The biggest reason people are staying away from the Black Friday crowds is that the deals online are just as good, if not better than what you can find in the stores. Customers who go out of their way to do their shopping on Black Friday simply want to get the best deals possible. If that bargain is available elsewhere, what’s the point of lining up to shop in the middle of the night with a mob of other rowdy customers?

So, how exactly are retailers faring online? According to industry numbers, 84 million people logged on to do their shopping in November and December of last year. It’s estimated the number will rise another 9 to 16 percent this year. Retailers seem to be doing quite well for themselves marketing online.

Why are customers shopping online instead of going to brick-and-mortar stores? Convenience is cited as a major reason, as well as getting great deals over the course of the whole winter shopping season. Internet deals tend to be going on all the time, rather than being limited to just one day. It’s easier for shoppers to find what they want and get great deals at 3:00 AM or whenever, and in their pajamas to boot, instead of having to brave the cold.

Retailers and online businesses are taking advantage of this by pushing ahead with “Black Friday” deals before the actual Friday after Thanksgiving. For example, Amazon is holding an entire week of deals ahead of Black Friday. For other retailers and small businesses, competing with Amazon’s model might not be feasible, but there are ways to leverage the business model. Stores can hold a “countdown,” offering a better deal each day leading up to the actual Black Friday event, creating somewhat of a buzz by using the Internet.

Another factor that can’t be discounted is the influence of online deal sites like Groupon and Living Social. An estimated 39 percent of online shoppers will search for deals this winter using these types of sites that offer discounts on local attractions.

Black Friday may still appeal to those who want to get that one must-have item, but more and more people are seeing the advantages of shopping online. As retailers notice this trend increasing, it’s only more likely online deals are going to get better and better while location-based retail declines. Consumers will buy with the cheapest and most convenient method out there, and the Internet has proved to be the best tool to accomplish that goal.

About the Author
Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Let’s look at an example from Dell.com. They segment their customers into several types. As the visitor to the website navigates down one of those paths, the website organizes the products and eliminates irrelevant options.

For example, the home customer isn’t distracted by the latest rack-mounted servers and the enterprise customer isn’t distracted by the home entertainment system.

To effectively get your customers to the point of sale, you need to clear the road of any obstacles.

These obstacles are choices and items that are distractions to the customer.

Sticking with our web example, if your customer has made selections based on their navigation through your site, you should not show them products that no longer match those needs.

As you eliminate options which are not relevant to the customer, they can more quickly find what they are looking for and proceed to the point of sale.

Too often we try and show the customer all of our products and services all the time. We hope that will keep them around because every possibility is readily at hand.

However, this is not the case. Too many choices confuse customers.

As you start to learn what your customers are looking for, you’ll be able to help them laser focus down to the right product match for their needs.

Think about how you can organize your product offering and eliminate distractions based on what you know about your customer. This knowledge can come from past purchase history or even the last click they made on your website.

Likewise we take a website’s recommendation when we accept the default choice that has been presented to us.

A great example of this comes from Kiva.org. Kiva is a non-profit where you can provide a micro-loan to the working poor around the world. For example, you can loan money to Blanca in El Salvador so she can buy goods for her corner store. She sells those goods, repays the loan, and then you can loan the money to another entreprenuer.

Kiva really wants you to complete the loan to Blanca and other entrepreneurs like her. They don’t want distractions or roadblocks to get in the way of you completing that loan.

To help get you to complete the task at hand, Kiva uses the power of defaults.

Once you’ve decided to whom you will loan your money, Kiva shows you a defaulted amount that you can loan. In this case, it is $25.

This immediately answers the question: “how much should I loan to Blanca?”

The default sounds good so you move on to the next step.

Kiva also wants you to donate to their non-profit so they default an amount for that purpose as well.

All of these defaults are in place to propel you to finish and fund the loan.

By using defaults, the site eliminates one more thing you have to think about.

Defaults not only push customers to complete a task, they can influence the direction you want them to take.

Defaults are extremely powerful. People will take the default.

Carefully consider what you default when you present choices to customers. Are there any downstream consequences? Will you need to make more of the widget you default for purchase? Will there be more customer support issues for that particular product?

Map out the downstream consequences so that you can give customers a default that is good for both the company and the customer.

Try some defaults on your website. You’ll be amazed at the results.

How You Can Help…

I’m competing against 3600 other submissions for only 500 speaking slots. So your help is critical!

If you’ve enjoyed the content here on Return Customer or seen one of my presentations, I’d appreciate it if you could vote for my panel.

Here’s what you need to do (it will take less than 4 minutes):

1. Visit: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12457

   My panel is called “Using Psychology to Increase e-Commerce Conversion”

2. Click the “Create an Account” link at the top of the page:

   

3. After your account is created, make sure you are on this page: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12457 and click the thumbs up:

   

4. You’re done!

Thanks!

Thanks for your support! If you voted or will be at SXSW next year, let me know in the comments.

“Object reference not set to an instance of an object”

This message was clearly written by a programmer and should never be seen by a customer or end-user of a website.

To the average customer, this message is pure nonsense. Don’t write nonsense messages that your customers will see.

Write customer friendly error messages for your website.

Or, better yet, mistake proof your website so customers never see an error message.

When real-time inventory information is missing or inaccurate, customers will get frustrated.

I recently purchased a generator from electricgeneratorsdirect.com. The individual product pages clearly show if a particular generator is in stock or on back order:

This information helps the customer make an informed and confident purchase decision.

Scarcity Drives Sales

You can also use real-time inventory to your advantage in marketing your products. If there are only a few products left in stock, tell your customers.

