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  • E-Commerce

    6 articles in this category

      5 reasons why the E-commerce industry is still immature

      In the world of e-commerce things are moving fast. We see new reports every day about how E-commerce is breaking new boundaries. Mobile E-commerce is overtaking the desktop, as king of the E-commerce according to reports and on the surface it looks like E-commerce is the tip of the spear and the cutting edge of modern commerce. That is not the case however and in many ways E-commerce industry is still in its infancy. I will give you some examples on what I mean.
       
      1. Still see things like multi- and onmichannel as new concepts.
      It is quite remarkable that the concept of combining different channels into a whole is still something that most E-commerce companies struggle with. Despite the fact that E-commerce has been around for quite a while, many companies still consider this as a separate channel to be developed in parallel with their physical stores when looking at brick and mortar companies and the opposite for pure players that start with E-commerce and want to expand to physical stores.
      Like Johan Hallgårde writes in his articles about omnichannel it is not a new concept and its time that we stop looking at E-commerce as something different from regular commerce. It’s all commerce and omnichannel should not be a vision for the future, it should be at the core of every business decision made internally in all projects related to commerce.
      My best suggestion is to contact Johan Hallgårde and set up a inspiration day where he can elaborate on how you can move to the front of the competition by start thinking on your business as a whole and not a jigsaw puzzle. I assure you that you will not regret that decision.
       
      2. Unrealistic belief in advertising agencies
      In the E-commerce industry, especially in the larger companies that comes from a marketing driven brick and mortar past, there is an unrealistic belief in advertising agencies. I say unrealistic because there is a belief that because a advertising agency excel in advertisement and print, that does not in any way mean that they have a clue about the web. Even if they do there is the fact that web design is not the same as E-commerce design that makes it even more unrealistic.
      The sad truth is that most of the larger companies want to work with a partner that they know can handle design and as they do not see the differences between the different mediums they often go for large print/web firms. I have seen, and I have heard of large, and small, E-commerce companies that did that and got a nice flashy website that did not convert half as well as the old one.
      As I am a graphic designer, web developer and Neuro web designer with many years experience in E-commerce I tend to get invited as external consultant to act as support to the design companies from time to time, or even asked to take the full responsibility of the design myself. With my background as a system scientist and frontend developer as well as business/Requirement analyst I find that this role is quite rewarding as I can utilize my full skill set in these situations. So if you need a hand in ensuring that the design you ordered is well suited for E-commerce, feel free to contact me and discuss the situation.
       
      3. Focus on technology instead of users
      In every E-commerce project there are a great deal of technical aspects to consider and it’s natural to become internal and focus on “we need” instead of “they need”. As a requirement analyst I always have to ensure that workshops stay on the right level, as they tend to dive right down to the data mappings and API calls instead of the actual requirements. Sometimes that’s where they need to be, but a lot of times it is not. This is because the focus is on internal need where it’s all these nitty-gritty details that fill their day.
      Unless you are focusing on building E-commerce site for your own sake, for a few millions, it’s crucial to lift the eyes above the wall surrounding your office and look at the users that will actually use the E-commerce site. What do they want? How can we make our products or services irresistible and what does that mean for the project, regardless if it is a redesign project of a feature based project.
      At the end of the day the most important question you need to ask yourself is: whom do I build this for and do I really know what they want? This question is not just missing in E-commerce project but in most IT projects as well as the focus is on technology and not the users. The best way to take care of this problem is to ask the users. Set up workshops and interviews for internal usage and questionnaires, interviews and user testing for external users to create personas and hypothesis for a User Experience approach.
       
      4. Interaction design instead of UX
      Because many projects focus on technology and not users many projects get stuck in the interaction design phase and have problems moving over to the UX phase where the real magic happen. I have seen projects where the aim has been to improve UX that failed completely. Not because the effort was not made or the competence was missing, but because the project worked on assumptions coming from stakeholders that did not match reality at all.
      Without understanding of the customers it’s impossible to work with UX because the very definition of UX is to improve the experience so it matches the users need. This is something that still seem to be unfamiliar and scary to many companies and in some cases it might even lead to a poor use of A/B testing as a substitute to communication.
      If you feel that you have not really communicated with your users or feel confident that you can describe your 3-5 most important types of users as well as the top least desirable type of users, then you are most likely stuck in the interaction design phase, or wasting money trying to A/B test things based on hunches.
       
