Big news in alternative payments this week: your friendly neighbourhood Amazon has just launched it’s challenger to PayPal and Google Checkout - cleverly dubbed Amazon Checkout. For 2.9% + $0.30 for all transactions over $10, 5.0% + $0.05 for transactions under $10, and tiered volume discounts above $3,000 per month, you too can offer patented 1-click ordering.

There are a few reasons you might consider adding Amazon Checkout to your roster of payment options, including:

• Access to 81 million (no, I didn’t forget a decimal) people already hold Amazon accounts. This is roughly 30% more than PayPal. Customers would not have to create a new account to checkout with you, nor share any additional personal information. If a customer has multiple billing and shipping addresses on file with Amazon, that can be very convenient for the customer.

• Through IP-targeting, Amazon can recognize Amazon.com customers and display the 1-Click checkout for them.
• Show cross-sells and upsells in your cart. And if you show Amazon products in your upsells (eww), you can earn Amazon Associate commissions.
• Call it a halo effect, but having the option to checkout through Amazon Checkout may carry some brand equity - provided experience with the Big A was positive. Plus, Amazon customers are likely aware of the A-to-Z Guarantee, which you now offer by virtue of the Amazon Checkout option.

Amazon promises increased conversion: “Amazon’s familiar checkout experience, 1-Click ordering, A-to-Z Guarantee, and tens of millions of customers who can checkout without re-entering information helps you optimize conversion on your website.”

But Scot Wingo was apt to point out that Amazon Payments comes with a price:

Amazon’s biggest weakness in general in the world of ecommerce technology like this is that they are trying to be both a technology provider to retailers and a competitor. Large retailers (TRU, Borders, etc.) have left Amazon’s third party business en masse because of this and I don’t imagine they will be jumping for joy to add Amazon’s checkout to their sites. For example, you won’t be seeing Wal-mart.com add this any day soon.

This actually plays to PayPal and Google’s advantage and I’m sure as a first response we’ll see them play up these fears: “Do you REALLY want Amazon seeing all of your transactions, learning about your top sellers and then using that data to compete with you?” The fact that Amazon has a well documented history of using partner data to their advantage in the third-party selling world will make this argument very believable.

What do you think? Would you test out Amazon Checkout or do you think the risks outweigh the benefits?

Yesterday we posted a Q&A session with Sally Lowery of Bronto Software on trigger email campaigns. Today we have 2 real-world examples from Amazon. These emails followed up the purchase of a camcorder:

• Amazon doesn’t wait for you to come back to the site to push recommendations at you. 10 days post-purchase,

• Notice the low price point relative to the camcorder (about 10% of purchase price)
• Notice the 2 star customer rating - not too persuasive, eh?
• It would be more persuasive to auto-recommend the highest rated relevant accessory, with a snippet from and direct link to the most helpful positive review
• The link to “improve your recommendations” is a good idea, especially if it was just a gift. Adjusting preferences now means more relevant suggestions next time you log into Amazon.com

• 15 days post-purchase, Amazon sends another plea to buy more

• Gone are the star ratings
• Amazon’s pushing categories, not specific products - there are 3 product links without descriptions, and links to category
• Mix of price points, software can be 3x the price of the purchased product
• Includes service plans
• Includes opt-out: “We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you’d rather not receive future e-mails of this sort from Amazon.com, please opt-out here.”

Now, I understand these are automated recommendations and crafting 1-to-1 cross-sell emails is not efficient. But this email could be a lot more persuasive if it explained more about how these would enhance the ownership experience of the purchased product - and from a fellow customer’s mouth, not the retailer. For the tripod featured in both emails, there’s a video review that 46/47 people found helpful.

Wouldn’t that make for a killer trigger email?

Jason Billingsley and I are always on the hunt for ecommerce trends and innovations. And one of the areas Jason will be covering in Thursday’s webinar Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now and What’s Next is loyalty programs. (There’s still time to sign up!)

Subscription options for consumables is not necessarily a new concept, but certainly an underused tactic of online retailers.

It’s far more common to see e-tailers offering tiered pricing (discounts on quantity) to increase basket size. But customers don’t always want to order a case lot of something — who has room for a year’s worth of coffee in the cupboard? Others don’t have the cash-on-hand to pre-purchase items.

Subscriptions are a great way to:

• Maximize lifetime customer revenue for the item

• Save customer time, storage space and money
• Build long term service relationship with customer
• Potentially sell more/different items over time

How Online Retailers Are Using Product Subscriptions

I first noticed Amazon using subscriptions on select consumables a while ago. The program is called Subscribe & Save, and Amazon has a directory of items that qualify.

• Offers 15% discount

• Choose from 1, 2, 3 or 6 month delivery intervals
• 2 calls-to-action (blue boxes) - hard for shoppers to miss
• Customers are only charged when items leave warehouse
• Email notifications are sent before reorder, customer can modify order if necessary
• Customers can cancel anytime

I just don’t understand why every product on Amazon is a wedding or baby registry candidate…

Coastal Contacts, Drugstore.com and Walgreen’s allow customers to select their own delivery schedule.

