At Mediarun we often tell our fashion clients that “If the internet were a supermarket it would be a nightmare getting to the tills through the sheer number of shopping carts abandoned just before purchase”. It seems the vast majority of internet shoppers – more than 70 per cent suggest some surveys – get cold feet at the point of payment and make a run for it. It’s a uniquely internet phenomenon and one which will continue to lose a lot of money for sites that fail to explore why it is happening and what they can do about it. Here are a few lessons that all fashion retailers should keep in mind when looking to see improved conversions.

Identify the Problem

Start by identifying where those could-be customers are abandoning their shopping. Tools like Google Analytics will help determine whether it is on the pay now page or the shopping cart page. This page should be the first to be checked for glitches that might be putting customers off and to be optimised to ensure it offers a smooth and straightforward shopping experience. Publishing a customer service number prominently on your pages, or using live chat technology to intervene when someone is having problems, can also help reduce the number of people who would otherwise simply give up and leave.

Transparency

Researchers have found the single biggest reason for ditching a shopping cart is the surprise of a high delivery cost, often not revealed until a customer gets to the check-out. Transparency throughout the process, with delivery costs and times listed clearly alongside the product, will help enormously in saving the sale. If the delivery options are too complex to list prices, offer help through live chat so a shopper is aware of the total cost from the start. The same goes for product information – any surprise about manufacture specifications or quality of finish that the shopper discovers late in the process could be the deal breaker that has them running for the door.

Usability

Once a shopper has decided on their purchase it is human nature that they will want to pay and get out of there as soon as possible. A check-out process with too many steps or too much form filling is a big turn-off – figures show a quarter of all customers give up when asked to register – so keep it as easy as possible and offer a simple guest check-out for those who don’t want to sign in. Ideally you want the checkout done on a single page with easy-to-follow navigation taking the customer smoothly through the process – and make sure it is optimised for mobile which is where a lot of people do their shopping these days.

Trust

No one likes handing over credit card or other payment details so it is important to create an obviously safe and secure check-out environment. Display security seals such as SSL prominently, publish customer testimonials, offer trusted multiple payment methods and make your refund procedure clear and easy to follow. And don’t give up if you still lose them after all this work – follow up with an email or use ad remarketing to keep their interest alive and encourage them back for a second look.

Responsive design is proving to be a lot more than just a neat way of scaling websites to adapt to the screen of any device they might be viewed on. For sites that have adopted this fluid and user-friendly design platform the payback is coming in the form of hard cash from significant increases in both conversion rates and sales. And the benefits do not stop there because responsive design is also great for SEO.

From a usability point of view there is not much to beat responsive design. Sites that have invested in it are finding that users love it, spending on average 75 per cent more time browsing their pages than before. Their SEO strategies also get a boost because there is no need for site equity to be shared with a separate mobile version of the site. Instead the whole site can be held under one top-level domain on which all SEO efforts can be focussed.

Designed for users

The phenomenal growth in mobile and tablet usage has created an urgent need to make sites easy and fun to use no matter what device they are being viewed on. One early solution was to create a parallel mobile phone-friendly version of the site, but then tablets took off and designers were faced with trying to make it work across a wide range of screen sizes and formats. With responsive design there is no problem – pictures move or resize, text columns expand or contract and side bars reposition themselves to suit the size of the screen.

The result is a site that is easy to navigate and use, one that appeals to users and encourages their engagement. As competition becomes ever fiercer, sites that can offer this will have a clear advantage over their rivals. The specific benefits depend very much on the site. Companies like the furniture retailer Skandium, whose website relies heavily on imagery to drive sales, are benefitting from the fact that responsive design allows photographs of their products to be shown in full. For handbag retailer Radley, on the other hand, a major benefit is that their site’s flash-based features work effectively on a multitude of devices.

Planning for success

Careful planning is the key to a successful responsive design. Specific objectives need to be defined under one over-riding principle – the site must be usable in a way that attracts customers instead of deterring them. Emulators like Quirk Tools can be used to see how these objectives might translate into pages viewed at different resolutions, while Google Analytics is useful for determining what content needs to be given more prominence when viewed on mobile devices. Knowing where people spend most time on a website will also help in deciding on where to position content. Finally, use tools like Optimal Workshop to canvas opinion from focus groups on the content most important to them. The result should be a site that is fit for the future and ready for whatever the device manufacturers might throw at it next.

The phrase “I’m not going to be the only one without a chair when the music stops” is commonly used to convey our determination to be a step ahead in the game. It’s ironic however that the very people who create and distribute music find themselves without the chair.

Until the late 90’s the music industry was booming.  There were multiple music formats in the market from the dying cassette’s tapes to the vintage Vinyl, offbeat mini-disk and the market-leading Compact Disk. Business was brisk for the artist, music stores and the manufactures of all the hardware that went with physical formats. The world music sales topped a record of $26 billion in revenues and everyone wanted to join the party.

Then, all of a sudden, the cash register went quiet.  Music sales fell off the cliff from a peak of $26 billion in 1999 down to $15 billion by 2010. Music plays an important part in people’s lives and even though the world population had grown by a 1 billion people the music appeared to have stopped for many. The industry was in its wilderness years.

From paying anywhere between £1 for a single to £18 for a music albums, music was now on tap.  With the wide adoption of the internet came disruptive technologies like Napster and Limewire. These took a huge amount of music and pushed it into a space where it was freely shared and readily available. Importantly, this was a space where neither the artist, record labels nor distributors knew how to control or manage.

The plummeting revenues fueled the fear of the industry going bankrupt and that consumers were no longer willing to pay for the music. This lead to a torrent of lawsuits being filed against the individuals who made copyrighted music accessible to millions.  Sites like Napster were shut down and people put behind bars but the revenues kept sliding. The problems facing the industry were far too wide and deep to tackle with hardball tactics and the future looked grim.

