Marketing the experience of ownership is critical in making the sale, whether it’s products in a store, catalog or website. With plenty of evidence to show that desire, more than product features, drives consumers, we need to further explore the creative opportunities to capture website visitors’ imagination in ways that will increase sales.
Every e-commerce website looks to engage and sell, but we need to look beyond such traditional formulas such as session length, page views and conversion rates to keep the customer experience fresh and profitable.
Get a Conversation Going
Use blogs to regularly update tips, trends and special offers conversationally—while cross-selling your product. It’s OK if your people write it; people will come back if they are entertained and informed. The Wal-Mart company blog is a great example.
Vox Populi
This Latin term for “voice of the people†has taken on a new life as user-generated content (UGC) at the heart of Web 2.0. If customers rate and review products on your website, tell your visitors about it. They can find out which products have the best reviews, and give feedback on prior purchases, as Amazon.com has so successfully shown.
PURLs of Wisdom
Personalized URLs (PURLs), web pages filled with merchandise based on the individual’s past purchase behavior, are proven to engage customers at a higher rate. eBay has created millions of unique PURLs that give up-to-the-minute deals on relevant products.
Sales in a Flash
Flash and other rich media can create a website to marvel at, like the Dutch department store Hema, which took a seemingly simple page of everyday products and created a fanciful display of flash genius that has been shared worldwide.
Learn Their Tastes
Marketers can dive into e-commerce with a wealth of customer data never before imagined. As sites like Netflix and the iTunes music store have shown, creating an intelligent, responsible recommendation system can create fantastic end results.
Add Sales Dimensions
More than just a basic selling proposition, customers want to visualize how the product will benefit their lives. Try a 360Ëš photo tour, video of your product in use, a full-screen view or colorization options.
…Worth a Thousand Words
Are you selling swimwear or a day at the beach with friends? You can take your visitors to an aspirational setting, where interactive environments can show valuable content and products. At the AT&T Blue Room microsite, visitors check out exclusives on music, sports, movies and more while surrounded by AT&T ads for DSL broadband and other related services.
eCatalog
eCatalogs are a hybrid vehicle that mix the page-flipping catalog experience with the click-and-buy e-commerce experience. Customers find the end result to be familiar, easy and fun, and multimedia can enhance the customer’s product consideration experience even further.
Effective as these methods are, you’ll need to tap their power with strong copy. Pictures invite. Words sell. Check out the Oh-la-la pants from the J. Peterman website—a terrific example of hard working copy powered by story.
Jeff Haggin is CEO and president of Haggin Marketing.
