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The 10 Ways To Drive Customers Away From Your Site
By Frank Fiore
Your Web site is here to serve your customers – not impress them. You job is to design a site and offer a shopping experience that gives consumers a quick, safe, and easy way to purchase something from your Web store.
So before you sit down with your Web consultant, and before your Web designer puts pointer to screen, be sure to avoid the 10 ways to drive customers away from your site.
- Confuse your customers
- Stay anonymous
- Offer at Retail
- Frame your page
- Surprise them with shipping costs
- Make them work
- Make them wait
- Neglect to address privacy
- Keep security a secret
- SPAM your customers
CONFUSE YOUR CUSTOMERS
Rodney Dangerfield gets no respect. He told his psychiatrist that he had suicidal tendencies. His psychiatrist said that from now on Dangerfield had to pay in advance.
That might be funny to you, but treating your customer with no respect will drive him away from your site for sure. And one sure-fire way to drive him away is to confuse him.
Keep your navigation simple. You’re there to sell. Customers are there to buy. Make it easy for them to find your products and buy them. If they can’t find what they want and order it in three mouse clicks, you run the risk of losing them. So, organize your site material logically from the customer’s point of view. Be sure to include clear directions for navigating the site from your home page. Remember that the home page of your Web store serves a variety of functions. It’s a map of your store, a welcome mat, and a marketing message all in one. People get lost easily, so include a “Return Home” link on every page of your site.
Include a FAQ page and have links to the FAQ on every page where you think a customer might have a question about your store or service. Anticipate the needs of your users. If your site has a lot of product to sell, provide a search engine to easily find it.
Go light on the technical jargon and don’t adopt a hipper-than-thou attitude in your writing. Shoppers want information - not a sales pitch. Let your shopper discover what they want at their own pace. Don’t persuade. Inform.
Finally, look at your URL. See that WWW in front of it? It stands for the World Wide Web. So think globally. Users from other countries can easily access your site. If you want to make an international sale, respect cultures other than your own. Remember that they might not be familiar with American slang or expressions, so keep the wording simple.
STAY ANONYMOUS
Here’s another cute trick that will drive customers from your site - stay anonymous. It never ceases to amaze me when the only means of contact on a shopping site is an e-mail address. Come on! We all have an address. Use it. Put your company mailing address, phone number, fax number, and customer service number on your site. And, while you’re at it, don’t forget to give your customers several ways to order from you - online, by phone, fax, and mail.
Why? People want some indication that your company is real. Supplying just an e-mail address or a P.O. box could seriously impact your sales. But if you’re running a business out of your home, you may have little choice. You could make use of a Suite Box at one of the private mailbox companies like MailBoxes Etc., but many consumers these days are wise to the fact that a Suite Number can masquerade as a business address.
Also, consider putting a picture of you and your team on your Web store. Make your Web site seem more personal and you more approachable. Be sure that you have an “About Us” section on your Web store that tells the shopper who you are and what your store is about. Use this area of your site to drive home your Unique Selling Position and why the shopper should buy from you.
OFFER AT RETAIL
Shoppers believe that because an online merchant doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar store, his overhead is low and he can pass these savings on to them in the form of lower prices.
I know. I know. That server farm you have taking up the space of a small condo costs as much, if not more, to set up and maintain as a storefront in a strip mall. But shoppers don’t believe it. So don’t sell at retail. Sell at some kind of discount - at least 10% off suggested retail price or more.
If you can’t offer a discount on the first sale, then offer some value-added service; perhaps a coupon good for a free item or a discount on a future purchase. You might consider partnering with another Web merchant selling products that are compatible with yours. If so, offer shoppers a bundled price of your product or service with your merchant partner’s product or service.
FRAME YOUR PAGE
If you really want to drive customers away, then frame your pages. Frames are a way to display several sections of several pages all at once. This is done by dividing the screen into several segments, or frames.
Frames are bad for two reasons. First they confuse the shopper and second, it makes it nearly impossible for a shopper to bookmark a framed page if he wants to return to it again later. When he does bookmark it and return, he only sees the framed page in his browser, losing any and all frames that surrounded the framed page originally.
