EP083 The 7 Deadly Sins of E-commerce: Avoiding Common Pitfalls
===

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: All right, good day and welcome to Commerce Today. My name is Darin Newbold and I am here as always with Josh Warren and we're very excited to have you for another episode of Commerce Today. Here we're going to be talking about the seven deadly sins of e commerce and avoiding those common pitfalls.

[00:00:22] DARIN NEWBOLD: Josh, this is, uh, God, it just sounds fun.

[00:00:25] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So this is, uh, this came out of a LinkedIn post that got a lot of reactions that I then wrote a longer newsletter article for. Um, apparently people like it. It's like, I always try to be really positive and say, oh, here's what you should be doing, but say, no, here's the seven deadly sins that can tank your e commerce business.

[00:00:42] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, I caught some attention. I even had a, a great comment of someone that said that number five is something that all businesses need to be aware of that. So many of them are leaving money on the table because of it. And uh, that was probably the, the most encouraging comment I've had in a while on LinkedIn.

[00:00:58] DARIN NEWBOLD: excellent well for those of you just [00:01:00] joining us right now you need to stay tuned for SIN number five. So let's kick it off with SIN number one just to start it off. Neglecting mobile optimization. Hey everybody's on a mobile device, Josh.

[00:01:14] JOSHUA WARREN: So on average, 50 percent or more of your customers are buying on mobile and in some cohorts, it's actually much higher than that.

[00:01:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, based on some comments and conversations I've had, I've realized that, parents of young children, there's a really good chance that like 90 percent of their purchasing is happening on mobile. On the flip side of it, we actually have a client. I was looking at some of their stats. Um, only 20 percent of their traffic's on mobile.

[00:01:36] JOSHUA WARREN: So it's not, cut and dried. It's not always, you know, everyone's on mobile, but it's definitely shifting in that way. Um, and we, yet we still see sites that are not.

[00:01:46] DARIN NEWBOLD: mobile

[00:01:47] JOSHUA WARREN: And we have been talking about responsive design and mobile friendliness for about 10 years now. but just the other day, I actually had a, um, a potential new client I'm talking to where their site design is based [00:02:00] on by 2005, 2006 designs.

[00:02:04] JOSHUA WARREN: And it just, it flat out does not work on mobile. And if that's the case, you are losing customers left and right.

[00:02:12] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, what do we got to do to, uh, to fix this? I think there's some quick, quick, easy hits that, uh, that you can help out with.

[00:02:18] JOSHUA WARREN: with. So there are, um, some tests to see how mobile friendly your site is. See how bad of a problem that is.

[00:02:23] JOSHUA WARREN: We'll link to the newsletter article that details all those in the show notes for the episode. I already mentioned responsive design, and I know a lot of y'all are probably thinking, yeah, Josh, everyone, we did that years ago. No, there's still some people who haven't done that. but then I think the thing that everyone thinks of around mobile optimization right now, and this is very true is speed is making sure that it's fast on mobile.

[00:02:47] JOSHUA WARREN: and lots of times people don't think about the fact that, um, especially some older phones, they don't have the processing power of the latest and greatest phone. They might be running an older version of Android, something like that, where they're going to [00:03:00] have some, some different issues rendering your pages.

[00:03:02] JOSHUA WARREN: And that brings me to the last practical fix for this is don't just test it on one device. I have worked with so many clients where, you know, the CEO, we know what phone he has, and that is the only phone that matters as far as that company is concerned. But kind of an interesting, um, recommendation I saw recently was like, if, if your people are mainly testing on iPhones, make sure somebody grabs an Android tablet.

[00:03:28] JOSHUA WARREN: And different form factor, different operating system. Um, that way you can test and make sure it still looks good there too.

[00:03:34] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, and there's even services that can do testing where you can test on multiple devices, or at least simulate testing on multiple devices to get you closer. So that's a great place to start. Well, moving on sin number two, complicating the checkout process. Wow. I've run in. I personally run into this craziness.

[00:03:53] DARIN NEWBOLD: So talk us through this one, Josh.

[00:03:55] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So complicated checkouts equal cart [00:04:00] abandonment. I mean, it just breaks down that simple. And, and again, you might be thinking, Oh, everybody knows make checkout fast and simple.

[00:04:06] JOSHUA WARREN: And you're probably even thinking, Oh, my checkout's fast and simple. Is it? Have you tested it? Have you tested it? Again, kind of look at it from an iPhone and an Android device. There are so many checkouts out there, including some of the big platforms that I won't name and shame this time. Um, but there's some that block Safari from auto filling credit card numbers.

