In Roadmap to revenue: How to sell the way your customers want to buy, Kristin Zhivago includes a lengthy section on customer interviews by telephone. Having tested all types of surveying methods, she has found people speak most freely by phone, in their comfort zone of home, car or office. They hesitate to reveal everything they think when speaking in person, and are more confident and willing to give their opinion behind the safety of the phone.

Similarly, email and text messages are not the best way to collect information. Customers are shy to be completely honest when there’s a paper trail to their comments.

Why telephone interviews can tell you more than online surveys

Multiple choice and Likert scale questions in online surveys or telephone interviews are “flawed from the start because the questions are composed by people who haven’t been talking to customers.” What if their real response was not one of the pre-set options?

The problem with focus groups

In focus groups, people know they are being watched, and there are many dynamics in a group setting that can influence responses. Some will be more vocal, some will shrink back to the dominators. More importantly, your most influential customers are unlikely to participate. Busy executives and consumers do not want to sacrifice a half day of living for “$75 and a sandwich.”

Corporate customers are more reluctant to share their own business problems within a group, and they won’t believe, if a concern is brought up in a focus group with a moderator, that any action will be taken to resolve their specific problem. One-on-one interaction with an executive or representative of your company suggests to interviewees that their opinions are being heard.

The pitfalls of personas

Creating a persona is not the same as hearing from real customers. Personas can be helpful to make a customer “real” to company insiders, or to represent a new type of customer you want to target before you have actual customers of the sort. But relying on a persona profile can lead to incorrect assumptions about what “Sally” or “Robert” want. “Real customers are real people who will surprise you. Personas that we create are not going to surprise us, because we created them.

Telephone interview tips

Make your own calls

As a business owner or lead, conduct at least five of the initial interviews yourself. This helps you personally understand your customers, their situations, and their buying process. It will also help you manage anyone who may be conducting additional interviews for you. In turn, you’ll be able to represent the customer within your organization. When another employee tells you “our customers are like this or that,” you’ll know if that is true.

Marketing managers and product managers should also make at least five calls each.

Don’t involve salespeople

“Even the best salesperson will have a very hard time simply ‘listening,’ without jumping to correct any misperceptions that the person has. Plus, the customer will feel as if she is being sold to, albeit covertly, if a salesperson is the person asking the questions.”

When to outsource

Once you and marketing and product management have made at least five calls each, with the same basic issues raised in each new call, it is safe to turn some of the interviewing to an outside party. The benefit of outsourcing is people speak more openly and honestly with outsiders than insiders. They’ll use stronger words, which helps you understand the seriousness of any problems customers may be experiencing.

An interviewer should be knowledgeable about your product or service, personable and friendly, and perceptive enough to be able to detect subtle openings during the call.

Who should you interview?

Your current customers. Why?

They know more about your product or service than you think they do. They will be able to describe their buying process, concerns, how you’ve addressed their concerns, their likes about your company and other information. They’ll give you good feedback on what’s working and what needs improvement. They also have interest in your success, because they are already using your products or services, and may even be dependent on your company for their own success.

Tips:

• Segment your customers by product line, business unit, geography, etc. if relevant. Other segments include size of customer’s business, job title, amount of purchase, length of relationship with your business, industry, satisfaction level, ore even salesperson in charge of the account.

• Shoot for your most profitable customers.

• Include a mix of happy and less-than-satisfied customers, but the majority should be happy campers as you want to build your process model to reflect a successful sale.

• If you sell through distribution channels, include an offer in your packaging that gives customers incentive to contact or register with you.

How many customers should you interview?

Zhivago recommends a five/ten/fifteen program. Expect to see trends after the fifth complete interview, main problems established by the tenth, and “no doubt about the big issues” by the fifteenth. This rule holds up regardless of industry or customer profile. Exceed this and face diminishing returns.

In author’s experience, one-third to one-half of folks you contact by email will respond to your interview request, so aim for 45 contacts, minimum. The subject line “Would like to interview you” paired with a C-level sender name improves response rates.

Interview questions

Ask these primary questions:

• What do you think of our [product or service]?

• Have you had any interaction with our customer service? How was it?

• If you were the CEO of [our company] tomorrow, what’s the first thing you would focus on?

• What problem were you trying to solve with our product/service?

• How did our product/service help you to solve your problem?

• What was your buying process–what were the steps–and what questions or concerns did you have as you were consiering our product/service?

• If you were looking for this type of product/service again, and you didn’t know about our solution, what would you type into Google?

• What do you think is a fair price for this product/service?

• What is your biggest challenge right now?

• What do you think of our competition? Is there anything we can learn from them?

• What trends do you see with this kind of product/service?

• Is there anything I should have asked you, that I didn’t ask?

Roadmap to revenue: How to sell the way your customers want to buy is available at Amazon.com

That places the burden on your website to support self care needs. How do you optimize your Support area? The following tips will get you started.

Navigation

1. Support scanning for trigger keywords

Usability research shows users are more likely to scan a page or menu for trigger words than turn to the search box. So menu options should contain these words, but also be short and easy to scan.

Long strings of words are more difficult to scan:

2. Use FAQs with caution

Showing top asked questions seems like a good idea, but it takes up valuable real-estate. Understand that customers are not looking to browse your Support content — they already know what they want to ask. They are more likely to scan categorical menus or head to your search box than peruse even the most common queries.

Hint: consult your analytics (click overlay) to verify whether customers are actually using your frequently asked question list.

Search

It’s difficult to address all possible questions through browse-able menus, so Support search optimization is key.

3. Scope your global search

You may have a dedicated search box on your Support page, but if you also have a global search box, make sure it has clear refinement tools for users to “scope” their searches to Support results, excluding product pages and other site content.

But avoid overwhelming menus of refinement options!

4. Don’t make search results look like product results

We are conditioned to view product thumbnails as product results. Be careful when presenting support content in a way that may be confused with your product catalog.

5. Avoid truncated results

If your search results look like this…

…you will have frustrated customers. Result titles must be readable in full!

