Forum Moderators: buckworks
100. Never leave unanswered emails for more than 48 hours, or your customer is gone.
Anyone, 99?
Hab
[edited by: Habtom at 8:18 am (utc) on June 10, 2007]
[edited by: lorax at 5:19 pm (utc) on June 10, 2007]
Of course you can pre-select United States, but it's kinda annoying for people in the United Kingdom who expect to find their country as the next item in the list!
Matt
[edited by: lorax at 5:17 pm (utc) on June 10, 2007]
[edited by: lorax at 5:17 pm (utc) on June 10, 2007]
92. Don't bury your products in several pages of clickthroughs, implement a working search mechanism so the user can get to what they seek in two clicks, three maximum. Insure there are redundant methods of getting around and no point on your site is more than two clicks away . . . from ANYWHERE.
91. Keep your initial products pages light and clean, with links to product details if they actually want to read.
90. Build your site for the end user, not the search engines. This means leave off all the serp-y text on the initial products pages.
[edited by: lorax at 5:18 pm (utc) on June 10, 2007]
89 - give the user a sense of who you are. The web is a cold, anonymous place. Anything you can do to bring a sense of personality and assurance to your website will help.
88 - if you use a site search, make sure it works better than expected. It should search more than product names. Make sure it can find products by SKU, Model Number, and even misspellings if possible.
87 - be sure to include links to your privacy, shipping, returns & exchange policies right out where the customer can easily find them. Tell them the truth.
[edited by: lorax at 12:56 pm (utc) on June 11, 2007]
85. Re: Navigation - Use the same visual theme for every action required of the customer
84. Re: Product options - Make them clear and comprehensive. Answer every possible question on the product detail page
So, whos writing the book?
81: Don't start huge lists like this that require people to read every previous post thoroughly :)
80: If you only ship to USA (or wherever) say that right off and several times.
79: Drives me crazy when the "About Us" section says nothing specific about the seller and just has some obviously canned verbiage.
78: Mission Statements: Yuck! Luckily they seem to be dying out. No one gives a damn, anyway.
77: Goes without saying that spelling must be perfect. On slow days, have employees proof read old pages.
76: Bragging about yourself is ok if you have something to brag about. But better to not mention things like "Since 2005" or "here's a picture of our new puppy."
75: If you're new to ecommerce NEVER mention that. Invitation to scammers to hit you.
74: Get a real 800# (or 888), not a 866 or such.
73: Get the most web un-savvy person you know to test your site.
72: Customize product descriptions. Eschew text provided by suppliers which everyone else uses.
71: Listen to customers, invite their comments and criticism and act on what you learn
70: Answer emails in 8 hours max (certainly not 48)
69: Give street address but never "we're in Puppyland Center, between Tony's Pizza and the Shoe repair shop."
68: Show good sharp graphics. Learn to use basic photo editing software.
67: Worth saying again, and again. Make everything fast and simple. Do you really need a wish list or tell-a-friend or even customer registration? Don't just add to your site. Sometimes remove clutter.
65. Calling your customer to thank them and confirm their order instills immediate trust.
• When the customer is looking at their card and alternately typing on their keyboard, they don't like to look up and realise that they have only entered the first four numbers in field one.
• Customers haven't got time to read explanations about how you would like them to format the date. Make it easy and obvious.
• If the customer has entered some incorrect information, please let them know this without them having to type in all their details again.
63. Install a really good stats system to track where your visitors bailed out of the purchasing process.
62. Pay good money for a proper interactive graphic designer (not a coder, web 'developer', or print designer doing a bit of moonlighting). If your web site looks professional, people will trust it and buy stuff.
61. Accessibility and usability - those 5% of 'non-standard' user groups all add up.
• They may only be 5% of your customer base, but Mac users also have spending power. Often proportionately more than your Windows customers. So it may be worth having your site tested with this in mind.
• Another 5-10% may be blind or partially sited. Having an accessible web site and checkout process is good for business.
59. Have a "best sellers" or "most popular" listing. The boost from this has been noticeable.
58. If your site ranks best in your niche, and If you sell something that is sold on many other websites (something drop shipped for you, for example), very slightly change the name -- Tarenta to Tarento, Classica to Classico, for example. This helps deter people price shopping for the 'product name' elsewhere and in the shopping engines.
It not only helps to load it fast for most of your audience, it also enhances google rankings in that country specific google, and prevents your site from being filtered out when people use the search filter for sites only from that country.
#52 - Referral Program: Refer 2 friends and get x% additional/ discount always helps.
[edited by: JudgeJeffries at 8:52 am (utc) on June 11, 2007]
48. Know your visitors - if significantly more people are first-time-buyers, don't hit them with a login screen with a small link to register to the site - reverse the process.
47. Keep your cart on your domain - if for nothing else, it keeps your reporting homogenous.
46. Don't use the "simple" methods of gateway processing where the visitor is redirected to the gateway site. It seems that on almost every implementation of these setups the webmaster fails to bring the most current site layout over to the gateway site and the visitor gets a whole new layout for cc errors.
45. Never tell the visitor to "Hit your 'back' button to correct". I haven't found a valid reason to do this yet - any issue should be able to be handled within the system.
44. Have a "Help" link very prominently displayed so they have somewhere to go if there is an issue.
[edited by: lorax at 1:54 pm (utc) on June 11, 2007]
[edit reason] added numbering [/edit]
Ad to no. 100 , answer your mail within 10 to 30 minutes, they will always reply like Thanks For Your Quick Answer and will always remember and talk about your great service.
It is better to deny a suspected fraudlent order in post processing, rather than have the computer automatically deny honest customers due to AVS or CVV issues.
Amazon do this a lot and it drives me mad.
[edited by: Calculus at 4:14 pm (utc) on June 11, 2007]
I hold my widgets in stock and try to ship same day. The customer almost always comes back for more. I get many WOW mails. This is a sure TIP. ;-)