      5. Analyze but don’t talk to their customers
      Another thing that I see quite a lot is that companies spend a lot of time and money on setting up advanced tracking for their analytic system, but then either don’t know how to interpret the data or lack the communication with the users to improve the experience.
      Having a good setup and track what happen on the website is very important and fortunately many have started to realize this. Tracking data and interpret the data is however a very different matter and it takes an experience analyst to really be able to draw conclusions from the data. It is also quite a difference between noticing that something is wrong with say the checkout and be able to understand what the problem really is.
      In some cases it might be enough just to look at the troubled area, but most of the time you actually need to understand the users in order to understand the problem fully. The best way to solve that problem is to simply locate a few customers that match the personas of your most important user groups and then do a think-aloud test to get their opinions on the trouble areas. This is not an expensive test and it can give a lot of insight.
      If you feel that you are focusing more on internal requirements and that even if you analyze your customers you are still not communicating with them or really know whom they are, then feel free to contact me or my co-worker Åsa Jonsson to discuss what you can do about the situation today.
       
      These are just a few areas where the E-commerce industry is currently a bit behind in their thinking and where they seem stuck on old ways, seeing the E-commerce part of the business as a separate channel instead of a natural part of all their commerce.
      Other areas include mobile maturity, lack of understanding of accessibility causing exclusion of the disabled, poor understanding of neuromarketing for web and not capitalizing the power of copywrite and quality graphics. I thought I should cover those in another topic however since this turned out to be quite a long post already.
      If one of the topics above interests you, please let me know and I’ll focus on that for my next post.

      Make your product page sell more - use storytelling to increase sales

      One of the biggest challenges when it comes to how to present your product on the product page is not how to actually show the product, it is how to sell it. I constantly see product pages with tons of bells and whistles. There are multiple product pictures or perhaps even a 3D model which is now getting more common. There are splashes for sales, discounts and campaigns. There are social media links and sharing capabilities. There are reviews, some better presented than others, and there are product attributes.
      The thing that I rarely see is: the selling text. How many e-commerce sites have you visited and looked at a nice product only to be served som SEO optimised text that just spit out keywords and attributes? Imagine for a moment that you ventured into a store and you see that same product. You walk up to it and just as you do that a sales clerk come up to you and start to talk:
      “ Stainless steel watch featuring textured dial border, contrasting chronograph subdials, and pebbled leather band with stitching.
      Quartz movement with analog display. Protective mineral crystal dial window.
      Features buckle closure, date window, stick hour markers, and blue second hand.
      Water-resistant to 300 feet (100 M): suitable for snorkeling, as well as swimming, but not diving.”
      I bet your first reaction would be to wonder why the sales clerk talk like that and then you would probably feel a bit uncomfortable because you would suspect that the person is a robot. No one talk like that, it’s simply not a very human like way to communicate. You probably already know that psychologically we tend to like things we can relate to, like people with similar taste in music, clothes or that look like us. Imagine if we instead write the text like if a real person would speak to us and see what happens:
      “This beautiful stainless steel watch have a nice textured dial border and the armband is actually handmade in Verona, Italy, that’s why the stitching have that special look. It was designed by the famous artist named Bruno DiMalo who is famous for his attention to the finest details and for his glass sculptures that are featured in many fashion magazines in Italy. In this particular piece he added contrasting chronograph subdials and a protective crystal dial window.
      The rumor has it that this watch was designed as a gift for a famous Italian actress and that is why the second hand is sapphire blue, just like her eyes, but also because of her love for the sea. Because of that love for the sea this fine watch can be used in water, but you should not dive too deep with it.”
      Suddenly we weave a story around the watch and if I have done my research on my customers this text should attract the customer and s/he can probably picture the city of Verona or some other Italian city in the mind. We add a feeling of luxury by tossing in words like handmade and then connect it’s origin to a celebrity. All of a sudden the selling text sound more appealing, even if I did not put a lot of effort into it. A skilled copywriter can surely do much better than this and it does not have to take a lot of time to write.
      So why not make a test, right now. Pick say 5 products that you are already measuring conversion for and re-write the selling text and weave a story around the product with the use of basic copywrite techniques. Match the story to fit your best selling usergroups and see what happen! If you do it right you should see a nice increase in conversion as you connect to your users, just by writing as a human and not as a robot.
      If you do, please let me know how your experiment turned out!

