Save Your Shoppers Time
Let’s face it. The conversion number (shoppers vs buyers) for your e-commerce site sucks. Amazon (excluding Amazon Prime) gets a 14% conversion. You’re likely getting nothing of the sort. Even if you consider your conversion “better than average”, lets say 7%, that means 93 out of every 100 people who come to your e-commerce store don’t buy anything.
If you as an e-commerce executive are honest with yourself, there is no way to be happy with that figure. There’s no way that when you speak with your CEO and you tell him that you had 100 people who walked into your store online, you could only convince 7 of them to buy something, that he will tell you what a great achievement that was.
The biggest reason people don’t buy when they visit your e-commerce store is time. Lack of time. There’s a lot of talk about how consumers demand more from e-commerce stores, how consumers want omnichannel experiences and various other things. Very few in e-commerce talk about the fundamental reason shoppers are demanding these functionalities from you.
The reality is that consumers want you to save their time. Your e-commerce store likely doesn’t do that. Does your 6-step checkout process save time from your shoppers? Likely not. Does the product inventory of 10 000 SKU’s that your site has make it easy for your shoppers to find what they want and save their time navigating your site? Likely not. Does making your shoppers click through 15 different sub-categories, product pages, leaving your site to find other information about a product to figure out if that product works for them save their time? Guaranteed not.
What you have to optimize for as an e-commerce executive is your customers time. If I spend 10 minutes on your website and still can’t find what Im looking for, you shouldn’t be rejoicing because of your Google Analytics dashboard indicating great engagement with your site. You should be terrified. Because you’ve just wasted 10 minutes of my time and as a shopper I won’t let you waste any more of it, ever.
A few practical features to implement today that save your shoppers time:
1. A FULL search function — There is a category of shoppers who come to your site knowing what they want to buy. Make it extremely easy for these shoppers to find what they are looking for. Not just based on the names of specific products, because if that’s what they have to use to search, you’ve already wasted their time. They’ve had to figure out what product and brand names you have in the category of products they’re looking for. If Im looking for a brown coffee table, let me search for a brown coffee table and find products.
2. Fast customer service — You probably already have a customer-service chat function. Thats a start. But that function today is wasting my time. By the time I ask a question, your customer service needs to be equipped with what I just browsed, what keywords I searched for and have a clear idea of what I was looking for in the first place. What’s the point of customer service if I have to explain the same thing I already tried to find on your site for a second time?
3. Digital Advisors — In addition to those people who know what they want, there is a category of shoppers who don’t necessarily know exactly what they need. They need to be catered to as well. Using a Digital Advisor -solution for specific product categories like the Revieve Digital Skincare Advisor for skincare products, takes work away from your shoppers. The last thing your shoppers want is to engage in a tiresome, long, brainpower requiring decision-making process. If you’re not guiding them towards a purchase, there won’t be one.
Start today. Save your shoppers time and sell more.
