Ecommerce Merchants Should Not Ignore Older Shoppers

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DECEMBER 16, 2013 • MARCIA KAPLAN

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Conventional wisdom suggests that when seeking customers, ecommerce merchants should pursue teens and people in their twenties. These are the people who own the most electronic devices, are the most comfortable with technology, and do the most online buying. However, you may be overlooking a large and neglected segment of the U.S. population that is eager to spend money online — people over 50.

Advertisers ignore them, concentrating mainly on the 18 to 34 age group. Nielsen, the research firm, estimates that only about 5 percent of advertising dollars are directed at seniors. Merchants too tend to offer products that appeal only to younger shoppers. Marketing efforts are directed mainly at this group.

Myths about seniors abound. Among them are that most seniors are poor, they don’t shop online, and they only buy necessities. Yet statistics show that this overlooked segment of our society has money to spend. Ecommerce vendors that can reach out to older Americans can be richly rewarded.

Why Target People Over 50?

Quite simply there are a lot of them and they have money. Nevertheless, brands focus on the under 50 age group. Yet the almost 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. — those born between 1946 and 1964 — are fairly affluent, well educated, comfortable with technology, and willing to try new products. They were raised in a spending-driven economy, unlike their parents who grew up during the Depression.

Yet the almost 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. — those born between 1946 and 1964 — are fairly affluent, well educated, comfortable with technology, and willing to try new products

Indeed, according to Nielsen, Boomers’ online habits are similar to those of the 18 to 34 age cohort. Boomers represent 38.5 percent of all consumer packaged goods expenditures. Research firm Ipsos, in cooperation with Google, conducted interviews with 5,100 Boomers and seniors in April 2013 and found that while the most common reason to use the Internet was to find out about the news and weather, 57 percent shopped online in the prior month and 45 percent looked for coupons or daily deals.

As a society, we tend to stereotype seniors. The only advertising directed at them emphasizes physical infirmity. But older people do buy things other than pharmaceuticals, adult diapers, and scooters. Even those who are retired have disposable income. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and Bankrate, a financial services company, Americans over 50 account for 77 percent of all financial assets, and 54 percent of total consumer demand. They comprise 47 percent of all car sales and 80 percent of luxury travel purchases. They also buy toys, games and electronics for their grandchildren.

According to the 2010 Census, there are 51.6 million Americans aged 60 to 84 comprising 16.6 percent of the population and 41.9 million between 50 and 59 years of age. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that approximately 18.5 percent of Americans age 65 and over were working in 2012. This percentage will likely increase in future because of erosion in traditional pension plans, a decrease in the value of financial assets, and the uncertainty of 401K plans. Working people need clothing, cars, and electronics.

The results of the 2012 Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey showed that over half of those 65 and older are online and 70 percent use the Internet on a daily basis. However, persons over 75 do not use the Internet very much. But the age group right behind them is comfortable with the Internet and when they reach 75 they will likely continue to use the Internet for email, research, and shopping.

Thirty-four percent of those over 65 visit social networking sites, while 86 percent use email.

Is Millennial Purchasing Power Overestimated?

Merchants who target people in their teens and 20s may be overestimating the purchasing power of this segment of the population. A substantial number of them are living with their parents, are underemployed or unemployed and don’t have a great deal of discretionary income. In 2012, 36 percent of the country’s young adults ages 18 to 31— the Millennial generation — were living in their parents’ home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Of those still living with parents, only 29 percent were employed. Millennials may actually have considerably less purchasing power than Baby Boomers and seniors.

What do Older Shoppers Look For Online

U.K. research firm Shoppercentric advises that seniors look for quality and value over bargains when shopping. However, they do tend to use coupons and discounts.

Seniors have the inclination and time to perform extensive research before making a purchase decision. Be sure to provide detailed information about your products and services. Visuals are helpful too. Seniors like to do online research on hobbies, vacation destinations, auto, and appliance purchases. They also rely on the Internet for health information.

