 |
|
In a study carried out by www.e-tailing.com comparing the metrics for the success of an e-tailing business this year (2004) compared to last year (2003) the following factors were found crucial to the success of an e-tailing website.
|
| |
 |
|
Keep the shopping process simple, fast, and consistent with help along the way. |
| |
|
The average time to shop keeps getting faster at just over four minutes with less than five clicks in the process – from product selection through checkout. |
| |
|
Granting customers’ desire for quicker checkout, more sites offered one-Click Settings. |
| |
|
The average time to chat with “Live Help” was reduced to 4.87 minutes this year vs. 7.2 minutes last year. |
|
| |
 |
|
Onsite information and FAQs are a must along with prompt and accurate answers to inquiries.
|
| |
|
Merchants did a better job listing customer service hours of operations . |
| |
|
Email response times to customer service inquiries improved. |
| |
|
Returns have become streamlined with fewer Return Authorizations required and more pre-paid return labels provided. |
|
| |
 |
|
Including post order — keep customers informed online or via email in a manner that is
both creative and consistent with your brand
. |
| |
|
Product inventory status present on the product page or shopping cart. |
| |
|
Online shipping status. |
| |
|
Fewer email shipping confirmations means merchants are missing an important opportunity to suggestively sell customers at a time when they are most likely to open and read the email. |
|
| |
 |
|
Essential for any direct marketing to succeed as value-driven shoppers demand it!
|
| |
|
Only four sites of the 100 shopped offered completely FREE shipping |
| |
|
Of the 94 sites offering conditional free shopping, 68 per cent presented price barriers. |
| |
|
Other conditions for free shipping were based primarily on specific products/multiple products while a few sites made the criteria purchases on proprietary credit cards or if items were shipped to a store. |
|
| |
 |
|
More established merchandising tools were present and implementation was robust.
|
| |
|
The use of Top Sellers and What’s New grew substantially |
| |
|
Brand Boutiques played a greater role as shopping by name brand. |
| |
|
Gives customers confidence in their product selections. |
| |
|
Greater use of promotional features given the value economy. |
| |
|
More frequent use of relevant Up-sells and Cross-sells to grow average order size. |
| |
|
Very little focus on Auctions due to eBay’s strength. |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| On many sites improvements still need to be made in the search process especially involving misspelled phrases and customer service questions. |
| |
|
The narrower the search the more relevant the results found. |
| |
|
Searching by product produced the fewest number of clicks to reach the desired item (1.26) with category navigation almost three times the clicks at (3.26). |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Both Seasonal and Gifting areas were more embellished and continue to get better in recognition of the Web as an important gift-giving channel. |
| |
|
Customers were made more aware of holiday shipping deadlines. |
| |
|
Increased use of Gift Certificates/Cards. |
| |
|
Significant growth in the use of Gift Search functionality. |
| |
|
Mirroring offline retailing, more year-round Gift Centers appear to be an online opportunity. |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| More visible use of the Web for branding was apparent online and via email. |
| |
|
Increased viral merchandising. |
| |
|
55 per cent of the sites this year deployed Affiliate Programs for extended reach vs. 47per cent last year with extensive marketing of both the program and the means to participate. |
| |
|
Wise merchants were also branding in their post-order communications from order confirmations to shipping confirmations, capitalizing on the high open rates of these vital communications. |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Profiling and personalization efforts focused on understanding and empowering the customer. |
| |
|
Customers given more customized options regarding receipt and content of targeted email and newsletters. |
| |
|
70 per cent offered an opt-out option for email this year vs. 60 per cent last year while newsletters were more apt to present an opt-in scenario (68 per cent this year vs. 42 per cent last year). |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Membership programs with more effective customer follow-up marked the beginning of
CRM strategies for wise merchants
. |
| |
|
Of the 54 sites that required membership, 39 per cent confirmed sign-up this year vs. 24 per cent last year. |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| The percent of sites with these features did not increase but strategic tools were more prominent and better executed. |
| |
|
Greater visibility of advertised items in weekly circulars/print ads/TV (20 per cent this year vs. 16 per cent last year). |
| |
|
Retail locators were more robust (97 per cent this year vs. 100 per cent last year) featuring both mapping and store events. |
| |
|
Emphasis on browse by catalog (32 per cent this year vs. 16 per cent last year) given the importance of catalogs as traffic and revenue drivers. |
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Promotion tracking on site was key to merchants this year. |
| |
|
63 per cent provided a promo code option in the shopping cart this year vs. 58 per cent last year. |
| |
|
|
|
