I’ve seen over the last few years that serve to differentiate companies in customer service.

1. Assign a Personal Customer Service Rep: Along with the order confirmation receipt that you send to your customers, also automatically assign each customer a personal representative that will field their questions. Send the email from this representative’s name, and include their contact info. Customers will be impressed that they have a “personal” representative assign specifically to them. For more info on this tactic, checkout this post on DermaTechRX.
2. Human Touch: Many online shoppers struggle with trusting an online merchant due to the lack of face to face interaction. Mitigate this weakness by showing pictures of your customer service staff. Christian retailer C28 shows the picture of their customer service manager on the Help page as well as on every order confirmation email. In addition, below the picture is the manager’s direct contact info. Something like this can go a long way to instill trust in your company.
3. Call Customers Who Abandon Orders: When a customer starts an order but doesn’t finish it, follow up with a phone call to find out if there were any problems. Customers appreciate the gesture, and you will likely save many sales in the process.
4. Free Upgraded Shipping: Surprise select customers by upgrading their shipping to 1 or 2 express. If you do this, be sure to send them an email letting them know they have been upgraded. This strategy was pioneered by Zappos.
5. Same Day Shipping: Most websites have a policy of shipping orders 1 or 2 business days after they are placed. If possible, selectively ship some orders the same day. The speedy delivery will be appreciated, though not expected by your customers.
6. Increase # of Reps: It goes without saying that if you have a higher representative to customer ratio, you will have the time to better serve your clients. While not every business can afford this, if you want to differentiate yourself with outstanding customer service, it’s a must.
7. Hand-written thank you on Packing Slip: Most packing slips are dull, impersonal, and useful only if you need to return the merchandise. On rare occasions, I’ve received orders where the packing list featured a hand-written, personalized thank you from a staff member. While this may not be practical for every order, it is a great way to impress select customers. Another idea might be to include the business card with contact info for a manager.
8. Follow Up Surveys: Consider sending a survey email out with every order confirmation. While not every customer will complete it, your customers will know you care enough to ask their opinion.
9. Extensive FAQ Knowledge Base: Surprisingly, one of the easiest ways to improve your customer satisfaction may be to prevent needless customer interactions in the first place. No matter how friendly your call center representative, no customer will be pleased if they have to call you in order to answer a simple question like “how do I return a product?” Prevent situations like this by maintaining a searchable FAQ knowledge base that answers every reasonable question.
10. Live Chat: Many customers dislike the thought of sitting on hold for even a few minutes. Offering a live chat option can be an inexpensive way of answering questions for your visitors, and reducing the call volume for your call center.
11. Improve After Hour Call Center: If your business employs a 3rd party after hour call center that is off-site, make sure you frequently monitor the quality of care they are rendering. Make sure they are empowered to serve your customers as effectively as possible. If your primary call center is 3rd party, seriously consider bringing it in house. While this is not always the most affordable option, it’s necessary if you desire to give your clients your absolute best.
12. Prominent Customer Testimonials: Place customer testimonials on more than just the “testimonial” page. Zappos features them right on their main customer service page. A word of caution applies here though. If you’re going to “brag” so to speak about your service, make sure you follow through!
13. Detailed Product Pages: Answer questions before they are asked by always having thoroughly detailed product pages. Include all the relevant info a customer would want to know about your products. For more ideas on this topic, checkout my previous post on 25 ways to improve your product page.
14. Customer Centric Slogan: Show your dedication to customer care by prominently featuring a customer centered slogan that summarizes your company’s practices. A great example of this would be Zappos’ famous slogan on their home page: “We are a service company that happens to sell shoes.”
15. Free Return Shipping: One of the greatest stumbling blocks to online ordering is the thought of having to return the product. Consider sending customers a pre-paid return shipping label in the case of a product needing to be returned. Because this is rarely done by e-commerce stores, you will certainly set yourself apart in the mind of your customer.
16. Automatic Price Protection: Always honor sale prices of items that were previously purchased by customers. They need to be able to shop with this confidence. Better yet, automatically notify customers when items they have purchased in the past go on sale. Offer to apply the price difference toward a future purchase or just refund the amount. Sound crazy? Maybe, but it’s small cost that can win a customer for life.
17. Lenient Return Policy: Make sure your return policy is not unnecessarily complicated or rigid. How many times have you shopped at a certain retailer because their lenient return policy gave you the confidence you needed to buy? (Think Costco vs. Walmart!)
18. Thank You Calls: Call select customers and thank them for ordering. This personalized gesture will blow them away.
19. Thank You Emails: Email certain customers and thank them for their business. Be sure to include something personalized in the email that will convince them it’s not just something generic sent to everyone.
20. Do More than Fix Your Mistakes: When your business makes a mistake, be sure that you exceed your customer’s expectations when fixing it. If an item was mistakenly left out of a shipment, don’t just a apologize, offer that item for free. Many businesses find their most loyal customers result from a highly satisfying resolution to a problem.
21. Fix Other’s Mistakes: If a shipment is delayed or lost due to the fault of the shipping carrier, don’t just blame UPS, offer a solution. Offer to promptly re-ship the item, or at the very least, offer to take care of the problem with the carrier so the customer doesn’t have to.
22. Guaranteed Email Response Time: Most customers expect an email inquiry to be answered within at most 24 hours. If you can, guarantee a response time faster than this. Also, acknowledge the receipt of an email inquiry by employing an auto responder.
23. Secret Shopping: Used extensively by brick-and-mortar retailers, secret shopping is a great way to identify problems and keep your customer service staff on their toes.
24. Upgrade Your CRM Tools: Proper technology can go a long way to improving customer care. At the very least, ensure that your staff has the ability to view the history of previous interactions with a customer. It’s very frustrating when you have to repeatedly explain the situation to a representative.
25. Personalize Everything: Always great customers by name on the home page, and offer them personalized product recommendations based on previous orders.