Seniors are receptive to email marketing. They are more likely to respond to that than other online forms of communication.

In most cases, it’s not necessary to change your website or your product offerings to attract seniors. It is simply a matter of letting them know that you are interested in their business. Many online businesses find that partnering with organizations such as AARP and offering a discount is a good first step in attracting older customers.

2014 Ecommerce Marketing Checklist

via Practical Ecommerce http://ift.tt/1a82U8x

DECEMBER 25, 2013 • ARMANDO ROGGIO

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Ecommerce marketing is a continually evolving field wherein the marketing tactics that worked last year may not be effective in the coming year.

What follows is a checklist of sorts. Look at each early to determine if it makes sense for your ecommerce business.

1. Responsive Design

Mobile devices may have accounted for between 31 percent and 43 percent of all ecommerce-related holiday site traffic in the United States, depending on which data source and which time period one chooses.

If one uses the lower number (31 percent of ecommerce-related site traffic) that IBM reported shortly after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, mobile still accounted for about 1-in-3 site visits. Add to this the fact that many computer makers are starting to merge tablet and laptop, creating a new mobile subclass, if you will, and it is likely that mobile devices will soon dominate Internet usage.

If an ecommerce site does not already have a responsive design, meaning that it adapts to the size and capabilities of a user’s device, 2014 is certainly the year to make this happen.

2. Rich Content

“The idea of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by creating and curating relevant and valuable content,” according to the Content Marketing Institute.

This definition gets right at the heart of ecommerce marketing in 2014. Some experts predict that online shoppers will become more fickle in 2014 as they are given an increasing number of shopping choices and options. One possible way to counteract this sort of fickleness may be to provide useful or entertaining content that will keep shoppers coming back.

This rich content can take several forms, including improved product descriptions, better or even provocative product photography, video content, blog content, or social media content.

Mr. Porter, an online retailer of men’s apparel, is a great example of content marketing in action. Its online publication, The Journal, always has interesting and relevant content. Similarly, American Apparel’s not-safe-for-work product slide shows and very provocative Tumblr page entertain and engage shoppers, creating lasting customer relationships and generate repeat sales.

3. Site Performance

There are several practical and pragmatic reasons to improve site performance in 2014, including that fact that faster sites are likely to convert better (Amazon has reported that 100 milliseconds in additional load time can decrease sales conversion by a full percentage point).

Quick loading sites may also do better in search engine results pages, since Google and other major search engines use site speed as a consideration in ranking algorithms.

Work with server experts in the IT department or at a hosting provider to improve site load times in 2014.

4. Microdata

Microdata is an HTML standard aimed at helping search engines and browsers better understand the content on a web page and thereby provide a better user experience.

For ecommerce marketer’s, the primary benefit may be in how search engine results appear. As an example, Google will include additional information about a product or a page on its search engine results page, when microdata is offered.

Look at the microdata standard and look for ways to add information about the store site. Also checkout therich snippets section of the Google Webmaster Tools site.

5. Multi-channel Sales

When brick-and-mortar retailers open new locations, those new stores generally increase the chain’s revenue and profits. In a similar way, selling across multiple channels online can also increase an Internet retailer’s sales and profits.

The Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Newegg, Rakuten (formerly Buy.com), and Sears are just five of the many marketplaces that retailers might expand on to in 2014, creating the opportunity to dramatically increase exposure to traffic, customers, and sales.

Consider using integration tools like ChannelAdvisor to manage and automate product submissions and manage order processing.

6. Social Login

There are plenty of good reasons to encourage shoppers to register on an ecommerce site. From the shopper’s perspective this creates the opportunity to review orders, look at order history, or, perhaps, earn points in a loyalty program.

Merchants like to have customer information since it can lead to personalized offers or marketing that in turn generates additional sales. The catch is that shoppers don’t really like have to create individual user accounts on dozens of shopping sites and keeping track of the many and varied passwords.

