This isn’t a complete list, just the most commonly made mistakes that are easiest to avoid.
1. Invest valuable time and money in a website and then ignore its potential for business building.
Too often small retailers think that investing in a website is like “checking off a box”. Once it’s done there’s no need to bother any further. And what a mistake this is for retailers who struggle to stay competitive and keep customers coming into their stores. A properly maintained website can have huge potential benefits that build customer loyalty and attract new business.
Suppose your store carries “blue widgets”. A prospect looking for a local (or maybe not so local) retailer who carries blue widgets is more likely to shop the Internet for them – which should be no surprise to the slowing dying Yellow Page phone book business. How high your store’s website is ranked by Google or Yahoo! is determined in part by how frequently your store’s website has been updated with new content (text, graphics, video, audio, etc.). A site that has gone untouched for a year or so will usually result in a low search engine ranking (SER).
A second point to consider is that consumers who research purchases online are naturally drawn to sites that are fresh and up-to-date. Such sites send the message that the retailer is anxious to offer an up-to-date, online channel of communication to customers. A poorly maintained site sends a far less favorable marketing message to potential customers and accounts for a high opportunity cost in missed sales for the retailer.
2. Accept “lazy” performance from your website.
Many retail merchants make the mistake of expecting very little from their online marketing strategy where their website is concerned. If they get a few hits a day from their website then they’re happy. If they get a phone call a month from someone who saw their website they’re ecstatic! The truth is that many retail store websites could probably do better – a LOT better!
So, how MUCH better could a typical retail store website perform for a retailer? This is not as hard a question to answer as most web designers might have you think. Web designers, after all, are trained to create websites that are visually appealing. That’s their job. Online marketers, on the other hand, are trained to view sites from a marketing perspective and how well the information on the site produces “conversions”, or actions that lead to purchases (either online or offline).
Online marketers can employ sophisticated analytical tools that can tell them (and their retail client) which elements on a site are working and which are not. Furthermore, these tools can give a retail client a reasonable idea of what the potential is for their site based on the products and services that are being promoted on the site compared to the frequency of online searches for those products and services by consumers.
3. The site lacks strong “calls to action” and compelling headlines.
One of the most important elements of most retail store websites is the “call to action”, or “CTA”. A call to action is any element that directs an online visitor to perform a desired action. In addition, an effective call to action element should be measurable to that you know what is working on your website and what is not working.
Call to action elements on a retail store website can have a number of forms. A call to action element can be a button or link that triggers a sales video; a link or button that encourages a visitor to click “Next”, “Learn more”, “Continue”; or the ultimate online directive to “Buy Now”. One of the most effective call to action elements is a web form that is combined with some form of compelling offer.
Headlines that are not universally understandable or don’t set expectations for what the online visitor should do next can result in poor website performance. Good headlines should be compelling enough to naturally draw the reader to the next line of content on the page. If it does not, then the headline fails and a conversion opportunity is likely missed.
4. You don’t protect your intellectual property.
Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. There are actually two types intellectual property: Industrial and Copyright.
Original content on your website (content that you or someone in your business authored) falls into the Copyright category of intellectual property law. Copyright law protects only the form of expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. The creativity protected by copyright law is creativity in the choice and arrangement of words, musical notes, colors and shapes. So copyright law protects the owner of property rights against those who copy or otherwise take and use the form in which the original work was expressed by the author.
Copyrights on your website can extend to text, graphics, photographs, video files, audio files, and even programs in the coding of the website that were developed by you or your company.
5. You use cheap or over-priced web hosting services.
Choosing a reliable web hosting service can be tricky unless you have access to a professional online marketer who has had some experience with a number of hosting services. After all, it is in the marketer’s best interest to have your site served up on a reliable host so that the site’s productivity can be accurately measured. A site that is frequently down because of server problems will not result in productive results for you, the client.
In the end, renting server space from a hosting provider is like buying anything else. You can pay too little or too much. Getting the help of a competent online marketer is probably the best way to avoid making a mistake.
6. You try to do everything yourself.
Unless you are a master of time management and can get by with only a couple of hours of sleep a night you probably don’t have the time to manage a thriving retail store and build your business’ website, too. And if somehow you do manage to get a site up you never have time to keep it properly maintained (See Mistake #1 above).
If your website – and your overall online marketing strategy – is really important to your business’ long-term success you would be well advised to find a professional online marketer with whom you can partner. A good marketer will take a sincere interest in your business and do everything possible to generate a return on your investment. After all, the marketer knows that a long, steady relationship with you will depend on how well he does his job month after month. He also knows that you can fire him when results don’t occur as expected.