I once heard it said that “the enemy of good is not bad, it’s mediocre.” Too many online retailers struggle with mediocre customer service. Many businesses fail to realize their customer base is also powerful marketing machine. If treated right, they can become to most effective viral marketing campaign imaginable. Treated poorly, and they can become a PR disaster.

If you enjoyed this post, please also checkout 25 ways to improve your shopping cart and 25 ways to improve your checkout.

Imagine walking into a busy, high traffic grocery store. Despite the large number of customers in the store, you notice abandoned shopping carts strewn about the aisles and checkout lanes.  For many online businesses, this example illustrates perfectly the predicament many online retailers find themselves in. Why? For one, I believe many online retailers rarely actually test their own checkouts from the user’s perspective. If they had, they would have identified stumbling blocks. Below I’ve compiled a fairly comprehensive list of ideas on improving the checkout process.

1. Eliminate pages, eliminate scrolling: Many usability experts decry the benefits of shortening the checkout to as few pages as possible. While in theory this works, sometimes the real world provides other factors that must be considered. For example, suppose you combine your whole checkout into 1 page. Sounds great, unless the page is a mile tall and requires excessive vertical scrolling. In my opinion, the basic rule of thumb should be to condense the checkout into as few pages as possible requiring little to no vertical scrolling.
2. Hide the Navigation: Hide both your top and side navigation once the customer has initiated the checkout in order to prevent distractions. At this point, your goal should be to finalize the order as soon as possible before the visitor loses interest.
3. Hacker Safe Logos: Services from HackerSafe or Control Scan can be a great way to boost confidence during checkout. For more info on Hacker Safe, check this post.
4. Secure Certificate Logos: Most likely, your Payment Gateway and Secure Certificate provider offer a clickable security logo that you can install in your checkout pages. This provides an external way of validating the authenticity of your site.
5. Progress Indicator Bar: Always show shoppers where they are in the process. Everyone likes to know there is light at the end of the tunnel.
6. Prominent 1-800 Number: If you offer a live help line, make sure the number is highly visible everywhere in the checkout screens.
7. Live Chat: For those not wanting to call a 1-800 and wait on hold, Live chat is an excellent customer service feature. I’ve found it to be very effective for businesses with high value items such as jewelry.
8. No Default Credit Card Type: Typically, before or after you enter your credit card you are asked to select what type of card it is. DO NOT default this option to one of credit card types as many people will not notice it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve neglected to change the default option, and tried to use a MasterCard with the Visa option selected. Customers then become confused when they received an error telling them their credit card it invalid.
9. Auto-Detect Credit Card Type: Many card processors, including Authorize.net don’t even require you to have a credit card type drop down box since the first 4 numbers of the card determine that. Paypal does a nice job of automatically detecting and showing the credit card type with AJAX.
10. Don’t Up-Sell or Cross-Sell: Resist the temptation to up sell or cross sell during checkout. Remember, this is not like a supermarket checkout aisle. Users get distracted and are free to abandon their shopping carts at any time for any reason.
11. Gift Receipt / Gift Wrap Option: Customers have begun to expect this, especially during the holidays. No one wants to send a gift with an invoice showing what they paid. At the very least, offer a gift receipt with the prices not showing. Even better, include an option for a gift message.
12. User Friendly Credit Card Errors: I rarely have seen this done, yet it can make worlds of a difference. In the complex world of online credit card processing, it’s crucial to simplify any potential problems for the end user. If their credit card is declined due to an address mismatch, give them a list of possible solutions. For example, maybe they have moved recently and the processor or bank still has the old address on file? Or maybe they don’t know where to find the 3 digit security code on the back of the card.