One way to streamline account creation is to allow social login, meaning that shoppers can create an account in one or two clicks using an existing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or similar account.

Every one of these services offers some form of social login, and there are even interfaces or services (Gigya is an example) that consolidate social login into a single tool set or script.

7. Free, Two-day Shipping

Free, two-day shipping offers could become a staple of the ecommerce industry in 2014. Regular Practical Ecommerce readers have already learned about how Amazon Prime and ShopRunner may be changing consumer expectations about how long free shipping should take, and about how payment solutionscompanies like MasterCard are also trying to offer free, two-day shipping options for online shoppers.

Rather than bucking this trend, online stores should look for ways to market free, two-day shipping offers in 2014, using expedited shipments to increase average order value, reward loyal customers, or, perhaps, get new customers.

8. Live Chat

Live chat can be an effective ecommerce conversion tool, providing customers with answers and help just when they’re making a buying decision, and for support questions.

Online competition is likely to increase dramatically as new ecommerce merchants enter the market, existing online sellers seek continued growth, and brick-and-mortar retailers boost online sales efforts. Live chat, which is very inexpensive, can provide a huge competitive advantage even if it is only offered for a few hours a day.

With services like Olark offering easy to implement solutions for as little as $15.00 per month, adding live chat is simply something online retailers need to do in 2014.

9. Plan Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a very important sales driver for online retailers. Planning and scheduling marketing emails well ahead of time can allow ecommerce marketers to focus on other tactics during peak selling periods. As an example, if a marketing department found itself scrambling for a Merry Christmas or Happy New Year email on December 24, how much more effective could that department have been if those emails had be planned the prior January, designed mid-year, and scheduled in, say, October.

Start your annual email plan with a good definition of who will be receiving the emails, what action each email should elicit, and how the email’s success will be measured.

10. Plan Promotions

Just like email marketing, other ecommerce promotions should be planned well in advance, including pay-per-click marketing plans, banner advertising plans, contest marketing, or even the use of traditional media.

To complete the 2014 ecommerce marketing checklist, be certain to plan well and stick to that plan.

15 Ways Marketing Automation Can Maximize Your Content’s ROI

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/01/marketing-automation-maximize-content-roi/

By PAUL ROETZER published JANUARY 9, 2014

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In order to realize your performance potential, and maximize your content marketing return on investment (ROI), you’re going to need the right marketing technology.

Marketing automation has the ability to expand the value and impact of your content, capture lead intelligence, improve lead-to-sale conversion rates, drive repeat purchasing, and enhance the overall customer experience. 

Generally speaking, marketing automation takes traditionally manual tasks and, well, automates them. Activities such as contact management, list segmentation, lead scoring and nurturing, A/B testing of website pages and offers, email marketing, and performance measurement and reporting can all be done more efficiently through automation.

IDC predicts the overall market for automating marketing will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in 2015. Venture funding, mergers, and acquisitions in the space have fueled innovation and advances in technology, opening up significant opportunities for content marketers.

Some of the leading marketing automation players include Act-On, Eloqua, HubSpot, Infusionsoft, Marketo, and Pardot. There are others, but these solutions are a good starting point when evaluating potential partners that can help improve your content marketing ROI.

Automation at work: Creating a tech-savvy, performance-driven content campaign

Let’s say your organization’s primary goal is to infuse your sales pipeline with new leads, and you have a secondary goal of segmenting and prioritizing an existing lead database to identify opportunities.

Like any campaign, you’ll want to start with a well-defined content strategy, where you determine your target audiences, establish goal values, and create compelling content assets and offers. But for the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the more technical benefits of marketing automation.

Keep in mind, not all features/capabilities outlined below are available with every marketing automation solution. This is meant to give you perspective on what’s possible, and the areas where marketing automation can help support and streamline your essential content processes.