The principle of scarcity is a powerful psychological motivator.

When customers see that you only have a few products left, they will feel compelled to order to avoid losing out on the desired product.

Mimic Offline Store Shelves

You are trying to replicate the offline shopping experience on your website. At a corner store, a person can see if a product is on the shelf or not. When something is out of stock, the customer immediately knows and can pick an alternative off the shelf or go to another store.

The feedback is almost instant. Your website needs to convey this same in-stock message.

Real-Time Inventory Leads to Sales

When customers know that you really have the product they want or are transparent in what you can deliver, they will be more confident in buying from you.

The last time I checked, that wasn’t my name. If my bank doesn’t know my name, I start to get a little worried. After all, my name is tied to my money at that same institution.

Your online marketing and efforts will have many places where you can greet the customer by name. This may be in an email or on the customer’s online account screen.

If you are going to call a customer by name, make sure you call them the right name.

My bank’s example above highlights what can happen when a programming error (can’t find the name) makes its way to a document the customer sees.

Make sure your applications and emails can detect when a name isn’t found, isn’t available, or another error happens and then don’t use the customer’s name.

In case of emergency, it is OK to be generic by omitting the name altogether or even starting with the “dear valued customer” salutation. Granted, you don’t want to use generic greetings all the time, but they can fill in when something isn’t working right.

Do you know your customers’ names? Use them wisely and it will positively personalize the experience. Use them poorly and they detract from the customer experience.

Think about when you go to the grocery store. You hand over your cash or credit card and immediately are given your products and a receipt. These are physical reassurances that your transaction is complete and you can go home happy.

In the online world, there are no such physical assurances. Often customers have to wait for a product to ship and fall into a limbo state of waiting for some confirmation that all is well.

During this waiting period, customers can be unsure of what happened or is happening with their order. This doubt and fear leads to an unpleasant buying experience that customers won’t be fond of repeating.

Your site may show an “Order Successful” type page after the checkout process is completed. However, this is not enough.

Let’s look at two examples.

When I place an order on amazon.com, usually by the time I’m done reading the summary page of my completed order, I’ve got an email from them confirming my purchase. By confirming my order in two places, on the original screen and via email, the retailer reassures customers that everything is fine.

Contrast this with when I place an order from Lego’s online store. It takes several hours after my order is submitted for me to get an email confirmation.

If your website has the technology to handle online orders, it can handle sending immediate emails to customers after the sale.

Reassure customers that the order went through and ease their anxiety by immediately confirming their purchases. If your company has slower, legacy systems that process orders coming from your website, send a confirmation that the order was received.

The key is to keep the customers in the loop of what is happening so buyer’s remorse doesn’t set in and lead to future problems.

If you sell your products and services online then you may feel somewhat distant from your customers. To some extent, that’s a natural by-product of the way in which online selling often works.

It’s not like having your own physical store, where you may see individual customers on a regular basis and will probably find it easier to strike up a good relationship with them.

Despite this, it is perfectly possible to provide your customers with what they want when you are selling online. As ever, the key to running a successful business is to ensure that you maintain a high level of customer service. This is the best way to guarantee that customers will keep returning to your online store.

When it comes to the internet, you need to think about how potential customers will react from the moment that they arrive at your website.

You should be aiming to create a site that is professional, that’s easy to navigate around and where everything is transparent.

In particular, you should obviously provide a secure payment facility and also make sure that you make it clear that you have done so. Ensure that you don’t hide any costs – be up front about how much it will cost for you to deliver items, for example. Customers like honesty – they don’t want to feel that you’re holding back any information.

If you have a great deal to offer then certainly make the most of it. Many people associate internet shopping with cost savings, so there’s no harm in demonstrating that they can save by shopping online at your store. Just make sure that you avoid making any false claims. Again, the key here is to be honest and transparent.

What about when it comes to customer contact? Some internet stores like to deal with all contact by email. Although this is certainly possible, you really need to think carefully about how you deal with such emails.

You should certainly always try to reply as quickly as you possibly can. Make sure that your replies are always professional and informative. You should try to avoid standard, automated responses. It can be absolutely infuriating to receive emails of this nature and you certainly don’t want to annoy your customers.

Keeping your customers happy is all about being professional, efficient, honest and transparent. If you stick to these basic principles then you won’t go far wrong.

Author’s Bio:
Keith Barrett takes a keen interest in consumer issues. He writes about shopping and discount codes for Offer UK, a leading consumer website.

What do you think would happen if jolly old Saint Nick ran your website and was in charge of your e-commerce efforts?

Perfect Product Recommendations

Since Santa already knows what everyone likes, the website would prominently display what customers are interested in and are most likely to purchase.

This intense personalization of your site’s offerings will drive sales through the roof.

Lesson: What can you do to better adjust your website to the individual people that are using it? One size doesn’t fit all.

Free Overnight Shipping (only Dec 24th)

If Santa was in charge of your website, any order your customers placed on Christmas Eve would arrive the next morning. That may even be faster than Zappos can deliver.

(Of course, if they don’t order that day, they have to wait a year.)

Lesson: Quick delivery builds trust, a delay undermines the customer experience.

Biggest Product Selection

Sorry Amazon, but an online store run by Santa will have more products than can be counted. After all, he is known for meeting the needs of boys and girls with different tastes all over the world.

Lesson: Does your current online store offer enough products to reach the prospective customers that are crossing your path?

Learn from Santa and your e-commerce efforts will be significantly more successful in the coming year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!