Frames on your merchant site should be used for only one reason - to keep your navigation bar in front of your customers so they can find their way back to your site when you send them to another. For example, if you have set up reciprocal links or banner exchanges with other sites, a one-frame navigation bar directs customers back to your site from the site where you sent them.
SURPRISE THEM WITH SHIPPING COSTS
Shoppers don’t like surprises. Before you put your customers through your order taking process, let them know what the actual shipped price of their order will be.
Present the customer with the full amount of his order before you ask for his credit card. If you can’t offer that calculation, then have complete shipping and handling charges listed on your Web store - and make that list easy to find. This is even more critical for your international customers. If you want to sell to international customers, then you have to let them know it. Give them the international shipping costs before they reach your order form.
MAKE THEM WORK
Speaking of order forms, here’s a way to stop a customer’s order dead in its tracks. The customer searched for, found, and is about to order your product. He reaches the order entry screen and it asks him to fill in the product name, code, description, and price of the product! Now the customer has to navigate back to the product page - or even multiple product pages - to retrieve and record the information. Their response? “Fuhgetaboutit! I’m outta here!”
So invest in a shopping cart software program that keeps track of what the customer is going to purchase and fills in the product information for him. These programs can be bought easily on the Web, and some are even free. If you’re not technically adept at installing it on your Web store, hire a programmer for a few hours to do it. But do it!
Another big Don’t is to ask shoppers to register with their name and contact information before they can shop in your online store. Would you fill out a form to enter a store in your neighborhood? Yeah, right!
MAKE THEM WAIT
The WWW stands for the World Wide Web - not the World Wide Wait. Shopping sites are a challenge to design. You want to keep page-download times low while at the same time customers want to see what they are getting. Don’t use bells and whistles just because you can. People don’t want to have to download anything to view your site. If you must use plug-ins, tell your customers where to get them. Be sure to include links to the software necessary for a full appreciation of your site. If you say your site uses RealAudio, then be sure it links to a download page for RealAudio.
As bandwidth increases, this issue will become less relevant. Until then, heavy use of graphics, video, and audio programs is time-consuming for the user.
Next, keep in mind that people want simplicity over cool graphics. Faster loading is better than eye candy. So keep your graphics small. Small is better where images are concerned. Try and keep them less than ten kilobytes each and your download time will speed up. If heavy graphics are necessary to display your offerings, at least be sensitive to customers with older systems. Offer a text-only option for viewing your site.
Finally, remember the three-click rule. It should take no more than three clicks to access
the information they need. That means three clicks to a buy button.
NEGLECT TO ADDRESS PRIVACY
You want to keep your personal information private, right? So do your customers. Privacy concerns are a big thing these days and shoppers are worried about how their personal information will be used when they give it to a merchant. So create and state your privacy policy and have a link to it from your home page where shoppers can easily find it.
KEEP SECURITY A SECRET
Don’t skimp on security. These days, there’s no way to hide that your site doesn’t sit on a secure server. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator tell the consumer when they are on a secure page of a site - and when they’re not.
The words “secure server” can have a very calming effect on shoppers. Use a secure server for all your transactions—and tell your customers this when they use their credit card at your site. Put this information in your FAQs and even on a separate page on your Web site. Explain to them that their credit card transaction is secure.
SPAM YOUR CUSTOMERS
Finally, after you have a customer, you don’t want to lose him. Keeping in touch with previous customers and prospects through e-mails and newsletters will keep your Web store in front of their mind. But you can overdo it.
Never spam your own customers. Offer your customers the option of receiving notifications of sales or new products, but be sure you have permission before sending anything. Unsolicited e-mail is more likely to generate more annoyance than sales.
As for frequency, try not to contact customers more than once a month, unless they have opted-in to a more frequent promotional program with you first.
There you are. Avoid these ten all-too-common pitfalls, and you have a good chance of making that sale and retaining your customers. After all, isn’t that what you went online for?
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