Building the foundational pieces for content marketing

1. Establish a scoring system: Use automation tools to define what a quality lead looks like, and how they behave. Then, apply an automated system to score leads as they enter and move through your funnel. 

For B2B marketers, important scoring criteria may include the obvious factors of job title, industry, revenue, employee size, and budget. But, now that you’re using advanced marketing technology, you can expand lead scoring to include actions taken, such as pages viewed, time spent visiting the site, webinars attended, content downloaded, social media interactions, email opens/clicks, and more.

2. Create a landing page: Every gated content asset needs a landing page on which to live. This is where you host the content and capture contact information through lead forms. The lead form fields can sync with your CRM system, automatically populating and updating contact records.

3. Use smart lead forms to gradually build contact profiles: Rather than having contact forms with 10+ fields, use what HubSpot calls progressive profiling to improve conversion rates and gather additional information about your contacts over time. Each form submission is a chance to learn more about your prospects.

4. Consider A/B testing the landing page: Not sure which image or headline to use on your landing page? Run an A/B test to show half the visitors one version, and half another. You can automate this process, and then monitor results to see which version has a higher conversion rate. 

Promoting your content

5. Develop and send tailored emails promoting your content: Email marketing to your existing contact databases is an ideal way to drive action. While your primary goal may be to generate new leads, you can use the same contact assets to capture additional information about your established leads and customers that will help you customize your content.

6. Schedule social media shares across your networks: Some marketing automation systems have social sharing built in, while others may require a third-party solution. Either way, marketing automation can help you schedule a variety of social updates to promote your content.

Gaining intelligence and driving actions

7. Capture contact information: As downloads and registrations occur on the landing pages, automation tools can directly associate responses with contact records that exist in your CRM system.

8. Segment and prioritize contacts in lists: These tools will help you define rules to automatically build lists based on pre-defined criteria. For example, you may have a “hot leads” list that includes contacts who meet a lead-scoring threshold, a “new leads” list for anyone who’s completed a form for the first time, and a “power user” list for anyone who’s filled out a form and visited more than 10 pages on the site.

9. Activate email workflows: Once you’ve moved contacts into lists, you can initiate automated email marketing. As with social media features, some marketing automation platforms include email-marketing capabilities, while others will require third-party integration.

Automated email workflows are a highly efficient and measurable way to deliver value to contacts, and nurture them through the marketing funnel. Be sure to include additional resources in your emails that relate to the content your contacts have downloaded. For example, if they download an eBook, configure your marketing automation system to follow up by sending them links to blog posts, webinars, and case studies on the same topic.

10. Create additional triggers to monitor engagement: Using automated email workflows, you can continue to monitor contact interactions — which can indicate whether or not they are progressing through the customer journey. These indications may include clicking on links, returning to your website, or downloading other content assets you have available. All of these actions should be evaluated when defining your lead-scoring system.

11. Consider using contextual content on your website: Think about the Amazon.com experience, in which the site recommends content and products based on your past interactions. Some marketing automation solutions are bringing this technology to corporate websites.

By connecting your contact database to your site, these advanced systems can recognize individual visitors and dynamically alter the content and calls to action based on their history on the site. The goal is to personalize the consumer experience, and drive increased engagement and conversion rates.

12. Support your sales team: Marketing automation tools help you set up automated workflows for your internal teams, so you can provide them with resources and recommendations to integrate content into their sales process. You can also set up automated alerts based on the behavior of leads.

For example, when a contact meets the sales-qualified-lead status defined in your lead-scoring system, you can set the system up to trigger an email to be sent to a specific sales rep. Or, you may set up alerts to notify your sales reps when specific contacts return to the website. 

13. Nurture beyond the conversion: Don’t stop at the sale. Think about the full marketing funnel, and what value your content can bring to existing customers as well. With the proper configurations of your system, you can apply the same methodologies of profiling, segmenting, and nurturing to your existing customers that you apply to your prospective customers.

