Open Letter to Online Retailers

Dear Online Retailers,

This is a letter to all online retailers. I've been online for over five years now and actively buying stuff off the web for over two years. In that time I've seen some great online shops and some real dogs. In order to do something positive, I'm writing this letter in the hope it will help those just starting off an online enterprise in avoiding some of the mistakes that have made me abandon more than one online store and go and spend my money else where.

Images

The issue of images falls into several catagories, which I will talk about here: too large, non-essential graphics, lack of pictures of products and broken images.

One thing that can be a problem is when design becomes more important than content. Many online stores go over the top when it comes to the presentation of their sites, by having large images of logos, navigation etc that take forever to load. When push comes to shove, customers want to see picutures of what they can buy, not the business logo.

Please remember that on the web people can't see your products. They rely on you to supply a clear picture, both visual and descriptive of what your product looks like. If I go to an online shop and there are no pictures, basically I will leave. How can I buy something if I can't see a picture of it?

I realise that it takes alot of work to put pictures of everything you have in stock up on the web, but that's part of the commitment you make when starting up a business. Would you open a real life store, put up shelves and then just have signs saying what the products are?

If you're having trouble getting good quality images of the products you have in stock, why not see if the manufacturer has a site with images on it? You're selling their product, I'm sure they wouldn't mind you using their images.

Another issue related to images is broken images. Always check that the images in your webpage are working. The easiest way to do this is to use someone elses machine to check the website. That way, the images aren't in the cache (memory) of the machine you are using. Also, check using more than one sort of browser, check using both Internet Explorer and Netscape. The market is still split about 50/50 between these two browsers, quite often what will work in IE won't work in Netscape. While some webpage coding errors are "forgiven" by IE, they won't be by Netscape. Can you afford to have half of the visitors to your site missing out on seeing images, text or other aspects of your site?

If a customer takes the time to point out problems with your page, try and fix them. If the customer returns to your page and the error is still there, they will feel like they are being ignored and that you aren't responsive to your customers.

Also, even if picture is supplied, its nice to get some dimensions, how long is it? Does it weigh 5 kg? Is the pattern on the fabric or paper 1cm across or 10cm accross?

The more detail you can provide, the better. I might not need it but I get annoyed if I do need it and have to spend time chasing that information up.

Return Policy

When buying on the web, its often very difficult to see the true nature (colour, texture, etc) of merchandise. Therefore, from time to time customers may not be happy with what they have bought. So it is imperative that online stores have their return policy displayed on their website. People may not mind a no returns policy, but they must be made aware of this before they purchase.

Payment

Have as many types of payment as possible but if at all possible, have some sort of credit card transactions in place. If I am shopping on the web, I don't want to have to send a cheque. I want to be able to be pay by credit card. I am using the web for speed and convenience.

Catalogue

This really only applies to some online shops. For example, you quite often see rubberstamp shops that have all sorts of information about their products but no pictures of the stamps. Often, this is accompanied by a link letting you buy a catalogue. I can understand that there is cost involved with producing, printing and posting a paper catalogue. But those costs aren't really there with the web. If you already have a print catalogue, why not make this available on the web for free??

I for one don't buy catalogues. They are usually around $10 each. After 3 or 4 catalogues that starts to add up.That is money I could be spending on product. Again, if I can't see your products on the web, I won't buy them.

Listing Site Before Its Ready

Another pet peeve is when you see a site listed in a directory, it has a great description, telling you about all these wonderful things you can buy. You eagerly click on the link. The page comes up with the dreaded, under construction message, or even worse a message telling you the site will be up any day, and the last updated date is 12 months ago.

Don't list your site in directories etc until it is ready for launch. People won't remember it, are unlikely to keep checking it and it leaves a bad impression.

Email Address

If you don't intend checking and answering your email, don't put an email address on the website. I don't know how many inquiries I have made from websites, only to never hear from the people running the site. Its like advertising your telephone number and then never answering it. What's the point?

Plugins

When setting up your store, keep it simple but well thought out. Don't go overboard with using fancy, wizzbang techno effects. Making people download large plugins so they can enter your store is more than likely going to drive them away. Any extra wizzbang effects is just another potential thing that can go wrong on your site and stop customers from spending money.

Navigation

Make it easy for people to get around the various sections of your website. The best way to do this is to break the site down into major catagories, then have these categories on each page of the site. Also, I don't know how many stores I've been to where once you leave the main page, there is nothing to indicate what site you are at, that is, there is no banner or text saying the name of the site or store on any of the subpages. If someone comes to you site via one of these subpages, they have no way of knowing where they are, couple this with no navigation and it adds up to a poor shopping experience for your ex-customer.

Geographic Restrictions

Being located in Australia, we have very limited access to scrapbooking and other supplies. As a result, many Australians order product from the USA. Now many USA shops don't ship internationally, which is fine. There are extra costs associated with being an international retailer, but if this is the policy of your store, please, state it somewhere on the front page of your site. There is nothing worse than spending time browsing a store, buying product, only to find out at the end that the store doesn't ship internationally.

Postage Issues

Also, another important thing to remember is the exchange rate, especially when it comes to postage. I know of more than one person who ordered from the USA only to find that postage cost 4 times more than what they bought!! If postage is more than the total cost of the order, please check with the customer before sending the order.

Another aspect of this is packaging. While we understand you want to package the products so they won't be damaged, overpackaging can really add to the cost of postage. So again, please check with the customer before sending if the postage cost is high due to packaging. They might be willing to get a magazine with slightly damaged corners if it saves them $10 in postage (this really happened!).

"What's New" Announcements

It's great if online stores are always getting in new stock, that what we customers love to hear. But we don't like having the spend hours looking through the catalogue to find new stock. A great way to get around this is to have a "What's New" page. This lists all the new stock and has links to those pages. I can tell you, the easier a product is to find, the more likely I am to buy it!