Category Archives: ecommerce

The Perils Of Showrooming – And What Retailers Can Do

With the continuing spread of smartphones (by May 2013, according to TNS Mobile Life, 60% of Kiwis had smartphones), local retailers need to develop strategies to deal with the practice known as “showrooming”.

What is showrooming? According to Wikipedia, “showrooming is the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick and mortar retail store without purchasing it, but then shopping online to find a lower price for the same item.”

Why do consumers showroom?

A September 2013 Canadian/U.S. study, “Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile-Assisted Shopper“, identified the key reasons cited by consumers:

Conversely, why do Mobile Shoppers still buy instore?

The value of the item under consideration matters, according to the study, with more expensive items (unsurprisingly) more likely to be showroomed:

And the critical pricepoints?

Is showrooming a problem in New Zealand?

Yes, according to Colmar Brunton (CBOmnijet Sept 2013), who report that 58% of online Kiwis have seen something in a shop, checked the price on their phone while in the shop and then bought the item elsewhere.

A BBC news report highlighted the demise of a camera retailer, and staff reaction to the store’s closure:

“The staff at Jessops would like to thank you for shopping with Amazon” read the sign in a shop window shortly after the British camera chain went into administration.

It was a dry reaction to a growing problem for “bricks and mortar”-focused retailers. Showrooming is said to have exacerbated the decline of high-profile brands like Comet.

Gadget stores, bookshops and the cosmetics industry are all losing sales to showroomers, but solutions have proved hard to find.

Kelly Buckle, 23, of Birmingham, sometimes spends more than £200 in a single shopping trip – but never actually gets as far as the checkout.

“I can go in and smell a perfume and then find it online for £30 less,” she says.

Research by design agency Foolproof found that 24% of people showroomed while Christmas shopping – and 40% of them took their business elsewhere.

So what (if anything) can be done about showrooming?

One strategy we wouldn’t advise is to follow the example of this Queensland store and charge prospective customers just for browsing:

A Brisbane specialty grocery store owner is charging customers to browse after becoming fed up with people who enquire but don’t buy.

A poster telling customers they’ll be charged $5 for browsing if they don’t purchase anything has been put up at Celiac Supplies in the suburb of Coorparoo.

Owner of the gluten free produce store, Georgina, says she resorted to putting up the sign after spending hours each week giving advice to people who leave empty-handed.

About 60 people a week would go into the store, ask questions and then buy the same or similar product at a supermarket chain or online.

She has became frustrated as her prices often match that of the supermarkets but people still go elsewhere as they are under the impression it will be cheaper.

She says the sign has turned some people away but others are more sympathetic and pay up.

“I can tell straight away who are the rat bags who are going to come in here and pick my brain and disappear,” she said.

Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman says charging customers to browse will likely turn people away.

He says a few stores in Queensland are charging to try on shoes or clothing but this is the first time he’s heard of a browsing charge.

Better instead, perhaps, to consider this American example. Time Magazine reports that leading U.S. retailer Nordstrom is testing one possible way to benefit from the practice through a partnership with jewellery website Blue Nile:

Blue Nile is paying Nordstrom for display space in the chain’s downtown Seattle store. A Blue Nile representative is on hand, iPad at the ready, to answer questions and help create customized rings.

The practice is unique because Blue Nile is a direct competitor to Amazon, and customers who want one of the rings have to purchase from the jeweler’s website.

Why would Nordstrom want to be used so blatantly as a mere showroom for another retailer? For one thing, though the terms of the arrangement were not made public, Blue Nile most certainly is paying the department store for its prime retail space. The other reason for the partnership is that Nordstrom hopes it will attract new customers to check out its Wedding Suite area, where they’ll browse (and perhaps buy) wedding dresses, bridal gowns, and other items before or after checking out the jewellery from Blue Nile.

If that sort of partnership strategy is unlikely to work for you, here are some other possibilities. First, USA Today suggests these ten strategies:

1. Offer benefits. For those who purchase from you, offer post-purchase support — lessons, personal set-up, service, telephone support.

Make sure you prominently display the fact that such services are included after purchase for those who purchase from you.

