T O W E R
M A R K E T I N G s m a r t . c r e a t i v e .10 cool
features for
your online
store
Not too long ago shopping meant getting dressed, driving
to a store during its open hours and selecting from the items
(size, color, style, model) they had on hand. In some locales
it could mean braving cold winds, snow and rain, or hot and
humid temperatures. Seasonally, you might need to brave
irritated fellow shoppers scrambling for holiday gifts from
a spotty inventory that could easily and quickly be sold-out
leaving you empty-handed or with a consolation purchase.
Back then, at best, you might periodically receive a photography-filled catalog from a favored retailer (or several) to leisurely peruse in the comfort of your home before making a selection, dialing a toll-free number and verbally placing an order. An advancement in convenience to be sure, but hardly a life-changing dynamic.
Then came the internet and the advent of online shopping...a light-year’s leap in shopping convenience. Shoppers could now make their
purchases day or night, from their home or office, fully clothed, in their pajamas or completely naked. At their own convenience, they could learn if the item of interest was in stock (in the size, color, model desired) without leaving their computer keyboard. No need to place a call or talk to a customer service rep. And now, shoppers are not even tied to their keyboards. They can make purchases anywhere, anytime, on mobile devices like the iPad, tablets and even their phones.
What does this monumental shift in the way we shop mean? Minimally, it means that operating a well-run online store is more important than ever. It’s also more competitive than ever. The bar has been raised. As businesses large and small continue to enhance the online shopping experience, customers have had their expectations raised higher and higher. And the phenomenon is not limited only to business-to-consumer (B2C) online stores. As the sophistication and expectations of consumers has risen, so has the sophistication and expectations of the business-to-business (B2B) buyer.
So, what 10 cool features should you have in your online store? How can you meet customer expectations? How can you be competitive?
1. Content Management
Content Management may well be the single, most essential tool that you absolutely need. Depending on the sophistication and power of your system, Content Management can enhance your marketing efforts by allowing you to:
• Introduce new products • Control inventory
• Manage customer accounts • Maintain a gallery of images • Launch promotions
The most indispensable feature of your Content Management System is that it should be a user-friendly tool that enables you and your administrators to control your website simply and efficiently based on your needs not on your technical know-how or computing prowess. With a Content Management System, you can add, delete, and modify information in any area of your website from the office, at home, or on the road.
And because it is user-friendly, not
programmer-based, you save not only costs, but time. CMS enables you to enter and immediately publish material in real-time. Internally, in addition to its marketing benefits, a computer-based CMS can:
• Allow for a number of people to contribute to and share stored data • Control access to data, based on user roles
by defining which users or groups can view, edit, publish, etc.
• Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data • Reduce repetitive duplicate input • Maintain a gallery of images
2. Shopkeeping
You might want to consider “shopkeeping” a combination of marketing and customer service. Shopkeeping helps you to enhance
the positive customer buying experience by delivering online value, performance and personal attention.
With shopkeeping tools you can relate to your customers in ways that can help to differentiate you from the competition. You’ll want a site responsive to buyer needs and able to manage fulfillment, returns, customer service and capable of providing gift-sending, repeat buyer and affiliate programs, coupons and discounts, and periodic sales, promotions and online events.
Think about these kinds of features when you’re thinking about shopkeeping features for your e-commerce site:
• Gift Certificates • Promo Codes • Customer Reviews • Suggested Sells • Real-Time Shipping
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is your way to develop customer loyalty and encourage repeat business by enabling you to communicate with your customers as often as you wish. With the right email marketing program customized to your needs you can add your own text to attractive newsletters and advertisements,
promotions, special offers and coupons. Self-administered email programs let you create as many campaigns, send as many newsletters and add as many contacts as you’d like.
A highly valued additional benefit of email marketing is that it is trackable. You’ll know who opened your mailing and who visited your website as a result. Email marketing can provide you with feedback statistics like unique views, number of impressions, unsubscribes, bounces and click-throughs.
Email marketing lets you:
• Send out timely newsletters for promotions, sales and events
• Send out automatic newsletters based on customer wish lists and buying profiles • Send out correspondence on order
tracking and status
4. Product Views
The obvious difference between buying online and shopping in a bricks-and-mortar store is that your customers can’t touch the merchandise. Maybe that’s why the most highly successful catalog retailers of the ‘80s and ‘90s began showing lifestyle and alternate views, swatch “samples”, and other details.