6. Perform keyword research

Keyword research for product catalog site search is tough enough — you need to handle synonyms and misspellings, including brand and trademarks not included in standard dictionaries. Help and support topics require even more keyword research, as problem-solving phrases can be construed many different ways.

In the telco industry, for example, one my describe a pre-paid top-up through a mobile app as “how do I add more minutes from my phone?” or “how do I renew my prepaid minutes?” North American customers may call it pay-as-you-go, while international customers use pre-paid/post-paid, with or without hyphens.

Use your search logs to identify how your customer describe their problems, and append your meta data accordingly. Consider mining your and your competitors’ forums for more ideas.

And don’t forget to run tests on your most frequently asked questions to see if your search is getting it right.

7. Optimize for search engines

Not just your internal site search, but for Google. Often users will turn to the big G for community answers. Well optimized FAQ and community forums can bring your customers directly to your site.

Community forums

8. Don’t neglect forum questions

Get your staff in to answer questions. Even better, train moderators to sell. For questions like “when is iPhone 5 going to be released?” you could point readers to a landing page with an opt-in form to be notified about its new release and pre-order information.

Support pages

9. Use pictures and video when possible

Step-by-step instructions are a headache when one must flip back and forth between a document and an account, device or application. Give users a head start by demonstrating visually, with screen shots or video tutorials.

10. Ask for feedback

Is your content really helpful? Bake feedback tools into your support pages and take user comments seriously.

Optimizing customer support is one of the topics in our latest 30 minute webinar for the telecommunications industry Keeping Customers: Reducing Churn Through Support and Upgrade Optimization, available on demand now.

“In Canada (and other developed countries), the salesperson or business owner depends on the customer to bring in their income. Therefore, their greatest interest is to serve the customer in a way so that they will keep coming back and buying their products. They value the customer because they realize that, without the customer, there would be no business.

Kenya is the complete opposite.

The business owner in Kenya often has the mentality that they are providing a service to their customers since, without them, their customers won’t have what they need to survive…

…(for example) I go up to the desk to pay for my item. I hand the cashier (often the person who owns the business) a large bill. He doesn’t have any change (which is always the case in Kenya). He then looks at me as if it is MY problem that HE doesn’t have change for me. He expects me to start rummaging through my purse to see if I can muster up enough coins while he sits there and stares at me impatiently. I usually drop what I wanted to purchase and leave the store to find someone else who has change.”

She also clarifies this is not everyone in Kenya, (she is in love with the country and its people). But this would never happen in the West (think of the Yelp reviews!) But this did get me thinking of all the ways Western online shops expect customers to remedy problems that occur in the buying process:

• Zero results found in site search without showing refinement options or near-matches
• Dead 404 pages without links back into the site or a way to contact customer service
• Checkout errors without clear, proximal callouts on how to fix
• Carts that clear contents after closing the browser (no use of persistent cookies)
• Slow email customer service response time, sometimes exceeding 48 hours

How does your customer service measure up? If you missed our post last November, we have a downloadable customer service scorecard you can use to identify the gaps on your site.

And while we’re at it, let’s not sweat our first world problems. (Can’t see video? View this post on GetElastic.com)

Looking for help with your ecommerce strategy and site optimization? The Elastic Path research and consulting division is available to enterprises selling digital goods and services. For more information, visit us at http://elasticpath.com/ecommerce-consulting/ or contact us at consulting@elasticpath.com.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

I trust most of us know what search engine optimization is, it’s a fundamental part of online marketing for any business. And it’s an activity you’re never “finished,” thanks to search engines that continually keep us on our toes.

Under the SEO umbrella are a number of sub-disciplines including keyword research, link building, copywriting, strategy and technical optimization.

There are a number of fantastic sources for search engine information out there, but some notable ones are Search Engine Land, Stone Temple , Bruce Clay, Small Business SEM, Matt Cutts’ blog and SEOmoz.

Got SEO questions? The High Rankings and Search Engine Watch forums are great places to hang out.

You can also poke through our archive of SEO related Get Elastic posts.

SMO – Social Media Optimization

Coined by Rohit Bhargava, SMO refers to both activities that make your site social media ready (think RSS feeds and share-with-your-network buttons) and marketing promotions that support word-of-mouth (or fingers) and draw traffic to your site.

We’ve covered all types of SMO here on Get Elastic, and blogs like Chris Brogan, TechCrunch, Techipedia and Marketing Pilgrim are great resources.

NFO – News Feed Optimization

A subset of SMO, the purpose of NFO is to get your Facebook Page’s content in front of as many eyeballs as possible via your fans and fans’ friends’ News Feeds. Like SEO, NFO strategies are based on what little we know about Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm. Activities may involve designing Facebook landing pages (or tabs) that have prominent calls to action to join the Page or incentives to share the Page or its posts with one’s network.

Check out our posts EdgeRank: How Facebook Determines What Appears in the News Feed and News Feed Optimization: 14 Ideas to Get Noticed in Facebook for more details, and subscribe to Inside Facebook and the Facebook Blog to keep up to date.

CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization

One of my favorite topics, conversion rate optimization is all about moving the needle higher on your site’s KPIs (key performance indicators). A/B and multivariate testing is key to CRO, but the strategy behind what is tested is critical. It involves a deep understanding of user behavior and expectations, with a healthy hatred towards relying on gut-feel to make decisions.

In addition to this blog, check out Tim Ash’s Landing Page Optimization podcast, WhichTestWon and Marketing Experiments.

For your bookshelf:
Conversion Optimization
Web Design for ROI
Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer
Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

WAO – Web Analytics Optimization

While tools come equipped with a number of metrics and reports out of the box, did you know your web analytics should also be optimized? A web analytics audit by a professional can help uncover sources of data inaccuracy like inaccurate cookies, rogue caching servers and tagging issues which can be overstating or understating your data. A strategist can help you set up the proper goal funnels and data filters, create custom reports that matter, and help work through complex issues like subdomain tracking and connecting data from other systems.

