What do shoppers look for when shopping online? [Archive]

movietub

10th February 2010, 19:54

There are so many threads concerned with getting visitors to your site. SEO, PPC, affiliates etc. We are all obsessed with traffic! The problem is that getting traffic cab be expensive, take a long time, or at the very least involve a great deal of hard work.

But what about increasing conversion rates? Not discussed enough me thinks!

The first two factors likely to convert are fairly straight forward:

low cost
in stock, quick delivery

People want to pay less than the high street, but they don't want to wait much longer than it takes to plan a shopping trip to buy the same. In fact, promise of low prices is probably the main incentive to virgin online shoppers. These two factors are closely followed by a professional looking website. A cheap looking website selling at low prices can raise suspicion.

But what else have people on here tried and found succesful? What are the more subtle additions to your site that you feel helps you convert a browsing visitor to a customer?

So lets discuss:

What helped increase conversions for you

What encourages you to buy when you are shopping online yourself

quikshop

10th February 2010, 20:02

Well presented, uncluttered pages with product presented clearly and centrally. Easy to find and read action buttons (add to basket, checkout etc) and absolutely definitely no DEMANDS to register first :D

Ease of use is so important, ahead of flashy designs and other jquery wizardry.

saxondale

10th February 2010, 20:04

if I have to "join" anything I leave ............

Tej

10th February 2010, 20:10

joining is definitely a no no

free delivery is definitely a yeah... the sites that offer free delivery for a quantity.. or amount spend.. would probably do better IMO

movietub

10th February 2010, 20:13

Quikshop, Saxondale,

Both fair points about the need to register. More than anything its a big barrier to those new to shopping online, probably the older generation. such people are completely perplexed by the need to 'register' in order to complete a basic one time transaction!

Not to mention it gives the impression the shop is rudely assuming you will be back to shop again! How presumtious...!

As for basic clean layout, lets take that as a given, its normally the first comment made when discussing site design.

Its the more unique and imaginitive ideas that I'm trying to root up!

movietub

10th February 2010, 20:14

joining is definitely a no no

free delivery is definitely a yeah... the sites that offer free delivery for a quantity.. or amount spend.. would probably do better IMO

We do, and we do! Average cart spend is around £50/4 items. Thats worth free delivery.

deniser

10th February 2010, 20:28

dots and spots Jeff

10th February 2010, 20:37

But what about increasing conversion rates? Not discussed enough me thinks!

The first two factors likely to convert are fairly straight forward:

low cost
in stock, quick delivery

Another important one: how confident are you that you'll get what you order? That's why I'm often prepared to pay a couple of quid more to buy from Amazon as I know that that's a pukka site and they are not going to scam me, rip me off or just be a one man band whose currently on holiday.

Not sure how you convince the first time customer that you are genuine though.

Great thread - I'll keep reading and keep thinking.

Jeff

Tej

10th February 2010, 20:41

But... amazon also started at square 1

movietub

10th February 2010, 20:42

Everyone says that about joining but our customers join happily. It means they can check the status of their order and they do return frequently so it saves them having to type their details again.

No-one has ever said to me that they didn't buy from my site because they had to register. After all it's only to type your name and address details in which you have to do anyway at checkout.

We didn't notice any difference when we took free delivery away either.

We are the market leaders for our product though. I am quite happy for people to have to register even if it puts some people off. It means that they must really want to buy rather than click buy on a whim which reduces the rate of returns.

Well done on being a market leader! But of course that will also skew your impression of the 'average' shoppers attitude to registration. Another factor is that its difficult to know how many people you do put off.

Sounds to me like your customers are motivated enough to buy your product no matter what minor hurdles you throw at them. Thats good at least! You can consider yourself immune so long as you maintain your market lead ;)

Matt1959

10th February 2010, 20:45

movietub

10th February 2010, 20:48

Another important one: how confident are you that you'll get what you order? That's why I'm often prepared to pay a couple of quid more to buy from Amazon as I know that that's a pukka site and they are not going to scam me, rip me off or just be a one man band whose currently on holiday.

If you read the paragraph below the one you quoted... You will see that I had commented on the 'looks to cheap to be true - on a cheap looking website' scenario ;)

Amazon is an interesting one. They were born around the same time as ebay, they are one of the very few survivors of the initial internet boom and burst. I guess someone had to to survive for all those that fell. Personally I would say they are an example of a company that people use simply becasue the name is familiar, and they assume an increased degree of safety. A lot of the time they are right to assume as much. Sometimes being the big boy in the market is enough to remain being the big boy. For now at least.

