Leading by example

While I thought that many charities overlooked their online shops when it came to it, I was quite impressed with Oxfam’s online shop. A simple interface means that the shop isn’t overwhelmed with navigation items, banners and irrelevant images. While there are a few things it could learn from best e-commerce practices (I use the term very loosely!), it is certainly a step in the right direction.

A combined experience

Many charities run events. It’s useful to offer tickets to these events through the website, especially if you can integrate them with your online shop.  This will mean that users can place a ticket to an event in their shopping basket, as well as your products and even a donation, so they don’t have to make a payment more than once. This is very powerful when it comes to cross-selling your products.

Sourcing products

It is likely that you have a few boxes of merchandise laying around. Sell these on the website, but also approach promotional companies that would be willing to re-brand their products with your charity logo. Negotiate a deal and integrate it with your system, so that when a user places an order through the website, a notification is sent to the supplier and it allows them to drop ship on your behalf. Make sure you have a solid service level agreement in place, as it is potentially your reputation on the line if they don’t deliver (fortunately, with charity shops you get a lot more resilience from your users!)

Second hand products and physical shops

The beauty of charity is that people want to give. This is where you can potentially make the online shop flourish. Using your physical stores and operations branches, you can encourage each offline store to contribute to the website, offering the facility for them to list all products that have been donated through their own interface. Oxfam do this brilliantly, take a look at their second hand shop here.

Encourage donations throughout the process

As you are a charity, it’s important to make it easy for users to add a donation to their order. Put a text field for them to enter an additional donation both at the basket and checkout, as well as giving them the option to “round up their order” to the nearest whole amount. For example, if the total is 6.49 then put a check box for them to round the order up to 10.00 and donate more to your charity.

Greetings cards, paintings, artwork and unique material

It’s useful to showcase and sell your supporter’s designs. Invite people to submit their artwork. Sell it as a greetings card, t-shirt, mug, key ring, etc. (Partner with a third party if necessary) When this is done correctly, you can create an intuitive system where user’s vote for each other’s designs and the shop showcases the more popular ones above the rest.

Make full use of your payment platform

If you have an online shop then chances are, you have paid for a payment platform such as Sage Pay. There isn’t usually a limit on where you can use it within your site, so it’s a great opportunity to offer more services that require payment integration.

Some great examples I can think of include online donations (obviously!), supporter events (so your supporters can sell tickets to their events online through your site) and fundraising pages (a lot like Just Giving and Virgin Moneygiving), where your supporters can setup their own fundraising pages with targets and running totals.

I would love to hear what ideas you can come up with for making the most out of payment integration within a charity website.

E-commerce platform

The e-commerce platform itself, the very basic of needs for an e-commerce website to function. Make sure you develop a site that is easy to use, using filtered navigation and split testing to continually optimise for maximum conversion rates.

Site security

Users are gradually becoming more confident with making a purchase online, however there is still doubt in many people’s minds on the security of their transactions. Reassure the user their credit card/personal details are being processed securely, make the site “feel” secure and above all, make sure your online store conforms to PCI Security Standards.

Marketing and value

This satisfies the belonging of your customers. By keeping them informed through marketing channels such as social media and newsletters, offering exclusive deals to existing customers, setting up loyalty schemes and adding value.

User engagement

Build a community around your products. By offering a platform for your customers to collaborate, support and communicate with each other around your products, you allow users to build self-esteem and your website will soon become a central point for useful information, building a great community.

Reputation

By doing everything else throughout the hierarchy you essentially have already set yourself up for user’s self-actualisation. This is the point where you have delighted your customers to the point where they become brand ambassadors. The main process here is regulation and ensuring your brand is echoed throughout everything within your company, from the packaging of your products to the way your employees answer your phone.

Build an e-commerce shop based on these principals and your marketing budgets can be cut, as your users are doing the marketing for you! Just take a look at Apple.

Here, I suggest 5 ways in which you can get the most from your e-commerce website and help to improve business efficiency.

1. Stock Control

Most e-commerce companies should have a stock control system of some sort. It is generally “best practice” to show customers availability on your site and this is the only way to make it possible.

If you already have stock control through your EPOS system then many of them will offer an API (Application Programming Interface) or a way to integrate your website with stock levels.

If you don’t have a computerised stock control system, this is the perfect opportunity to let your website be in control of one. Product quantity can be deducted automatically when an order is made online and if you have a physical shop, interfaces can be created at the till to make updating quantities simple, fast and effective. Please feel free to chat to me if you want to know more.

2. Picking, Packing and Delivery

The more you can automate, the easier it is on your staff. It allows them to add value to customers and colleagues, which in today’s competitive environment is more important than ever.

Picking – if you have a large warehouse, when you print an order report from the website, have it output directions based on a structure in the warehouse that translates to a direction code for each product.