2. Stock different merchandise. If a shopper can get exactly the same merchandise online at a lower price, it’s easy to comparison shop.

So look for items that are unique or special in some way.

3. Specialize. Become a desired destination for certain shoppers.

A small grocery store in my neighborhood, nondescript store where people pick up a few last-minute necessities, transformed a section into a specialty store, stocking craft beers with a sign outside touting “999 great beers — and a few lousy ones.”

4. Hold events. Become a place customers want to hang out.

I recently attended a great event at my local bookstore, Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif. One Saturday night, they had a book swap.

For a price, the bookseller offered food and wine and guests swapped books they loved with one another. It reminded me how wonderful it is to be surrounded by people who love books and reading and how fabulous it is to go to a vibrant, real bookstore.

5. Create a membership programme. Why not turn customers into members?

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. After all, outdoor sports retailer R.E.I. has members. Members pay a small price but get a discount on purchases, invitations to special events, extra services, and a greater feeling of attachment to your store.

6. Engage with customers on social media. The closer customers feel to you, the more likely they are to be loyal.

7. Allow customers to run a tab. Everyone loves to be considered a regular.

If you sell something that customers purchase regularly — books, garden supplies, hardware — create a programme where they leave a credit card on file and just add to their tab when they come in.

8. Make sales from your website. Some customers may not be quite ready to buy when they come to your store but want to make an online purchase later.

If you don’t have e-commerce on your website, they’ll go elsewhere.

9. Provide great service. Small businesses have to go the extra mile to stay alive.

I go to my local hardware store instead of the big, ugly home-improvement stores because I get help from people who really know what they’re talking about. They’re friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, and I like going there.

10. Do everything you can to remind people what they lose when they fail to support local stores: the convenience of shopping locally, the health and vibrancy of their town, and, most important, tax dollars that support their schools, streets, and safety.

The US National Retail Federation gives some useful additional advice:

11. Seize the moment. Bricks-and-mortar retailers have a chance to salvage a sale that might not otherwise happen if the customer is merely shopping online.

12. Engage all five senses. Take advantage of the physical presence of the customer to wow them with sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

13. Upskill your staff. In-store consumers have more information than ever before. If sales associates can’t enhance that knowledge — or worse, know less about a product than the customer — the sale can be lost.

But “if the sales associate is empowered with technology and has a deeper understanding of the product” and access to CRM data, “they’ll have a better opportunity to connect more effectively with the shopper,” says Branden Jenkins, general manager of e-tail/retail products for NetSuite.

Focusing on staff expertise will move the in-store experience from commodity-based to “value added”. People still buy fashion in a store to ask, ‘Does this look good on me?’ … [retailers] need to drive up knowledge as currency.

14. Know your customers. Customers also want to feel valued — and known — by the retailer.

The battle for the retail floor is going to happen in the cloud [via] customer data and an understanding for customer preference. Most companies — retailers and non-retailers alike — “do a poor job of leveraging the valuable customer information they have,” says Brent Cohler, director of mobile product marketing for SAP. “That’s frustrating because the more customers are engaging with the brand, the greater their loyalty and expectations. Retailers should provide customers with personalized content and offers at the point of decision. They can do this using information from a variety of sources … and combining it with the rich contextual signals that mobile devices provide.”

Greg Girard, program director of merchandise strategies for IDC Retail Insights, cites the MyLowe’s plan, in which Lowe’s customers swipe a card when they make a purchase and can keep up with home-oriented details online. Lowe’s “can help manage warranties of products … or remind them that it’s time to do periodic maintenance,” he says. “That’s a great customer support system, but there’s analytics behind it, too.”

15. Millennials are leading the way … but not for long
Mark Logan, senior vice president of digital innovation at advertising agency Barkley and head of Moonshot Innovation Lab, says half of all millennials surveyed in 2011 reported using smartphones while shopping, compared with 21 percent of non-millennials. “A year later, that gap had closed,” he said.

And retailers with older core audiences need to pay particular attention, says Jeff Fromm, Barkley’s executive vice president and author of Marketing to Millennials. “The older generation is adopting more and more the technology habits of the millennials,” he says. “Millennial influence is much greater than just the impact on members of their generation.”