Walgreen’s and Drugstore.com allow auto-refill on prescription drugs, but not on all the other product they carry that would also make for great subscriptions like baby formula, diapers, vitamins, razor blades, pet food, shampoo and so on.

Offering Incentives

Amazon gives 15% discount on all Subscribe & Save items. Nutrica offers a free box of vitamins — even if you cancel your subscription, just for giving it a shot. Doctors Foster and Smith offer the 10th shipment free in its Catered Pet program.

Communicating Value

HGH1000.com combines tiered pricing with subscription and provides a chart that shows the price savings on automatic re-orders vs. one-off shipments for each tier. Strikeout prices are effective, as are big, bold or red discount prices, “you save X% or $X” etc.

Purity Products uses % savings and “Best Value!” messaging:

You can choose your delivery interval from the cart, and you find a surprise free gift:

Helping Customers Choose Frequency

Nutrica sells vitamins and supplements, so it’s easy to let customers estimate their expected daily use and select the right monthly program.

Psoriacream gives recommendations based on the severity of one’s psoriasis problem.

Customer review content that addresses product life would be helpful for first-time buyers. For example, how long does a shampoo bottle last long-haired women who wash their hair 3-4 times a week vs. short haired men who wash every day vs. a couple who shares a bottle? How long does 2 lbs of coffee beans last someone who drinks 2 cups a day?

A tool could also be programmed to ask the customer a few questions about their lifestyle and then recommend a frequency. This would depend on the product, whether it’s worth it to program such a tool or not.

Another idea is to use “customers who bought X chose Y delivery time” similar to reviews — one could see that out of 25 customers who subscribed to refill razors, 18 selected 1 month refills, for example.

Some products like mascara should be replaced every few months for hygienic reasons - even if there’s product left in the tube. What an opportunity for pricey makeup stores to gain repeat business — many customers are not aware of that or need to be reminded.

Subscribe is a Call-To-Action

Some retailers have programs, but don’t show it on the product page. That’s a head-scratcher for me…

Others, like Green Mountain Coffee, are just very subtle about it. The “Recurring Delivery” option is near-invisible, and once you add the item to cart, there is no further announcement that you can subscribe to the product.

Since subscriptions bring more money than single purchases, why are they not treated as valuable calls to action?

Alternative Payments

Cenestra Health uses PayPal subscriptions for recurring orders, which may ease the fears of customers who don’t want you to charge their credit card on a regular basis.

Usability Issues

Tabletools.com allows you to order a variety of flavors of a product in whatever quantity you want, as described below. However, it’s asking a lot from its customers to enter the details in the middle of checkout. Shoppers must remember the names of the flavors after they’ve navigated from the product page unless they open up a new tab to check out - otherwise they’ll need to call the order in.

Subscription Program Tips

• If you’ve got a program, flaunt it on your product pages - don’t bury it deep in your site or use near-invisible links

• Link to program details from your product page, preferably without leaving the page (AJAX or pop-up window)
• Clearly communicate shipping charges, billing dates, cancellation policies, pricing policies (are prices subject to change?), how customers can update billing information, shipping address or subscription preferences in your details
• Communicate the benefits (savings and convenience) of subscribing
• Remind customers of health and safety reasons for replacing products regularly, if applicable
• Select realistic delivery options suitable to your product. Don’t force customers into 1, 2, 3, 6 months just because Amazon does it
• Help customers figure out their best reorder schedule. This can be done through customer reviews, questionnaire tools or historical repeat purchase data
• Create a section where customers can browse all products eligible for subscription
• If you use cross-sells, recommend eligible subscription products
• Send a reminder email shortly before you fulfill a repeat order, remind customers they can modify their order (and remind them of their login name or password!)
• If a customer didn’t opt-in for subscription, ask for permission to send a reminder email in X months instead. Customer may not want to commit to transaction but may still be interested in a friendly reminder in time
• If using the above tactic, send the email with an incentive for repurchase and several similar items, should the product ordered not have been satisfactory, customer can choose something else
• Consider “{product} of the month” clubs — get creative. They don’t have to be gifts for other people, and they don’t have to be consumables, either.

It excites me to know end to praise a usability innovation from an online retailer that is NOT Amazon. Hooray!

I noticed a filtered navigation design on Overstock that is really interesting. It combines search with filtered navigation - here’s what I mean:

Say you’re checking out the “Rings” category. You’re presented with a number of ways to narrow your results: Category, Metal, Size, Price and Stone.

But if you’re looking for say, a cocktail ring - this could include a variety of gemstones and metals, could be at any number of price points and would depend on what size you are looking for. Rather than looking at ALL items in the “Rings” category, you can hone in on just the cocktail rings by searching for “cocktail.”

Continue Reading:
Browsing Usability: Overstock Blows Amazon Away »

We talk about Amazon often here on Get Elastic, because you’ll always find some innovation, design or usability improvement to blog about there.

