Common Sense eCommerce

A simple request, I wanted to find out about the 2430N printer. It’s an HP LaserJet printer and that’s a model number. Simple right? So I typed that into HP’s shopping website search box. A bunch of other printers come up - not the 2430N.

I thought Ok, maybe it’s discontinued. So I used the ‘browse through categories’ to find the printers in that series. I noticed that when I browsed a few levels I found the 2430N. Hmm.

Ah but it gets worse. I clicked the product and lo and behold there was my printer with all the specs I could possibly ask for. But as for the price: it said in red letters at the top; ‘See Store for Price’. And the see store for price was not linked to anything. Don’t you think if they wanted to sell printers they would have provided a link to the store entry or at least the store in general?

Instead it left me confused, wondering where to find their “store”, and what to do next. I was already at the site “shopping.hp.com”. Isn’t that the store? So I did what any buyer would do. Noted the model number and went elsewhere to shop around - and found it elsewhere by the way!

It’s always fun to look at large gangly companies and pick on their usability problems. In this way, we smaller ecommerce businesses can avoid those kinds of mistakes.

Two things to note as “don’t let this happen on my site”. First, their search did not work or did not work properly. That alone will drive buyers away. But there was no clear path for the buyer once the item was located or no clear call to action. That will really drive buyers away - it sure drove me away!

So learn from the 800 pound gorillas on the web: Make sure your website is useable from the shopper usability standpoint!

Tags: Web Usability, eCommerce Usability, eCommerce Website, eCommerce Shopping

This past week, a buyer won two listings. The listings were for the same item in different color patterns. It’s unusual for one person to buy two of these things so I was not the least bit surprised when buyer wrote in:

I only want the pink one, not the black & white one, can you cancel the black and white one?

I wrote back that we could cancel it, but that we would have to charge her the final value fee plus the listing fee, explaining that it was our cost of the transaction. It only amounted to only an extra $3 which she paid. I would not have not pushed the point over that amount, however I always attempt to recoup the costs on things like this.

In this post, I talked about the mindset of non paying eBay buyers as maybe actually being ‘retail buyers’. I think this example illustrates this mindset perfectly. This buyer simply picked up 2 different variants of the same item and then decided on one. Not unlike what a buyer would do in a typical retail store or online store.

This buyer was not an eBay newbie. She had several hundred feedback points and had been on eBay for a few years. This makes me think that eBay could do a lot more to give the buyers a ‘retail system’ if that’s what they want. I know eBay stores are supposed to do that, but eBay is doing a very poor job of promoting those stores. After all, remember that they had to ‘reset the balance of the marketplace’ last year to steer sellers back to core listings. Meanwhile eBay store owners are pretty much left to fend for themselves in getting shoppers to their stores.

All my listings have incentives for the shopper to go to the store, but eBay itself needs to do more to raise awareness of the store paradigm. If shoppers desire a ‘retail experience’ versus an ‘auction experience’, then shouldn’t eBay should do more to provide that?

Tags: eBay Retail, eBay Stores, eBay Shopping, eBay Selling

There’s a certain internet marketer, I’ll just call him ‘Jerry’ - not his real name of course, but since this is not exactly a favorable blog post and in the interest of not getting my self into libelous hot water, I’ll just change the name.

He used to write a wonderful, fairly regular email newsletter. It was fun to read, very inspiring, uplifting and informative - diffused with humor. I used to love to get them and always saved them off to read them again and again.

Then along came success for Jerry. As far as I can tell, BIG success. And the wonderful newsletters tapered off and eventually were replaced with sales letters, fewer and fewer. Now, the only time I hear from Jerry is when he is trying to affiliate sell something. Perhaps about 3 or 4 times a year now. Most recently it was that pipeline thing.

Jerry, if you’re only going to contact me when you have a big product launch, how do you think that makes me feel about giving serious thought to that product?

Funny thing is, he used to use such metaphors as “Jedi Marketing” and the “Dark Side” in talking about doing business on the internet. Now it seems he has succumbed to the ‘dark side’ himself.

As far as I can tell, ‘Jerry’ does not maintain a blog (that would have been the logical replacement for an email newsletter). The only place I can find him in the blogosphere is as a temporary blogger in various places in relation to product launches or marketing announcements.

I suppose ‘Jerry’ is probably just too busy now to write like he used to. Jerry, if you ever decide to get back to writing the wonderful material you used to, let me know. For now however, I’ve removed myself from your email list.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Internet Marketers, Internet Marketing Business, Internet Marketing Strategies, Affiliate Internet Marketing

I get a lot of email from internet marketers in my Gmail box. I’ve noticed that two in particular have been getting dumped into the Spam folder of Gmail. Mike Filsaime and The Blog Squad to be exact. I’ve had to instruct Gmail that these folks are not spam - I believe Gmail ‘learns’ from what you tell it. I’ll wait to see what it does next time I get email from these people.

How long or exactly when they began getting moved into the spam folder I cannot say. They were going to my inbox at one time. They might be doing something that Gmail’s spam algorithm doesn’t like. There are plenty of other internet marketers who go right to my inbox. From the perspective of an internet marketer, having their email go off into the spam folder is practically a fate worse than death! It’s kind of like “go to directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $$$”.

I may send them each a little note letting them know about this or else they may pick up my tag. If Gmail is doing this to my inbox, it’s possible that other Gmail spam filters are getting their fill of these legitimate emails as well.

Tags: Mike Filsaime, Blog Squad, Internet Marketers, Spam Filters