14. Monitor campaign performance: Use your automation tool to set up automated reports to stay informed on how your content campaigns are performing.

15. Connect actions to outcomes: Use marketing automation technology to demonstrate the value of content. Connect content campaigns to marketing metrics that matter, and show how the campaigns directly contribute to achieving business goals.

Marketing automation gives organizations the ability to maximize the content marketing ROI of your campaigns. In order to reach your full performance potential, take actions to:

• Build a strong foundation with lead scoring, landing pages, lead forms, and A/B testing.
• Promote content through emails and social sharing.
• Turn intelligence into action, and action into results, with lists, workflows, monitoring, contextual content, sales team integration, customer programs, and performance reports.

How is your organization using marketing automation to drive business results?

Looking for information on selecting the content marketing tool that will work best for your organization? Read CMI’s guide on How to Choose Content Marketing Technology.

Cover image via Bigstock

Ecommerce Profitability: The Critical Second Sale

via Practical Ecommerce http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/61531-Ecommerce-Profitability-The-Critical-Second-Sale

Acquiring new customers is so expensive for retailers that it wipes out any profits from a first time sale. New analysis from my firm, SeeWhy, of data from Forrester and U.S. Census Bureau shows that on average 73 percent of online conversions come from first-time customers, but that these first-time conversions are not profitable due to the acquisition costs.

In contrast, the 27 percent of conversions that come from returning customers generate 41 percent of the revenues, and 100 percent of the profits. This mirrors work done years ago by Bain and Company and made famous by Fred Reichheld’s book, The Loyalty Effect.

There are several factors at play here.

• Returning customers spend more than first time customers.
• The cost of acquisition is born solely by the first purchase.
• Factoring in customer service, fulfillment, and returns eats into margins.

New shoppers generate an average 9 percent loss, due to the acquisition costs, compared with repeat shoppers who spend more and generate a 14 percent gross margin, on average.

However, it’s worth noting that even though new customer conversions are not profitable, they still make a contribution to overhead. A proportion of new customers will go on to become profitable returning customers.

Your own data will likely show some variation from industry averages. I’ve assumed a gross margin of 40 percent — some retail sectors are significantly more profitable than this, and others less — and I’ve also not amortized the customer acquisition cost across the expected lifetime purchases of a new customer. However, if this prompts you to do your own analysis, and consider tactics for securing the second sale, then it will have been a fruitful exercise.

So what tactics are important when it comes to getting the first and subsequent second sales?

Getting the First Sale

Getting ecommerce prospects to purchase for the first time is a topic that warrants a novel, but here are three essential tactics to focus on.

• Nurture new prospects: Remarketing, brand messaging, promise of service. Only 0.25 percent of new visitors buy — but if you can get them back to the site, your chances of securing a conversion go up 9 times. The reality of the conversion process is that each visitor is on a journey toward a potential purchase, spanning a sequence of visits to your site and others.

There is a huge temptation to view all visitors on a particular page as equal and to focus solely on conversion optimization of the page. Prospects behave differently from customers and have different needs. It’s also tempting to chase the holy grail of securing a conversion from the first time visitor. But it’s probably going to take a sequence of visits before your prospect is ready to purchase.

Nudging nervous prospects with reassuring brand messages via email helps drive new customers back to your site. This is best done using retargeted advertising and email remarketing, and the key to success here is to be 100 percent consistent with your brand and to promise great service.

• Build trust: Content, authority, social proof. You can build trust in your brand and purchasing experience with great site content. When writing content, step out of your shoes and into those of your prospect by giving objective advice about which products to buy so that you earn a trusted adviser status. Remember that new customers aren’t looking to be sold, they are looking for confirmation that your proposition is a good fit.

Social proof in the form of reviews, testimonials, number of products sold, and authoritative reviews by independent third parties, are all critical for building trust in both your products and the brand and service that go along with it. Don’t forget to feature reviews and testimonials about your service — they may have decided to buy the product, but not yet decided whether to buy it from you.

