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Ten Tips to Keep Shopping Carts Shopping Not Dropping

Desmond White — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:08:28 +0000

People that are shopping online are very impatient. They have no lines to wait in and the checkout is always open. Yet customers still abandon their shopping carts, and that is an issue that online marketers want to prevent as much as possible. There is a company called e-Consultancy that will offer the retailer some helpful hints on keeping shoppers shopping and checking out at the end.

MarketingSherpa has research proving that nearly 60% of online shoppers abandon their carts before checkout.

Ten Tips to Make Sure Shoppers Buy:

Security- Your customer has to feel that they are on a secure site giving personal information to a legitimate and safe cause.
Shorten the process- Make as few steps as possible. Any more and they may grow restless or could change their minds.
Simple Process- Let the customer know where they are in the process. Give them status toolbar so they know where they are in the purchasing process, and how many more steps until the sale is complete.
User Feedback- Wait until checkout is complete to ask for any user feedback. You want the purchase to go fast and w/o interruption.
Registration- Don’t make customers register online until after the purchase. This avoids confusion and streamlines the buying process.
Links- Do not put distractions in front of your customer, links are a good way to get the customer interested in a different idea or product.
Patterns- Use established patterns of collecting information to avoid confusion.
PayPal- Give the option for the visitor to use their PayPal account to pay. This is good for the customer that doesn’t want to use a credit card.
Shipping Info- This is Very important. All customers want to know when they will receive their product, where it is and who is carrying it for them.Shoppers that make impulse buys generally want their product as quickly as possible, so offer express shipping to them. Also give them tracking information to allow them to figure a ballpark arrival of their item(s). Add how much shipping and handling charges will be for the comparison shopper.
Contact Info- Make sure your customers have a quick and easy way to contact you. This adds to the level of trust that if and when something goes wrong that your company will be able to be reached.

One last piece of advice: Customers will use shopping carts to save items that they do not intend to buy at that time so give them a wish list to avoid confusion.

gPhone: Low Cost, High Tech?

Desmond White — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:14:25 +0000

Google’s much anticipated “gPhone” is set to release and compete if not dominate the new iPhone. gPhone is the most sought after competitor of Apple’s iPhone in the latest cellular phone tech boom. They both offer similar features but with one big catch; the gPhone is a fraction of the cost of it’s rival competitor, Apple. Cost is generally the most important stipulation when the public is looking into updating their current technology.

Features on the upcoming gPhone include but are not limited to…

Built in Web and Email
Google Maps™
Google Earth™
Google search
YouTube®
Digital camera
MP3 player
Games such as dodge ball, solitaire,
Nintendo downloads
Hints of much more

So with ample features and a more customer-friendly retail price the choice is simple. Many will go with the just as capable, half-the-price gPhone. In stores soon.

Will Your Boss Buy You an iPhone?

Michael Myles — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:12:43 +0000

This interesting article making the point of how the Apple iPhone is going to be such a great business tool for professionals on-the-go.

“Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great [business] applications look and work on [the] iPhone

This is a little overstated, I think. The iPhone is a nice shiney new toy that we would all love to play with a little. When it comes to business apps, though, professionals need it to be more about function than form. This pretty much negates half of what the iPhone has to offer. When it comes right down to it, the Treo is a superior business tool out of the box. The only real advantage that I see in the iPhone is that it has a superior built-in Safari browser. With this browser, online applications have an easy way to say that their application works on the iPhone. It’s already fully capable of displaying and executing all the fancy AJAX and Javascript stuff that we have come to love in our applications. The AIMpromote CRM Software application is web-based, and is fully iPhone compatible just as-is. We haven’t needed to change anything. That’s nice, but it’s hardly novel. We will see that with its inflated price and it’s almost standard functionality that there are other products on the market that will serve the business community more efficiently. From an Internet marketing standpoint, I think we will be adding an iPhone logo on our site to state that it’s compatible. This will really just be a marketing move though, as there was no actual work involved on our end to make it work on this platform. If I were your boss would I buy you an iPhone? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be because it’s such a great business tool. The Nokia N800 is a far superior product at a lower price point. It has all the necessary business functionality with a price point $100 less than the iPhone. If you want something fun to play with, then get the iPhone. If you are looking for cost-benefit and ROI, get the Treo or the N800.

Increase Profits, Decrease Customer Base

Michael Myles — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:16:05 +0000

Sprint made a bold move recently by canceling 1,200 accounts because they complained too much. According to their books, these accounts called in 40 to 50 times more than the average account.

Apparently, these whiners were dialing in “40 to 50 times as often” as the “average customer,” and after failing to appease them, the firm chose to “terminate the relationship with those customers to allow them to pursue other options.”

This was smart. Some people might cry about how ‘unfair’ it is, but the fact is that these are at-will relationships. If Sprint doesn’t want to do business with unprofitable customers, then they should definitely not be forced to. It wouldn’t surprise me if legislation is created regarding this issue (or at least the attempt will be made to create legislation). Sometimes it’s hard for us to realize that we don’t have to do business with every willing customer. The fact is that if we aren’t profitable, we can’t long provide our services to any customers. This article notes more detail on unprofitable customers:

Unprofitable customers are parasites. Harvard Business Review estimates that, on average, 15% of all customer are unprofitable. The book, Angel Customers & Demon Customers, estimates that, in most industries, the best 20% of customers account for 150% of profits. The worst 20% typically lose money equal to 75% of profits.

You could always raise the prices of these customers, but that has the potential to backfire. How do you explain to one of these parasitic clients that they are being charged an additional premium due to their overuse of services that were supposed to be unlimited. It may actually be illegal to do so. It’s far easier just to cut these clients loose, and let them find another company with which to do business. There are almost always alternatives for the customer. If you have customers that are clearly unprofitable, just cut them loose. It is ethical, and it is the only sane decision that a business can make.