Marketing intelligence is absent from far too many commercial websites, writes TONY PHILPOTT
SOME €12 million per day is being spent on internet purchases in Ireland, according to Realex Payments, one of Europe’s leading suppliers of internet payment services. Not only is this figure substantial and growing, it is sending a loud and clear signal to retailers who are only now hearing it because their once-tinkling cash registers are edging toward silence.
There is currently a rush to the web for both consumers and businesses. Cash-pinched consumers see it as a way to click through the crunch and increase their spending power, and more and more businesses are creating their own websites in the hope of growing sales.
And it is the creators of commercial websites who are facilitating this overall growth and creating new ways to monetise the web.
Providing creative design, site management, and a host of other ancillary services, the number of companies specialising in the creation of commercial websites has grown significantly in the past two years.
Some are excellent, many are very good, but a few are less than qualified. Because no real benchmark of quality has yet been established – it is a young industry after all – such companies often purport to have the skills and services that can convert web browsers into web purchasers, when, in fact, such skills may well be rudimentary at best.
So, how to choose? What exactly are the selection criteria? A prominent industry insider, who declined to be named, said “hard-working commercial solutions with real accountability are what’s needed”.
And if accountability is indeed the essence of a truly professional e-commerce service-provider, then marketing know-how is its equal.
Establishing a commercial presence on the web is not like painting a new shopfront or designing a new logo. It requires the support of formal strategic thinking – the kind of analysis marketing tacticians bring to all commercial communications.
If the company you are considering as your e-commerce partner does not exhibit such thinking, then reconsider.
Mark Cassin of DMA Response Advertising is similarly concerned that marketing intelligence is often lamentably and very obviously absent from many commercial websites. “You see great web design, you see desirable products that have an immediate market, but very often the target audience isn’t addressed in a way that is strategically appropriate. The web is not simply a new medium in which to present your wares – it is a domain where you sell your wares using a well-defined set of marketing rules which, when obeyed, will get orders. A commercial website is not about graphic bells and whistles; it’s about getting customers.”
The danger of simply commissioning a website without due diligence as to the ability of its creators is more than a waste of money – it can actually result in lost sales.
Paul McGurran, director of e-commerce at Magico in Ennis, stresses the fact that total support is what’s required in order to have a sustained level of paying customers.
He believes that “the ability to give clients advice on how to properly handle pre- and post-sale queries, to the ability to accurately track the site’s performance on an hourly basis” are two of the key services that should be provided by web commerce companies.
Improperly handled inquiries and a less than perfect post-sales follow-up have a cumulative and damaging effect on repeat sales and a company’s credibility.
Assuming that your e-commerce service provider has the marketing smarts, and assuming that all of the pre- and post-support is available and in place, then what of design? The look, the feel, the very ambience of the site are absolutely critical. Because just like television, the web is, first and foremost, a medium.
But people do not watch television stations. They watch television programmes. Fans of the West Wing have no affinity or loyalty to the network broadcasting it. Whether it’s on the BBC or ITV makes no difference. Viewers go where the show is. And the same applies to the web; only in this instance the “show” is that sought-after purchase or service.
Invariably web shoppers know exactly what they are looking for long before they go online. When they arrive at their destination-website they are in effect pre-qualified and primed to purchase. This means they are easy to sell to. But it does not mean they lack powers of discrimination. A badly designed website is an immediate caution to a consumer – it suggests that the products on offer may be of similarly poor quality. It follows that if your site is the “programme” they have come to see, then you had better make the visit rewarding.
Site designers are artists, there’s nothing they like better than making full use of the techno-pallet available to them. But good e-commerce companies recognise the power of aesthetic restraint. And there is no better example of that restraint than the Apple website.
It is unashamedly minimalist, unhampered by fancy graphics or video. The journey from the first screen to actual purchase takes just 5 clicks. The site is a classic example of the maxim “less is more”. And in Apple’s case that guiding principle guides shoppers to one destination – the little window where they type in their Visa number.
Adrian Feane, director of Digino Marketing, measures the gap between a company’s ability to design a website and its ability to support it: “Just as it’s important for companies to realise the futility of building a website without any accompanying marketing support, it is equally important for companies to understand that no amount of marketing will make a success of a poorly designed and executed website.”
Remembering that web shoppers go online in full purchasing mode ready to lay their money down – a poorly-designed website can result in them laying their money elsewhere.
In the rapidly-accelerating race to recapture those consumers who have detoured off the marketing high street, retailers and small firms particularly are in danger of being beguiled by superficialities. The belief that just having a website will somehow counter the recessionary trend now affecting sales is a dangerous one – a mere presence on the web is not a panacea for a weak bottom line.
A commercial website requires objectified thinking, goals, management, and it requires a flow of customers who prop their credit cards on the keyboard and make a purchase. But the quality of companies supplying commercial web services is proving to be patchy and variable.
This is an emerging concern particularly in retail, where competition from the web is having an immediate and visceral effect on the bottom line. Mark Creighton, account director of digital communications agency Refresh, recalls the shopping technique of an associate who “is an athlete at the competitive level who went to a well-known Dublin sports outlet to pick up a new pair of his favourite runners in the sales. Normally they retail at €150, but were reduced by only €10 to €140 in the sales. ‘No thanks,’ he thought, went home, found the shoes for sale in an online store for €85 and bought four pairs.”
It is this act of “monetising” the web that has become the grail of marketers. The act of moving stock, making money and sustaining a profitable presence on the web is a first priority; therefore it goes without saying that choosing an e-commerce agency requires an informed and critical assessment of that agency’s skills profile.
Creighton poses a testing conundrum that might typify the dilemma facing brands and retailers as they seek help in bringing their products online.
“You might have a product or service that you have been selling in the offline world for eons, and sales might depend on customers sampling it, touching it or requiring an explanation from a sales representative. But how do you recreate that in the two dimensional world of a website? Web companies that can understand those problems are the ones that will generate real sales for their clients.”
As the number of companies requiring a web presence increases, so too will the number of good, bad and indifferent companies providing digital marketing services. A good e-commerce company will have depth, will provide a constellation of services and will offer true accountability.
Its true measure will not be seen on the website it designs, but on your bottom line.