Fast forward to 2013. The revenue decline has been arrested. Iconic stores like Virgin and HMV that created a culture for two generations for browsing, talking and buying music have all but gone bust.  A regional singer from South Korea can become a global sensation overnight and challenge the traditional popularity of bands like The Beatles.  If you hear a song in a restaurant it can now be yours in seconds without even leaving your table.  Things have gone off the handle and things are not as doom and gloom as some might have once thought.The question is, what changed?

While the music industry was in a spin and saw the internet as its nemesis the technology firms around the world embraced digital.  They explored, innovated and, without realising it, they collectively helped usher in a new era for the music industry.

The following are some of the developments of the last decade which have changed the way music is now consumed.

1. Mobile phone:  Rapid mobile adoption and technological advancements made it possible for people to constantly and easily carry and create content.  You no longer need fancy players to hear music or expensive devises to create a music video at home.
2. Community Sites: Platforms like YouTube, Soundcloud and MySpace have created communities where individuals can view, share, upload all kinds of videos creating overnight stars. Previously it was only possible in music festivals or listening to a boom box in the park.
3. Streaming Services: Software’s like Spotify, 8tracks and Deezer work like on demand radio. charging the listeners affordable subscription fees for millions of songs a few of which going to artists.
4. Download Stores: Apple & Amazon created technology for users to buy individual tracks or albums on the go using multiple devises. Download stores now account for over 80% of digital music revenues.
5. Smart Apps: Paid Apps like Shazam help you identify music where ever you are providing users with options to buy them instantly from various stores or watch free music videos.

All of these technologies changed the focus from curbing online piracy to creating a new way we interact with media. Pockets were created at various levels where revenue could be tapped like buying apps, subscribing to streaming services and downloading tracks.  The people followed in mass and far more than ever before.

In developing countries, the highest growth has been seen in mobiles; with that came access to the internet. As a result, these news forms of buying and engaging with music become possible for a vast number of people.

So, far from ever stopping or slowing down, more people had started listening to music with much more music being produced in the “wilderness years”. It’s just the music industry could not find the right frequency to tune into. Luckily it now seems that they have figured it out.

 

First it was the emergence of the big brands which came to dominate the high streets. They squeezed the small retailers out by driving up real estate prices. Then came the online retailers. They drove down product prices, making the small retailer non-competitive altogether. To be in business the small retailers needed to move out to areas with lower rentals along with joining online marketplace and auction sites or starting their own websites to tackle the online threat. Now there is a Penguin on the loose which is about to spoil the party once again. That is Google’s recent algorithm update which appears to reward sites that invest more in brand building, PR and social engagement rather than those doing traditional SEO. For an online business, having top 10 results on Google SERPs is like having a prime location on the high street and very critical to business success. So while this Google update is progressive and puts checks on unscrupulous SEO tactics it is the big brands with access to large budgets that will benefit from this change while the smaller retailers will get edged out of the top rankings. An example of this can be seen when on searches for “wall lights” on Google UK. The top 10 SERPS are dominate by John Lewis, Amazon, Argos, Ikea which are all massive brands. A year or so back the top SERPS had relevant but small significantly smaller players which will find increasing difficult to compete with them. So booted out of high street and now from the online space, is it finally curtains down for the small retailers? Based on a research carried out by Ecommplished, a research outfit, 57% of users buy products through the on line market place with another 22% using high street sites and 9% using product owner’s sites.  This makes about 87% of circa £65 billion which is spent online in the UK.  No matter what the cost no retailer big or small is going let go of this piece of cake so easily and will fight tooth and nail for their share.

(source: Ecommplished)

A few days ago I came across a concept which although not entirely new, made news and caught my attention. This was the launch of myhigh.st which as per the above image is a hybrid of a high street and marketplace site called the “high street marketplace”. A group of high street retailers from Wells, Somerset have come together to sell their products through an online marketplace. The aim of this venture as per the site owner Loaye Agabani, is to take an off-line sense of community onto the internet, encouraging local people to support their home-grown shops around the clock, while also opening up a new universe of potential customers further afield. As a concept a high street marketplace appears quite interesting, many small retailers who were so far excluded from the online boom and the big high street footfalls will now be able to pool their resources on a common platform that is catering to their best interests. This will assist them in building up a strong web presence under a powerful umbrella brand and reach out to a wider audience than that which frequents Castle Cary. So will this be the new avatar for the small retailer in the future? It could as well be. However myhigh.st which is a new entrant in a space which has been dominated by companies have not only mastered the art of generating visibility but also optimally converting it into revenue. So its not going to be a walk over. For my next blog we will evaluate Myhigh.st’s competitive positioning in the market and the tactics it will need to launch a comprehensive attack to regain lost territory.

What were you doing on Saturday April 9^th 2011? Yes, last Saturday. “I was using my internet-enabled mobile device to browse the internet, Paul,” you say? Well I didn’t expect that to be the first answer I got, admittedly, but it does help to conveniently underline the message of this post, so I thank you. Mobile internet traffic is increasing rapidly, particularly in the UK. On top of that, there are a series of external factors that are influencing the volumes on any given day. Looking at our client’s analytics data, as I do, I have been seeing several new patterns and rules emerging for marketers to deal with. Mobile traffic behaves differently to desktop traffic. The details of that are perhaps left to another post but take a look at your own web traffic and you’ll probably see shorter visits, fewer pageviews and if your site is well designed for mobile, possibly higher conversion rates. But I only bring that up to emphasise the fact that we all need to adapt our sites and marketing quickly to the mobile visitor.

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