• Make it easy: Phone numbers, free shipping and returns, payment methods. Studies consistently show that consumers seek free shipping and free returns above all other promotions. Easy returns are of particular concern to first time customers who have no experience with your brand or customer service. If you can’t offer free returns then make the process transparent and as easy as possible. Don’t bury this information on your site or hide your phone number, which only deters nervous prospects from purchasing from you. A prominent phone number goes a long way in reassuring a prospective customer that you will be easy to contact when something goes wrong. Ensure you have thought through your payment strategyas it has a big impact on mobile conversions, in particular.

The purchase process should be easy and intuitive. Read Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think and consider your own site experience while wearing the shoes of a prospective customer.

Getting the Second Sale

Again, I’ve picked three tactics, out of many, to focus on in securing the second sale.

• Deliver exceptional service. We know that customers choose to spend with you again based on both price and previous experience. So it’s critical that first time purchases go off smoothly, and you should use any hiccups as opportunities to deliver exceptional and memorable service. These are the “moments of truth” that cement a relationship with your brand and lead to brand advocacy and future purchases.

Since the first purchase is unlikely to be profitable, you may encounter resistance internally to spending money on outstanding service. This is why understanding where the profit comes from is important. Leading ecommerce companies know this. It’s not a coincidence that Amazon is the largest ecommerce retailer and also has the highest customer satisfaction score.

• Get customers browsing your products on their tablets. Tablets are increasingly being used for recreational shopping, so take a page from the catalog companies’ playbooks and link the pleasure of browsing catalogs with easy online purchases. There are massive online conversion benefits from having customers research your product catalog at leisure on their tablets. If you were planning on building a tablet app soon, you might want to reconsider and look at digital catalogs instead as they are more in line with what customers want when shopping recreationally. Or, focus your efforts in having a stunning tablet shopping experience that recognizes the recreational nature of how many consumers are starting to shop — in the evenings from the couch.

If you’ve not yet investigated digital catalogs, they can be produced cheaply and will drive high-quality traffic to your site that spends more. Put this on your to do list, or read my previous article, “Do Digital Catalogs Drive Conversions?” to learn more.

• Keep email communications relevant. Simply adding new customers into your email program will keep your brand message in front of them but does little to build a relationship. Instead, think about triggered email programs that are more relevant, including leveraging recommendations on the purchase confirmation, soliciting for post-purchase reviews, and real-time triggered emails based on products and categories browsed. All of these techniques increase the probability of securing future purchases.

Conclusion

Examine your own numbers so that you have a clear picture of profitability for new and returning customers. The tactics above offer some opportunities to improve first and second time conversions. Actually making changes that improve the new customer conversion experience can be challenging. But hard data tends to win the day and offer objectivity that allows you to make much better informed decisions.

15 Online Shopping Pet Peeves

via Practical Ecommerce http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/61536-15-Online-Shopping-Pet-Peeves

Being an avid online shopper, I buy from many ecommerce sites. Most of these sites are helpful and effective. But there are some that have annoying features.

Here are my top 15 pet peeves.

1. Slow Site

A site that is slow is a complete turn off. I switch to another site unless I need a specialized product that is only sold there. Slow, for me, is a page that takes more than three seconds to load. Unfortunately, based on a recent Marketing Land report, the average page load time for the top 2,000 U.S. retail sites is 7.25 seconds.

Make the home page and key landing pages faster to load to avoid losing customers.

2. No Support for Guest Checkout

It is important for retailers to identify shoppers and personalize their experiences, to increase the chances of closing a sale. But this should not be done at the cost of losing the customer by not offering guest checkout. Many sites still require shoppers to create accounts or log in using their Facebook accounts.

Allow guest checkout and offer an option to set up an account during the checkout process after the shopper has entered her shipping and billing information.

