E-Commerce Wishlist When Times Are Tough
Written by Evan SchumanA reader was visiting Walmart.com this weekend because she was about to run out of printer paper and knew she had to drive by a Wal-Mart that afternoon. Her mission was simple: She wasn’t especially picky about which plain printer paper, but she just wanted to make sure it was in stock at her local store.
She hit Walmart.com and found tons of different printer paper, all of which looked quite acceptable. But she tried one or two and searched if it was in-stock at her store. Nope. She simply wanted to ask the site, “Limiting your answer to this one store, what printer paper does it have in stock?” If she was only interested in one very specific brand and paper type, she could have searched that store. The generic searches made so easy on the site, though, wouldn’t work when focused on one store.
Why? The inventory data is clearly all there. Another reader asked why the site didn’t leverage its CRM data and flag to her that, according to their records, her toner is 15 months old and that she might want to consider replacing it now, as it likely only has a few weeks of life left, assuming her usage is standard.
During this time of economic sadness, chains need to squeeze every dollar out of their channels as possible. So why leave money on the mousepad? For your amusement, a random offering of other unsolicited reader site suggestions:
Typically, sites offer consumers two choices: either pickup in store right away; or pay shipping and have to wait days or weeks to receive the merchandise. Why not offer ship-to-store, at a rate slightly higher than grabbing merchandise that is already there but at a rate much less than paying for shipping to the consumer’s home. It’s less convenient than home delivery and that should come with a discount. For the chain, it’s a way to lower costs to the consumer who is willing to wait, especially when your internal supply chain can be a lot cheaper than FedEx.
Many sites offer straight volume discounts, but how about mimicking what good physical salesfolk do in-store and offer ultra-deep discounts for associated items. Buy a camera and get those deep discounts on a tripod, spare battery, upgraded lense and memory cards. Perhaps show them a list of options and promise a deep discount if they put a package together of more than $XXX.
One of the retail benefits of getting a customer to order online and pickup in-store is the upsell potential. Or forget upsell. The basic sell, where the customer, while there, is likely to purchase some other items.
But whenever I have done in-store pickup, no attempt is made whatsoever to lure me into the rest of the store. I go right into customer service and am conveniently situated to the exit afterwards. That’s fine for the consumer, but the retailer could at least try. With that in mind, why not offer an in-store coupon good only at the time of in-store pickup. Make it deep enough to be persuasive. As long as they’re there, they might as well look around to see if they can use the coupon. If you want them to stick around, give ’em a reason.
Why not have an application that scans the cart, compares it with prior purchases (and anything else the system knows about that customer) and looks for disconnects? Envision a dialogue box that might say, “By any chance, is this item in your cart related to something else in your cart or something you’ve bought from us recently?” If they say “yes,” offer a pulldown of those items for both.
The system could then flag that they’re buying the wrong ink for that printer, the wrong USB cord for that laptop or even a food that should be flagged. “You’ve previously said your daughter has a severe nut allergy. That product was made in a factory that also processes tree nuts.”
This could quite a few uses for apparel, allowing them to pull down a list of frequent gift recipients. “According to the information you provided three months ago, that blouse is the wrong size for Aunt Agnes” or “According to the information in our gift registry, the intended recipient of that outfit hates purple. That outfit has a permanent purple bow.”
This also gives the consumer an incentive to volunteer more personal information to facilitate future flags. Win win.
-Marc
March 13th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Why are sites so limited when a known store is indicated?
As a sideways corollary to the first item, I am always annoyed when browsing a site that has lots of items to display, but when you look at them, the are ‘not available at stores’ and on-line only.
Sorry, but some of us might just want to check what is AVAILABLE AT THE STORE that we already indicated on your site!
We want to go, see and inspect it in person, and then buy it.
They sometimes have an option to limit the views to On-Line only, but I’ve never seen one to limit to available in stores.
Grins,
R
March 14th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Customers need to have options – buy online and ship, buy online and pickup in-store, reserve online and buy in-store, research online (with availability) and then go to store and shop the old fashioned way. Indigo’s bookstore, in Canada, charges approx 20% less to buy online and have goods shipped, rather than buying int the store. I don’t get that?? They don’t want me in the store?
March 30th, 2009 at 1:31 am
I like this idea – we’ve talked about building this functionality with some of our customers – but have never implemented it.
One option for implementing it is as a refinement using a drop down box to select the store. If you have lots of stores this may be a little cumbersome – so I think it would be nice to give your visitors the option of selecting their local store and remembering that.
You could also guess their location based on their IP address and show some of the local stores at the top of the drop down.
If you know the visitor’s local store you can use this information to personalize the search results and show the avaialability of each product within the local store.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Your point is a valid one, but remember for many retailers the website enables them to offer more choice than they can fit in a store. Knowing what visitors look for can aid in development of local assortments adding items not currently carried in that market due to web demand/interest.
That being said, it should be common practice to allow the visitors to see whats stocked locally by some type of flag or note indicating available in nearby stores…
Knowing their location also allows for options such as localized pricing, delivery options & costs, and market specific promotions.