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Bringing potential customers to your site using the techniques we've demonstrated is only half the job. Now you need to sell them on your services and your product. Convince your customers that you have what they need, make it easy for them to buy, and bring them back later with good online customer service.
The web is an instant gratification medium. It's easy to enter a site, and even easier to leave. Many Internet advertising guides and many of the enterpreneurs who use them focus on getting customers to their web page, then drive them away with intrusive information-gathering techniques, confusing navigation that makes it hard to buy, and a complete lack of interactivity and support. Customer service should not disappear when stores migrate online and storefronts become index pages.
In an article entitled Learning to Let Go, Richard Bierck discusses some of the common errors commercial site designers make that alienate customers, and how HPshopping.com has learned to avoid them. The "quest for stickiness" is a major pitfall. Designers often try to add extra features, graphics, links, and intermediary pages at every stage of the buying process to lure the customer into exploring farther and doing more. The end result is that actually making a purchase becomes slow and difficult, and many potential buyers may get lost or simply give up.
Intrusive data-gathering is another way to discourage potential buyers. The worst offenders are the sites which expect visitors to fill out lengthly forms before even allowing them to browse the store's listings. Sure, the information can be useful, but a customer who was hoping to save time by shopping online isn't going to be thrilled about having to fill out forms in triplicate for the priveledge of finding out if your store has what he or she wants. And if you can't sell a product or service based on its merits now, what good will information do you down the road?
Vince Flanders, web guru and maintainer of Web Pages that Suck has some strong words for commercial web designers here. He attacks sites that display "ego-stroking mission statements" and focus on telling the world how "clever and smart" they are. Customers don't care about that. What customers want from your web site is to know how you are going to solve their problems, whether it's a need for a new modem, a flashy logo or a trial lawyer. Don't expect them to wade through mounds of verbiage to find out why they should buy from you.
The point is to make your web site work for the customer, much like you would expect a human service representative to. Before adding a new feature to your site, take a moment to ask yourself, "would I fire a salesperson for doing this?"