Vin65 Blog

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August 5, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

Predictable Customer Behavior

Are you training your customers to delete the email you send?

My grocery store has me trained. They have one of these loyalty rewards programs where I receive a point for every dollar I spend. Every two weeks they send out a flyer (via mail) and it has 50 products advertised, each with 10 or 15 bonus points. They also always have two coupons that are for 2500 points each if you spend $95 or more.

Over the past couple years I've discovered that all the coupons suck, except the 2500 point coupons. So like clockwork, every two weeks I cut out the two good coupons. The rest of the coupons are in the garbage. I've never use them. I can't even remember the last time I glanced at the offers.

So here's my point. Customers can be trained. Amazon sends me an email, I'll read it, and if that email is of value I'll remember. Because the last email was of value, the next email I receive from Amazon I'll read. If there is value there, I'll read the next email. It spirals up. I start to predictably open the emails from Amazon.

The opposite happens at some wineries. An email is created. Rather than creating a specific value proposition for a specific target audience, they send the email to their entire consumer list (after all, it costs almost nothing to send the email out). Some customers don't see value in the email. Another email is created and it goes out to the entire email list again. Again a group of customers don't see any value. The winery has trained a group of customers to ignore the email.

Tonight we analyzed the open behavior on one million emails sent over the past two year where the customers had been emailed 5 or more times. After 4 emails there was an 91.4% chance the customer had been trained (and responded to all future emails in the same manor).

So to put my point in a few sentences. Customers are predictable. If they are opening your email and responding by clicking back, you should probably keep doing the same thing. If they are consistently ignoring you email, it might be time to change what you're doing.

Aug 5, 2009 at 10:05 PM

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July 24, 2009 | Peter Andres

The boring old newsletter signup - what's the point?

These days it is all about the social media. You need to be getting your facebook page up, your Twitter account going, and blogging...don't forget to blog at least two or three times a week. Oh and just to up the bar a little are you getting every one you know to rate and comment on your wines on Snooth.com? It is no wonder the email newsletter list is getting completely neglected. Let me just say that you should start with the email list and then move onto the other stuff.

Social media is about building connections and trust with potential and existing customers, not about making hard sales. On the other hand the email list if built correctly is made up of individuals who have given you permission to send them some information and some solid sales pitches. A list of 1000 qualified customers on your email list is way more valuable than 1000 twitter followers. The fact is that well crafted email campaigns give better ROI than social media (http://directmag.com/email/1014-email-roi-dma/). It is just more intimate, and therefore a more powerful tool to reach out to your customers and convert to sales. When your wine fans say to you..."Send me information when you have a special or release new product", then your should be doing that. They want to buy from you - right now!

There are a lot of reasons why email list building has started to slide recently. Focus on social media, spam blockers, lack luster response all add up to email list abandonment. Email marketing is the holy grail though. It would be unwise not to concentrate on building your email list and consistently delivering good emails targeting your customers desires and concerns. That list if built over years could number in the thousands and become a large source of immediate sales, and even a large segment of your sales. It is so important to work on building your list and sending email to your customers. Once you have that dialed then move onto the social media scene.

If you want to know more about email list building and how to get the most out of your website send us an email.

For another good article on email marketing copyblogger.com put up a great article.

Jul 24, 2009 at 4:50 PM

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Email

July 22, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

5 Signs that Your Web Developer "Gets" Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing can be a full time profession. If you want to do it well you have to be concerned with link building, good content, and a lot of technology. While search engine marketing is typically not your web developers primary responsibility, your web developer will affect your search engine ranking.

Here are 5 signs that suggest your web developer "gets" search engine marketing.

1) Your site uses title tags.

The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search rankings. A great title tag should contain your company name and a specific keyword phrase (ideally 4-7 words long). For example the current title tag at Twisted Oak is "Twisted Oak Winery - Rhone Spanish Tempranillo Viognier Petite Sirah".

