When you consider the cost of trying to acquire a customer, it’s worth taking some time to think about what things might stop potential customers from buying.
A case in point is my recent experience of trying to buy some aftershave for my father for his birthday. It’s a regular purchase I make every year.
Normally I go straight to my favourite website StrawberryNet.com to make the purchase. My purchase pattern is so regular that it would have been a great opportunity for StrawberryNet.com to pre-empt my purchase and send me an email about it. Sadly, this did not happen. Even worse, the product was out of stock.
This led me to a state of friction. I had to find a new online store to purchase the product – with many options available, I was nervous about trying a brand I had never heard of nor had any experience of.
As a retailer, it was a great opportunity for someone to shine and offer something that would make me consider changing my purchase habits and buy from them.
After Googling the brand and name of the product, I had hoped to find a store that could sell me Yves Saint Laurent Pour Homme Cologne for a reasonable price, low shipping rate and could deliver within 14 days.
My quest failed.
Here’s why:
1. Google Shopping Ads Showing product that is out of stock
Although I had previously visited the StrawberryNet.com online store and couldn’t find the product I was looking for, I saw a StrawberryNet.com product listing ad like the one below which showed they had the product I wanted. So I clicked on the ad only to be taken to a specials page which unfortunately did not have the product I wanted.
2. Online search ad showing a product that is out of stock
One of my online shopping trips took me to BigW. Kudos to Big W for getting their landing page right. I landed on the right page. Unfortunately, the product was out of stock so I could not buy the product. In this instance, an alert system needs to be set up so that when products are out of stock, notifications are sent to their Google ads campaign manager so the ads can be paused.
3. Website takes forever to load
Next on my list to consider buying from was from FeelingSexy.com.au. The price was reasonable – the only thing was that the shipping price was not immediately noticeable. So I added the item to the cart and then went to check out.
It took forever for the website to load to the checkout page. It might have been only 5 – 7 secs but it felt like a very long time. Finally, when I got there it showed that the shipping price was $9.95. Hang on – didn’t I see another item for $52.95 with free shipping. I abandoned the cart.
4. Shipping price not obvious and too high
In this particular market, there were a number of players offering free shipping. FeelingSexy.com.au had a higher shipping rate which meant that while their price was reasonable, the combined price of the aftershave and shipping rate made the total price more expensive. Being a price-conscious shopper I abandoned the cart.
5. Unable to hit the buy now button
In this example, I clicked on an ad from TheIconic.com.au that took me to the right landing page. Fantastic. The price was a little more expensive but it offered free shipping on items over $50 making the offer one that I would be willing to accept.
I clicked the buy now button. Nothing happened. Actually, a message appeared asking me to select the product size. The issue is that there was only one size – 100ml. I couldn’t buy it. Perhaps it was out of stock – I don’t really know. So I did the next logical thing, I phoned the company. The message at the end told me that The Iconic was experiencing a higher volume of calls than normal and to leave a message via the contact form on the website.
Seriously, given my first experience, do you really think I trust that the contact form would work!
6. Clicking on an ad that takes use to an irrelevant landing page
My next step was to try a few alternative companies. This led me to visit to MrPorter.com and ReebonzAus.com.au. Unfortunately, both stores took me to a landing page that displayed clothing and leather goods. Not really what I was looking for.
From a cursory look, I determined that neither store actually sold any fragrances. Perhaps I should have contacted them to help manage their Google Ads campaigns. I am sure I could have helped save them a lot of money and avoid wasted ad spend.
It was clear that their advertising campaigns were not well set up and they needed to have the words Pour Homme, Cologne and aftershave as negative keywords in their Google Ads account so that they stopped wasting money on clicks that were never going to make a sale.
So there you have it. Getting people to your website is only half the battle. The other half is making sure you offer a good user experience, have well executed professionally managed campaigns. After all, why would you want to annoy potential customers and deter them from buying from you.
What things stop you from buying online?