13. Don’t Require Phone or Email: Though most e-tailors would like to have this information, you must ask yourself if it is important enough to risk losing the sale. Many privacy sensitive customers don’t like to give out this information.
14. Email List Opt-Out: Validate Email Address: Always allow people to opt-out. Though technically this is not required since they are making a purchase, it is a best practice required by most ISPs in order to be considered for white listing.
15. Copy Billing Info to Shipping Info: Most sites have this feature, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Nothing is worse than having to type the same information twice for the billing and shipping.
16. Don’t Require Login: Again, certain people will prefer not to create an account, so don’t risk losing the sale over this. Provide a “checkout without account” option.
17. Prominent “First time signup” Link: If you’re like most businesses, you probably get a significant amount of online business from first time shoppers. For this reason, there should always be a prominent “first time signup” link in the checkout when you ask someone to sign in.
18. Offer Paypal: While I have doubts about certain online payment methods such as Google Checkout and Bill Me Later, I strongly believe adding Paypal will help conversion, especially for international customers or those without credit cards.
19. Offer E-Check Payments: Another common payment method is by an e-check. Many customers who pay this way have checking accounts, but no credit or debit cards.
20. Security Code Explanation: Always provide a clear explanation of what this credit card security code is and why you need it. While most sites provide an image of where to find it, rarely do they answer the question of why they need it. Many shoppers are wary about giving this out, so provide an explanation of why it’s necessary for an online purchase.
21. Disable “Finalize Order” button On Click: A lot is going on technically speaking when the user clicks the “Finalize Order” button. Many users are impatient, and will click this button again and again until something happens. Depending on how your checkout is programmed, this can cause serious problems such as double billing or duplicate orders. Prevent this confusion by disabling the button after it’s clicked.
22. Show Estimated Processing Time: In addition to the above, show something to the nature of ”please allow up to 60 seconds to process your order.” after the shopper clicks the finalize order button.
23. Bookmark able Receipt Page: Make sure your receipt page is not the same page that processes the order via a form post. Shoppers tend to bookmark receipt pages, but if it’s not available later they will be very confused.
24. Shipping Time Estimates: Usually, the first question on a customers mind after submitting an order is “when will I get it?” Prevent needless customer service interactions by providing an estimate of both when the order will ship and when it will arrive.
25. Eliminate Insecure Page Errors: A customer should never have to see a “this page contains insecure items” error right before they enter their credit card. Usually, this is just a case of the webmaster not using relative links properly with images (http:// vs. https://).

I hope you found something here useful for your online business. This is actually the 4th post in my “25 Ways to” series, so please checkout the other posts as well. 

When I hear the term wish list, I immediately see a mental picture of an eager child sitting on Santa’s lap holding a lengthy list of their much desired toys. There seems to be a trend, however, to move away from the narrow term “Wish list”, which are usually employed by a younger audience. Recently, Target took an interesting step in giving their wish list a broader appeal. They now call it simply Target Lists, and they allow people to create lists with themes in mind such as birthdays, Christmas, Housewarmings, shopping lists, etc.Does every e-commerce site need a wish list feature? While not every business it suited to the concept, I think the answer in most cases is yes. In my experience, I’ve seen wish list help in the following areas:

1. Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment (people use the wish list to store items instead of the cart)
2. Site Stickiness (people come back frequently to edit or view their list)
3. Viral Marketing (people tend to share their lists with others, which provide word of mouth advertising)

Does your site already have a wish list? Below I’ve compiled a fairly comprehensive list of great upgrade features I’ve either used or seen used on other sites.