Online sellers can top the limitations of static views shown in a catalog by providing buyers with dynamic lifestyle and alternate views that are enhanced by zoom-in details, changeable options such as colors, styles, and patterns, links to options and accessories and cross-selling opportunities (“You may also like...”). The most obvious applications are retail and soft goods such as apparel combined with accessories, but virtually any product that can be merchandised, even to commercial buyers, might benefit from enhanced product views and links.
The views displayed need not necessarily be “static” either. With programs like Flash, sellers can create online interactive environments in which consumers can utilize the sellers products in familiar lifestyle scenarios. For example, by designing a floor plan and placing furnishings or decorating an outdoor deck, patio or porch with hanging and potted plants.
5. Product Views
Short of virtual reality, this is likely the closest a buyer can get to a product online. The advantage to video is that the seller is able to actively engage the buyer in a variety of potential scenarios including:
• Product views • Demonstrations • Construction/Manufacturing Details • Performance • Instruction/Usage • Promotion • Entertainment • Tips/Professional Advice
Plus, videos and animation can offer a dynamic marketing value providing the seller with a number of alternate channels to reach customers beyond the website via social media outlets. These videos most often will be successful if they have entertainment value and have the potential to go viral.
6. Electronic Notification (SMS)
Short Message Service (SMS) is the text communication service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices. SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application in the world, with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers. The term SMS is used as a synonym for all types of short text messaging as well as the user activity itself in many parts of the world.
As a marketing tool for e-commerce, electronic notification (SMS) offers sellers yet another way to communicate with customers. For the seller, the SMS function can be built into the content management/shopkeeping system for automated and/or custom messaging. For buyers who subscribe, SMS keeps the customer informed about the sellers’ activities, programs and policies in a variety of ways:
• Sales • Promotions • Transaction Confirmations • Customer Services • Event Announcements • Alerts • Demonstrations
7. Built-In Accounting and Inventory
Management
You may not know it, but if you’re already using (or contemplating) a financial accounting and business management software to operate and grow your business, you can interface these operations with your online store.
Typically these systems internally connect financials, manufacturing, supply chain, sales and marketing, project management, human resources, and services information depending on the needs of the business.
In simplest terms, you can utilize information already uploaded to your management software, such as inventory, to populate your website server.
At the same time, transactions conducted in your e-commerce store are reported back to the management software to maintain inventory, process orders, manage customers, create sales reports, and handle processes such as order entry, invoices, and packing slips. Interfacing the e-commerce store with your management software reduces the need for double entry and streamlines the transaction processes. In many cases, this heightened productivity improves real-time results, reduces errors and enhances both customer service and customer satisfaction.
8. Security
E-commerce security is probably more of a necessity than a feature, and that makes it all the more worth mentioning. Customers will only buy online when they know that their personal information and their purchases are safe and secure.
What you need for safe and secure e-commerce is an SSL certification. SSL certificates keep online interactions private even though they’re conducted on the
internet because they help customers gain the confidence to transact with your web site. An SSL certificate is a bit of code on your web server that provides security for online communications. When a web browser contacts your secured web site, the SSL certificate enables an encrypted connection. SSL certificates inspire trust because each SSL certificate contains identification information. When you request an SSL certificate, a third party verifies your organization’s information and issues a unique certificate to you with that information. This is known as the authentication process.
For public web sites where customers enter credit cards and other high value information, you need to quickly show users proof of your web site’s identity and encryption. People make decisions fast when they browse the Web and your link has to stand out to earn a click. A third-party authentication seal displayed on your site helps assure visitors that your site is legitimate and safe, giving customers the confidence to stay and make purchases on your site.
Studies also show that by inspiring confidence in customers that their transactions are secure helps to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
9. QR Codes & Smartphone Scanners
A QR code (short for Quick Response) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) readable by dedicated QR barcode readers, camera phones and smartphone* scanners. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.