I also believe Amazon is the ebay for people that don't get ebay - or ecommerce overall in fact!

eWAY Eddie

11th February 2010, 00:33

I want to see an about page. Not one that skirts round the detail but one that mentions names etc. This goes a long way toward helping me get a feel for the type of set up I'm dealing with. At the end of the day, buying on the web is a risk and I want to minimise it for myself....

landline phone numbers also, for above reason..

I agree Matt. A website that clearly displays an 'About' page, and clearly displays their contact details and a landline phone number definitely gives more confidence to the buyer I think.

KateCB

11th February 2010, 01:30

Contact details etc are now a legal requirement, so most genuine websites have these showing, I always showed them anyway, but don't think that these are what help drive the sale.....I do a lot of shopping on line and the things I DON'T like are easier to remember than the things I do....

I will not register in order to buy - I will look elsewhere or do without
If I don't like the look/feel of a site (too cluttered, images missing etc) I leave.
If important information is out of date or a last updated item is showing 2 years ago...I leave
If the wording doesn't appear to be professional - one site I visited today (trying to buy traditional cast iron kitchen scales and weights) gleefully proclaimed that their product was "exatly wot your need for your kitchen works" - I left!
Sites that offer 0871/0870 numbers as the ONLY method of customer contact

Good offers, good layout, all help - we used to have free delivery over a certain spend amount, but as we have a lot of brands that are sent direct from the manufacturer, it got unrealistic for us if a customers order consisted of several brands - they didn't pay at all, we paid 4 or 5 different delivery charges - we removed the free shipping and added a flat rate for UK - didn't appear to hurt us at all and most people understand that there is no FREE shipping really, it is paid for somewhere along the line!
Transparancy, honesty and damn good customer service are a huge part I think, offers to help, someone ABLE to help when you email or call all help to build your reputation and drive customers to you - word of mouth referral after a good experience is worth millions!

eWAY Eddie

11th February 2010, 02:01

word of mouth referral after a good experience is worth millions!

Couldn't agree more Kate - some of the best publicity your online business could ever get!

Snippa

11th February 2010, 02:09

I shop online a LOT! One of the major factors is cost, but shipping runs a close second. And if I get to the checkout and find out the shipping ups my price tremendously, I won't follow through at all. I like to know UP FRONT exactly what all costs are. Variety is good, as is a trustworthy appearance. Definitely the locked security on the URL when ordering. And I will register, if I think it's a site I might do business with again, but not if I feel it's a one-time transaction.

RBS

11th February 2010, 06:49

No-one has ever said to me that they didn't buy from my site because they had to register.

And nobody ever will tell. Or expect them to send you an email saying: HA HA HA, I didn`t buy from you because you ask me to register. They just surf away from website and find another place.

:)

PrismTechWales

11th February 2010, 07:57

I dont understand the philosophy behind "If i have to register I go elsewhere" Do you mean if you have to register as part of the checkout process?

If the registration process is intrusive then the site has had no usability testing and with ecommerce you are shooting yourself in the foot. But seeing as you have to generally put in all of the details that would be required to register in order to checkout- Delivery address, billing address, email address - it doesn't have to be a barrier to checkout.

Besides if you think your registration page is causing problems setup google analytics and create a goal funnel that tracks users through the checkout and registration pages and see how many abandon at each stage.

One thing that can cause issue is making people put in all of their details before being able to see the delivery charges. Just add a postcode field to the basket page and allow them to bung the postcode in and hit calculate postage or something similar. You can always take this value and use it to autosearch for addresses at that postcode later on in the checkout process.

The less your visitor has to do to buy the more likely they are to spend and return.

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RBS

11th February 2010, 08:01

deniser

11th February 2010, 08:04

And nobody ever will tell. Or expect them to send you an email saying: HA HA HA, I didn`t buy from you because you ask me to register. They just surf away from website and find another place.

:)

No-one else sells the product though and anything remotely near doesn't compete on price so they can't.

I am actually quite happy to put what you lot think is a hurdle (but which is actually only typing in their name, address and a password which is automatically copied over to the payment page so they only type it once ever) into the transaction because I want them to really want to buy it and not buy it casually and send it back. I hate returns with a vengeance!

Out of thousands and thousands of transactions over 4 years don't you think someone might have picked up the phone and tried to order by phone instead because they didn't want to register? No, they only ever phone to order when they have a problem with their payment going through.

alanc

11th February 2010, 08:28

One more thing to mention. If you B2C, then I expect ALL prices on screen to be inclusive of VAT.
It makes me wish to kill somebody when I shop online and I have to click 10 times in shopping cart to see what would it cost me at the end.
Actually, I thought this was a requirement for B2C sites.