1. Email Your List Feature: An “email your list” feature is a perfect way to empower your customers with the ability to share their lists with family and friends. For an example of this and many other of the features below, checkout C28’s wishlist.
2. Comments Field for Each Product: Allowing users to add comments to each item on their list will help them remember specific product details, or help them share relevant information to other looking at the list.
3. Email Me When It’s Re-stocked: In many cases, items remain in wish lists for long periods of time, sometimes allowing the items to go out of stock. If this happens, allow user to request to be notified when list items are re-stocked.
4. Email Me Before It Sells Out: Better yet, prevent the situation above by automatically emailing list users when an item is almost sold out. Customer will greatly appreciate it, and you will drive sales creating a sense of urgency.
5. Show Shipping Info: When friends and family are buying an item out of the wish list of someone, they might not know where to have it shipped to. When someone buys a wish list item, allow them to see the shipping address of the list user.
6. Make It Linkable: Make it easy for users to share their lists with other by giving them a unique and easy to remember url to access the wishlist. For example, www.yousite.com/wishlist/customername. Some sites hide the wish list behind a form post url or something that requires login. Avoid this.
7. Wish List Banner Ads: Even better, provide your wish list users with a copy and paste banner that they can post on their myspace, blog, or even email signature. This can provide great brand exposure, as well as drive traffic.
8. Remove Purchased Items: When someone makes a purchase from someone’s list, be sure to flag that item and purchased. Otherwise, multiple people may buy one item as a gift. This happened to me with a client one time during the busy Christmas season. (not fun!)
9. Multiple Search Options: For those looking up another person’s list, make sure you allow them to search by more than just an email address. Searching by first and last name or even address would be helpful.
10. Reward / Affiliate System: Reward your list users by giving them an incentive to share their lists with others. What can be better than emailing your wish list to friends and earning 10% if they buy something for you?
11. Diversify Your Wish Lists: As a mentioned above, Target diversified their lists by letting users choose a theme such as birthday lists, Christmas lists, shopping lists, etc. You will find that each list type caters to a different type of customer.

I hope some of the ideas above gave you something to think about. Be sure to leave a comment letting me know what your experience is in this area. 

I suppose this post is a good prequel to 25 Ways to Improve Your Product Pages. An extremely crucial step in the buying process occurs on the product category page. Basically, product category pages show listings for all products within a certain category, and provide a link to get more detail on the product page. Every product based e-commerce store has them, but not all of them are equally optimized. While the suggestions below vary greatly in their complexity and may not suite all businesses, I hope you’ll find something you can implement on your site.

1. More Items Per Page: In the past, it was advantageous to show only a few products per page due to slower dial up connections. With most surfers on DSL now, it makes sense to show more products per page, so users don’t have to constantly click to the next page. Also, be sure to allow them to view more than the preset amount of items.
2. AJAX Popup Feature: Many sites are now allowing you to view more product details such as more photos or the description directly on the product listing page. This is a great time saver when used with
   AJAX, because it doesn’t require the customer to leave the product category page. Checkout the “Quick Look” feature on Gap.com.
3. Add to Cart Button: Don’t underestimate the eagerness of your customers to buy. If they know what they are looking for, many won’t need to go all the way to the product page in order to click add to cart. If possible, put the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button directly on the product listings page. For an example, see C28’s music pages.
4. Sort by Price: Let’s face it. Price is one of the most important factors for most consumers. Give them a way to answer the ubiquitous question, “which one’s the cheapest?” by letting them sort by price.
5. Sort by Sale / Clearance: Every customer base has its bargain hunters. Highlight sale or clearance price merchandise by letting them view those items first.
6. Sort by Age: Your repeat visitors will greatly appreciate this. The first thing on the repeat customers mind when they hit your site will be “What’s new?”