Barkley’s research showed Facebook was the second most-used app among millennials while they shopped. “When we asked them about it, they told us they use it as a way to consult with friends about a potential purchase,” Logan says.

In fact, the research showed that 60 percent of millennials don’t make a decision without seeking advice from others. Retailers “could make it easier to gain ratings/reviews and see that the value equation is in line instead of trying to prevent it,” Fromm says.

Logan cites cosmetic retailer Sephora, which allows customers to scan a barcode for access to reviews and ratings. “It’s a simple tactic that gets people thinking about checking out the review,” he says. “It brings the tacit endorsement from all those voices into the … store.”

And for millennials — and those who follow — that might just be enough to close the sale.

Mobile-Assisted Shoppers, Segmented

Finally, let’s hear some good news. That September 2013 study we mentioned earlier, “Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile-Assisted Shopper“, took a closer look at the category and established that not all shoppers are alike. The study identified five different segments:

These were the key findings of the study:

Only 6% of Mobile-Shoppers are “Exploiters” — already planning to buy online, and always opting for the lowest price
30% are “Traditionalists” — committed to purchasing in-store, and only using their smartphones to find more information
Convenience, urgency, and immediacy — the top three reasons that Mobile-Shoppers buy in-store even after they find the same product cheaper online
48% of Mobile-Shoppers are more likely to purchase products in-store despite equal or cheaper prices online when they are a loyalty program member
60% of Mobile-Shoppers are more likely to buy a product in the store when they find online reviews on their smartphone
55% are willing to sign up for a store loyalty programme in order to gain benefits on their smartphone while in the store

For more details about these Mobile Shopper segments, download the free report here.

Our conclusion: showrooming is a problem for retailers, but not an insoluble one.

Kiwi Shopping At International Stores Up 20 Percent

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The latest BNZ Online Retail Sales Index, covering NZ eCommerce trends up until November 2013, has just been released and it demonstrates just how small the world is — and the heightened risks facing NZ retailers.

The most significant statistic is that online spending by New Zealanders at offshore stores in November 2013 was up approximately 20% on November 2013, while spending in domestic online stores was up just 5.5% (this despite the introduction of several Kiwi online initiatives such as Click Monday and Click Madness).

Whilst we’re not seeing the huge gaps that we saw in 2011 (see the graph below), the trends are clear: Kiwis are spending more online — and are spending more than three times as much online as they were in January 2010.

In which countries are we shopping? Not only in America, as you might have expected. In fact, the US accounts for only 30% of online spending, according to the BNZ’s figures. “Other” (encompassing Asian trading partners such as China, Hong Kong and Singapore) is in second place, followed by the UK, the EU and Australia.

The economic impact on NZ retailers of this trend towards international shopping has been in the news of late, most recently with Hallenstein Glasson chief executive Graeme Popplewell citing “competing with an e-commerce world where profit margins are low or nonexistent” and forecasting a 20 per cent decline in half-year profit.

Steve Waite of accounting firm BDO penned a column carried by the Herald Online arguing that NZ should charge GST at the border on all transactions, not just those over $400. This, he argued, should “give our retailers on Main Street a bit more time to adapt to the brave new world confronting them”.

Unfortunately, those sentiments drew little sympathy with the vast majority of the more than 290 commenters on the article. Typical responses pointed out that there can be vast differences between the cost of products sourced direct from offshore and those sold locally:

The issue is not so much the GST as the massive mark up charged to NZ customers on some goods. If goods were priced competitively compared to overseas people would not bother buying from overseas.

I have just bought a juice pack from the USA for $49. For sale here at $220 dollars. That’s why people buy overseas. In a market economy adapt or get out.

It would take a month at most for a NZ retailer to cut prices to match. They simply need to stop making such high margins. I bought some North Face shoes that cost $250 in NZ and $110 in the USA. No one will convince me that 15% GST and the cost of moving a container of shoes to NZ instead of the USA from Vietnam adds $140 to the price.

