Famous Last Words : Make It Easy to Order!

"When in doubt, do the obvious,” said my first mentor in business, Franklin Watts.

In 1993, my wife, Peggy, and I bought a Center City Philadelphia fixer-upper row house, which we gutted and turned into our dream pad. However, a number of the designer light fixtures were esoteric—not the kind stocked at the A&P or even The Home Depot.

One day, a bright fluorescent overhead bulb in the kitchen started blinking angrily, and I spent a Saturday driving to lighting stores all over Philly and South Jersey with no luck.

Somehow I found a lighting guy in Ohio and faxed him a picture of the sleeve that the bulb came in and an order for six of them. He phoned to say he could supply that bulb model from a different manufacturer. I gave him a credit card number over the phone, and the bulbs arrived a few days later.

I had a satisfactory fax-’n’-call relationship with the guy for years. But last month the same pesky light in the kitchen blew out. I operate a QWERTY keyboard at 70 words per minute and do not like talking on the phone or bothering with the glacially slow fax machine. So I went on this guy’s Web site and was given two ordering options: (1) call the 800-number; or (2) fill out a lighting support form.

“To correctly identify you (sic) lamp we will need as much of the following information as possible.”

The form had 13 separate pieces of information to fill in: wattage, voltage, base style, lumen or candle power, glass shape, glass color, etc.

Come on, guy. All I wanted to do was type in the bulb number, get a price and give him a credit card number.

“Make it easy to order,” said one of my first mentors in business, Elsworth Howell, founder of Grolier Enterprises and Howell Book House. That five-word dictum has been etched in my memory since 1963, along with many hundreds of others.

Clearly, modern Web marketing had passed my Ohio guy by.

I went to Google and typed in: “SLI LYNX D 18w.” The first entry was AtlantaLightBulbs.com. I clicked and up came a picture of my bulb at $4.95. I ordered a dozen, typed in my credit card number and received an instant acknowledgment. Four days later the bulbs arrived via UPS. The entire transaction was as easy as kiss my hand.

When Creating Order Devices
Consider the following:

• If any single component of an offer can kill the deal, it is a poorly constructed order mechanism.

• Before finalizing the order device, think about handing it off to four or six perfect strangers to try it out. If they have frustration or trouble, send it back to the copywriter and designer for surgery.

• “Give the order mechanism more time and effort per square inch than any other element of the offer. It’s time well-spent.” —Malcolm Decker

• “Create the order form in conjunction with the people who do your order processing, telephone sales, white mail response and customer service. Give them the final vote. It must be simple, clear, direct and—if you can possibly imagine it—foolproof.” —Malcolm Decker

• “Is it easy to read? Does it have adequate type size for readers whose eyesight will vary? Is it easy to understand, with room to include all information such as size, color, item number or other information important to the completion of the order?” —USA Direct

• Let customers order any way that floats their boat: phone, fax, Internet or snail mail.

• Offer a live person to answer questions—by phone, fax or Internet.

• Do not answer your phone with a recorded message.

• If the order comes in via the Internet, you need to send an instant acknowledgment.

• Send an e-notice when the product is shipped.

• And the last bit of wisdom from USA Direct: “Are customer assurances, such as return/refund policies and guarantees, featured clearly?”

Denny Hatch is a freelance direct marketing consultant and copywriter, and author of the e-mail newsletter, Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense. Visit him at www.businesscommonsense.com or www.dennyhatch.com, or contact him via e-mail at dennyhatch@yahoo.com.

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