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From B2C to B2B and Back: 5 Tips B2B Sites Can Take From E-commerce

Back in January, Brian Walker posted a short piece on some of they key cultural differences between B2B and B2C organizations, and how those cultural differences drive differing approaches to web site requirements and technologies.

Over the last year, I have seen an increase in the number of B2B clients seeking help with their web strategy, and I've had the opportunity to work with quite a few of them.  While initially it might seem odd that a retail/e-commerce consultant can offer insights on how to make a B2B website work, I have found that there are many strategic concepts rooted in retail and e-commerce that can catapult B2B websites from the bland brochure-wear of the '90's into vibrant and effective marketing and selling tools.

First, it's important to acknowledge that B2B is a different animal.  Sure, it's selling stuff to customers just like e-commerce, but the customers and the way they buy are dramatically different.   The critical differences that need to be considered are:

• The selling cycle is usually longer:  Depending on the product, it may take weeks, months or longer from the initial research to the purchase.
• The decision process may cross from online to offline numerous times: from initial web search to phone conversation to more web research to a sales call, etc. The information gathering and decision making takes many twists and turns and touches.
• There may be many people involved:  And, those people may float in and out of the decision process over time, gathering different pieces of information along the way.
• Products and services (and their prices) are more likely to be negotiated and tailored to the client: this means that zeroing in on specifically what products and services to cover on the website may be a very complex undertaking.

These differences cause many B2B clients to ask "is my website even worth the investment?" I think the answer is absolutely yes.  If you need convincing, download the Enquiro B2B Survey that was done in 2007 (it's free).  Ok, it's a couple of years old, but I suspect that the findings have become even more pronounced.   The entire study is worth reading, but most notably, across the entire B2B purchase cycle, from awareness through purchase, company websites and search engines are the most used resource by B2B buyers.   That means if you're a B2B company and your website is bad (and, I must say, many of them are), you're likely missing significant opportunity.

So, here are my top 5 e-commerce concepts that translate well in making great B2B websites:

• What's on the menu?  E-commerce sites are typically very good at telling you what they sell.  There's a defined product assortment, usually categorized.  Not so with many B2B sites.  In fact, many B2B companies don't think about their business in clean categories the way retailers do.  Spend some time on this ; how do you expect customer to understand what you offer? What do they call it? If a lot of your phone calls start with "Do you do____?" , start there, and develop a framework for your products.
• Show it off and make it move: Ask any top tier e-commerce leader and they'll tell you that video and interactivity, done well, can pump up the sales volume.  Yet, most B2B sites are a sea of stasis.  A nice video about your operation or a demo of how your product works can make it real and bring credibility to your company. Ditto for professional images and larger & multiple views (if applicable).  
• The power of proof: Customer reviews have become one of the key decision tools for customers on e-commerce sites.  While there may not be a direct translation to your B2B site, especially if products are built to order or highly customized, testimonials can be a great substitute. Well placed testimonials from high profile clients can help the customer turn the corner and pick up the phone.  Client lists and case studies are also great proof points.  If you're worried about your competitors seeing who you do business with, get over it. They probably already know, and they're already calling them.  Holding back info that your customer needs because you're afraid of a competitor is not likely to help your business. He who is transparent (within reason) and can prove (not just talk about) greatness will likely win.
• Clear and ever-present call to action: On e-commerce sites this is the "add to cart" or "buy now", of course.  Not so clear for B2B, particularly if the transaction takes place offline.  So think about it. What do you want visitors to do? Most likely, you want them to call you or email you, or request a quote on a job.  Sounds obvious, but I am amazed at how many B2B sites have the contact information buried in the "contact us" section vs. making it readily available on every page.  Your customer can have that "moment of truth" on any page.  Have the number there when they're ready to pick up the phone.
• Tracking the transaction path: That phone number we just talked about that you're going to put on every page? Make it a track-able phone number so that you can measure how well your website is achieving it's goal of driving people to contact you.  Bonus points if you add call recording as well, so that you can go back, listen to calls and coach your sales people on how to handle these important inbound leads.  Be sure salespeople know that the phone number is on every page and that sending those calls to voice-mail is not an option.  Tie phone activity to your web analytics to see the full picture of visit through "conversion", even if you define conversion differently.