Fantastic sources of web analytics information include VKI Studios (now Cardinal Path), the infamous Avinash Kaushik, Lunametrics and the blogs of the web analytics vendors themselves, like Google Analytics Blog and Omniture.

WPO / WSO – Web Performance Optimization / Web Site Optimization

So nice, they named it twice. Whatever you choose to call it, performance optimization is often the “forgotten” piece of the optimization pie. WPO is a technical job, requiring ninja coding and IT skills. It may also involve third party services like CDNs (content delivery networks) to cache content for quicker retrieval. While it’s not marketing per se, it’s essential to it. No matter how souped-up or stripped down your landing page is, a slow page load speed will quickly send visitors elsewhere. As a marketer, you need to know what to ask your IT counterparts to help you with.

The blogs Web Performance Today, Steve Souders, Gomez Web Performance Blog and Andrew King’s Website Optimization book are great resources.

EMO – Email Marketing Optimization

While this term could apply to CRO for email campaigns, as we have defined it on Get Elastic refers to a hypothetical idea from fellow ecommerce blogger Rishi Riwat. This form asks customers by email to Google a specific keyword and click on the company’s search result in exchange for a %X discount. The premise is that click through rate is a ranking factor for organic SEO, and such a campaign is a way to boost it. Hey, it could work!

Of course, the CRO side of EMO is also very important. Email is its own animal, as you have to consider headlines, timing and frequency of deployment, list segmentation, list cleaning and so on. Great resources are the Retail Email Blog, Marketing Sherpa, Style Campaign, ClickZ and the Email Insider column.

PRO – Product Returns Optimization

Okay, I admit I totally contrived this discipline – it’s an acronym to describe a discipline I believe should exist. We always talk about driving sales, but what about preventing sales that will only be returned? There are at least 6 ways you can go PRO: product descriptions, images, video, customer reviews, site tools and features and customer support.

CSO – Customer Service Optimization

Again, a fabricated acronym – but let’s face it, most e-business’ customer service can be improved – whether in the call center or on-site through self service and FAQ availability and usability. And customer surveys are to CSO as web analytics is to CRO.

I’ve also put together a comprehensive scorecard you can download to calculate your “customer service quotient.”

APO – Affiliate Program Optimization

Though I don’t hear the industry labeling “affiliate program optimization” with the acronym APO – it has a nice ring to it, no?

APO is continuous improvement that involves recruiting the right affiliates, improving relationships with your top referrers, combatting spam and parasiteware, properly attributing multi-touch sales, developing and testing offers and creative, and so on. Great resources are the ABestWeb forum and blogs by Geno Prussakov, Linda Buquet and Shawn Collins.

SSO – Site Search Optimization

Site search is another often overlooked area of optimization, but it could provide greater gains than even landing page improvements, depending on the condition of your tool. Even if you have a rock-solid thesaurus and never show zero-results found, testing and improving the presentation of your results, and their ranking order and refinement options can go a long way.

Our recently posted site search digest has our best articles on the topic – 61 tips!

PSO – Paid Search Optimization

Like SEO, PSO (more commonly called SEM for search engine marketing) requires an ongoing strategy with several activities at once. After creating a proper account structure and configuring appropriate settings like geographic and device targeting, there are ongoing tasks like keyword research (including negative keywords), bid management, copywriting and landing page testing, analysis and keeping up with the moving target that is search engine advertising that must be mastered.

PSO is no DIY task – whether your team is in-house or outsourced, practitioners must be experts. But even if you’re not doing the hands-on account management, it’s important you understand the industry and best practices so you can better evaluate if your SEMs are doing a good job.

Great resources are the RKG Blog (Rimm-Kaufmann Group), Search Engine Land, Certified Knowledge and Click Equations.

DFO – Data Feed Optimization

Shopping engines are search properties of their own and can send higher converting traffic than organic and paid search, since referred visitors have already seen your product image and price vis-a-vis competitors’. But shopping engines require their own TLC. Enter DFO – the practice of managing data feeds across various engines (each with their own requirements, traffic mixes and click prices) whilst optimizing for each.

Great sources of info include SingleFeed, CPC Strategy, LoveYourFeed and CSE Strategies.

MCO – Mobile Commerce Optimization

Now more than ever ecommerce businesses are interested in mobile commerce, as consumers flock to tablets and smartphones and are becoming more comfortable with the mobile web. But it’s not as easy as changing a few style sheets to get your site to render nicely on mobile phones. Optimization requires measurement (mobile analytics), strategy (prioritizing devices and platforms, designing unique mobile features and functionality) and development (mobile sites and/or applications for various devices).

We’ve written several guides on Get Elastic on mobile commerce, and you can find great advice on Econsultancy, the Mobile Retail Blog and Mobile Marketer.

Can’t get enough 3-letter ecommerce acronyms? We got 99 of ‘em for you.

Dell

Image credit: Marketing Sherpa

Dell blends a bit of urgency with a helpful, customer service oriented message. The headline “Your saved cart is about to expire” coupled with the screenshot of the checkout gives the gist of the message without the need to read any text. The copy expresses a “quick and easy” message, promising it won’t take too much time to take care of, and the customer can get “right back to work.”

Dell also links directly to the saved cart, and offers a click to call option which can track the conversion back to the email. My only concern is the click to call button and checkout graphic are more prominent than the white “Retrieve Your Saved Cart” button. Ideally the graphic would also be linked in case the recipient assumes it’s clickable.

Additional links to Subscription Center, Dell Financing, Resource Center and Services & Warranties do not compete with the main calls to action, but are still clearly visible. Links to manage email preferences, unsubscribe option and privacy policy are all easy to spot.

Dell could take it to the next level by personalizing its cart recovery emails with a first name when possible, and testing short and long copy/instructions.

HSN

Image credit: e-tailing group

HSN also creates urgency with the line “our inventory sells out quickly” – but the email has a more company-centric tone than customer-centric. The emphasis is more on “order today” than concern for the customer – something Dell did well.

Points for personalizing the message, making the call to action clear and including a phone number and email link for customer service.

