From shelf psychology to the trick of triangular balance, optimising retail floor space to increase spend in the offline world is nothing new. But are organisations taking their robustly tested merchandising tricks from the shop floor and tailoring them to the online retail world, which is expected to grow to a staggering £50bn in 2011 alone?
Things have become increasingly sophisticated since the days of pumping the smell of the bakery at the entrance hoping to entice shoppers that have made the mistake of shopping on an empty stomach. Retailers now have more insight and understanding of their customer than ever before.
Whilst billions of pounds are spent every year in the UK to encourage consumers to buy more and opt for the more profitable products, the question must be raised as to whether organisations are taking their robustly tested merchandising tricks from the shop floor and tailoring them to the online retail world, which is expected to grow to a staggering £50bn* in 2011 alone?
The majority of digital marketers have a level of data and insight available to them that retail space planners would hit somebody over the head with a freshly baked baguette for. Taking many of the age-old merchandising winners such as clever positioning of profitable impulse buys and eye-level displays for the highest margin goods, combined with online data and the opportunity to test different strategies can equal a winning formula.
Recognising the importance of optimising online and drawing lessons from offline retail is the key to increasing performance and profitability of your site.
Welcome Visitors New and Old with Open Arms
Online retailing offers a unique opportunity to recognise your visitors new and old – creating the chance to ensure your visitor’s experience is like walking into their favourite boutique or corner store. While it’s something which can also only truly be achieved online, many organisations fail to ensure that users are remembered by their cookies and that the right content is delivered. It is an opportunity to incentivise new visitors to register – for example, offering free delivery on your newly acquired customer’s first order.
First Impressions Count
Over the past few years, we’ve all picked up something that we didn’t intend to buy the moment we’ve walked into a store. Be it a DVD you hadn’t planned to throw in your trolley, this season’s must have jacket and coordinating shoes or perhaps a Krispy Kreme to help the torture of a weekly food shop. It’s a fact that people only worry about the cost of a shop when the basket is full, not empty.
The tactics deployed in a high street chain or supermarket, can easily be used on a home page with the use of data and understanding of optimisation. Ensuring that the home page has the latest fashion look, the most highly viewed items or most profitable goods ensures that a visitor is already adding things to their basket the moment they enter your online doors.
Eye Level is King
A supermarkets’ key weapon is the use of eye-level display. Experiments over the years have shown that when customers walk down an aisle, they look at only the shelves that are level with their eyes. That’s why merchandisers ensure the items with the biggest profit margins are placed at eye-level, while the cheaper less profitable items are away from ‘natural view’. If your customer wants value brands, they’ll find them, eventually, but they won’t buy them on impulse.
Whatever product you sell online, this is a technique that can be adopted to increase order value and sell more profitable products and services. Like the eye-line in-store, more profitable products can be strategically placed above the fold line of the page so eyes are drawn to these products straight away rather than the less value ones below.
Creating the Last Minute Up-Sell Opportunity
A checkout area is also a good example of how optimisation can work well both on and offline. These areas in a store are the monthly engine of the business and the promotional calendar is often driven by their performance. Be it magazines that pass the time while queuing, leaflets on the latest supermarket finance products or those ‘that’s a bargain’ fashion accessories, the checkout is a prime opportunity.
Online retailers are becoming increasingly clued up on using this same principle by testing different low cost products to complement a customer’s purchase as they move towards the checkout. Is a customer able to resist that must-have necklace to match a blouse they are about to buy? I think not.
Wave Goodbye to Distractions
But let me finish on an example where, in some cases, optimising your visitors experience to remove distractions at the purchasing stage can work very well, dependent on the type of product being sold.
Looking at one the world’s biggest (albeit subtly) retail outlets, lessons can be learnt from Disney’s Magic Kingdom. It may be a theme park, but every corner and turn is filled with a merchandising opportunity. However, when Walt Disney designed this financial goldmine he took the decision to create a layout that prevents visitors from seeing another ‘land’ except the one in which you are standing.