Just bought some Levis jeans in Costco in LA. US$19 a pair. Same jeans in NZ? US$135/pair or so. Please explain how adding 15% to $19 will make me stop buying overseas?

The other most commonly-cited reason for buying online: range, quality and variety.

The reason why I buy online is to get better quality of goods as well as specialty items that are not available in NZ shops.

Convenience gets a mention from a few:

It’s not just the pricing that’s attractive to the consumer, it’s the whole package. No driving around in circles trying to find a park, no overworked underpaid disgruntled staff showing you no courtesy or manners (in fact a lot of the stores are understaffed at busy times), no queues, no crowds, no dirty toilets and waiting for a loo.

Compare that to browsing your favourite stores online in the comfort of your own home or office, and having your purchases delivered to your door.

And then there’s customer service (or its perceived absence locally):

I personally don’t care if 95% of NZ retailers go bust because they cannot compete – most of them are next to useless anyway, with very limited stock inventory, slack and uninformed staff and poor warranties/return policies that offer only the legal minimum, combined with ridiculous trading hours that mean they close at 1230 on a Saturday and don’t open Sunday etc.

I’ve been trying to buy an item for a month from a NZ company, have emailed 3 times and no one has bothered to respond, so guess what, I bought it overseas and it arrived within a week.

What about buying locally so that you’re protected if anything goes wrong?

A couple of months ago I purchased a $500 item from a store, instead of for $200 USD overseas, thinking that I would get better after sales service. However, when a part of the item broke last week, I had terrible service from the retailer, who in turn got no service from the importer.

And shipping from local suppliers comes in for criticism as well:

How is it that I can purchase something online from a NZ shop on the same day as something from a US based retailer, and have the US purchase arrive first (by courier)?

A few commenters felt that the real problem is not so much the retailers but rather the various intermediaries that each add their own margins:

Rubbish, people shop online because NZ retailers are forced to pay ridiculous rentals, and have to then gauge extortionate profits, and justify it by saying it is because we are so far away in NZ.

Yet, even single items can be purchased for half the price overseas, online. If they were only 10-15% more expensive, nobody would bother.

The main problem is middlemen, or wholesalers, who have large warehouses, teams of people, and fleets of vehicles that all have to be paid for. In most cases, these wholesalers are making more margin than the retailers.

This middleman structure will disappear in the future, and retailers will all be buying direct, importing their own products. At that stage, we will have retail prices that are consistent with prices charged overseas.

And as for that “a bit more time” comment:

Finally, how long is a “bit more time” for retailers to address their cost structures in relation to on line business – 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, or more? On-line stores like Amazon, iTunes and even New Zealand’s ill fated Flying Pig have been around for many years now – Amazon started in 1994, and will celebrate 20 years next year.

Ultimately, what is being requested is protectionism not an efficient market

All in all, it’s clear that there’s little sympathy for buying locally if the consumer has to settle for higher prices, limited range, poor service and inefficient delivery times. Which explains the continuing appeal for international shopping.

What’s to be done? One commenter made some useful suggestions:

Until retailers (here and offshore) understand that they need to add value to customers, not simply attempt to sell products that will always be available for less somewhere else (whether on Amazon, eBay or even Trade Me), they will continue to lose market share.

There have always been retail establishments that charge more, but we frequent them nevertheless, because they either:

understand our needs better;
introduce us to products we never would have thought of buying otherwise;
have a unique perspective on the world that catches our imagination;
have mastered retail as shoppertainment;
curate products, not just sell them;
provide peace of mind after the sale;
are really nice people with whom we just like to deal; or
otherwise distinguish themselves in a world of parity products and retailers.

Food for thought.

Scary eCommerce Statistics, Trends & Predictions

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Wondering about the latest eCommerce statistics? Planning ahead and need some trends and extrapolations?

