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E-Commerce Link : Humanizing the Web

Move beyond transactions to experiential shopping

May 2008 By Ken Burke
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As the playing field levels for online retailers in terms of basic transactional capabilities-e.g., fast checkout processes, accurate shipping calculators, e-mail order confirmations-how can we increase sales and build competitive advantage in the years ahead?

I believe the next fundamental shift in e-commerce is to create experiential shopping by humanizing the Web. This means using new techniques, technologies and capabilities to allow people to interact with each other, share ideas, and rate products and services. It even means allowing negative comments about your products and services to appear on your site!

By making the online experience more compelling through real and unfiltered human-to-human interaction, merchants build trust with customers, making them more likely to buy products and services and recommend the brand to others.

The Human Touch
Merchants have to communicate with customers early and often, not only through the transaction cycle, but also through ongoing community building and customer-to-customer communications. There are three primary ways online merchants can create experiential shopping.

1. Promote customer reviews, satisfaction, service and support. The functionality consumers want most on a retail Web site are customer ratings and reviews. According to the 2006 JupiterResearch study, Retail Marketing: Driving Sales Through Consumer-Created Content, 77 percent of online shoppers seek reviews before purchasing. What's more, a 2006 eVOC Insights study reveals 63 percent of online shoppers are more likely to buy from sites with ratings and reviews, and a 2007 ForeSee Results study finds reviews drive 21 percent higher purchase satisfaction and 18 percent higher loyalty.

Customer reviews let buyers rate products according to the criteria that matter most to them, which lends credibility to the site. Reviews may also help boost your search engine rankings, as spiders scan the text as relevant content.

Merchants sometimes balk at the prospect of allowing customers to define the benefits of a product-and to point out the negatives. While it may seem counterintuitive, negative reviews are essential to building credibility. According to a 2007 Forrester Research study of 4,000 reviews for 30 products on Amazon.com, negative reviews comprised just 16 percent of the total and were considered helpful by 50 percent of shoppers.

eBags.com, an online retailer of handbags, luggage, backpacks and travel accessories, not only uses reviews on its site, but also promotes the number of reviews as a major benefit.

When it comes to demonstrating satisfaction, service and support, it's key to reassure shoppers at every step of the purchase process:

• Address security concerns by using third-party certification logos such as VeriSign and HackerSafe, which can help boost conversion as much as 14 percent.
 

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Most Recent Comments:
Carolyn Gardner - Posted on May 15, 2008
Ken, you've done a great job at capturing some key points with respect to improving the online experience with a human touch. But I wish you could have touched on how the human touch can be effectively influenced through web personalization...which essentially taps into web analytics to segment and serve the right content to the right person at the right time. The first time visitor segment would want a very strong feeling of trust to resonate for example. Or a geo-segment - perhaps the Canadian shopper - might also want to quickly understand that you ship to Canada etc. Bundling web personalization technology with the humanistic tactics you've provided would definitely help boost conversion and loyalty. It's all good.

Carolyn Gardner
Director of Customer Experience
cgardner@sitebrand.com
Click here to view archived comments...
Archived Comments:
Carolyn Gardner - Posted on May 15, 2008
Ken, you've done a great job at capturing some key points with respect to improving the online experience with a human touch. But I wish you could have touched on how the human touch can be effectively influenced through web personalization...which essentially taps into web analytics to segment and serve the right content to the right person at the right time. The first time visitor segment would want a very strong feeling of trust to resonate for example. Or a geo-segment - perhaps the Canadian shopper - might also want to quickly understand that you ship to Canada etc. Bundling web personalization technology with the humanistic tactics you've provided would definitely help boost conversion and loyalty. It's all good.

Carolyn Gardner
Director of Customer Experience
cgardner@sitebrand.com