The advantage? Visitors are in the moment and they don’t acknowledge that there are other experiences they will want to have material memories of just around the corner. The result? They buy a souvenir key ring or pay for the rollercoaster picture now.
This method focuses the consumer to the job in hand. Keep it clean at the vital conversion stage of your site and it can prevent abandonment.
Test the Theory
Organisations are spending millions on offline optimisation. Why? Because it works. And as a result digital marketers are increasingly recognising the benefits of applying optimisation techniques online.
Online optimisation offers the opportunity to test and refine. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s cheaper and in some cases it can generate as much, if not more, revenue as offline. If it has worked – and very successfully – for all these years in our everyday world then surely it would be madness to not take those lessons and try them out online.
[Originally Published on Figaro Digital - Hugh Kimber is the EMEA Optimize Sales Manager - Ed.]
It can be fairly straightforward today to create an online presence for your company and this can even be done overnight (albeit in a simple manner), but what is more challenging to digital marketers is making the most of their online presence and using it to increase revenue and build brand awareness.
Here are a few of my top tips to help your company get the best results it can:
The Customer
Most importantly, remember that websites are all about enhancing the customer experience so that customers engage more effectively with your brand. View all visitors to your website as customers (regardless of what you sell) and ensure you have the necessary services in place to make them happy. The best way to do this is to live test different strategies to see the real-time results. This way you can effectively see what works and what doesn’t, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Competitors
It’s also important to consider what your competitors are doing online. Take a look at their online presence (such as website, Twitter, smartphone app, eBay store, Facebook, mobile site) and channels they are using to push their brand and sales. Take note of what you think works well or doesn’t work well and why. Also, analyse the channels that are being used and identify how well they engage with the customer.
Be App Savvy
With the rise in smartphone apps, it is easy to get distracted and dive head first into the ‘cool’ channels such as building an all-singing all-dancing app. But often it is more important – and cheaper – to concentrate on other online areas first. There is no point building an expensive app and then having a poor online presence elsewhere because the app can end up being a burden. Mobile websites can be a more important resource than apps depending on your industry. For example, increasing numbers of web users are banking online, but it’s no good having a smartphone app allowing customers to check their account balance if the counterpart mobile site isn’t accessible enough to allow user-friendly money transfers.
Analyse
Web and mobile analytics are essential to monitor the success of new and existing channels. It sounds obvious, but there is no point in having an online strategy if you don’t monitor it. There is plenty of insightful data out there and it’s important to make the most it by analysing what the data reveals about visitor habits. This data will tell you a lot about what areas you need to improve, add or promote, and just how customers are engaging with your brand.
Decide on a Social Media Strategy
It can be too easy to set up numerous accounts across numerous networks and leave them to go stale or only update them occasionally. Think about how you will use Twitter as a marketing tool. Will you use Twitter primarily as a marketing tool, or will it be used for sales and customer service too? Also, investigate the best ways for your company to make the most of social commerce – an area which is set to be a rapid grower in 2011.
Stay Ahead of the Game
Finally, don’t forget that online channels are continually changing. Don’t assume that one update here and there once a year is enough. Regularly track how your online strategy is faring and explore any new developments that might be relevant.
[This was originally published on Fourth Source. Colette Wade is the Marketing Director, Webtrends EMEA and Australasia. -- Ed]
For more on Webtrends Optimize, our testing, targeting and site optimization solution visit our product site or review some of our other posts on optimization. Any other topics you want to see covered here or a burning question you’ve got. Let us know!
The past few weeks have been quite the whirlwind of activity. My 
In today's networked economy, customers and prospects come armed with deep insight about your products and service levels well before they are ready to buy. Whether engaging with buyers who have similar interests on Twitter, or perusing third party or branded communities, knowledge about you and your products is widely available from other customers. So they expect timely and knowledgeable insight and service, to continue to do business with you or to become new customers.
To respond to this new reality, organizations require tighter connections between those on the front lines (sales, marketing, support) and those designing, building and supplying products behind the proverbial firewall.