This week I read two excellent blog posts that I wanted to share. The topic of the first post is retail signage, namely the relationship between the display of messages in online stores and the use of signs in brick and mortar stores. Here’s the main point that author Kevin Ertell is making:
“In brick and mortar retail, we use promotional signs in our windows to draw people into the store, where we expertly display lots and lots of product to customers the moment they walk in the door. We certainly reinforce our promotional messages with signage throughout the store, but we never block the product with the signs. On our sites, our promotions seem to be more important than our products. What message are we sending to our customers about the value of our products when promotions get more prominence than the merchandise?”
If you’re running an online store I recommend you read the entire blog post because Kevin has put his finger on something that could be costing you money–distracting customers with too many signs about offers and discounts–as well as something that could make you money–getting the right balance between products and offers.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that striking the right balance is not easy. You have loads of great product shots, testimonials, deals, discounts, offers, and so much more that you want to put in front of people who land on your site. No wonder it seems like there’s never enough real estate on the screen. Of course, if you’re driving people to your site with targeted email or ad campaigns you can create landing pages where the content is chosen specifically for that target audience. But in general you can’t control which page of your site people land on.
One solution is to give up trying to show all messages and offers to all site visitors. Instead, just show different content to different visitors on the same page (which incidentally is one way to describe what Monetate does). If you segment your traffic into different groups which see different content you don’t have to cram all the signage for all your offers onto a single page; you can show just those offers that are appropriate for each segment. This is true for even the most basic segmentation: new versus returning visitors. Some offers are more appropriate for new customers. Returning customers need fewer messages about how the site works, and so on.
The second post that caught my eye was “8 Applications of IP Geolocation” and it delivered just what you would expect from the title: eight different ways in which online retailers can use geolocation information to vary content according to the physical location of the site visitor (based on IP address).
As you may know, Monetate greatly simplifies the process of creating geolocation-based campaigns, so it was great to see an article that illustrates the many possibilities that geolocation technology opens up. Of course, one of those possibilities is economizing on web site real estate by varying your signage according to the location of the site visitor. For example, point out the availability of international shipping to a non-domestic visitor, but use that space for something else when the visitor is domestic.
For more information on this topic, we have a geolocation case study here and geolocation was the subject of one of our press releases, picked up by several publications such as this.
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I want to ask you a question to which I don’t yet know the answer: If you have an online store, when should you display a coupon box on your checkout page?
Have you studied the Amazon.com home page lately? If you’re an e-retailer you should. By my count it now contains 13 pieces of personalization, 13 ways in which Amazon is addressing me personally, and I don’t just mean “Hello, Stephen Cobb.”
They did it in ancient bazaars beside the Euphrates and they do it in the massive Internet emporiums of today: Discounting.
David Brussin
Stephen Cobb
Blair Lyon
Tom Ellis