 The good news here is that in many industries, the B2B bar for websites is set very low. A few simple, and likely not too expensive changes can have you towering over your competitors and helping your customers get the information they need.  And don't forget to track the results. Then, you won't have to trust me when I tell you that the investment is worth it. You'll know.

Why CRM Matters More Than Ever in Tough Economic Times

Everywhere I go, someone is trying to save me money.  The grocery store.  The department store. Restaurants. And of course e-commerce sites.  It's everywhere: coupons, signs screaming "sale", huge percentages off.  It's like every retailer in the world is dolling out virtual dollar bills.

No question, we're in a nasty economic situation and no question, it's taking more incentive than ever to get the register to ring.  As a retailer and as someone who has spent the better part of her life trying to crack the code on getting customers to buy, it pains me to no end to see these genuinely well-intentioned efforts by retailers executed in a way that is costly and ineffective in achieving the desired result.  Here's my latest example:

There's a spa/salon not far from my house.  It's fantastic and I've been going there for years.  Actually, as I've aged, I find that I go there more frequently as there's a lot more work that needs to be done.  Brows, nails, toes, hair, the occasional facial when the wrinkles get too hard to hide.  You get the point.

I am a regular, to say the least.  Every 3-4 weeks for haircuts and brow waxing.  Typically every 4-6 weeks for pedicures and periodically, a manicure for an important meeting or occasion (too much typing to get them on a more regular basis).  While the economy is tough, and I, like everyone else have found things to trim back on, my hair and nails will not stop growing.  So it's doubtful that my spending habits at this salon will change much in the months or years ahead.

This salon has my appointment and purchase history for the last however many years.  A lot of years.  They can probably predict when I need an appointment better than I can.  The technicians all know me by name and are always pleasant to deal with. We have a nice relationship.

So, here's the kicker.  I have right now, sitting in front of me on my desk, the following:

• A letter from my hairdresser offering me $10 off my next haircut
• A gift card from a nail technician offering me $15 off my next service combo of $65 or more
• 5 (count them) $5 off coupons good on my next service or retail purchase now thru April.

So, what's going to happen?  I'll use all of them.  But, as you've probably figured out, I would have made appointments and paid for services whether or not I had this pile of discounts.  I have no doubt that business for this salon is probably not what it was a year ago (hardly anyone's is, after all).  But, they are now making their business worse by spraying discounts far and wide, giving many of them to customers like me, who show no slowdown in their purchase activity.  They'll be making less money on me without the benefit of any extra business.

I know, implementing and executing well on CRM is not an easy task, but if this one anecdotal example is any indication, the payoff would certainly be there.  What if the salon only mailed coupons to those customers that they hadn't seen in 6 months? Or those customers whose spend over a certain period of time had slowed by a certain amount?  The really painful thing here is that they HAVE the data.  I know.  Every time I call for an appointment, the service rep diligently types the info into a computer and verifies my contact and credit card information that they have on file.

Managing customers is about more than having a nice relationship, it's about having a smart and profitable relationship.  In these times, can we afford any less?

E-commerce Help Wanted: Retailers Need Not Apply?

Today is Darwin's 200th birthday, so what better time to reflect on the evolution of e-commerce leadership.  

A recent article about e-commerce executive recruiting  in Times Online reveals that retail experience is among the least important attributes that retailers now seek when hiring someone to lead their online effort.   While at first I was surprised, some quick memory checking made me realize how much the e-commerce leader's role has changed in the last decade, and how very different the skill set requirements have become.  Still, when I thought about the important perspective that a seasoned retailer brings to the online channel, I'm nI decided I wasn't necessarily willing to push retail experience to the bottom of the pile.  Here's why:

In the years following my graduation from college, I spent a lot of time on the selling floor of retail stores.  It was the early 80's; there was a recession going on (sound familiar?) and jobs were scarce.  It wasn't glamorous. My feet hurt,  it didn't pay well, and the customers were demanding.  I was glad to leave.  But, 15 years later, as a pioneer in the early days of e-commerce, I drew from that selling floor experience in a big way.  When I had to think through how to present a product online, what information a customer would need to make a decision, how to communicate helpful service information without a human, I thought back to those days when I had to look the customer in the eye (not in the email address) and tell them that the item they wanted was out of stock or that the sale didn't start till tomorrow and I couldn't honor the price today. I remembered that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I had to walk a customer because I didn't have what they wanted.  To this day, when I am getting a website ready to launch, I think about how I had to be sure that the selling floor was "ready for showtime" every morning, with the best selling products front and center, the right signs on the fixtures and my brain up to speed with what specials were running and what new items had just come in.  Today, as an e-commerce consultant, I can always tell when the client I'm working with came from the retail ranks.  They are typically the ones with an intuitive sensitivity to the customer experience and a maniacal sense of urgency about every customer facing detail.  I never ask, but I suspect they have that same sick feeling in the pit of their stomach when the customer isn't happy.

Of course, e-commerce has grown up, and with it, the expectations of the e-commerce leader. In the beginning, retailers had no choice other than to choose a passionate person from the inside.  After all, when an industry is only a few years old, there are no seasoned veterans to choose from.  Early stage e-commerce leaders relied heavily on their offline institutional knowledge  and internal company relationships to get things done.  They found insight and validation from their peers at other companies through Shop.org and regional/local networking groups springing up to share information.  They became evangelists in their organizations, and were often the catalyst for channel coordination and integration; and who better to do this, they were the ones who had a view of what the future retail experience was going to be.

As the online business matured, these e-commerce leaders became a very special breed: seasoned execs who not only had an extensive background in traditional retail or catalog operations, but who now offered a bonus layer of expertise in how to get it done online.

But, sometimes evolution happens very quickly, as it has in e-commerce. The demand for seasoned e-commerce leaders has outpaced the supply.  E-commerce businesses and technologies have become more sophisticated and complex.  E-commerce now represents a substantial portion of many retailers' sales and profits.  For most retailers, e-commerce represents one of the few bright spots of growth and innovation. 

Retailers eager to make the most of the online channel may no longer have the luxury of putting a good store/catalog person in charge of e-commerce and letting them "figure it out".  The learning curve has gotten steep and the e-commerce leadership job now comes with c-level expectations and demands.   When seeking an online leader, the Times Online article points out, retailers may cast a wider net for talent.  That net may include top tier talent with little or no experience in retail.

In the wide net, you may find someone with the right leadership and vision to drive e-commerce, but before you leap to hire someone without retail chops, think about these questions:

• Who else on the e-commerce team can be the retail voice? Is their voice loud enough and respected enough to be heard?
• Is the boss of this potential new leader someone with a strong retail mindset and can they provide mentorship in this area?
• How critical are cross-channel and multi-channel initiatives in your organization? Will this potential new leader understand the complexities and cultural challenges in executing these initiatives without hands-on retail experience?

And finally:

• Has the potential new exec spent any meaningful time dealing directly with customers, and in what capacity?  In other words, have they had to look the customer in they eye (not in the email address)?  And what gives them that sick feeling in the pit of the stomach?

There are consequences to taking retail out of your e-commerce gene pool.  Be sure you're ready for them.

Nudge Your E-commerce Customers and Grab the Low Hanging Fruit

Often, I'm asked by clients or prospective clients to look at their e-commerce websites and identify low hanging fruit.  Usually, that means unearthing opportunities to improve the customer experience, and thus, improve conversion.

Here's one way to grab some low hanging fruit: give your customers a nudge.

In any given e-commerce shopping and buying experience, customers are faced with a large number of choices to make.  I'm not just talking about selecting the product to buy. It's all of the various configurations of choices that come after you've found the item that you want:

• What color and size do I choose?

• What shipping method do I want?

• Do I want to sign up for email, and if so, do I want HTML or text?

• Do I want the item shipped to my billing address or a different one?

• Do I want to save my personal info or create an account for next time?

• What credit card do I want to pay with?

• Do I want to donate extra dollars to a good cause?

