Five by Five

We were asked to contribute to the latest in the IAB’s vertical handbook series: retail. With a focus on what makes a good online shopping basket experience, our top tips are below. You can download the handbook here.

Shopping basket drop-off can be avoided by learning from the benchmark leaders: Amazon, Carphone Warehouse and Figleaves. What they do is simply make it easy for you to buy, change your mind, save it for later and come back, and compile wish lists which others can buy for you. What makes a good shopping basket experience?

1. Clear product descriptions and price information so users are reassured that what they wanted to buy has magically found its way to their basket.

2. Images to re-enforce the product description because people think visually too, especially when it comes to color choices.

3. Easy removal, amendment or addition of items because they’re allowed to change their minds.

4. Clear navigation to proceed to purchase or back to similar products, back to home, or a new search as these are users’ typical next steps.

5. Clear labeling of the basket during the entire shopping experience so the user can see what’s in it at any time.

6. Ability to save.

In this latest podcast I speak with Jane Gleadall of Biglight on e-commerce and the challenges faced both on the high street and in digital from the credit crunch and the current and future impact of social media on e-commerce.

You can listen to the podcast here. You’ll also be able to download it, subscribe via iTunes and all that plus download the transcript if you’d rather read than listen.

Here’s some nuggets:

On the economic impact affecting retailers and e-commerce:

I think that online sales whether its high street or online it will be a hard fought battle this year, I think that what we are going to see is that many of the consumers are raising their expectations and they want improved service at lower cost, I do think that online will be high on the agenda for many retailers this year, and I think that getting that share of business is going to be an essential part of their survival strategy. The principles of online to a large degree are no different to what you are seeing on the high street, it’s about improving margins, it’s about reducing your costs, it’s about improving your efficiencies.

On social media’s future impact on e-commerce:

I think social media in the retail context plays a slightly different role than as it’s used for the pure community context. In the pure community context people just want to talk to one another, want to share information but retail have got to see a bottom line improvement. I think that as I have said before retail tends to apply the philosophy of testing and if social media and what it brings to the table can improve conversion, can improve average order values, it will absolutely be used. What is becoming evident is that social media is becoming very important to purchase decisions

As usual, I’ve run the content through Wordle and it looks like this:

Catch up on previous podcasts:

Tomas Nihlen of Urban Lifestyle Report

Future of search with Love Digital

Kym Niblock, bbc.com

Content also shared in these spaces:

Five by Five blog on Brand Republic

Five by Five Podcasts

bluurb.wordpress.com

Who to heckle for this post:

Nicholas Gill, Planner | nick.gill@fivebyfivedigital.com | @nicholasgill | bluurb.wordpress.com

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