Check these out (we call them “scary” if you’re a retailer committed to bricks & mortar):

54% of Kiwis aged over 18 years are now shopping online, an increase from 38 percent of New Zealanders five years ago (Nielsen NZ Online Retail Report June 2013)
In key spending demographics, the numbers are much higher. 71% of Kiwis aged 25-34 and 68% of those aged 35-44 now shop online (Statistics NZ, per NZ Retailers Association Online Retail Report 2013)
New Zealanders spent $3.7 billion in the last 12 months purchasing via the internet (Nielsen NZ Online Retail Report June 2013)
26% of the total NZ online shopping, representing nearly $1 billion, was spent on international websites (Nielsen NZ Online Retail Report June 2013)
These totals are only for physical products purchased online. It’s estimated that a further $1.6-$2 billion is spent on downloadable products or intangible purchases such as airline tickets, rental cars, accommodation, theatre tickets and entertainment (NZ Retailers Association Online Retail Report 2013)
37.8% of Kiwi online shoppers bought Clothing, Shoes or Accessories online in 2012, while 32.1% bought Books or Magazines (Nielsen NZ Online Retail Report June 2013, as reported in NZ Retailers Association Online Retail Report 2013)
Smartphones have changed the way that Kiwi consumers shop. Smartphones are critical shopping tools with 74% of NZ users having researched a product or service on their mobile device. (Google/Ipsos Our Mobile Planet NZ May 2013)
33% of Kiwi smartphone users have made a purchase on their phone; of those, six out of ten have purchased within the last month (Google/Ipsos Our Mobile Planet NZ May 2013)
U.S. wedding ring retailer My Trio Rings reports that the amount spent in a smartphone transaction tends to be as much as 12% more than sales through other media
More than a quarter (27%) of Kiwi online shoppers made 11 or more transactions online in 2012, an increase of 44 percent from 2011 (Nielsen NZ Online Retail Report June 2013)
17% of Google searches on a mobile device result in a purchase (Google/Nielsen Life360 Mobile Search Moments Q4 2012)
Over 40 per cent of all visits to Trade Me are now from smartphones and tablets (Trade Me Annual Report 2013)
A survey of 2000 UK consumers by ITV’s Tonight news programme found that 49% of UK consumers plan to buy the bulk of their 2013 Christmas gifts online
By 2018, the Centre for Retail Research predicts that 61,930 UK shops will close and more than 21% of purchases will be made on the web (Monocle, October 2013)
Internet marketing experts at Emarketer estimate that by the end of 2013, eCommerce sales in the U.S. will generate US$262.3 billion worth of sales, 16.4% higher than in 2012
Sales from U.S. mobile commerce alone is projected to amount to US$41.68 billion in 2013 (eMarketer September 2013)

New Zealand eCommerce Statistics 2013 [Infographic]

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Because infographics are so popular, we’ve put together this collection of New Zealand 2013 eCommerce statistics.

In one handy place, you’ll find:

How many NZ web users made at least one purchase online in 2012
How many New Zealanders now shop online, by age group
How much money will be spent online by Kiwis in 2013 and how much they’re expected to spend by 2016
How many Kiwis shop online by mobile and by tablet
What NZ Internet shoppers buy online, by category
How much NZ Internet shoppers spend in a typical month

The data comes from:

Statistics New Zealand Household Use of Information and Communication Technology 2012
Julian Prior, PwC interview: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10880279
The Nielsen Company, New Zealand 2012 The Year That Was
Roy Morgan Research, State Of The Nation, March 2013 [the graphic from this research comes from the NZ Herald story reporting the results]

If you’d like a copy of this infographic in full size (A4 width), email us at info (at) eCommerce (dot) org (dot) nz.

Latest New Zealand eCommerce Statistics

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Statistics New Zealand has just released the latest Online Shopping figures from the Household Use of Information and Communication Technology report for 2012 — and they make fascinating reading.

Key points:

Yes, 54% of New Zealand’s 2.8 million Internet users (those aged 15 plus who went online in the last twelve months) shopped online and made at least one purchase in 2012.

If we look at individual age groups, those numbers go way up:

Typical online shopping expenditure ranges from twenty to five hundred dollars in a typical month (with a small percentage who spend a lot more):

As Statistics New Zealand notes:

It also seems that what we’re buying is changing. We’re not necessarily buying tangible items; over half of those who shopped online had at least one item delivered electronically. This may include items such as e-books, music, or e-tickets.

