Recently in E-Commerce Category

This week I found myself wandering through Brookstone and admiring their crazy gadgets and ended walking out with a gag gift (think giant sized remote). During the checkout process the sales rep/ cashier offered me a $20 gift certificate to which I responded "no thanks" thinking it was a credit card offer or the likes. But when he explained all I had to do was provide an email address (to send it to he said but capturing it for marketing was clearly the goal) I provided one without hesitation.

Creative sample & comments inside.

Today I'm taking the train from the Bay Area to LA for thanksgiving and thanks to the 12 hour transit time I finally have a chance to work on a few of the sites I've promised to update, like the one for my parent's rental property in Hawaii. As I'm reworking with this site I thought I'd quickly share the idea which inspired this redesign which is something almost every business can be benefiting from especially in these tougher times...

There's no doubt that the current economic climate requires certain cuts and pull backs especially as customers tighten their own wallets but does that mean you should be cutting your online budgets in marketing or optimization? While many out there have jumped up and say yes, stating that less consumer dollars necessitates less spending and less project development to save cash I'm not in agreement, and certainly not when it comes to taking big cuts and drastic steps.

So I'm browsing around some of my favorite blogs tonight I'm seeing a lot of the same suggestions from site to site... FutureNow is talking about common shopping cart mistakes, BeRelevant is linking to a post on using analytics to drive email, LunchPail is explaining the basics of using cookies, and Bazaar Blog is hyping up the perks of social media for increasing sales and decreasing returns thanks to relevancy. What's interesting here isn't what the suggestions are but that they keep coming up, month after money, year after year. One week I'll see a topic covered by one blog, a few weeks later by another and I don't think it's a result of sites ripping content ideas.

So what gives? Why are marketers having trouble optimizing their campaigns and adding features? Click in to keep reading...

While watching football this morning I caught the tail end of a Circuit City commercial about a "One Price Promise". It's a pretty simple statement so what makes it interesting to me is that it's still an issue. Any store crazy enough to change their pricing in store and online is simply missing the boat. Sure your overhead online is lower but your customer doesn't care. Customers shop the channel they want whether it's because they still don't buy online [yes they do still exist - scary, I know] or because they want immediacy or just to put their hands on the product.

Furthermore if you're asking for less online you're encouraging people to abuse your price structure testing offline and buying online. Smartphones, iPhones, phone a friend, people don't stop looking online just because they aren't there anymore. When your prices don't jive the customer isn't going to be fooled and trying to deal with returns from overpricing doesn't help your overhead or brand reputation.

If you want to incentivize online sales make it easy to buy online. Offer simple to returns, useful sales suggestion tools and give out free shipping either without qualifiers or at low levels. These days everyone is online and offline so rather than trying to penalize people into a channel for margin reasons it's time to wake up and realize that multi-channel means getting customers wherever you can. Over charging them in one spot won't win them back in another.

We shouldn't need a commercial telling customers pricing will be fair.

Now back to the game...