A better Deal Is Just One click Away

It is not always possible to educate our customers about the importance of their website and particularly discouraging after spending countless hours with individual customers on the phone to see them spend far less time working on their actual websites.

So hopefully this article will put the fear of death into some of you as you realize why your business can fail in just minutes.

The hard fact is, that running a website is a thousand times harder than running a brick and mortar store. By brick and mortar I do mean a physical location and not that you actually sell bricks.

If you have a store in a town, a customer drives to your location and they walk across the parking lot, enter the store and spend time shopping for products. If they need an item, they will choose between what you have on the shelf even if it is not exactly what they need. They do that because the alternative it to hike back to their car, drive to another store and hope they have something better.

Rather than spending another hour shopping, people will buy what you have and live with it.

But the Internet has changed that attitude and behavior.

At one time there were just "13 channels of shit on the tv to choose from".Cable TV gave us have hundreds of choices and now it is much harder for the big 3 networks to compete. Now the Internet has added the streaming market and companies like Netflix are creating first run programs challenging the cable stations while enjoying smaller budgets and lower overhead.

The same has happed with retail in the last decade if you missed it or were sleeping.

Customers can shop hundreds of stores at the click of a mouse and find the best product and price in minutes. While ecommerce has not replaced retail, it certainty took a big bite out of it. It also changed how we think about shopping.

Now we look at products at walmart and think "I can get it cheaper on ebay".

I don't think I have told you anything that you do not already know and this is the point. You already know what I am going to tell you about your own website.

If you don't provide the best deal, the most information and the easiest way to purchase another store is just one click away.

I don't have to drive down the street, there is little time impact on my shopping. I can just hit my back button and choose another store from my google search.

With TRILLIONS of pages online my choices as a consumer are endless. Once hard to find collectibles are now abundant online driving the prices down and killing the market.

Selling has never been easier and yet it has never been harder.

If you are selling a product, especially one the user can't physically inspect then the information you provide is critical to making the sale. If you don't provide quality details, the potential sale can be lost in a flash.

I don't know why people think that anyone will buy from them with 1 picture and no description. I often ask the website owners if they would buy a product that is represented that way and ways get the same responses.

BUT, my product is different, it is much higher quality, we use better materials and our customers love it soooo much!

So what doesn't the website say it?

How am I supposed to know it is better as the consumer unless you tell me?

I don't know if it is laziness or stupidity, either way, nobody is going to buy from you when they are one click away from a better retailer.

In many cases the best price does not win the sale. It is often purchased from the website that provides the most confidence to the buyer. The website that makes the checkout the easiest.

If you are requiring me to register for an account, I just click over to a website that makes the checkout more simple.

If you don't give me any information about the product, I will just click over to someone that does,

If you don't tell me about your company and how to contact you I will find someone that does and provide a phone number with a real person.

You don't have to be a genius to understand buys online, changes are, you are one. So why is your website absent of all the factors that make you buy from other vendors?

If you want to compete then you have to up your game, add content to your website or when someone does find your website and the lack of information on it, they will just click away to another website. Now you just lost a potential customer for life.

With the efforts that people go through to get people to their website you would think they would want to keep them there once they do. If you want to keep your customers, give them the tools and information they need so they don't get bored and click way.