The list goes on.  Depending on the nature of the product, there can by a myriad of custom configurations of a product (like the Timberland boot builder) or options for receiving a physical product vs. a digital version (such as an airline ticket or software product).  As many online shoppers have discovered, on some websites, it's all too easy to make the wrong choice.  In fact, some websites make matters worse by having the wrong choice "pre-selected", causing frustration, abandonment, or worse, an erroneous order followed by dissatisfaction and returns.

By dissecting all of the places on your site that your customers need to make choices and gently "nudging" them towards the appropriate choice, you can make your customers happier AND improve your e-commerce business results.  

Fortunately, some great brains at HBR have written an article and created a useful decision tree methodology for those of us who lead e-commerce efforts.  The article, Nudge Your Customers Towards Better Choices is a must-read for any information architect or designer faced with getting customers through the online decision making process, and for e-commerce business leaders wrestling with the pros and cons of making "default" choices for customers, either with the intent of achieving a business results (such as getting more email sign ups) or improving customer satisfaction (such as presenting personalized selections).  Note: you will need to pay for this article on the HBR site, but it's only $6.50 and, in my view, well worth the investment, as you'll probably refer to it again and again and put the decision tree they've created on your bulletin board.

Fundamentally, the HBR authors divide the world into two key types of "default" decisions that can be presented to a customer: a) mass defaults, where a retailer "pre-selects" the option that a majority of users will likely choose and b) personalized defaults, where implicit or explicit information about a customer is used to "pre-select" the best option for them. 

Both of these default types come in a variety of flavors, all of which are described in detail in the article, with examples of appropriate usage based on the business objectives and customer information available.   But, to quickly make they point on how useful nudging can improve the customer experience and business results, here are a few examples of my own: 

First, an easy one.  A typical illustration of an e-commerce  mass default is below.  When it's time for the customer to choose a shipping option, pre-selecting "standard" shipping makes sense.  It's the least expensive option, and if I have special circumstances that cause me to need expedited shipping, I don't expect the retailer to know that.  Of course, if they can highlight messaging about shipping deadlines here around key gift-giving holidays, all the better.

  

In the above example, specific info like the anticipated date of delivery would go a step further to helping the customer make the right choice.

Now, let's look at an example where the wrong mass default is a likely source of frustration.  On the Allen Brothers site, notice that the default quantity choice is set to "0".  Why not set it to "1", since customers ordering will order at least one, and must choose a quantity in order to add to cart?

 
How many customers do you think mistakenly hit "add to cart" without choosing a quantity?

Personalized defaults, when well executed can lead to increased conversion, loyalty and reduced returns.  Consider myShape.com, the women's apparel site that "pre-selects" the right size for the customer based on the extensive body measurement information she provides.  Assuming they have the right data, this saves customers the hassle of determining the right size, and reduces the risk of returns.  This is a form of personalized default HBR calls a "smart default".  I agree, it is smart.

Then, there are those mass defaults that would be so much more effective if they were personalized. I'm a petite.  I've stopped growing (at least vertically), so that's not likely to change. Yet, every time I shop online from my favorite stores, I have to "override" the default "regular" size setting. Sure, most women are "regular", and while most stores probably don't know enough about me to recommend a specific size, they could easily get enough data from me, either in my profile or in my purchase history to pre-select "petite".  Incidentally, when I was rushing through some shopping last holiday, I mistakenly ordered "regular" from two websites (see eddiebauer.com below) and promptly returned them, I was too aggravated to make an exchange.

    

After reading the HBR article and doing a quick drive by on a few sites, I've concluded that paying close attention to key points of customer choice and applying the right form of defaults is an area of untapped opportunity for many. If you're under pressure to improve your business results through low hanging fruit (and who isn't these days?), try this:

Buy and read the HBR article. Identify all of the decision points on your site where defaults are used or could be used. For each, ask yourself:

• Is this the appropriate form of default?
• Is the appropriate choice pre-selected?
• Are there areas where we're using mass defaults when personalized defaults would be more effective?
• What customer data could we gather or what data do we have that would help us offer a truly helpful personalized default?

Then, set up some A/B tests, and gently "nudge" your customers to the right choice.  Chances are, you'll see that a well placed nudge might just push them over the "buy" threshold, and allow you to pick some low hanging fruit.