Drugstore.com

Image credit: Get Elastic

Drugstore.com creates urgency that the cart is at risk of being wiped clean, and wins points for signing off the customer service oriented copy with a personal salutation. Showing value propositions for shopping with Drugstore.com is also strong. However, the image choice should be carefully considered. The “d’oh” girl suggests the customer is doing something stupid to forget items in her cart.

This email does not link directly to the cart, there is no call-to-action that relates to the email subject line or body. Rather, there is a banner link to “start shopping.” Also, there’s no indication of how long the items left in the cart will be held. There’s a bit too much going on in this message.

S&S

Image credit: Practical Ecommerce

S&S screams “Courtesy Reminder” in the headline, and stays consistent throughout the body. “We thought this might be important to you” sets the tone. “We have reserved these items for you” makes it sound like a special service. This approach may create a feeling of obligation for the customer – if an item is reserved, it’s not available for anyone else. One might feel guilty if they didn’t respond.

The message is personalized, includes images and prices of items left in cart and is streamlined, without any distracting offers or links. Including the offer code helps S&S track conversions from this program, even for telephone completions. The free shipping offer also addresses the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about shipping charges – one of the top reasons for cart abandonment.

Great job by S&S, I actually have nothing to critique. This program has been very successful for S&S, with a 25% conversion rate and 33% of email revenue coming from cart recovery efforts.

Neiman Marcus

Image credit: DoublePlus Ecommerce Blog

Similar to S&S, Neiman Marcus does a great job with a bold headline that creates urgency, with a customer service focus. It includes images of what’s in the cart. However, the call to action “Place your order soon” does not appear clickable (pink text) and the white rectangular button is hard to spot at the bottom.

There’s also a disconnect between the image of the girl staring straight ahead and the rest of the message. You may recall from previous posts that a model’s eye gaze affects where the customer looks.

Pottery Barn

Image credit: Big Fat Marketing Blog

Pottery Barn smartly includes the address and phone number of the closest retail store, should the customer be researching online to purchase offline.
might know this from email signup information, account info, city/state entered in checkout form or geotargeting from the cart.

CafePress

Image credit: Get Elastic

Cafe Press makes use of pre-header text “We’ve saved the items in your shopping cart” to give the recipient the gist of the email in a preview pane. It also has a customer service tone, personalized with the item in the cart, but it’s missing price information and messaging that creates a sense of urgency.

Cooking.com

Image credit: ProImpact7 Blog

Cooking.com also makes use of pre-header text “Your shopping cart is waiting for you at Cooking.com.” Merits for linking directly to the cart, showing a thumbnail image, and addressing the common reasons why one abandons a cart in the text area: interruptions, checkout trouble or confusion, and using the cart as a “wishlist.”

Cooking.com also does a good job in the post script, describing why the customer is receiving the message with an unsubscribe link. This would be an especially good idea for customers who have not opted in to email, but are receiving the trigger because they provided their email in the checkout process. (Though anyone who’s initiated checkout and provided an email address likely isn’t using the cart just as a wishlist).

I’m not crazy about “Why wait?” – it sounds like marketing fluff. Rather, something that would create a sense of urgency like “your cart is about to expire” or “items in your cart are at risk of selling out” would be more persuasive.

Walgreens

Image credit: Minggie.com

Walgreens gets gold stars for personalization (first and last name), repeated calls to action (both a big shiny red button and a text link) and evoking curiosity with the text “some of the items in your Shopping Cart or Saved Items list are eligible for additional discounts.” Notifying a customer when an item in the cart has decreased in price, is about to sell out or is about to increase in price is a great idea.

My only critique is this email is busy – there are so many links competing for attention. Only about 15% of the page is dedicated to the real purpose of the email – the rest is navigation and secondary calls to action. Walgreens could test a more streamlined version vs this control, or work on pulling the actual cart contents into the email like Neiman Marcus and others do.

Bass Pro Shops

Image credit: Listrak

Offering incentives to complete checkout is territory you should tread carefully. Bass Pro offers a whopping $20 reward for cart abandonment (on orders over $100) – this may condition customers to simply abandon carts to get a discount every time. However, this strategy warrants testing because it may be a more profitable strategy (more incentive, higher average order value) than a reminder without an incentive. The subject line “Come back and save $20″ should also be tested, as it’s not explicit that this is a message regarding an abandoned cart.

Proflowers

Image credit: SeeWhy Blog

Proflowers also plays the discount card, offering 10% off an order. Including “Maybe you didn’t notice weekday shipping costs less” adds additional incentive to click through (ideally such an email would be sent early in the work week). I imagine emails for flowers should be sent as quickly after the abandonment as possible as they are usually ordered very close to the event.

I like how Proflowers merchandises its recovery email. The item that was abandoned includes a large image, full description and price after discount, along with alternative product suggestions.

14 Tips for Cart Recovery Emails

• Craft a subject line that makes it clear the email is about items remaining in the cart.

• Make use of pre-header text. Again, make it clear the email is about items remaining in the cart. (Don’t put shipping offers, generic copy or unsubscribe links up there).

• Don’t be salesy. Keep your copy friendly, customer-centric and customer service oriented. Bonus points for creating a sense of urgency (cart will expire, product is about to sell out, price has dropped, etc).

• Include contact information for phone and email (click to call if you offer it).

• Personalize with name and if possible, show which items are in the cart along with current price information.

• Link directly to the cart.

• Make your call to action as prominent as you would on your website. (Big, shiny buttons!)

• Tell your customer when his / her cart will expire (if relevant).

• Include store value propositions, but don’t let them overshadow your main calls to action.

• Test product recommendations. They may be effective, they may also be too distracting, create “choice paralysis” or make your email too salesy.

• Avoid superfluous navigation, links and calls to action (don’t clutter your page).

• Consider the emotional impact of images (like the woman smacking her forehead). A quick and cheap way to gauge customer sentiment is to submit your images to 5 Second Test, which will expose them to users who will provide feedback on the impression they give.

• Explain why the customer is receiving the email (post-script is fine), and include an opt-out link if you plan on running a series of triggered emails.