Packing and Delivery – This can be solved with a labelling system, printed directly from your website. Many courier companies offer an API or way to integrate with their systems, allowing you to print off the shipping labels directly from the website.

3. Returns

Dealing with returns can be a time consuming process. Ultimately it boils down to the same sort of questions each time, such as whether the item is faulty, unwanted or incorrect. You should have a fair policy for each one and allow the website to process returns automatically.

If you want to add value, you may even consider integrating with your courier company and allowing the customer to print off a returns label themselves, or arrange for a collection.

4. Communication

It is important to keep in communication with the customer throughout the order process. This can happen automatically! When you pick a product, at a simple click of a button you can send the customer an e-mail to let them know. Do the same with dispatching and again a few days after delivery, to ensure they are happy with their product.

You can even send them a PDF invoice upon order completion, saving you from having to manually do all of this.

5. Personalised products

If you offer personalised products, here is the perfect opportunity to really get the most out of your website.

You can provide the tools to enable the customer to fully customise and preview their end product online.
You can emulate what the product will look like by mapping images, drawings and text on to a blank version of the product.
You can prevent them from not sending you material with the incorrect dimensions/specifications and allow the customer to be fully creative by providing interactive tools to upload, draw and write on their product.

If you need help implementing any of these ideas, please feel free to contact me. It won’t cost you and I’ll be happy to provide advice and direction based on your needs.

Searching for a Disney Mug - free rankings

Until now it has been relatively easy to generate a product feed, no matter what the structure of your current site. In September, the 22nd to be specific, Google are enforcing a new set of changes as part of an attempt to enhance the quality and offerings of their Google Product Search service.

Update your Google Product Feed by 22nd September

How to implement the Google Product Feed updates

This isn’t easy and entirely depends on the structure of your e-commerce platform. For some, this can be a very costly and time consuming process. To see the new requirements for your country specifically, see their help page.

Here is a summary of some of the requirements that you have to integrate:

Unique Product Identifiers

For clothing products, “brand” is always required and for other products you have to specify gtin or mpn. At least 2 of the 3 (brand/gtin/mpn) are required.

gtin – Global Trade Item Number, usually what you find on the barcode. This is the UPC (North America), EAN (Europe), JAN (Japan) and ISBN (books)

TIP – Most barcode scanners actually just function as a normal ‘keyboard like’ device when plugged into your computer. Usually, scanning a barcode in is the same as typing the number on the keyboard and hitting enter. You can customise the way some of them work and some differ, but this is the most common way.

mpn – This is the manufacturers code, unique to that product

Different variations of one product must be added as seperate products

If you have an attribute management system, this is where the coding for the new changes can potentially become complicated. With the majority of systems that support attributes and utilise filtered navigation, you have just one product and add the attributes to it. With this way of doing things, it means that the filters have to be separated from the products in order to output as separate items in the Google Product Feed.

gender, age group, size, material, pattern and colour
These fields are required for clothing and recommended for other products, if applicable.

If multiple products are actually different variants of the same product, they must be grouped together with the “item group id” attribute of the feed. This must be a unique identifier that links all these products together.

Images and availability are required

Your e-commerce shop should have a stock system or indicate availability anyway if conforming to “best practices” – however, it is also now a required field of the Google Product Feed. In addition, you must supply an image for each product. If different variations must be added as separate products (see above), then that also means you will need to associate the different images with the different attributes.

Google Product Category attribute

As if managing your own category system wasn’t hard enough, now you have to implement two! Each category on your shop will need to be associated with the correct Google Product Category, or the Taxonomy as they like to call it. This will then need to be output as part of the feed, and yes, it is required. See http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160081 for the full list of categories.

Everything else

If you haven’t had enough already, you can check out the full list here: http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=1344057 in a table that is fairly easy to read. There is a lot of information that is required, and some that is recommended.

Oh, and by the way – if Google say “recommended” – it usually means, “we will display your results first and more prominently if you fill them out”

This is going to be hard work and very time consuming, potentially costly too. On the bright side, at least you won’t have as many other stores competing with you on the feed any more. Good luck!

As a final point and a little silver lining to every cloud, here is a little tip shared with me by my colleague Dan Cave. By signing up and using Trust Pilot, as trust builds through the tool, your results are much more likely to rank higher in the product feed.

Throughout the year, events occur. You should be aligning your deals to run in parallel with these events and as a result, it will keep your shop relevant to what is happening in the world today.

Choosing the right events and promotions

Firstly, choose events that relate to your business industry, goals and target audience. I could tell you what events to promote for, but it entirely depends on your business.

Next, you need to decide on a long term plan. Some promotions may require the reduction of just a few products with a couple of banners, while others will require more thought. You typically need to plan your Christmas promotions 4-5 months in advance.