Here is how to tell if you have a title tag: In your browser title bar (on a PC this is the bar (typically blue) at the very top of the browser) - you should see the title. If it only says "Internet Explorer" or "Firefox" your title tag is missing. On this particular page the title is: "Vin 65 - Blog - 5 Signs that Your Web Developer "Gets" Search Engine Marketing".

A good developer will ensure that your site starts out with some decent title tags. (If you engage a search engine expert, they will want to massage these title tags).

Learn more about title tags here.

2) Your site has a robot.txt file.

Visit www.________.com/robots.txt and see what happens. On our site, this would be www.vin65.com/robots.txt.

A robot.txt file is a file that tells search engines what content they can and cannot index on your website. Search engines generally follow the rules set in this file (Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing all read the robots.txt file). This robots.txt file is also a key way to send an XML site map to the search engines.

New promotional tools on the Vin 65 platform

This week we enhanced our List Builder® tool to include two new features that we think are very cool. These were features requested by clients and we liked their thinking.

Feature 1: is NOT
What is this??? This feature allow clients to create a more powerful and targeted lists by excluding groups. Here is an example of where you might use this. What if you wanted to find everyone who has bought from your store, but isn't a newsletter subscriber, now you can.

Feature 2: Location specific parameter
Now you can search for members in a specific area by entering a zip code or postal code and then specifying a distance from that zip code. This is a great tool if you are hosting an event and want to invite everyone from that area. Another great way to use this tool is if your wine has been picked up in a restaurant or wine store, you can then email your members in that area and let them know that a local store or restaurant now carries your wines.

If you have any questions about our winery ecommerce platform, or would like to see a demo give us a call at 604-852-8140 or send Brent an email.

Jul 7, 2009 at 1:00 AM

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July 5, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

Improving Customer Experience Part 2: The Checkout

The customer experience in the checkout process will make a difference in whether a customer completes the transaction or abandons their cart.

Here are five points to consider in your checkout process:

1) Make it easy for customers to get to the checkout area. Once items have been added to the cart, the "checkout" button should be clearly marked and visible to the customer. This button should be the largest button on the cart page. (Also ensure that when a customer clicks the checkout button, they are taken to the checkout page.)

2) Keep the customer focused. Once inside the checkout area, don't lead the customer away to other sales or promotions. The checkout process should be fully enclosed and devoid of almost all navigational elements. (Have you noticed that most large ecommerce stores switch their navigation or remove their navigation in the checkout area.)

3) Only capture the information required. This seems obvious, but how many times in the checkout process have you been asked for buying preferences, newsletter signups, or even to select a username and password. Gathering extraneous information can easily be done after the customer checks out. (Use contact points such as the confirmation page and order confirmation emails to request the user signup for your newsletter, create an account, etc)

4) Assure the customer about the trustworthiness and security of the checkout process. Trustworthiness can be communicated through a security assurance message and having an SSL certificate. Trustworthiness is also communicated by posting contact information, delivery charges and by having a smooth checkout process.

5) Use Customer Friendly Forms. There are a large number eye tracking studies with regards to forms and labels. It's accepted that the form fields should fit the information that is to be entered and should be clearly labelled. Studies also show clear advantages when the label is placed directly above the form field. Form fields are not a great place to show off creativity.

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Is customer experience costing you sales? Visit the recent store we launched for Cuvaison and tell us what you think of the customer experience. We would love to hear your opinion.

Jul 5, 2009 at 11:00 AM

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June 14, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

Improving Customer Experience Part 1: The Modal Cart

Have you ever really thought about the 'Add to Cart' function on your ecommerce site? In a typical experience (and this is true on sites we build), you are in the store, you look at an item, you click 'add to cart' and you are taken away from the product you are looking at and redirected to a completely different area of the website where you focus on the items in your cart.

Image if the offline world behaved the same way. You walk through the grocery store, picked up an item, looked at it, and then when you added it to your shopping cart you are whisked away to a different part of the store and all you can see are the items in your cart.