• Use caution with discounts and other offers – they may teach the customer to abandon every time. Some experts suggest sending incentives in a 3rd or 4th email (if you’re sending a series) to win non-responders.

Dell

Image credit: Marketing Sherpa

Dell blends a bit of urgency with a helpful, customer service oriented message. The headline “Your saved cart is about to expire” coupled with the screenshot of the checkout gives the gist of the message without the need to read any text. The copy expresses a “quick and easy” message, promising it won’t take too much time to take care of, and the customer can get “right back to work.”

Dell also links directly to the saved cart, and offers a click to call option which can track the conversion back to the email. My only concern is the click to call button and checkout graphic are more prominent than the white “Retrieve Your Saved Cart” button. Ideally the graphic would also be linked in case the recipient assumes it’s clickable.

Additional links to Subscription Center, Dell Financing, Resource Center and Services & Warranties do not compete with the main calls to action, but are still clearly visible. Links to manage email preferences, unsubscribe option and privacy policy are all easy to spot.

Dell could take it to the next level by personalizing its cart recovery emails with a first name when possible, and testing short and long copy/instructions.

HSN

Image credit: e-tailing group

HSN also creates urgency with the line “our inventory sells out quickly” – but the email has a more company-centric tone than customer-centric. The emphasis is more on “order today” than concern for the customer – something Dell did well.

Points for personalizing the message, making the call to action clear and including a phone number and email link for customer service.

Drugstore.com

Image credit: Get Elastic

Drugstore.com creates urgency that the cart is at risk of being wiped clean, and wins points for signing off the customer service oriented copy with a personal salutation. Showing value propositions for shopping with Drugstore.com is also strong. However, the image choice should be carefully considered. The “d’oh” girl suggests the customer is doing something stupid to forget items in her cart.

This email does not link directly to the cart, there is no call-to-action that relates to the email subject line or body. Rather, there is a banner link to “start shopping.” Also, there’s no indication of how long the items left in the cart will be held. There’s a bit too much going on in this message.

S&S

Image credit: Practical Ecommerce

S&S screams “Courtesy Reminder” in the headline, and stays consistent throughout the body. “We thought this might be important to you” sets the tone. “We have reserved these items for you” makes it sound like a special service. This approach may create a feeling of obligation for the customer – if an item is reserved, it’s not available for anyone else. One might feel guilty if they didn’t respond.

The message is personalized, includes images and prices of items left in cart and is streamlined, without any distracting offers or links. Including the offer code helps S&S track conversions from this program, even for telephone completions. The free shipping offer also addresses the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about shipping charges – one of the top reasons for cart abandonment.

Great job by S&S, I actually have nothing to critique. This program has been very successful for S&S, with a 25% conversion rate and 33% of email revenue coming from cart recovery efforts.

Neiman Marcus

Image credit: DoublePlus Ecommerce Blog

Similar to S&S, Neiman Marcus does a great job with a bold headline that creates urgency, with a customer service focus. It includes images of what’s in the cart. However, the call to action “Place your order soon” does not appear clickable (pink text) and the white rectangular button is hard to spot at the bottom.

There’s also a disconnect between the image of the girl staring straight ahead and the rest of the message. You may recall from previous posts that a model’s eye gaze affects where the customer looks.

Pottery Barn

Image credit: Big Fat Marketing Blog

Pottery Barn smartly includes the address and phone number of the closest retail store, should the customer be researching online to purchase offline.
might know this from email signup information, account info, city/state entered in checkout form or geotargeting from the cart.

CafePress

Image credit: Get Elastic

Cafe Press makes use of pre-header text “We’ve saved the items in your shopping cart” to give the recipient the gist of the email in a preview pane. It also has a customer service tone, personalized with the item in the cart, but it’s missing price information and messaging that creates a sense of urgency.

Cooking.com

Image credit: ProImpact7 Blog

Cooking.com also makes use of pre-header text “Your shopping cart is waiting for you at Cooking.com.” Merits for linking directly to the cart, showing a thumbnail image, and addressing the common reasons why one abandons a cart in the text area: interruptions, checkout trouble or confusion, and using the cart as a “wishlist.”

Cooking.com also does a good job in the post script, describing why the customer is receiving the message with an unsubscribe link. This would be an especially good idea for customers who have not opted in to email, but are receiving the trigger because they provided their email in the checkout process. (Though anyone who’s initiated checkout and provided an email address likely isn’t using the cart just as a wishlist).

I’m not crazy about “Why wait?” – it sounds like marketing fluff. Rather, something that would create a sense of urgency like “your cart is about to expire” or “items in your cart are at risk of selling out” would be more persuasive.

Walgreens

Image credit: Minggie.com

Walgreens gets gold stars for personalization (first and last name), repeated calls to action (both a big shiny red button and a text link) and evoking curiosity with the text “some of the items in your Shopping Cart or Saved Items list are eligible for additional discounts.” Notifying a customer when an item in the cart has decreased in price, is about to sell out or is about to increase in price is a great idea.

My only critique is this email is busy – there are so many links competing for attention. Only about 15% of the page is dedicated to the real purpose of the email – the rest is navigation and secondary calls to action. Walgreens could test a more streamlined version vs this control, or work on pulling the actual cart contents into the email like Neiman Marcus and others do.

Bass Pro Shops

Image credit: Listrak

Offering incentives to complete checkout is territory you should tread carefully. Bass Pro offers a whopping $20 reward for cart abandonment (on orders over $100) – this may condition customers to simply abandon carts to get a discount every time. However, this strategy warrants testing because it may be a more profitable strategy (more incentive, higher average order value) than a reminder without an incentive. The subject line “Come back and save $20″ should also be tested, as it’s not explicit that this is a message regarding an abandoned cart.

Proflowers

Image credit: SeeWhy Blog

Proflowers also plays the discount card, offering 10% off an order. Including “Maybe you didn’t notice weekday shipping costs less” adds additional incentive to click through (ideally such an email would be sent early in the work week). I imagine emails for flowers should be sent as quickly after the abandonment as possible as they are usually ordered very close to the event.

