Jason Solarek is Creative Director of the Solarek Studio, a Manhattan-based marketing company that builds websites for the tabletop industry, including DeVine Corporation, Scully & Scully, and William-Wayne & Co.
Contact Jason at: jason@solarek.com.
Ten Questions To Ask To Increase Sales from Your Website
August / September 2006 Tableware Today
Online sales in 2005 grew 22% to $143.2 billion, and they are predicted to grow more than 20% this year. If you don't have the right website, your competitors will simply reap your share of this $143.2 billion. A true website offers the ability to: browse 100's of product images, buy these items, and manage your marketing (e.g. e-newsletters, customers, and advertisements).
The most expensive part of running a website is adding content. My advice: kindly ask the distributor of your products to take photographs for all products, write tasteful descriptions, and post this information on their site for you and other retailers to access for free. DeVine Corporation (www.devinecorp.net) smartly does this for the nine brands it distributes. However, many brands and distributors do not offer this and it's causing chaos: 1,000's of retailers around the world are forced into playing amateur product photographer, writing minimalist product descriptions, and then slapping this up on their site. Or, they hire a photographer to shoot the item for $50. Why should 1000's of retailers pay $50 per item while one source can pay $50 and distributing it to the rest for free?
There are three common suggestions I make to clients to improve ease of use:
- Get rid of Flash introductions (and Flash websites). Flash is slow and excessive, and your goal is to empower your customers to browse products as fast as possible. Furthermore, Flash is problematic because it's difficult for Google to search its content. (Embedded Flash, however, is a feasible option.)
- Use large type font. Many customers are more than 40-years old.
- Use Ajax technology. Ajax is a free website technique that lets you roll over a product and quickly see enlarged images, pricing, and stock.
At your physical store, you employ people that smile because customers trust smiling people-and therefore they buy. Photos of people smiling on your website have the same effect: studies show that people are 20% more likely to complete a purchase from a site with a picture of a person on it.
We have all heard the adage that 80% of business comes from 20% of customers. To keep in touch with this 20%, collect the e-mails of your best customers and send out an e-newsletter once every two months to share what is going on at your store. (Of course, make it easy to unsubscribe, otherwise you may alienate the customer.) For DeVine Corporation, I built an e-news tool that helps DeVine communicate with general customers and the nation's top 400 retailers. A tool like this may cost about $3,000, and should pay for itself after six e-newsletters.
Why should thousands of retailers pay $50 to photograph one item when one source can pay $50 and distribute it free to the rest?
If a store is not making enough to cover rent, personnel, and inventory costs, then close the store. This strategy is not the way to approach the web. Be confident that you can take your share of the rapidly growing $143.2 billion in online sales. Put one person in charge of your website and encourage them to create a plan to grow your website.
The bridal industry in the U.S. is worth $60 billion a year. Take your piece of this $60 billion by creating an online registry, which costs approximately $3,500 to set up and will more than pay for itself after seven registries. Remember, if brides can't register at your site, they will register with your competitors.
Put as many products online as possible. Most people will find your site through Google, and Google looks at what products you have (as well has how search friendly your site is). The long-term benefit of this strategy is that no consultant will be able to pull the rug out from under you-you have products on your site, and that is money in the bank. Google Ad Words in another promotional tool to consider.
Where there is measurement, there are results. Do the following weekly:
- Review online sales.
- Keep track of telephone orders that originate from your website.
- Calculate how much you are saving by doing business online vs. offline (e.g. sending out e-newsletters saves postage).
- Review your website statistics frequently. If you don't already have webstats, www.Lem.net offers reasonable packages.
- Record how your site ranks in Google when you type in your site's keywords (e.g. "tableware").
In the 10 minutes you took to read this, $2.35 million worth of goods were sold online. Fill an Anna Weatherley teacup with some steamy Earl Grey and start planning your website's success now.