7. Sort by User Ratings: Product peer reviews are becoming increasingly important to online shoppers. Many have begun the expect them. Let people easily see which products are rated the best by other buyers.
8. Sort by Best Seller: No one likes to feel they are the first one buying something. Ever heard of this psychological merchandising trick? Make a perfectly stacked pile of widgets and place them in a prime location in a store, and they won’t sell. However, take a few widgets out of the pile, and people think they are selling like hot-cakes and grab one for themselves. All that to say… let your visitors view the top selling products first.
9. Filter by Brand: For the brand conscience, let people filter down and eliminate items they don’t want to see. Remember, once they are on your product listing pages, your goal should not be to show them as many products as possible, but rather to filter down to the ones they are interested in.
10. Filter by Color/Size/etc: Have you ever shopped the clearance rack at a clothing store? Usually, items are merchandised by size. Or take shopping for paint at a hardware store. Most people walk right to the color family they desire, then decide from there. What your e-business sells will determine what type of filters you should create. View a good example of filtering here.
11. “Save These Settings” Feature: Suppose you’re browsing a certain product category on a site. After telling the website you want to see the items sorted by lowest price first with 50 products per page, you’re irritated to find that your settings have been lost when you move to a different product category. To prevent situations like this, save a user’s settings to the most recently selected ones, or allow them to click an option to save them across the whole site.
12. Breadcrumb Navigation: It’s easy for visitors to get lost in an endless trail of sub-sub-sub categories. Show them where they are and where they’ve been with cookie crumb navs.
13. View All Feature: It’s easiest to compare products when they are all displayed on one page. Give your visitors the option of to ”view all.”
14. Unique Content in Title & Meta Tags: One of the most challenging issues with product category pages from an SEO point of view is that they all appear similar and contain little content. If possible, ensure that the title and meta tag content for each page within a product category is unique.
15. Click to Any Page Navigation: I can’t stand it when a website only gives you a “previous” and “next” button to click through the product category. Allow visitors to go exactly to the page number they desire by creating hyperlinks to each page number.
16. Sorting & Filtering Options at Top and Bottom: It’s important to show your filtering options on both the top and bottom of your category pages. While most sites show them on top, many neglect to feature them for easy access at the bottom of the page as well.
17. Eliminate Parameters from URL: Here’s a rule of thumb, if your category urls are so ugly that it’s impossible to remember one, then odds are the search engines won’t remember them either. If you must use a parameter in the url (i.e. ID=123), try to use only one.
18. Create SEO Friendly URLs: Better yet, convert url’s like this: http://abc.com/?category1=widget&category2=gadgets to something like http://abc.com/widgets-and-gadgets.html. This can be accomplished by using a re-write engine.
19. Highlight New & Sale Merchandise: Include an icon or other indicator to show that an item is on sale or is brand new.
20. Show “Real Life” Photos: Showing pics of your products in real life situations brings your pages to life and is much more appealing than a dull list of names and prices.
21. Prominent Search Function: People tend to use search as the first resort or the last resort. If they are unable to find what they want from browsing your category pages, they will look for a search option. Make this feature available on every page of your site.
22. Make Product Images Clickable: I’m still surprised when I see sites that force you to click on the text of the product name to get to the product page. Make sure the product image is clickable as well.
23. Auto Following Nav: Most sites have a left or top navigation structure. However, unless the site uses frames, when the user scrolls down, this navigation will not be accessible. Create a dynamic navigation that follows them down the page. This will ensure they are able easily move to a different category.
24. Compare Checkbox: Allow customers to easily compare items by placing a checkbox next to each product listing. For an example of this, see CompUSA’s product categories.
25. Need Help Deciding? It’s a well-known fact that having to many products to choose from can be just as bad as not having enough. Help your customers make a decision by linking to a “Help Me Decide” page that compares the benefits of each product type. Again, see the bottom of CompUSA’s product listings for an example.

