Selling Sites Wiser
If this could get out there, it would revolutionize the web development industry. It would so change the way businesses purchase sites, their involvement in its development, and more importantly, the unnecessary costs involved that the web would become a real tool for business growth.
I’ll start with this and it comes in two parts:
- Businesses need to understand only one thing – web sales originate with the prior intrest of the customer for their product or service.
- Having said that, no amount of improvement to a well designed and attractive site will convince a visitor to buy.
To repeat an obvious fact, people buy on emotion. After MUCH research, what I’ve found is that there are NO statistics that indicate a flashy website causes sales.
Studies too numerous to count peer into Conversion Optimization. Why do people buy online? Selligent’s Customer Case summary gives a clue. (http://blog.selligent.com/blogs/conversion-marketing/en-conversion-optimization-why-people-decide-buy-web-site-and-why-not)
Why people buy online?
- Trust
- Clear Contact Details
- Recommendations
Why people DON’T buy online (abandonment)?
- Slow loading pages
- Poor design
- Hidden costs
- Security Concerns
- Product information, including video and product view options
- Lack of alternative payment methods
- Not enough reassurances about security
- No return policy/information
- Buying process is too long
- Hidden charges
- Compulsory registration
- Lack of contact details
NONE of this has to do with how fancy a site is in graphics or color scheme. “Poor design” on the don’t-buy list indicates that they layout needs to be easily navigable.
I’d like to take note about the first reason why people buy online: trust. We live in such a marketing-heavy society. There are even more studies out there about the mistrust people have of slick marketing campaigns designed to deceive them into parting with their hard-earned money.
The Principle of Diminishing Returns would say that the more a business dumps money into trying to “slick up” their website, the more likely it is that they’ll loose money by doing it.
All this argues to a to an obvious phenomenon which bears this out: the move toward relevant content made by the large search engines. They have known, for years now, that what matters to the buying and interested public is relevance. And this is reflected in the ecommerce powerhouses of the web. Take a look at sites such as Amazon.com. There is nothing flashy at all about it. Simple pictures, multiple product views, product reviews, and well placed cross-sells. Take a look at the layout and information available from Duracell.com as opposed to the graphic-rich site of Energizer. I can’t find any articles on it, but I found Duracell’s site a place I could get information about the products without clicking through innumerable, albeit technically advanced, graphics.
Allow me to quote from the above-referenced article:
“For e-commerce businesses and retailers with an online shop, a large part of their digital marketing efforts is about optimizing the buying experience and thus conversion, with an important role for the online shopping process. Abandoned shopping carts and interrupted buying flows are looked at thoroughly since every slight improvement can have a tremendous impact on the bottom-line.
“In general, conversion optimization is mainly a matter of personalized and valuable experiences and contextual offers, good design, perceived trust and simply customer-centricity: it all revolves around the so-called “user”. The more you know about your – prospective – customer and the more personalized you can work in campaigns and contact strategies, the better.”
Let this be fair warning for web sales persons and businesses interested in investing in an effective website. The customer may be driven by fear to make indecision after indecision on color, graphic, placement, and more. Please just remember one thing. You may not know their business better than them, but you certainly know their customer. …and THAT is what matters.