Looking at those who had made a purchase in the four weeks before the survey, women outnumbered men in spending a total value of up to $500, while the more expensive purchases predominantly belonged to men.

The number of people spending a total of over $2,000 online has doubled since [the previous survey, i] 2009, to reach 44,000 people in a four-week period.

If you are one of those who aren’t yet offering ecommerce on your website, NOW would be a good time to start. Check out our Mastering eCommerce course.

Click Wraps, Browse Wraps & Bad Raps

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Have just read Mike O’Donnell’s latest column, and wanted to share it with you because it makes essential reading for Kiwi eCommerce operators.

Here are the most relevant points:

Broadly speaking there are two kinds of user agreements or “wraps” on eCommerce websites. One is a “click wrap” where you are presented with the terms and conditions and have to click “I agree” before proceeding.

This other is a “browse wrap” where terms and conditions are viewable on the site but your ongoing use of the site supposedly means you have agreed to them. Browse wraps do not require users to click on an “I agree” button, but assume that simply using the site signifies acceptance.

…

Late last year the US District Court found that eCommerce giant Zappos’ user agreement did not protect the company (or owner Amazon) from a class action brought by its customers. In fact the US Court went further than that.

First, it found the “browse wrap” style of agreement under which customers buy stuff on Zappos had no ability to bind those customers to its terms and conditions.

Second, it found a provision in Zappos’ user agreement saying it had the right to change the terms and conditions at any time (without bringing those changes to the attention of customers) was likely to be useless. The District Court called such a clause “illusory” and suggested it was unfair and likely voided an underlying arbitration clause.

Mike’s article goes on to point out that New Zealand’s own Consumer Law Reform Bill is trudging its way into the statute books, and amongst the many implications of that impending legislation are that

… the Bill prohibits businesses from having ‘unfair contract terms’ in their standard term contracts with customers … [such as] terms that allow only one party to limit performance of a contract, vary the terms, or change the price without notice.

If your ecommerce business is typical, it may well have boilerplate ‘Terms & Conditions’ that seem to reserve your right to do anything you want (without bothering to notify customers). The cruelly-exposed reality is that such T&Cs already probably mean nothing (and will mean even less in the future).

Your recommended solution? Go read the full column.

The Perils of eCommerce

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Even when you think you’ve got a solid handle on eCommerce, the basics can still catch you out.

Here’s a classic example. Alas, it’s not a quaint historical tale — the item was received today, from a New Zealand operator who we’ll allow to remain anonymous.

The item carried this pricetag:

You’ll note the markdown, from $39.98 to $9.99. Nice — except that the discounted price on the website (and the price we were actually charged) was $19.99.

We bought two of this particular item, in different colours. The second item just bore the original pricetag, $39.98, with no Clearance sticker.

Sloppy Logistics

We absolutely champion the right of this online retailer to manage its pricing; it may well be that the price on this item was reduced to $9.99 on the 3rd of January and has since returned to $19.99, still a good price against an RRP of $39.98.

However the product packers should be, ahem, ticketed themselves for sending out a product bearing a clearance sticker. The packing slip bore no pricing; it’s entirely possible that the product could have been ordered at full price, which would have resulted in even more annoyance when the item was received by the purchaser.

The result of this sticky oversight: we thought we were getting a good deal at $19.99 — now we don’t. Now we consider we’ve overpaid by ten dollars an item. (Fortunately, a phone call to the seller has resulted in an equitable solution; unfortunately, it involves a trip to one of their retail stores, an outcome we’d aimed to avoid by ordering online in the first place).

Strike #2

This is the second strike against this particular merchant for this particular order; when we ordered these items (and a couple of others), the total came to around $92, with shipping calculated at a flat $10 more. Regrettably, it was only AFTER we’d confirmed the order and paid that we were reminded that shipping is free for items totalling $100 or more. We’d spent a total of $102, but had paid for shipping — if we’d realised, we’d have happily gone back and purchased something else, probably going above $102 in the process. Likely result: increased basket size, happy customer.