I hope something here has sparked your interest. Be sure to also checkout my other posts on 25 ways to improve your shopping cart and product pages.  

Shopping cart abandonment is every online merchant’s worst fear. After all, with all that you invest in marketing your website, it’s painful to leave money on the table when would-be buyers don’t convert to sales. In this post, I’ll share some ways to improve your shopping cart that I’ve used or seen used by other savvy online retailers.

1. Add Product Thumbnail Images: It’s easy for visitors to forget what they added to their cart. Remind them by displaying a small product image next to the name. Remember, visitors don’t know the product names as well as you do, so they need a visual reminder.
2. Your Just X Dollars away from Free shipping: Most e-commerce sites offer free shipping at a certain level. Remind your customers of this by displaying a prominent message letting them know how much more they need to spend to receive the promotion.
3. Buy X Get X Free: If you offer some sort of BOGO promotion, the shopping cart is a great place to
   display a message such as “Buy 1 more, get a 3rd FREE.”
4. Show Shipping Prices: For me, the thing that frustrates me most is when websites require me to enter my shipping info in order to calculate the shipping price. Simplify this by showing the shipping prices as early as possible. If your website calculate shipping prices based on the destination zip code, allow visitors to calculate the cost without having to enter all their personal info.
5. Show Shipping Times estimate: UPS, Fedex, and USPS offer different service time commitments to different parts of the country. Show a map of these estimated to shipping times to re-assure your customers they will get their order on tine.
6. Show What Method(s) order will ship: For many, the shipping method is as important as the shipping price. Some customers may have reservations about certain shipping methods. In addition, customer with rural address may only be able to get service from UPS or Fedex. Customer with PO Boxes will only be able to get deliveries from US Mail.
7. Cross-sell Items: The shopping cart is a great place to suggest
   similar items to that which are already in the cart. Just make sure the suggestions does not get in the way of the checkout process.
8. Up-sell Items: The shopping cart is a great place to let customers know about another product that may better serve their needs. Again, remember to soft sell so as to not confuse the checkout process.
9. Link Back to the Product Page: It’s very easy to forget the features or other details about the products in your cart. Make it easy for your buyers to get back to the product page by providing a link from the shopping cart.
10. Feature Comparison: Show as much detail as possible on the cart page in order to let shoppers compare features. If you can’t fit all the relevant information, include a “compare” link that allows them to compare all the features at a glance.
11. Progress Bar: People want to know that your checkout process is fast and easy. Display a progress indicator to let them know where they are, and how much further they need to go.
12. Make Your Cart Button Highly Visible: Above anything else, the “Checkout” button should be the most prominent feature on the shopping cart page. Make it large and bold enough to reach out and grab the user’s attention.
13. Add “Checkout” to Cart Button: Most site’s have a ubiquitous “View Cart” button on every page of the site, usually located in the upper right hand of the page. Consider also including the word “Checkout”, since not everyone
    knows that “View Cart” is the first step to checking out.
14. Express Checkout: Make repeat purchases quick as easy by allowing return customers to login from the shopping cart page.
15. Email Customers with Abandoned Carts: An extremely effective way of capturing lost sales opportunities is to email those customers who abandon their shopping carts. Better yet, offer them a coupon or some other discount to come back and finish the purchase.
16. Show Stock on Hand: There’s no greater way to stress urgency than to let customers
    know how much product you have on hand. While you might not want to show the exact quantity in inventory, you should
    definitely warn them when a product is close to selling out.
17. 1 Click Ordering:
    Surprisingly, a great way to increase your conversion is to skip as much of the shopping cart/checkout process as possible. Pioneered by Amazon, 1 click ordering is a great way to speed up the checkout process.
18. See More Items Like Those In Your Cart: Give them an incentive to spend more by suggesting other items
    similar to those already in the shopping cart.
19. Live Chat Link: Don’t let customers abandon their order due to a nagging question. Provide an easy way to get an instant answer to their query.
20. Prominent Phone Support Number: Again, always provide an easy way to speak to a live person.
21. Show Payment Options Early: Customers will be curious as to what payment options you
    accept early on in the process. Let them know by displaying credit card logos, the Paypal logo, and an e-Check representation.
22. Auto-Submit Form Changes: It’s common for customers to change the quantity of an item in the cart, and then click “checkout” instead of first clicking the “update” button. You can prevent later confusion by refreshing the quantities in their cart automatically if it is changed.
23. Save for Later Button: Let’s face it, not everyone will complete the purchase the same day they add the item to their cart. Assure them that the items will remain in the cart by allowing them to save it for later. Better yet, email them after a certain amount of time to remind them.
24. Security and Privacy Reminder: Assure your visitors your website is secure and trustworthy.
    Display emblems such as the HackerSafe logo or the BBB Online logo. Also, let your visitors know their personal information will be kept private by linking to your privacy policy.
25. Link to Your Return / Exchange Policy: One of the greatest hesitations to buying is worrying about returning a product to an online retailer. Assuage the fears of your customers by linking to your “No Hassle Return Policy.”

I sincerely hope some of the ideas above will be helpful to your online business. Remember, each shopping cart feature that helps to improve or simplify the shopping process will become a competitive advantage and another memorable reason for your customers to come back.

I’m constantly astonished at how many large e-commerce sites have seriously deficient product pages. Many large companies, especially click-and-mortar retailers, seem to forget that products cannot be touched, tasted, or tested over the internet. While the internet will never perfectly mimic the in-store experience, there are dozens of tactics that can be implemented on the product page to increase customer engagement and convert visitors into buyers. Below I’ll describe 25 methods I’ve either used or seen used by other online retailers.

