July 17, 2007 | Tuesday
Online sales: If the shoe fits…
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Marketing |News |Online Sales
With confirmation coming that “Online advertising is the strongest performing marketing channel with an annual spend estimated to exceed £2bn”, you may be wondering what companies do with that traffic once they get it.
Methods of converting those visitors to customers abound, and some prove more effective than others. I’ve been studying the various methods used by online retailers specifically, as this is the most straightforward way of tracking traffic to sales, and one case study in particular really impressed me.
I’ve heard lots of buzz in the US about Zappos.com, an online shoe retailer. I have lots of friends and business associates who swear by the site, which always struck me as a bit odd. After all, sizes can vary so greatly that you’d no doubt end up with significant costs for returns - especially shipping. How could people be bothered to go through that rigmarole, and to evangelize the site so enthusiastically afterward? Something did not compute.
But it turns out that Zappos.com not only offers free shipping on all orders, but free shipping for returns, too. So even if the shoes don’t fit, at least you can just pop them back into the box and send them back without being out of pocket. The company even encourages customers to order several pairs of the same shoes, just for trying on, even though they know they’ll incur shipping costs for the returns. As Joe Weisenthal writes:
Of course this cuts into its margins to some extent, but the alternative is for customers to buy shoes at traditional stores. The basic lesson is one that plenty of retailers recognize: making it easier to return items will make customers more comfortable with purchasing them. But it’s the application of this lesson online, to such an extreme degree, that has separated Zappos from the pack.
What struck me is that, amongst all the people who have raved to me about Zappos, none mentioned this free shipping for returns deal. They just praised the site for offering good deals on great shoes and being an overall dream to shop with. I would have expected to hear at least one of them say, “Oh, you can really take advantage of their free return shipping and order shedloads of shoes at a time.”
But no, what has shone through for these happy customers is the ease with which they can buy products they value, and how pleasant it is to do so. Sounds like a result any online retailer would be happy to have.
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