Finally, think of something more creative than just the usual. Reducing products is easy, but it won’t grab attention. Interactive games, competitions and unique experiences are likely to go a lot further.

Make it visual and fill the gaps

You need to be on top of these promotions all the time. If you have a gap in your calendar, fill it. You always want at least one promotion running at one time, whilst always planning the next.
- Block out time for the planning of the promotions. Consider the resources and staff you will need
- Split the promotions for your marketing channels. E.g. Website, Twitter, Facebook, Pay Per Click campaigns
- Don’t necessarily run the same promotion through all your channels (unless it is something big!)
- Run multiple variations of the same promotion to target different audiences

Involve your team

Your staff, friends and family will have some great ideas. Encourage them to think of ways to come up with a unique promotion and reward them for doing so. Organise a brainstorming session so you can chat about ideas.

By coming up with a solid promotional schedule for the next year or so and reviewing it on a regular basis you can increase traffic to your store, increase conversions and get your name out there.

Always remember the key events, should they be relevant to your business. Christmas, Halloween, January Sales, Mothers and Fathers day, Valentines day, April Fools, Back to School, Easter, Summer, Winter and anything unique to that year such as the Olympics, Elections and other big events.

Monday – Impress new customers

It’s monday, so time to put smiles on faces for the rest of the week. Put goodies in all parcels or upgrade them to next day delivery free of charge. See my post on how to make more profit from a first order for more on this.

Tuesday – Share the knowledge

If you don’t have a blog then you probably should get one. If not, for now you can ask to guest blog on somebody else’s and link back to your site. Either way, you need to demonstrate your knowledge about the products or service you sell and show yourself as a thought leader in this area. There are some great tips here from SEOmoz

Wednesday – Engagement

Whilst this should be something you do every day, make sure this time you really give it attention. Through message boards, customer support channels and social media (most importantly), seek feedback from your users and be pro-active on anything you see. Go above and beyond with at least 5-10 customers.

Thursday – Reward your most loyal customers

Make a list of those who make the most orders with you. Send them something in the post, or even by e-mail. A small gift, or some money-off codes.

Friday – Staff appreciation

If you’re the only employee in the business, that’s you! If not, take your team out for lunch or give them a small bonus. Alternatively, just take the time to thank them all. Letting them go home 15 minutes early can make a massive difference to morale! The team around you are just as important as your customers – they’re the ones providing the service.

Saturday – Communication

Review your communication processes. Are you as open as you need to be? Do you have a telephone number prominently displayed on the homepage? Get one there now! Also, think about the other channels such as social media and make sure you have a social media policy in place.

Sunday – Rest and Recreation

As any successfully business owner will tell you, R&R is very important. Spend the day with those closest to you and do something enjoyable. You’ll arrive to work on Monday refreshed and rejuvenated.

Leaving money on the table or in our Xbox Live account makes most of us a bit uncomfortable because it feels wasteful.

I’ll let the article on The Pyschology of Games do the explanation, but this quote sums it up brilliantly. By crafting the top-up amounts and their indirect correlation to the product prices, users are often left with points on their balance after making a purchase – points that aren’t enough to spend on anything else, or at least not without a top-up anyway.

How to apply the psychology of points to e-commerce

The answer to this could be staring you right under the nose, but obviously it entirely depends on your business model. Here are a couple of suggestions that will apply to the majority and implements the use of points in e-commerce.

1. Loyalty Schemes - Although not purchased by the user, loyalty points usually make up the core of any loyalty scheme. If you have rewards that users can redeem points against, allow them to also purchase points to make up any costs but do these in packages (eg. £10 ($16) for 500 points) and craft the redeemable amount on the products to leave a few points left over in the users account. Having points expire will add that impulse buying pressure on to the user too.

2. Give the user free money (credit their account) – this seems crazy, right – give the user free money? Not if you approach it correctly. Say for example, your products had at least £10 ($16) profit to be made on the products and the cheapest product was £20 ($32). Give the user £5 ($8) to redeem on anything they want – it will feel wasteful to just leave it there, especially with an expiry date.

It would be great to hear of other interesting ways you may have thought about integrating this psychology using points and if/how you use it in your e-commerce business.

I’m sure someone has already coined the term g-commerce – but the idea of apply gamification to e-commerce isn’t new. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Examples of gamification in e-commerce

MadBid.com – In a way, it’s kind of like gambling – the idea, is genius. Users simply buy credits at a low price each, which earns them the ability to bid on a product. You can get an iPhone, for example at just £5 ($8) – the trick they employ though, is every time you bid it increases the auction time by a few seconds or even minutes. With many people using the website, this can run for days and they end up making more money than the product is worth, despite the item only going for a minimal amount.