      Teknik Magasinet file for bankrupcy - Another swedish company goes down

      Today the Swedish company Teknik Magasinet filed for bankruptcy after failing their reconstruction. It is one of several Swedish companies that have failed recently and many other are struggling at the moment. With tougher competition, changes in peoples buying habits as well as more expensive rent I think we will see more brick and mortar based companies fold in 2020.
      After a few rough years for Teknik Magasinet and with a reconstruction started in the summer of  2019 they finally gave up the struggle and filed for bankruptcy. The company that started in 1989 have had a tough time adjusting to the new times, just like many other older companies. They did a push for E-commerce and had some success in 2018, but lower number of customers in the physical stores and raising rents did nothing to help the difficult situation.
      While Teknik Magasinet has filed for bankruptcy on January 15th they have looked into the possibility to have someone else take over the business. So far no one has stepped forward, but there is still hope that TeknikMagasinet will survive in one for or the other.
      As sad as this is it does not come as a surprise. We see many companies struggle with making ends meet these days. It is easy to blame the death of old companies on the rise of E-commerce, but there is more to it than that. That is a topic for another time however and for now we say goodbye to Teknik Magasinet and thank them and all their employees for the services these last 30 years.

      Ikea introduce Buy Back Friday - will buy back and resell your Ikea items

      Ikea is making a bit of a splash recently with them announcing that they will not do the regular Black Friday sales and instead will buy back and resell products from their customers. This initiative called Buy Back Friday will happen in 27 of 31 markets globally between November 23rd to November 29th.
      When the rest of the world get ready for the biggest marketing campaign of the year, Ikea chooses to focus on a little different approach. The Buy Back Friday will focus on sustainability and not only will it reduce the number of things that are thrown away, it will also allow people to get some furniture at a pretty low cost. The fact that you get store credit for the things you turn is also a great way to give people a bit extra before Christmas.
      Personally I think this is a great example on how you can have great marketing while also making a good impact on the world. Ikea get two thumbs up from me.
       

      Color Psychology - not as easy as it may look

      Color psychology is a topic often brought up when discussing conversion rate optimization. It often comes up as a sort of law of what colors to use, which is based on an article online or some generic description in a book. Color psychology however is far more complex than that and a recent article by Talia Wolf at GetUplift is the best introduction to that complexity I think.
      The fact that colors can affect us should come as no surprise to anyone. There are a lot of studies that show that this is true. How they affect us however is still a bit vague and seem less important to a lot of people working with it. This is a big mistake because just like music has an impact on our minds, colors also affect us based on association and everyone has different associations.
      Just as Talia brings up the different association differences in her excellent article, like the fact that white is both purity and death, there is also associations based on age and even personal preferences. You also have a whole science behind the different versions and shades of the colors where for example one shade of green can be seen as healthy and full of life and another will associate with pestilence and death.
      Talia also briefly touch on the fact that color psychology should not be used alone. It should be considered together with other association factors like typography, iconography and overall tonality. In conversion rate optimization it should also be accompanied by other CRO tools like direction of movement, familiarity and the gestalt laws to direct and highlight the actions we want the users to take.
      If you want to know more, then head over to GetUplift and read the full article "Color psychology: The complete step-by-step guide" by Talia Wolf.
      You will not regret it.
       
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