Its amazing how many sites still don't have any contact details. Even quite large ones.

As a general observation, trust is a huge factor in customers' decisions, and people have different ways in accessing whether they 'trust' a sight. The popularity of Amazon explains this, as that was most people's first experience of shopping online. The whole trust-thing is the reason word-of-mouth recommendation is so valuable.

movietub

11th February 2010, 08:36

I dont understand the philosophy behind "If i have to register I go elsewhere" Do you mean if you have to register as part of the checkout process?

If the registration process is intrusive then the site has had no usability testing and with ecommerce you are shooting yourself in the foot. But seeing as you have to generally put in all of the details that would be required to register in order to checkout- Delivery address, billing address, email address - it doesn't have to be a barrier to checkout.

You don't understand the philosophy because you are looking at it from a technical and logical point of view.

For sure the workload to checkout with/without registering is pretty much the same. You provide all the same details with the exception of choosing a password.

That makes sens to you and I because we work with websites! But there are great number of potential customers that don't understand why they are asked to register to complete a one time transaction. Does it mean they will get spam email for instance? Do sites that ask you to register hold onto your credit card details? I bet some people even worry they may be charged a recurring fee to be a member!

We know that registering is 99.9999% of the time harmless, but its impossible to educate a doubtful shopper they will move on long before you have chance to explain why they dont need to worry.

Also - why do so many shops ask people to register? I'm guessing it became a trend when new retailers expected people would sign up and become a 'customer for life'. Of course this very rarely happens. I don't think having a registered customer increases the chance of that customer becoming a repeat customer at all.

RBS

11th February 2010, 08:42

Also - why do so many shops ask people to register? I'm guessing it became a trend when new retailers expected people would sign up and become a 'customer for life'.

And shops can send them spammy special offers, weekly specials etc. Once they get your details, you are hooked up. Also, if shop gets hacked, your email address harvested from shops database will be sold to REAL spammers. +scary stuff like credit card details being stolen.

People dont like passwords, because they cant remember them. We already have dozens of codes and passwords to remember.

People just dont want to be bothered after purchase, all they want - fast and easy buy with nothing attached to it, end of story.

movietub

11th February 2010, 09:05

And shops can send them spammy special offers, weekly specials etc. Once they get your details, you are hooked up. Also, if shop gets hacked, your email address harvested from shops database will be sold to REAL spammers. +scary stuff like credit card details being stolen.

People dont like passwords, because they cant remember them. We already have dozens of codes and passwords to remember.

People just dont want to be bothered after purchase, all they want - fast and easy buy with nothing attached to it, end of story.

All true except the spam email bit. Every cart remembers your email regardless of registration. There is always the risk of it falling into the wrong hands... although its a very small risk.

The problem of remembering passwords is a huge factor for me most of us these days I suspect. There is no safe and easy way of remembering your passwords.

I used to use the same password for eveything, which we are told is bad! But I actually hit a problem when some sites required a minimum character limit and a certain number of digits... So I changed m password to include 8 characters and 2 digits. Then I started having problems because more and more sites want to see a special charachter in the password too!

So then you end up with a variety of 'versions' of the same password unable to remember which is which.

It gets worse!

On top of all of that you register somewhere, cannot remember your password and for some reason the email password reminder doesnt come through, so then you have to re-register using another old email that you forget later on. Worse still some systems won't let you re-register if other parts of the account are identical to the one you cannot access.

So what do you do? Remember 100 differnt combinations of password, email, username? Not possible for most. Do you write down a list? Hardly secure!

Needs to be a better system!

KateCB

11th February 2010, 15:46

"So what do you do? Remember 100 differnt combinations of password, email, username? Not possible for most. Do you write down a list? Hardly secure!"

Agreed - the characters - 'strong' passwords etc become a problem, but if I shop at sites that require a password, then register with forums such as this, that require a password, and perhaps competition sites, bank sites, generla information sites, government sites....the password thing is a nightmare - I don't hae to give me name and address, password, mother maiden name etc when I go to shop at Asda, why should I have to give it anywhere else?

I also understand that the customer has to fill in the details when they purchase in order to validate credit card details and provide a shipping address, and this I don't object to because by this time I have already MADE the decision to purchase; asking for this information BEFORE I make the decision just makes me go away.....it's like being bullied!

PrismTechWales

11th February 2010, 16:12

Do any of the people that "Don't buy if you have to register" make exceptions to this rule. For sites like Amazon perhaps or play.com or ebay?