SneakPeeq - Another way of turning shopping social and into a game. You get limited “Peeqs” every day. “Peeqing” is basically where you click a button to view the price of a product, but you only have 10 seconds to commit to a purchase before it is hidden again. The trick is, is that the more people that “peeq” at the product price, the lower the price becomes. I tried it with a bag on there, it was 25% off based on 288 people having a “peeq” at it.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved is a game for the Xbox Kinect. Basically, it encourages you to train and progress your fitness levels by linking in with your on-line account, where you can challenge friends and family, or work harder to earn discounts on new training programmes.

How can you apply gamification?

This is a tough one to answer without knowing your audience, but we can look at the examples above and learn what has made their success.

1. Limited times to make a decision will give the user less time to think about a product purchase or research an alternative. As a result, they are more likely to make an impulse purchase.

2. Social engagement with other users is important. Linking in with a user’s Facebook profile can instantly link your platform with the most popular social network in the world. Encouraging competition among the user’s friends is a great way to engage the user with your products more.

3. If you manufacture your own products, consider ways to link them with an on-line, social platform where the user can acquire points and compete against friends.

Finally, think about how you can apply gamification to your business. Perhaps you have  a loyalty scheme and could offer flash based games to users, allowing them to boost their points? I’d be interested in hearing what ideas you have.

1. Reactive and Proactive customer service.

Twitter Search - a powerful tool

One thing larger companies constantly seem to struggle with these days is a good customer service. You can offer this. React to customer queries and complaints urgently and avoid getting into any arguments with the customer. Remember the age-old saying, “the customer is always right.” Be proactive and use social media to pursue feedback. Search.twitter.com can be a very powerful tool.

2. Building a community and engaging users

Please read my blog post on User Engagement. By building a community and engaging with users, your website is seen as a place of resource and information. This gives you the opportunity to then convert these users into paying customers.

3. Becoming the “go to” for product information and advice

If you build yourself a community and allow users to engage with each other, you are 90% of the way there! By becoming an authoritative figure for the products and/or services you sell and showing that you know what you are talking about, people will come to you knowing that if they buy off you, you can help them if any issues arise.

4. Product Personalisation

I will be blogging about this soon, as it is a great topic to talk about. If you can offer customers a way to personalise their products, they have the opportunity to make something truly unique and their own. This makes your products perfect gifts for people and easily justifies the higher price. Printing machines aren’t as expensive as you may think.

5. Adding value to your products

When you buy from your local shop, they can offer more than just the product. They can offer someone to chat to should they need any help, they can set it up for the customer and show them how to use it. This is difficult to do online, but there are other ways to add value. See my blog post on making more profit from a first order – simple things like adding a couple of small freebies to a package can go a long way, as well as being available on the phone, e-mail and social media channels.

What about you – how do you decide what to do when you just can’t lower your prices any further?

Make your e-commerce shop smart

By adopting some of these techniques (not necessarily all of them, it entirely depends on your business model) you can create ever-changing product displays, promotional pages, hero images and targeted e-mail/social campaigns based entirely on your customers browsing habits, location and history.

Locational awareness

Did you know that you can detect the approximate location of a user based on their IP address? As HTML5 becomes more available this is even more accurate and reliable, but quite often you won’t need to go to that level of accuracy. By detecting the users location, you are able to link this in with your own database of products and adapt the layout of your site, tailored for users from that region. Here are a few ideas: Event based promotions If you sell festival products – targeting the festivals happening in the user’s area is a good idea:

Weather based promotions

By using a weather API, you can actually find out the user’s weather based on their location and change your products accordingly.

Factual based promotions

An area may have a famous celebrity, monument or culture associated with it. For example, Torbay (Devon, England) is famously associated with Agatha Christie

By utilising what you know about the area, your campaigns can be more focused and personal to the user.

Historical awareness

This is the most widely adopted and commonly practised technique used, especially with some of the big players such as Amazon. The big advantage here is that you can use it for both registered and anonymous users. Simply by tracking the user and logging what products they view, you can put this information into a database and return similar products based on the user’s browsing history. These similar products are formulated based on products other users have viewed and purchased. You may even want to relate certain products yourself through your admin area. As you can see, I have been searching for Agatha Christie books on Amazon. When I visit the home page I see the following:

The registered user

The registered user is certainly the easiest to customise for. You have a whole wealth of information, including their e-mail address that you can use to create targeted e-mail campaigns, exclusive offers and a store suited to their needs. The products you show them can be based on what they have viewed, their profile information (eg. Gender – which you can get from their title), previous purchase history and analysing their contributions to your e-commerce community. I buy most of games on Amazon, so when I’m logged in I see the following:

The possibilities are endless. You can use the data to split test, customise promotional boxes, hero images or even entire layouts suited to the user. Finally what about you - what do you do to target your products to each individual user?