Finally, there are many online providers of what we refer to as “roll-your-own” or “do-it-yourself” websites. Despite the hype, we have rarely seen such a website that didn’t look like it was built by someone who had little knowledge of what makes a website compelling and productive. Sure, the prices for such website services are tempting, but they should only be considered for non-commercial purposes such as family or club websites that don’t depend on commercial traffic.
7. You don’t include online video and other “rich media” technologies on your retail store website.
Incorporating video into a retail store website is not something reserved for large large retailers with expensive web development teams at their disposal. In fact, free online video hosting services such as YouTube, Yahoo! Video, and other such service providers now enable virtually any size retailer to easily embed video on a store’s website, a blog, and even in email. By leveraging low-cost video and other “rich media” elements retailer’s of all sizes can supercharge their online marketing strategy to educate, engage, and persuade online contacts to become in-store customers.
As a business owner or manager you, along with your online marketer, should look at new technologies individually and consider whether they can actually improve the online customer experience in a measurable way. If the customer experience can be improved in a cost-effective manner then you should be willing to give it a try. After all, bad things tend to happen to businesses that stand still or fail to innovate for the benefit of their customers.
8. You don’t have a backup.
Woops! Your web hosting server just failed and your entire website has become unaccessible and unrecoverable. What do you do next?
Well, if you don’t have a backup of your site (either your own or one performed routinely by your web hosting service) you can always consider falling on a dull butter knife! But why not avoid that predicament in the first place by making sure you have a recent copy of your website content on hand yourself. Your online marketer can be tasked to do this for you and you should insist that he or she deliver such copies to you every time your site gets a significant update.
The good news is that most reputable hosting services perform comprehensive backups automatically on a daily or weekly basis, so the scenario described above rarely happens. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Having an extra level of backup is a good policy to adopt.
9. You overlook your web performance statistics.
“Huh? You mean our site can produce performance statistics?”, you may be asking yourself.
Yes! Your site can produce useful statistical reports that can show you in black and white how well (or how poorly) your site is converting prospects into customers. Your online marketer can add special coding to each of your website’s pages that will tell you, among other things:
- How many unique visitors landed on your site.
- How long each visitor stayed on your home page.
- Whether a visitor “clicked-through” to another page.
- Which pages were the most popular on your site.
- How visitors were led to your site.
- What links or buttons on your site were clicked the most often.
…and much more.
This kind of information is extremely valuable to retailers because it can tell them what product or service offers are the most appealing and which ones are generating no interest at all. It can also highlight what words in an offer illicit the best responses from customer and prospects – information that can then be used in other forms of retail advertising.
10. Your website isn’t worth your customer’s time and attention.
The cold, cruel truth is that visitors to your website don’t care how great you think your store is. They don’t care if you think your products are the greatest on the planet and that your service is “world class”. Nor do they care that you are the “#1 Retailer of Blue Widgets in the Entire World”.
The real question is “Are you worth your online customer’s time and attention?” The answer to this question is communicated to your online customers in ways that are so subtle only a good online marketer could identify and help you appreciate them. Here’s an example:
A small furniture company that specializes in solid oak furniture was having problems getting traffic to their website. We were contacted by the owner of the store with an offer to take over the maintenance of their website with the expectation of improving their online traffic. Along with the offer we included a list of ten minor changes that the store could make right away to their website that would likely produce a noticeable uptick in online traffic.
One of the changes we suggested was something so subtle the store owner nearly blew the suggestion off completely. But, he told his in-house “website guru” (a college student who doubled as a sales clerk) to make the change anyway. The results startled him. The phones started ringing and visitors to the store actually mentioned that they saw the store’s website.
What was the subtle change we suggested? We simply suggested moving the stores phone number from the bottom of the homepage to the very top and to display it in a big, black, 30 point font size. Who would have thought this could make such a difference!
Summary
Retail merchants who fail to adopt a sound online marketing strategy that includes a well-designed, well-maintained website – one that avoids the mistakes outlined in this report – will one day find themselves at the bottom of the search engine list. Worse still, they may even be squeezed out of business altogether.
This article was written by Mel Cooper, President of MELCOOPER
Consulting, Inc. MELCOOPER is an online marketing and web design
consultancy based in Montgomery, Alabama USA. Copyright 2009
MELCOOPER.
For more information about Online Marketing Strategies for Retail
Stores and Services please visit the company’s websites at:
http://melcooper.com/