I like how Proflowers merchandises its recovery email. The item that was abandoned includes a large image, full description and price after discount, along with alternative product suggestions.

14 Tips for Cart Recovery Emails

• Craft a subject line that makes it clear the email is about items remaining in the cart.

• Make use of pre-header text. Again, make it clear the email is about items remaining in the cart. (Don’t put shipping offers, generic copy or unsubscribe links up there).

• Don’t be salesy. Keep your copy friendly, customer-centric and customer service oriented. Bonus points for creating a sense of urgency (cart will expire, product is about to sell out, price has dropped, etc).

• Include contact information for phone and email (click to call if you offer it).

• Personalize with name and if possible, show which items are in the cart along with current price information.

• Link directly to the cart.

• Make your call to action as prominent as you would on your website. (Big, shiny buttons!)

• Tell your customer when his / her cart will expire (if relevant).

• Include store value propositions, but don’t let them overshadow your main calls to action.

• Test product recommendations. They may be effective, they may also be too distracting, create “choice paralysis” or make your email too salesy.

• Avoid superfluous navigation, links and calls to action (don’t clutter your page).

• Consider the emotional impact of images (like the woman smacking her forehead). A quick and cheap way to gauge customer sentiment is to submit your images to 5 Second Test, which will expose them to users who will provide feedback on the impression they give.

• Explain why the customer is receiving the email (post-script is fine), and include an opt-out link if you plan on running a series of triggered emails.

• Use caution with discounts and other offers – they may teach the customer to abandon every time. Some experts suggest sending incentives in a 3rd or 4th email (if you’re sending a series) to win non-responders.

WISMO stands for “Where Is My Order?” calls to customer service. They can make up 70-80% of all customer inquiries during the holidays, which sucks up a lot of resources. The good news is, there are many things you can do to reduce the volume of WISMO calls.

1. Overcommunicate delivery estimates. Frantic WISMOs come in when customers don’t know what to expect. Providing a reasonable delivery estimate should keep at least some WISMOs at bay. Make sure you repeat yourself. Make sure you repeat yourself. Link to delivery times in your headers, mention them on product pages, in the cart summary and on your customer service page. Be sure to state they are estimates only, that due to high volume, shipping times may take longer. It’s also a good idea to pad your shipping cutoff dates with a few days buffer. If it typically takes 2 weeks to arrive, make your standard shipping cutoff date 17 business days before Christmas, with an option to upgrade to next day shipping beyond that date.

2. Provide order tracking and make it a prominent link site-wide. Yes, this carries a large cost if you don’t already provide this service, but it can help your conversion rates as some shoppers choose their online retailers based on this service. And considering self-serve order tracking can significantly reduce your customer service calls, this allows you to give better customer service (shorter call wait times) to other customers, which increase satisfaction and can save sales. (Check out this Get Elastic post on order tracking usability).

3. Follow up every order with a link to your order tracking tool. Include instructions on how to use the tool (your own or the carrier’s tool), and a request that the customer bookmark or tag the message for easy retrieval. If you don’t have a tracking tool, reinforce the delivery estimate. If you can, state it as a date, rather than “X business days.” E.g. “estimated delivery date is December 20th.”.

4. Send an email when the item ships, not just after order placement. Again, reinforce the estimated delivery date.

5. Address “Where is my order” on your Customer Service page. Some customers will beeline for your contact information. Provide customer service FAQs including “Where is my order?” so customers can self-serve. If you don’t have a tracking tool, re-state your typical delivery estimates.

6. Pay a bit extra for second day shipping. Sometimes the difference between regular and expedited is only a few dollars. If you choose to cover the cost on your end to expedite packages to next-day service, you’ll significantly lower your WISMO customer service costs and “surprise and delight” customers by underpromising and overdelivering (pun not intended.)

Though WISMO calls are annoying, remember we experience the same anxieties with others’ online stores. I’ve posted this comic before, but I can’t resist doing it again – I just identify with it way too much…

Via xkcd

Happy Black Friday!

Though it may be too tight to make these changes this year, make it your New Year’s Resolution to optimize your site for minimal returns in 2011 by improving the following:

Product Descriptions

It is believed the more thoroughly you can describe a product, the more likely the customer will be able to determine if it’s suitable. However, there are 2 glaring problems with detailed product descriptions:

1. Web users have a tendency not to read important things like instructions and privacy policies. They like to click on shiny buttons without understanding what they’re getting into.
2. Product descriptions are typically designed to sell product – not to be open and honest about its strengths and weaknesses.

If your product descriptions are big, long blocks of text, they’re less likely to be read. Try breaking up copy into smaller chunks, use headings and sub-headings, bullet points, images and tabular data. Much more user friendly.

Consider incorporating the positives and negatives into your product descriptions. Customers love to read reviews by “people like them” because they believe they will be more open and honest about their experiences. This generation is far less trusting of marketing hype. Be refreshing and write like a customer. Read reviews, not just on your own site, but on competitor sites. Use what you glean from many, many customer reviews to improve your own product descriptions.

For example, a review on Best Buy for a VHS to DVD software product mentions the inability to convert to certain video formats. Best Buy could find out from the manufacturer which formats it can and cannot support, and make that clear in the description. Another review for the same product suggests more information is needed on what players will play the digitized format:

When you sell a lot of alternative products, consider “contextual cross-selling” (yes, made up another word – I had to because I’ve never seen an online retailer actually do this). For example, you might include in the description “though customers say this product has a big bang for the buck, if you’re looking for a burner that supports XYZ format, the [link to alternative product] is a better option for you.”

Product Images

Most products benefit from multiple images to show front, back, inside, accessories, etc. If you sell software, show screen shots. Give the customer as much visibility into your product as possible. At minimum, allow customers to zoom to a high resolution image, and for bonus points, use 360 degree shots.