1. More / Better Product Photos: It’s important to remember that unlike you, your customers may have never seen nor handled your products before. Therefore, take pictures of every possible angle a customer would want to see. Also, make sure the quality is acceptable. If you’re still using a 1 megapixel camera you got for Christmas 10 years ago, it’s about time to upgrade.
2. Flash Zoom with Different Angles: Many advanced e-commerce customers have implemented flash technology to allow zooming and changing angles. If you have the expertise and the resources, this is a killer add on feature for any product page.
3. Include Info about Where the Product was made: People care immensely about this. Whether they are concerned about ethical working conditions, or just for quality reasons, be sure to tell them where your products are made. If they are made somewhere besides the US, be sure to put a link to your fair labor policy, so your customers don’t think you’re using sweatshops.
4. List benefits, not just features: Don’t rattle of an endless bullet list of technical specifications. Tell customers specifically how this product will improve their life.
5. Show product measurements or weight: Remember, they can’t actually touch and hold your product over the internet. Give them the next best thing with the measurements and weight.
6. Make “Add to Cart” Impossible to miss: The “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button should reach out and grab your attention. Avoid tiny, vague “Add to Bag” buttons such as the one on Gap’s product page.
7. Allow customer generated product reviews: This will both increase the amount of trust your website receives and add valuable content for the search engines. Worried about negative product reviews? Don’t, the experts say it can be one of the greatest tools to show your customers you are transparent and trustworthy.
8. Ask a Question Link: Don’t leave your customers hanging with nagging questions about a products. Add a link that emails your customer service department so customers can ask a specific question about the product. This also serves as a great feedback tool so you know what information needs to be put on the product page to prevent questions. For an example of this, checkout C28’s product page.
9. Show Related (cross sell items): Having a “customer who bought this also liked…” section is a great way to cross sell. Remember, a product page can be a dead end if the customer is not interested in what they are viewing. Always give them somewhere else to go.
10. Show Related upsell items: Add to your average order by suggesting an upgrade to what they are currently viewing.
11. Show add on items: Selling shoes? Don’t let your customers checkout without socks! Customers will appreciate the suggestion, and you will increase your average order.
12. Include possible search query terms in the title and meta tags: If you sell moisturizer cream, don’t just put the product name in the title tag. Create an extra field in your product database that people will likely search for such as “Cure for Dry skin.”
13. Foreign Currency converter: Have you ever been to a site that showed currency in something other than US dollars? I have, and I usually leave because I am too lazy to convert it. Including a currency converter link near the price will help encourage your international business. If you don’t want to clutter up your product page, you can even program the link to only show if the user has a non-US IP address.
14. Add a Wishlist: Wishlist’s are a great way to create stickiness and possibly even reduce shopping cart abandonment. People tend to use shopping carts as wishlists, so giving them to real thing will allow you to more accurately track your true shopping cart abandonment.
15. Email Me When It’s Re-stocked Button: Many sites, especially apparel retailers, may sell out of a certain size or variety of a product. Rather than throwing up a “Out of Stock” notice on the product page, why not allow people to be emailed when the item is re-stocked? In my experience, this is one of those features that really surprises and delights customers who are otherwised already frustrated. Checkout an example of this on C28’s product page.
16. Email Me Before It Sells Out Button: People tend to wait to the last minute. But what if you warned them before the item sells out? There’s no greater way to create a sense of urgency then by sending an email saying “Hurry, it’s about to sell out!”
17. Email Me When Products Like this are Added: Customers are tired of generic, one size fits all email newsletters. Give them something they really care about by creating a system where they can request to be notified when product within certain categories are added to the site.
18. Social Bookmarking Links: Although its not typical to see a Digg or Delicious button on an e-commerce site, it may work well for certain buzzworthy products, such as t-shirts from Threadless.
19. Bread crumb navigation: It’s easy to get lost in a myriad of product categories, so always keep visitors informed about where they are with Bread (aka Cookie) crumb navigation. Bread crumb navs typically are located in the upper left hand of the page and look something like this: Home > Top Category > Lower Category > Product Name
20. Customer Generated Photos: Allow your customers to upload pictures of them using your products. This works great for apparel retailers, or anything where people take pride in using a product.
21. Audio Testimonials: This is becomming common as sales pages for ebooks or other informational products. A testimonial that can be listened to will probably hold more weight than simple text on a page.
22. Video Testimonials: Even better than just audio, allow for full video testimonials. If you have the videos hosted by You Tube, you can also spur a viral marketing campaign.
23. Back Button to Product Category Page: This allows customers to navigate more efficiently and return to where they just were.
24. Browser Bookmark Button: Don’t let them forget your site. With a simple javascript command, you can trigger their browser to bookmark your product.
25. RSS Product Feeds: With the integration of a feed reader into Microsoft’s IE 7, Rss feeds will likely move out of the early adopter stage and become more mainstream. With the abundance of SPAM in the inbox, receiving product updates through an RSS feed is a great alternative for keeping your customers informed. Checkout how Threadless displays the RSS icon at the bottom of their product page.

I hope some of the ideas above have given you some inspiration for your site. Be sure to leave a comment if you’ve successfully used any of these tactics. Also, you migh want to checkout my post on 25 Ways to Improve Your Shopping Cart.

First off, this is not a sponsored post.

However, it will speak very favorably about Scan Alert’s HackerSafe service based on an experience I had with one of my clients.Basically, there are 3 purported benefits for using the Scan Alert logo and scanning service.

1. Customer’s who see logo feel more secure when checking out, which will increase conversions
2. Scanning exposes loopholes in site where hackers can penetrate
3. As a deterrent to future hackers who see the logo

In my experience with one particular business, I didn’t necessarily see a noticeable improvement in conversion (although we didn’t a/b test, so maybe there was). The biggest benefit to us came from the vulnerability scanning they do.