Amazon sometimes attracts more reviews than customers want to read. So Amazon provides tools to filter reviews by star rating and displays the “most helpful” positive and negative review as determined by Amazon’s community.

Plus, you can also search reviews by keyword.

Which is helpful, because you don’t want to buy a product that sucks unless it’s a vacuum or a Flowbee.

Amazon is testing new waters in mobile marketing with its Text-Buy-It technology launched earlier this week. The new service allows customers to check prices from their cell-phone completely through text messaging - bypassing the need to access the mobile web (many people still don’t have web access or incur extra costs per web page viewed). Most if not all phones are text-ready and in general it’s not complicated to figure out.

Since Amazon undersells most brick-and-mortar retailers and is aggressively expanding its product line (including wines), physical stores could turn into local showrooms for Amazon’s inventory - only to help push customers towards an Amazon conversion.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Text a product name, search keyword, UPC code or ISBN number to “AMAZON” (262966)
Step 2: Amazon sends back a numbered list of products and prices matching your search
Step 3: If you find the item you want in stock and at a favorable price you can click the number beside the result to buy
Step 4: Amazon calls (not texts) you back with final details of your order
Step 5: You confirm or cancel your purchase, provide an email address and select a preferred shipping speed

While customers can’t access features that makes Amazon famous like customer reviews and cross-sell suggestions, this is likely going to be a very popular service that could really nail local retailers - the country is in a recession, businesses are already feeling the pinch and customers are more price sensitive.

No word on super-saver shipping options for multiple purchases or if purchases made within a certain time period can be combined.

We can thank Amazon for pioneering many innovations in ecommerce and now mobile commerce. This is certainly an exciting development for discount retailers like Overstock who could develop similar services. It could also work well for etailers that sell items carried by other retailers and can’t compete on price, but have earned loyal and passionate customers through rewards programs, great service or word-of-mouth (Zappos is a good example).

As customer reviews become more and more common on ecommerce sites, we can expect innovations to emerge in design, usability and quality.

It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on Amazon for usability innovations. Today we’ll look at an example of how Amazon helps customers filter product reviews when there are literally hundreds of them. Not only does Amazon help customers hone in on specific types of reviews, it also takes the opportunity to show relevant merchandising based on the customer reviews themselves. In this post I’ll also suggest something that Amazon isn’t doing yet that could help you save sales when review content actually discourages a customer to purchase the item in question.

I’m going to use the example of a book that’s going to be a top-seller on Amazon simply because it’s endorsed by perhaps the most influential television personality in the world - Oprah Winfrey. Most people will not feel the need to read reviews because they trust her opinion so much. Others will be so excited about the book they will read the reviews just to tide them over until the book arrives at their door.

Continue Reading:
Saving Sales From Negative Customer Reviews »

We just wrapped up our webinar on merchandising (cross-selling and up-selling) with Mike Svatek of Baynote.

This was an incredible session and I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of catching the Webinar replay which will be posted within the next few days. The replay will walk you through all of the screenshots used in the presentation - I’ll only be using select screenshots for this recap.

Mike chose the king of cross-selling Amazon to illustrate the concepts in the webinar, sharing an impressive statistic:

35% of Amazon Sales come from cross-sells & recommendations
Venturebeat (Dec 06)

How does Amazon do this?

Merchandising Based on Intent

First-Time Visitors - Pre-Intent

If Amazon has no information on you (your first visit, you are not logged in or your cache and cookies are cleared) you’ll see default merchandising (pre-intent) within a number of merchandising zones, what Mike refers to as a shotgun approach:

Continue Reading:
Webinar Recap: Effective Merchandising: What Sells? »

In case you missed it on TechCrunch the other day, Google is now showing search boxes within SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for some of the larger online retailers like Amazon, Zappos and Office Max.

The boxes only appear for certain keywords, for example “amazon” and “shop amazon” but not “amazon books.” Zappos shows up for “zappos shoes” but not “zappos shopping.” For other sites, adding “shop” or “shopping” to the site name won’t trigger a search box at all.

OfficeMax should be pleased that this works for them but not for Staples and Office Depot, at least it makes them seem a bit more important? I noticed that Target and Walmart get a search box, but not Sears. NewEgg, Radio Shack and BestBuy get one, but not Circuit City. Ebay and Overstock also are left out, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Continue Reading:
Search Within A Search - Good Idea? »

Today, we all know how important customer reviews are to retailers and customers alike. They help convert buyers by building trust and confidence in the product, they reduce returns, draw long-tail search traffic and are a simple entry into on-site communities for ecommerce websites.

But there was a time when no one had them. It makes you wonder what we’re missing today that we don’t know we’re missing.

Let’s take another effective merchandising tool: cross-selling. Currently, ecommerce marketers are banking that their personal cross-sell suggestions or algorithmic-based recommendations will be relevant and attractive to shoppers. This *can* be really hit and miss. But what if we gave customers a crack at cross-selling?

Continue Reading:
User Generated Cross-Sells? Why Is Nobody Doing It? »