It’s also important to show products in context – or in use. A great example is Coach. Handbag images tend to make all bags look the same size. Coach built a tool where a woman can get a feel for how large a bag is relative to her height. She can even select “in hand” or “over the shoulder.”

Another common reason for returns is a color looked one way on the computer screen, and totally different out of the box. Furniture.com had a clever idea – show a picture of M&Ms. If the colors in the candy don’t match those in the real life treats, the user should adjust his or her monitor.

Video

Because video allows you to show products in context, with 360 degree view or with expert narration, customers can experience the product better than with text and images alone. Ice.com reports some products’ return rates are down 24%, and conversion rates on products that do show video are up 40%, since
products on models show size and context.

Some product types like software and electronics are returned, not because they are defective, but because the customer can’t figure out how to use them. I recently bought a used camera off eBay which did not come with an instruction manual. Knowing nothing about DSLRs, naturally I couldn’t figure out how to adjust my settings. I just assumed I must have bought a lemon. I did find a camera expert who showed me how to use my camera, but many customers will simply send the product back).

A ShowUHow study found online video instruction guides reduced returns up to 30%, sales by as much as 20%, and reduced customer support calls by as much as 50%. Customer feedback revealed that 84% of those who watched instructional videos preferred them to calling 1-800 numbers, and 95% to using printed user guides.

Customer Reviews

Simply having customer reviews is a good start, but the presence of review content alone is not optimal. Consider the helpful features in today’s product review tools. Amazon allows customers to provide feedback on reviews, marking them as “helpful” or “not helpful,” and features the “most helpful positive review” and “most helpful negative review” first.

Sites that allow customers to provide star ratings for individual product attributes are also helpful. One can see a product’s strengths and weaknesses at a glance. E.g. if picture and sound quality are most important to you, you want to avoid TV sets that are reasonably priced (value) but lack in the areas you care about.

Shoeline.com has one of the most creative feedback features I’ve ever come across. The Return-O-Meter shows visually the relative frequency a product is returned, along with most common reasons why, such as “fits short.” This helps customers pick the right size or width the first time.

Site Tools and Features

Product finders can also assist customers in finding appropriate products by asking the right questions. Jessop’s Camera has one of the most intelligently designed shopping tools I’ve seen. It provides dynamic product recommendations based on how important various camera features are to the customer. The attributes work together – when you adjust megapixels to the right indicating high importance, you’ll notice ISO slides left. Product suggestions also dynamically adjust, along with a relevancy rating. This instills a lot of confidence in making the right product selection, quickly.

Jessop’s explains that “Increasing the importance of one feature automatically decreases the others, mimicking the natural trade-offs of your decision.”

This visually teaches the customer that there are tradeoffs between features. With cameras, many folks are misguided by megapixels, thinking the higher the MP the better. If a product is purchased based on the wrong feature, which compromises other features, the customer is more likely to be dissatisfied and return the item, only to repeat the same mistake with another make and model.

Another emerging technology is artificial intelligence. SalesClark is a shopping tool consumers can use to locate computer products. The virtual customer service rep asks a series of questions and finds products to fit a customer’s criteria. I’m expecting to see technology like this baked into actual ecommerce sites soon.

SalesClark is programmed to catch conflicts between products and features customers think they want. For example, “MacBook for gaming” or “Netbook to watch DVDs.” Macs aren’t geared for gamers, and Netbooks don’t have space for a DVD drive. The virtual assistant will point out the problem and suggest more appropriate product types for the usage preference.

Virtual customer service transcripts are another great source of information on what customers are looking for, as are email and live chat records. Mine them regularly for clues as to why some products are frequently returned, or what attributes are important to customers. Try to bucket reasons for return into common groups and review trends (NTF or “no trouble found,” “defective,” “wrong color,” “wrong size,” “incompatible,” “item not as described,” “wrong item,” “not what ordered,” etc.) Don’t forget to include any data you gather from in-store returns.

Customer Support

When touring Zappos headquarters, I was impressed at the CSR center. Customer service reps were free to walk around and pick up product to describe to customers. A customer could ask if the shoe “feels heavy,” or ask specifics like “how high is the heel?” Many times I’ve called customer service and the CSR has not had any contact with the product I want to buy, rather he or she can only help with product location or checkout issues.

Training CSRs on solution selling is also key. They should have access to accurate information, such as device compatibility. I recently asked a CSR to help me find a USB headset that would work with Mac. He directed me to a product that indeed was not compatible, but the CSR told me it would be. The costs of a refund or exchange would be felt by both parties in such a case.

Question and Answer tools on product pages can also reduce returns. Make sure you have staff experts answering questions. Too many sites let unanswered questions linger for months – which not only lets down the question asker, but shows all customers you don’t care much about service or don’t know much about your product.

Knowledge bases are important for many product types, especially computers, software and other technical products. But KBs can also be tedious to use. Consider asking whether knowledge base entries are helpful, like Google. Also consider running some usability tests to see where users get frustrated navigating your KB.

The PRO Challenge

Product Return Optimization should be as important as Conversion Rate Optimization. You might not be able to do everything above, but even if you chose one area to focus on, you’re on your way to reduced costs and higher profits next year.

So how does your stack up in the customer service department? There are a lot of small things that impact customer service, so I’ve developed a Customer Service Scorecard which you can download for free to find out your CSQ (Customer Service Quotient). Don’t have Microsoft Excel? You can access the Google Doc version here.

How to use the scorecard

First, make sure you’re using the appropriate scorecard for your industry. There are 2 tabs in the spreadsheet, one for general retail (clothing, electronics, furniture, toys etc), and one for the software/telco industry.

Each line item has a point value from 1-4, with 4 being most important. You either get full marks or no marks for an item. For example, 24/7 customer service is worth 2 marks. You can’t get 1 mark for 9-5 Monday to Friday service. Customers can either reach you any time or they can’t.

The line item point values total 100, but you can get bonus points for certain features like a free return shipping policy or the ability to re-order items from past invoices. If you score over 100, please let me know in the comments, you deserve an award!

Retail Customer Service Scorecard

Below is the content of the retail scorecard. You can’t enter your own data into this post, so make sure to download the real thing (or view the Google Doc).

