Ecommerce’s Key Challenge? Show Me the Goods and I’ll Buy

Emarketer.com notes a Pew Internet & American Life study conducted last year that shows an inability to see products before buying them as a bigger factor in negative attitudes to online shopping than security and privacy concerns.

But the real story is an increased diversity in online purchases. With a USC study showing clothes (57.4%) beating travel (57.3%) to second place behind books (65.6%) in rankings for product groups Americans bought online in 2007. A confirmation of a trend for people to be comfortable buying beyond the ecommerce staples — books, travel, CDs, DVDs, software/games — which offer an experience independent of the way they look/form they take.

Hmmm… Doesn’t add up. People want to see before they buy. But they’re buying clothes online a lot. You’d think clothes would be most susceptible to the see/try before they buy sale barrier.

One of those dueling studies scenarios that raises questions rather than answering them. Trying offline, then buying online after a price comparison, perhaps?

And interesting in the context of a meeting this morning where we discussed beefing up product information a client was offering with more product images.

Apparently, sites with so-called “supersize images” have experienced up to 24% better conversion.

Bottom line: Whatever you are selling/promoting, scrimping on images is not a good idea.

Give people a picture or five to help them picture themselves on that beach. Give them lots of images to help them imagine themselves riding that bike down their street…

July 2nd - And more: “In context” increases conversion — as much as 147%. Showing items in use is much more effective than simply showing them say Elasticpath via their blog Getelastic.com.

There are probably some instances where this doesn’t apply — no need to show someone reading a book, listening to a CD, etc.

But an image of active wear is much less powerful than an image of an active person wearing the item bounding from rock to rock. Your visitor can them see the item in action and, possibly more important, identify themselves as the sort of person who bounds over rocks and looks good doing it.

An image of a software CD or box is next to useless, in conveying benefits of that software. But an image of the interface suggesting some great functionality…

Getelastic.com offers all sorts of examples of good product images. And its very worth reading “How top Retailers Show product Images”.

Indeed, if you are running an ecommerce store I’d sign up for Getelastic.com’s feed.

Small is Good for Internet Marketing

Mike Moran’s suggestion that web marketing favours small businesses is an interesting one for me as I transition from mainly working with large corporations to working with sme’s.

Moran suggests that the marketing challenges that small businesses face offline can be advantages online.  Not sure that I agree but I do agree that there is a lot more to successful online marketing than having the resources the big players have at their disposal.

Smarts can outgun budget. But often making the most of web marketing opportunities requires a significant investment in time and effort, if not money.

Why does Mike think that small business people have an advantage?

“1. Because you don’t have any money[...]

2. Because you aren’t trying to impress your boss[...]

3. Because you aren’t afraid to fail.”

Not surprised to see that comments are not all positive but I will be checking back to see if anyone else offers an opinion