Future Now Post
Friday, Nov. 16, 2007 at 3:59 pm

Screencast: Guarantee Holiday Sales

Written by: Bryan Eisenberg

...says Best BuyOne of the most important — and often overlooked — ways to boost your conversion rate while improving the experience for your customers is to focus on point-of-action assurances. Basically, these are the messages that smart e-commerce sites give us, just as we’re ready to check out. Point-of-action reassurances help us overcome that one last moment of doubt (”I think she hinted at this one, but can I exchange it if she wants that other digital camera instead?”). These types of messages are especially important when dealing with customers who are buying gifts online.

Offline, returns and exchanges are less of a concern to shoppers. They can simply take their purchases back to the store they bought them from. Many retailers even offer gift receipts so recipients can take the merchandise back and exchange it.

Online, the gift exchange/return process looms more ominously in shoppers’ minds. What if shoppers want to return or exchange orders? What do gift receivers do? How about gift givers? Where do they go? How fast will they get a refund? Return-shipping costs, shipping hassles, price-matching concerns, and other questions hover like conversion-rate-chomping gremlins, threatening to devour your sales. Online retailers must resolve these questions, manage expectations, and inject confidence into their visitors, or their “buy now” buttons will look like black holes threatening to suck shoppers’ cash into the ether.

In this screencast, I’ll show you how big online retailers like LandsEnd.com, WalMart.com & BestBuy.com handle these concerns during the holiday crunch. You’ll see how adapting these techniques to your own checkout process can help close the sale and keep them coming back — not just to return things, but to buy from you year-round.

(If the video doesn’t show up, click here.)

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9 Comments on “Screencast: Guarantee Holiday Sales”

  1. Tom Says:

    Interesting that Best Buy has already changed that slogan to reflect guaranteed Christmas deliveries.

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  5. Ladies Scarves Says:

    Great article. Brayan. I would include these when I start using customizable shopping cart.

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  8. David Jacques-Louis Says:

    It’s interestig as always. Stumbled it.

  9. Camping Says:

    Geez all these tricks marketers have.
    I don’t even realize if im being “called to action” but I guess it happens at a subconscious level.

    Thanks.

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