CUSTOMER SERVICE ACCESS
Customer service number clearly visible on every page (4)
Customer service has its own link (not buried under “help” or “Contact Us”) (4)
24/7 customer service – telephone, live chat or both (2)
Live chat button is easy to find on all pages of the site (2)
Emails are answered within 24 hours (3)
Business hours and expected email response times are listed on the site (1)
Customer self-serve knowledge base or FAQ available (1)
Twitter customer service channel (1)
Customers on hold are provided with average wait times, number of calls ahead or opportunity to leave a call-back number (1)
Customers are assigned a dedicated service rep (1)

POLICIES
Clear links to shipping, returns and privacy policy (4)
Returns policy extended for holidays (2)
Site search tool includes shipping, returns policies (1)
Bonus: free return shipping [2pts]
Bonus: 365 days to return [1pt]
Bonus: Ship to store [2pts]

GENERAL WEB DESIGN AND USABILITY
Persistent cart (4)
Personalized recommendations (3)
Search refinement tools (filters, did you mean, autocorrect) (3)
Show stock availability in search, category and product pages (3)
Gift finder or other guided selling tool (3)
Product reviews (3)
Customer Q&A tools (2)
Offer contextual help (2)
Show shipping calculator on product page (1)
Shipping in X business days (1)
Bonus: Customer can request email notification when item back in stock [1]
Bonus: Shipping by X date (people can’t count in their heads) [1]
Use website monitoring (3)
Customer service questions are logged and run by the ecommerce design and usability team on a regular basis (3)

CART SUMMARY
Show that the product is in-stock (2)
Offer pre-checkout shipping/tax calculator (1)
Provide a delivery estimate (2)
Offer gift receipt option with price suppressed (1)
Offer gift wrapping and/or gift message (1)

CHECKOUT
Secure checkout (4)
Guest checkout (4)
Show customer service contact options clearly (live chat, telephone) (3)
Friendly error handling (2)
Email cart (1)
Save cart for later (1)
Move cart items to a wish list (1)
Bonus: reorder from order history [1pt]
Bonus: Single sign-on across sites [1pt]Bonus: one cart for all stores [1pt]

POST CHECKOUT
Offer order tracking (3)
Send email order confirmation (4)
Send email with a branded sender address (2)
Include a tracking number in confirmation email (2)
Include customer service contact information in confirmation email (2)
Send email when item has shipped with tracking number (1)
Don’t auto-check boxes in email signup (2)
Phone customers when there is a problem with their order, don’t rely on email (3)

TOTAL SCORE (out of 100)

What’s your grade?

86-100+ Stellar Service
65-85 Good Service
50-64 Average Service
0-49 Needs Improvement

If this was helpful to you, please Tweet this post or share it on Facebook (buttons at the top of this post).

However, the lack of credit card adoption has not slowed the growth of ecommerce adoption in China. As in other countries around the world, popular alternatives to credit cards have arisen online. These alternative payment types can create a drastically different checkout process from what we are used to in North America.

One such example is from the Alibaba Group, founders of Taobao (China’s answer to eBay) who back in 2004 created Alipay, a popular online payment platform similar to PayPal. In China, over 300 million consumers have an Alipay account and use Alipay to pay for goods purchased from popular online shopping sites including Taobao.com and Amazon.cn. Alipay allows consumers to pay for goods either immediately after purchase or on delivery.

Conversely, German consumers don’t have any issues obtaining credit cards, rather they are just uncomfortable using them. Germans don’t like to carry a balance on their credit cards, and thus avoid using their credit cards for high-value purchases. Instead, they prefer to use bank credit transfers. Online stores in Germany need to allow consumers to pay via direct bank transfer as well as credit cards. Mytoys.de, like most German retailers, presents bank transfers as the primary payment method.

In Brazil, credit cards are commonly used online, however, most online retailers allow consumers to pay in installments. Netshoes, Brazil’s largest online shoe retailer, allows its customers to pay with a variety of credit cards, including the local Brazilian Hipercard, and spread the cost of the purchase over a period of up to 12 months, interest free.

Offering credit card payment via installments is also popular in Japan. Apple offers a range of payment installment options on its Japanese store ranging from 3 to 24 months.

Interestingly, Netshoes also allows customers to split the cost of purchases across 2 different cards, empowering consumers with a low remaining credit balance on one of their cards to still make purchases.

In Japan, many consumers pay for online goods in local convenience stores like 7-Eleven. Japan is primarily a cash-based society where credit card penetration is lower than North America and Europe and carries a stigma of insecurity for online usage. When selling to Japanese buyers, retailers must offer convenience store (konbini) payments, which have become one of the most popular payment methods for online payments in Japan. Consumers order goods in a conventional way, but select “convenience store” as the payment method during the checkout process. After the order is submitted the item(s) are reserved and the consumer is sent a pay ID via E-mail. The consumer usually has up to 6 days to pay for the order at one of Japan’s 40,000 convenience stores. Once payment is received, the items are shipped.

In fact, Amazon also allows Japanese consumers to pick up their orders from the convenience store, similar to Walmart’s Site-to-Store feature in the US.

Finally, although almost unheard of in North America and the UK, cash on delivery is still a popular payment method in some European countries and across Asia. In many countries where private courier firms are used for delivery and credit card adoption is low, this option makes perfect sense.

So before you roll out your next store in a new market, make sure you carefully study consumers’ payment preferences. Credit cards should always be accepted, but in some markets, you may need to ensure you offer alternative payment options. Otherwise, your cart abandonment may be very high on the last step of your checkout process. Work closely with your payment gateway provider to find out what localized payment types they can support and look at other online sites in these markets to see what payment types are being offered online.

We’ve covered a lot on international ecommerce this month in the run up to our next webinar with Zia Daniell Widger of Forrester Research, Tapping into the International Online Consumer: What Every Enterprise Needs to Know About Going Global. Reserve your spot today, it happens this Wednesday at 9am PST/12pm EST.