One of the big ways to improve a user experience on the web is to not take users out of the context they are in. In a site we launched last week, Twisted Oak does this 'Add to Cart' experience well. If you are on a product list page and click 'Add to Cart' (or Add To Sack in this case), you stay on the same product list page and a little 'modal' cart drops in to let you know the item was added. If you are on a product drilldown page, and click 'Add to Cart', the same modal effect. The user is never whisked away to another part of the site.

From a user perspective this "modal cart" becomes more like the real world shopping experience where you add something to your cart, and continue down the same isle.

What do you think?

Jun 14, 2009 at 8:40 PM

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May 25, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

Pursuing Abandoned Shopping Carts

A customer comes to your website, adds several items to their cart, and then abandons their cart and leaves your website. How maddening! You don't even know why they left. So what can you do about it?

Some reasons they might not be checking out.

They are just comparison shopping or window shopping.
They were scared off by the shipping costs.
They had technical issues checking out.
There was a lack of direction or some confusion.
Maybe the website didn't give them the correct assurances.

And there are a lot of reasons not listed here.

How intrusive do you want to be?
Visitors on the internet are hardly anonymous. If a visitor has been to your store before and given you personal information, there is a good chance that you know who they are as soon as they come back to your website. If a visitor has entered personal information in the checkout area, but does not complete the checkout, you should definitely know who this visitor is.

Do you want to survey them about why they didn't complete the checkout? Perhaps with a popup survey? Or spamming them with an email survey? How about sending them an email coupon for the items in their cart that they didn't purchase?

How intrusive should you be with contacting this visitor? Maybe you just want to send an email asking them about their recent shopping experience?

Taking a hint from the offline world.
There is a great article at Future Now about gorilla marketing. To quote the opening line "In the offline world, have you ever been chased by retail staff because you opted not to buy something at their store?"

My Opinion
Nobody likes intrusive or pushy people. If a person abandons your website in the pre-checkout area (on a product page or cart page) you shouldn't contact them (via email, popup survey, phone, etc). In an offline world, if someone entered your store, and then left, you would never chase them. Having a feedback button on your site and a clear phone number for customer support are both good ideas to get this visitor to contact you. Look at ways to improve your conversion via A/B tests is also a good idea.

How about if a visitor enters the checkout area, completes their peronal information and shipping information, but fails to enter their payment information? Here it gets a little more interesting. Having a tactful phone call from customer service might be good idea to try. (In an offline world, if someone entered the checkout area, and then decided to leave, a good clerk would ask them if they could assist in anyway - without being pushy). I would side with a tactful phone call more than an automated generic email, or any kind of spam email. Take a hint from some of the ideas in this article.

May 25, 2009 at 5:35 PM

Comments (5)

Email

May 10, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

What does your welcome message say?

When a person signs up for your email list, you probably send them an email to confirm their action (well at least I hope you send them an email confirming their action). How about doing more with that welcome message? This is one of the first chances you have to connect with this visitor - make it a good first impression. Here are a few ideas:

Use the welcome message to ask questions to ensure future emails are relevant.
Use the welcome message to tell the new subscriber about current relevant promotions.
Use the welecome message to link to highlights from your past emails.

And one last tip - don't hide your unsubscribe link - even in your welcome message. Make it easy for people to join your email list. Make it just as easy to get off your email list.

May 10, 2009 at 7:31 PM

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May 3, 2009 | Andrew Kamphuis

One key factor for a better user experience.

What is the top factor in creating a better user experience?

I was reading through the 'Usability Study: Men Need Speed' talking about gender differences in web. While the study's sampling size is small, 'Ease of Use' trumps Download Speed, Navigation, Accessibility, and Customization for both men and women.

I found this interesting as it conflicts with what I feel is an almost natural tendency for website owners to request more and more features. (Can we add multiple ship-tos, multiple payment methods, and a few more options inside the checkout process - or perhaps we should just make it really simple and easy to use)

May 3, 2009 at 9:00 PM