The website shopping cart should have been equipped with appropriate triggering code, to alert us to the fact that, just by spending a few more dollars, we would qualify for free shipping. If that was a technical difficulty, then a Free Shipping link would have been a very useful alternative.

Yes, the front page of the site does talk about free shipping, but visitors need to click through if they want more details:

Since the free shipping offer is really straightforward …

*If you spend $100 or more in a single transaction, we will deliver this to you for FREE. It’s that simple.

… why not just spell it out, with a small box on the front page and on every page of the website (including the shopping cart pages)?

Telling us after the sale is a surefire recipe for Buyer Remorse.

Free Shipping is the single most important offer you can make, to close the sale. If you’re going to make the offer, shout it from the rooftops (or at least from within your shopping cart).

Don’t Waste Your Home Page

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As we enter 2013, we begin a series of tips on how to maximise your online sales. Some of these tips will be drawn from our Mastering eCommerce course, others will be inspired by new thoughts and articles that we come across online.

Our first tip, brought to mind by this article on “7 Unlucky Things You Can Do To Your Ecommerce Site in 2013”, is simply:

Don’t Waste Your Home Page Space

There are a number of ways to waste your home page’s potential: hero shots and distracting rotating banners, unclear value propositions (or none at all), irrelevant merchandising or even annoying country-selector splash pages when geolocation tools can do the job.

To put the home page in context: it’s the single most important part of your ecommerce site, the page that draws the most eyeballs. Think of it as the equivalent of the front page of a printed catalogue. In the days when we worked (during our time in ad agencies) with some of New Zealand’s largest retailers, we saw first hand that the front page is solid gold — items featured on the front page were expected to be the biggest sellers of all products in the catalogue. If they didn’t have that potential, they simply weren’t featured on the front page.

Similarly, the home page of your website needs to lead to more sales than anywhere else on your site. If it doesn’t it, change it immediately.

Let’s look at the front pages of some of NZ’s leading online retailers:

Nothing tentative about The Warehouse’s home page — and the top product panel rotates through a number of offers, in case the first three you see don’t attract you.

Another hard-selling front page, this time in the form of one-day-only deals from EziBuy.

Our leading electronics retailer, Dick Smith, similarly devotes its home page to hot product offerings.

And, unsurprisingly, we see a similar sales-centric home page approach from Farmers.

We could go on, but we think you get the idea.

Essential Home Page Components

What else should you include on your home page, apart from your latest offers and promotions?

Econsultancy editor Graham Charlton suggests 27 essential elements of an effective ecommerce homepage. In our view the ten most important are:

Search box
Store finder
Telephone number
Contact details
Address
My account / sign in
Shopping basket / checkout link
Email sign up
Delivery information
Accepted payment methods

Why You Should Consider Listing Your Products On Amazon.com

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You may have heard about Google’s latest foray into eCommerce, Google Shopping (not currently available in NZ, at least not for New Zealand sellers).

Here, according to the New York Times, is a scary statistic which just might explain why Google is gearing up for eCommerce:

In 2009, nearly a quarter of shoppers started research for an online purchase on a search engine like Google and 18 percent started on Amazon, according to a Forrester Research study. By last year [2011], almost a third started on Amazon and just 13 percent on a search engine.

Product searches on Amazon have grown 73 percent over the last year while searches on Google Shopping have been flat, according to comScore.

Stats show how Amazon.com outperforms the market

For more about listing your products on Amazon (and what you need to know about the US-centric retailer’s terms and conditions for international sellers), see Lesson Three of our Mastering eCommerce ecourse.

Another US-based online shopping delivery service launches

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More competition for Kiwi eCommerce operators. Yet another American delivery service has decided that New Zealand represents fertile ground:

"PreZoom, a unit of i-parcel, LLC, has begun a unique new service geared specifically to New Zealand based internet shoppers, providing highly economical shipping services from the USA."
http://www.voxy.co.nz/business/prezoom-starts-delivery-service-new-zealand/5/133781

Pricing starts at "as little as NZ$19.50 for a 500g package from the United States for delivery to their door, including Customs Clearance, full tracking and tracing as well as automatic minimum compensation for lost or stolen packages."