If you do make exceptions what are the reasons?

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quikshop

11th February 2010, 16:38

If you do make exceptions what are the reasons?

eBay is an auction website so it doesn't compare to standalone shops. The only exception I made was Amazon, and I think it works with Amazon because of the size of the business - they can get away with demanding registration and have a given trust element which removes one of the objections.

For a small unknown business to demand pre-registration, its a non-starter for me and I suspect an awful lot of others.

Lorro2

11th February 2010, 18:02

Yes you need a nice clean well designed functional site but most important is having a product or service that is fairly unique and has the wow factor. It is ideal for artists, craftsman that can offer a product that you won't find in the high street. If you are simply selling cheap imported goods you can easily get swallowed up. Last but not leat is having superb photographs with lots of important key words and phrases so your customers will find you.

deniser

11th February 2010, 18:49

The only exception I made was Amazon, and I think it works with Amazon because of the size of the business - they can get away with demanding registration and have a given trust element which removes one of the objections.

Seriously, many of our customers are lifelong repeat customers so registration makes it easier for them to shop with us not more difficult. Our customers do tend to get hooked once they buy.

Personally I would not buy from a site that I visited frequently if it did not take registration because I don't want to type my details in repeatedly. Amazon and Ebay have already been mentioned. I could add the golf website that my husband buys from every week (yes I know!) and the site he buys bespoke suits from where it is a nuisance to have to measure so good that they keep the details. And the site where I buy my contact lenses where I only have to press "repeat order". If I had to find my prescription and type it in every time I would not be such a loyal customer.

I think you are not seeing the full picture, you people that say you would not buy if faced with registration.

KateCB

11th February 2010, 19:39

movietub

11th February 2010, 21:21

I think that if I was a regular customer, ie.contact lense etc, then it is a whole different area - one site I have bought from recently has the right idea - you can register IF YOU WANT TO, and still buy from them if you don't want to - I don't actually think it is the registering that is the problem, but the HAVING to in order to buy anything at all......If I return to the store I bought from yesterday to repeat purchase after a good experience, then I would consider registering, but I will NOT register to make a single item purchase.

I agree 100%

The problem is that from the shoppers point of view there is zero reason to register if they are making a once only purchase. So they have to question why they are being asked to register. You can hardly blame them for thinking it must be for the benefit if the shop somehow, its clearly not to the customers benefit.

Any promise of registration making future purchases easier always sounds very presumptious too.

However if you offer both, the customer is probably more likely to register, than if they were told they had to. If the retailer proves they don't care if the shopper registers, then the shopper will actually think more about the potential benefits of registration.

Its not rocket science, people want to feel in full control of what they are involving themselves in. If you give your shoppers options, you are giving them something they like. And at no cost to you!

eWAY Eddie

11th February 2010, 21:53

However if you offer both, the customer is probably more likely to register, than if they were told they had to. If the retailer proves they don't care if the shopper registers, then the shopper will actually think more about the potential benefits of registration.

Agreeg - offering both caters for all your customers - the ones who don't mind registering their details, and the ones who don't want to register, but simply want to make a purchase from your site.

deniser

11th February 2010, 22:02

but I will NOT register to make a single item purchase.

Even if you really want to buy and it is not available elsewhere?

Waveney Books

11th February 2010, 23:02

I agree with everyone that hates having to register. I do too.

However, my little website is an oscommerce site and I simply can't work out how to ensure that purchase is "no account needed". I use only Paypal and it would be great if customers could simply click on 'add to basket' and go straight to Paypal.

I can't imagine any customer wanting to set up an account and remember yet another password, as my site is for one-off purchases.

I also agree with others that like to see details of real people on 'about us' pages.

movietub

11th February 2010, 23:11

Even if you really want to buy and it is not available elsewhere?

There is an exception to every rule. I never want to pay tax, yet I do because it's my only option!

Even if you do have a somewhat captive market, it won't be any less captive if you allow sale without signup. And you could also convince the possible few people that are so against registration that they simply decided to go without, you never know.

saxondale

11th February 2010, 23:15

Even if you really want to buy and it is not available elsewhere?

everything is available "elsewhere" ................... and you just lost a sale.

movietub

11th February 2010, 23:22

everything is available "elsewhere" ................... and you just lost a sale.

As far as it matters you are right, but we also sell certain things that are 100% exclusive. That doesnt mean we choose to force the customer to fit in with our rules though. Even if the customer can't go anywhere else there are still benefits in keeping them happy!

Even an exclusice product requires kind word of mouth if you are to make the most of it - look at the iPhone for example.