Back in August of 2007, this company had an serious database breach from their website. They weren’t sure exactly how it happened, but the hackers were able to see customer contact information. Fortunately, the company did not store credit card info. Regardless, having to email hundreds of customers telling them their information was compromised was a PR disaster.

Unfortunately, this small company did not have the internal resources to implement a full security audit on the website. They signed up for the Hacker Safe service, and the vulnerability scanning exposed several serious problem areas where information could be hacked in to.Basically it comes down to this.

For the small to medium size e-commerce site, Scan Alert’s service is a great low cost security initiative. (I believe the annual fee is somewhere around $2000). While it won’t necessarily catch everything, most of the major issues will be found out.

Be sure to leave a comment about your experience with HackerSafe or any online security issues in general. 

When I was in college, I worked part time at an electronics retailer, where I was paid on commission. For the first year or so that I worked there, my sales performance was decent, but nothing spectacular. Many times I would spend hours telling customers the benefits of a product, only to hear them say, “Thanks for the info, maybe I’ll be back.” Then one day I learned an amazing trick to closing more sales, I simply needed to ask for the order. “Would you like to purchase this today?”  

Surprising, this revolutionized my sales. I was shocked that simply asking someone to make a purchase would actually convince them to do so. I always figured that if they wanted it, they would tell me. Man, was I wrong.

The same principle applies to website conversion strategy. If you want somebody to do something, you have to tell them so. From a webmaster’s point of view, when I put a hyperlink in a webpage, I expect people to click on it. After all, I know it’s there, and if the user rolls there mouse over it, they will know it’s there too right?

This is seriously flawed thinking. Recently, I fell in love with the CrazyEgg analytics software. One tool they offer allows you to see a “heatmap” of clicks. In other words, highly clicked areas a different color than rarely clicked areas. You can even see what non-hyperlink elements people are clicking on.

Using this software, I ran a test on a client’s homepage. The splash image for this homepage was full of products displayed in an attractive way. Each product had an image map link going to the product page. Surprisingly though, no one was clicking the products. When we added a simple call to action button, such as “View more” or “See All”, the situation changed dramatically. People began doing that we asked them to.

Studies have shown time and time again that a strong CTA is more effective than a subtle or vague one. For example, “Buy Now” usually works better than “Add to Bag”. “Learn more” is probably more effective than “click here.”

As internet marketers, we can sometimes lose touch with our customers because we don’t see them face to face. For this reason, it’s important to fall back on the basics of salesmanship. Always create a strong, persuasive call to action!

Unfortunately, yes it can. Let me explain.

Suppose your website is relatively new, and you currently only rank for a few terms, namely your brand name. After a year or so of optimizing your site for search engines, you notice that despite a huge increase in search traffic, your conversion rate is significantly lower than it used to be. What happened?

Unfortunately, the SE’s are not as smart as we think they are. Occasionally, they will rank your website for keywords that are completely irrelevant or too broad for your business. For example, I have a client who retails a highly niche clothing type. After about 2 years of SEO, they currently rank first page on Google for the broad search term “clothing stores”. However, looking at the web analytics, I found that not a single visitor from this keyword has converted to a sale.

I would venture to guess that most sites rank for several major keywords and many long tail keywords that are either too broad or have nothing to do with their website. So what’s the big deal? Nothing really, express your conversion rate will suffer.

From a birds eye view, it would be very disconcerting for an executive to see the conversion rate fall after beginning an SEO campaign. However, this is completely normal. It’s important to delve deeper into the analytics and monitor not just the overall conversion rate, but the individual conversion rates from SE’s, direct traffic, and referring sites.

It’s important not to obsess too much over conversion rates. If overall conversions (sales) are up, yet the conversion rate is down due to some external factor, there is absolutely no cause for alarm.

About PWM

Palmer Web Marketing offers e-commerce site reviews and advice on the PWM e-Commerce blog.

Create a Discount Pop-Up Window

Another creative way to decrease your abandonment rate is to launch a popup window anytime a customer exits your website while the shopping cart is still full. The popup window can say something like, “Complete your order now, and receive an additional 10% discount.” Hopefully, the customer will re-consider their action and stay to finish their purchase.

 Typically, I’m not a big fan of pop-up windows in general. In order for this to work, it must be executed correctly. If done wrong, the pop-up may be blocked or immediately closed by the user. The pop-up must not look like an add, and must load fast enough before they close the window.

As always, test a system like this thoroughly before implementing.