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This article started when i was looking for a new piece of luggage recently. Ive been travelling a lot recently and have seen those suit carry cases and thought how useful one would be for me. They are specifically designed to keep suits flat and crease-free when travelling.
I went online and began looking at a major luggage company's website. It wasnt long before i came up against my first problem. I couldnt find them on the site. The different luggage categories provided no clues as to where i'd find them. The category names were so vague that you couldnt guess where they were either. Apart from going through every single category, the only other choice i had was to use the on-site search function. Couldnt find anything under "suit carry cases" or "suit carrying cases". By this time i was getting frustrated and annoyed. I emailed the company and asked them where they were on their site. The next day i got a reply to say where they were - under "garment bags". Thats the last thing i thought they'd be called (at the time at least). No wonder i couldnt find them.
I looked through the garment bags section and found another equally serious problem. The pictures they provided of the products were tiny and dark. I wasnt going to make a great buying decision when i couldnt even see the product detail well was i? No, of course not.
This cant be a good situation. I want to buy a particular product. I have my credit card ready to buy and the company is persuading me not to buy it from them.
Why did this negative experience happen? Because they didnt make it easy for me to find the product i wanted and look closely at it in order to make a confident buying decision. Could it have been prevented? Yes.
Could it have been a positive experience instead of a negative one? Yes.
Would they have made a sale then? Yes.
Would i be a happy customer? Yes.
Could they be losing other sales too to other frustrated potential customers? Yes.
What should have happened when i visited the site? They should have gone out of their way to present me with a great product and make it easy for me to at least look at in detail, i.e. a bigger photo. Incidentally, the website was very glossy and polished as you would expect from a corporation but it obviously lacked in other critical ways. Therefore, perhaps functionality isnt always the highest priority for a website and well, maybe it should be.
Make sure you arent doing something similar on your website. Get someone independent to look it over ( hint, hint!). You'll be glad you did if you can prevent losing as many sales as this company obviously is. Who knows how many sales they've lost. Hundreds? Thousands?
Dont frustrate your customers by making it difficult for them. Help your customers choose your products and buy from you easily. Do it well and stand out.
Good luck!
Peter Simmons is editor of the DYNAMIQ EZINE. GET MAXIMUM RESULTS FROM YOUR WEBSITE! Increase your traffic, sales, profits, referrals and more... START GETTING RESULTS RIGHT NOW with our FREE WEBSITE EVALUATION at http://www.dynamiq.co.uk/ezine or email me anytime for immediate assistance peter@dynamiq.co.uk
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