While the QR codes themselves appear in the physical world beyond the website store, they are important as a device to drive customers to your store. You can use the QR code to link the user to the URL of your online store or to specific landing page URLs where you can expose them to promotions, sales, contests, demonstrations and other marketing activities. Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (termed mobile tagging). QR codes can be used to display text to the user, to add an electronic business card (vCard) contact to the user’s device, to open a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) or to compose an email or text message. Users can generate their own QR codes for scanning and use by visiting one of several free QR code generating sites.
QR codes storing addresses and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards, or almost any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone’s browser. This act of linking from physical world objects is termed hardlinking or object hyperlinking.
Recently, QR codes have become more prevalent in marketing circles and have been integrated into both traditional and interactive campaigns. QR codes have been deployed as marketing tactics for: billboard ads, guerrilla marketing campaigns, in-store displays, event ticketing and tracking, trade-show management, business cards, print ads, contests, direct mail campaigns, websites, email marketing, and couponing just to name a few. QR codes are of particular interest to marketers, giving them the “ability to measure response rates with a high degree of precision” allowing for easier ROI (return on investment) calculation, thus helping justify spending on marketing budgets. QR codes have also been used at trade shows and in conferences. *Many of today’s smartphones such as
Google’s mobile Android, Nokia’s Symbian and the Maemo operating systems support QR codes by natively including the barcode scanner on some models. In the Apple iOS, a QR code reader is not natively included, but over 50 free apps are available with reader and metadata browser URI redirection ability. As for BlackBerry devices, the App World application can natively scan QR codes and load any recognized web URLs on the device’s web browser.
10. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) offers an effective way for sellers to make it easy for customers to find them on the internet. The goal of SEO is not only to get listed, but to be highly ranked. SEO is not just a cool feature, it’s a way to achieve those goals.
Optimization makes your website easier for customers to find your store by ensuring that it’s more search engine–friendly… resulting in a higher ranked and more favorable position within the non-sponsored “natural” results of the search engines.
The Importance of Keywords & Search Terms
In the same way traditional marketing works to identify target audiences, search engine marketing must ensure that the search engine marketing campaign identifies the correct
keywords, or search terms, that people type into the search fields of major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
The first step, then, is to understand the target audience and know the search terms they are using. These keywords are the building blocks that form the foundation of any search engine marketing strategy. It is essential that they are chosen carefully. These keywords and key phrases should be used in site and copy development, for natural site optimization, and with pay-per-click campaigns.
Copy and Content for Search Engines
The copy and the content included on your web pages will have significant impact on how search engines rank your site. Once you’ve identified the search terms being used by your target audiences, those terms will be included in the content of your website. Careful crafting of the copy and content is one of the most important and essential steps in a search marketing campaign.
Natural Site Optimization
The results of employing natural site
optimization are highly ranked listings that are not sponsored or paid. The ranking or position is not purchased or sponsored. Instead, all the main category pages are optimized to the most up-to-date specifications of the search engines
following more than 60 researched methods. By creating or modifying the underlying website source code, you can influence how well the search engines rank your pages.
Pay-Per-Click
The primary reason to consider Pay-Per-Click advertising is that it gives your website the best chance to be found by people looking for your product or service. You are guaranteed a position, plus, you’ll know immediately that you’ve had a visitor and what he or she did when they came to your site, so it’s measurable. In essence, it allows you to use your chosen keywords to attract visitors to your site by achieving a preferential position on the search engine pages. Your position is achieved through a form of bidding. In general, when you bid on a keyword, you are bidding on a position. You decide what you will be willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results.
Summary
The ten cool features we’ve discussed aren’t the only things you can do to create a successful online store. Currently, there are e-commerce strategies and tactics utilizing social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, with tools such as Shop Tab functions and apps that can incorporate your store directly on your Facebook page. With this kind
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M A R K E T I N G
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of e-commerce shopping technology users can complete transactions without leaving Facebook, including add-to-cart, checkout, edit and remove products from cart, specify shipping address, ship to store, and pay with credit card.
For tomorrow, there’s the promise of “augmented reality” for e-commerce which interactively combines real and virtual views in real time 3D and the potential offered by “near field” wireless communication.
But for now, consider each of the e-commerce cool features we’ve discussed as the baseline starting point and an opportunity to reach more customers, improve your competitive position, streamline your processes, enhance customer satisfaction, and make more sales. Together, they can form a solid foundation for the success of your online store.