3. Incorrect Product Recommendations

Most retail sites have some sort of recommendations functionality — though the logic used to display these recommendations varies from site to site. It’s annoying when sites continue to recommend a product even after the product has been purchased. Some other sites base their recommendations on a shopper’s search terms, his browsing history or preferences. These recommendations are not always helpful.

The best way to avoid annoying shoppers with meaningless recommendations is to offer an option to indicate if the recommendation was useful or not. This can be done using a small icon overlaid on top of the recommended product’s image that asks the shopper if the recommendation was helpful.

4. Misleading Product Availability

Ecommerce sites sometimes allow a shopper to add a product to the cart and go through the complete check out process before displaying a warning about the product being “out of stock.”

This is annoying. If a product is not in stock, it should be displayed on the product page or before the product can be added to the cart.

5. Pricing Variations

Some of the omnichannel retailers that I shop with price the same product differently depending on whether it is online or in the physical store. I understand that the cost of carrying the product is different across channels. But these days when consumers use multiple channels, it is a must to offer consistent pricing for products regardless of the channel.

6. Complicated Use of Promotion Codes

Promotions are a popular way to attract shoppers to a site. But it is frustrating if the promotion code can be used only if rules or conditions are met. For instance, I have received promotion codes in emails and when I try them on the site, a message appears saying that this product is already on sale (so I cannot use the promotion code), or the promotion code is not yet active, or promotion code only works on a subset of products.

Promotion codes are helpful only if they are simple to use.

7. Product Page without Pricing

A brick-and-mortar store does not have products on shelves that are not available for sale. So it is frustrating to search for a product on-site and then find that it is not for sale.

If there is a product shown on the site, there has to be a way to purchase it.

8. Lack of Channel Integration

Consumers are becoming omnichannel shoppers. It is annoying when, for example, a product added to a cart using the mobile site does not show up in the desktop site. Or something purchased online cannot be returned in the store.

Omnichannel is here to stay and it is important to have a seamless integration across channels to avoid customer frustration.

9. Too Much Email

Unfortunately there are some sites that do not respect their shopper’s time and send multiple emails for product campaigns, news, product releases, and more. In some cases, the site does not even have an option for a customer to opt out of these emails.

Too much email is an easy way to lose shoppers.

10. Needing to Log In Repeatedly

Though I do not register or change passwords frequently, it is still annoying if a site asks me to log in when I have just registered or changed my password. It should be straightforward to authenticate a user based on the password that was just set up instead of introducing another step.

11. Not Secure

Most shoppers do not pay much attention to security features of a site. But a frequent online shopper will see the difference if your site does not support a strong password policy or allows credit card information to be transmitted without using SSL. A customer account can be easily hacked or a credit card can be misused if the site is not secure.

12. Browser Favoritism

Some retailers do not take the time to test their site on different browsers. They assume that if the site works on one browser, it will work the same way on others. I run into this frequently, as I am a Apple Safari user.

Retailers should review their analytics periodically to identify their visitors’ browsers and ensure that their site works on all of them.

13. Bad Customer Service

A good customer service team resolves issues quickly and ensures that telephone hold times are short. Sites that do not have such teams and policies struggle to retain customers.

This is an easy fix and should be a priority for all retailers.

14. Not Mobile Friendly

Some sites still do not function on mobile devices, or they partially function on such devices. I use my phone and tablet for the bulk of my online research and shopping. I much prefer sites that are mobile friendly.

Retailers have no excuse not to support a mobile friendly site, as there are several easy-to-use tools that can instantly convert a website to a mobile friendly version.

15. Third-party Payment Options Hosted on Another Site

Ecommerce sites often support different ways to pay for a purchase. Some of these payment methods take customers to a third-party site for checkout and leave them there. In some cases, there is no confirmation that the payment went through and the order was successful. The only option is to wait for the site to send an order confirmation email.