Vividence Reveals 10 guidelines for Online Retail Success
Good Customer Experience Helps Retailers Ring in Holiday Sales
SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 15 -- Vividence, the leader in
Customer Experience Management (CEM) products and services, today announced
10 guidelines to help retailers improve the online customer experience and
maximize the potential of their Web sites this holiday season. The
recommendations are based on findings from the company`s annual Holiday
Readiness Study, conducted in September. The study also highlights consumers`
holiday shopping attitudes, assesses how the tragic events of Sept. 11 affect
holiday shopping plans and features screenshots of best practice designs for
retail Web sites.
Vividence`s 10 guidelines for holiday success:
1. Save customer shopping carts for later visits.
Customers do return later to purchase items "abandoned" in their
carts. Make it easy for them by keeping their cart items for
30 days or more.
2. Offer a promotion or incentive to purchase.
Promotions (or deals) differentiate sites from one another. Free
shipping is the most common purchase influencer.
3. Show shipping prices early.
Customers prefer to choose shipping options and see shipping prices
in the shopping cart.
4. Make site registration optional.
Customers are more likely to abandon their carts if you require them
to register.
5. Consider a charitable donation tie-in.
Customers increasingly want to donate to charity. Sites that
contribute in some way will engender customer good will.
6. Keep products in stock.
Out-of-stock products frustrate customers, especially when they
aren`t notified until they place items into shopping carts.
7. Provide order tracking.
Customers want to reduce uncertainty about delivery time by tracking
their orders. This will also reduce calls to customer service.
8. Shorten the checkout process.
Customers prefer entry fields on one screen as opposed to multiple
screens.
9. Be clear about delivery time.
Customers want to know when their items will arrive.
10. Provide paper gift certificates.
Gift certificates can influence purchase, and customers tend to
prefer paper to e-mail gift certificates.
"As consumer expectations increase and more people plan to do their
holiday shopping online, it becomes increasingly important for retailers to
understand and improve the online customer experience," said Jeff Greenberg,
president and CEO of Vividence. "By using Vividence`s customer experience
guidelines, online retailers will be better prepared to ready their sites for
the holidays and capitalize on every shopper that visits their Web site."
The annual Vividence Holiday Readiness Study helps companies better
prepare their Web sites for holiday shopping by assessing consumer
expectations and online shopping behavior and making recommendations to
improve the customer experience online. This year`s study was conducted on
Sept. 1 and Sept. 17. It included 900 participants recruited from the
150,000-person Vividence Research Panel, which represents a cross-section of
Web-savvy online consumers.
About Vividence Corporation
Vividence is the leading provider of Customer Experience Management
products and services to the customer-driven enterprise. By capturing and
interpreting the behavior, thoughts and attitudes of customers on the Web, the
Vividence XMS Suite(TM), a collection of hosted software applications,
research and customer panels, yields business insights that improve
profitability. More than 200 customers, including Best Buy, Cisco Systems,
Citibank, Compaq, Dell, eBay, Microsoft, Pfizer, SAP, Wells Fargo and more
than 100 of the Fortune 1000 use Vividence. For more information, please visit
http://www.vividence.com.
CONTACT:
Blake Wise of Vividence Corp.
+1-650-645-5023
blakew@vividence.com
or
Melissa King of Phase Two Strategies
+1-415-772-8452
melissa_king@p2pr.com
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