[00:04:27] JOSHUA WARREN: So then the person has to manually type in their credit card number. The worst offenders I've seen of this are the people that their site has this fancy system that's trying to show, Oh, here's the visa icon or the MasterCard icon as you type in the credit card number. But so many of those are implemented in a way that autofill doesn't work.

[00:04:45] JOSHUA WARREN: And so you're just frustrating your customers. You're frustrating Darin.

[00:04:49] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yes, very 

[00:04:50] JOSHUA WARREN: and then they are going to buy from your competitor instead. So definitely, um, think through. The form fields. Do you have too many form fields in your checkout? Do [00:05:00] you have too many required form fields? Are those form fields, um, supporting autofill or not?

[00:05:05] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, think about guest checkout, of course. I know some of you, um, especially some of the B2B brands we work with, guest checkout isn't always an option, but where possible, you know, definitely offer that. And then provide multiple payment options. And there has been some Some contrarian research saying that sometimes too many payment options can overwhelm people.

[00:05:25] JOSHUA WARREN: but I think for the most part, you know, your customers, you know, the payment options that they're going to resonate with. Make sure you're offering, you know, more than just one or two. Again, especially if you have a whole lot of, um, mobile users offer some type of wallet based payment. So Apple pay, Google pay, or both.

[00:05:41] JOSHUA WARREN: Most of the better payment integrations for e commerce now will support both. So there's no reason not to turn that on.

[00:05:48] DARIN NEWBOLD: that should be easy. That should just be an easy thing that everybody does. All right. So sin number three, underestimating product content.

[00:05:57] DARIN NEWBOLD: I really want to hear about this one, Josh, because I, [00:06:00] I, we talked about product content and all that quite a bit. So tell us about this one.

[00:06:05] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So high quality product content, that can be as simple as high quality photos. Uh, I was having an interesting conversation on, um, someone else's LinkedIn posts this week about thinking through from the buyer's perspective.

[00:06:18] JOSHUA WARREN: And in this case, I mean, the. the buyer of that product line, not the customer. thinking about like, if you're selling a high end fashion apparel item and it really requires, like, the reason people pay more for it is because of really fine stitching and really fine detail. You're going to need to get really good photos of that.

[00:06:38] JOSHUA WARREN: And you can't just have one photo of the product. You're going to need multiple photos that really showcase why someone would pay more for this. And so often, um, again, especially in mobile, I see where they don't have those photos. So you can't really see the detail on the product. So people aren't going to buy it

[00:06:53] DARIN NEWBOLD: Or really having the ability to zoom in quickly and easily.

[00:06:57] DARIN NEWBOLD: So you can zoom in on that, uh, on that high [00:07:00] end stitching and those kinds of things. All right. sin number four.

[00:07:04] JOSHUA WARREN: I wasn't done with three yet. There's more, but wait,

[00:07:07] DARIN NEWBOLD: but wait, there's more.

[00:07:08] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, yeah. Try not to just steamroll through the, all my suggestions, but, um, so having compelling descriptions and I mean, in the age of chat GPT and all the AI advancements, there is no reason why every single year, one of your products shouldn't have a unique, compelling description.

[00:07:26] JOSHUA WARREN: And I'm not saying go out and, um, Have AI write them all for you and just post that. Um, there's some really cool stuff I saw actually last summer at conferences being talked about, where brands were taking spreadsheets and filling them in with some product data, feeding that into ChatGPT with some specific prompts that it then put back in the spreadsheet.

[00:07:48] JOSHUA WARREN: And then human reviewers would go through and basically craft the final description and they were coming up with some amazing product descriptions that way. video content, size guides, and then also, [00:08:00] and this again, I feel like I've talked about this. I know I've talked about this for over 10 years now, but SEO.

[00:08:05] JOSHUA WARREN: So what comes to mind for me is if you are selling products that. Um, and there's a case I always think of, we were working with a power equipment parts site. So they sold anything you might need to fix a lawnmower. Well, those parts, what works for a, Honda engine and lawnmower might also work on a Ryobi.

[00:08:27] JOSHUA WARREN: so having on the product detail page, that cross reference of all the different part numbers, but also displaying that in a way that it was really easy for Google to understand and find that information on the page. That was a game changer for them. Once we implemented that, they got so much more organic traffic.

[00:08:42] JOSHUA WARREN: So you got to think not just the basics of SEO and optimization, your product pages, but think through like, what unique data do you have that customers might be searching

[00:08:52] DARIN NEWBOLD: That's a really interesting and really great tweak is that, cross reference products. All right. number three, have you covered it? I [00:09:00] don't want to

[00:09:00] JOSHUA WARREN: I don't worry.

[00:09:00] JOSHUA WARREN: We can, we can move

[00:09:01] DARIN NEWBOLD: All right. Sin number four, ignoring customer feedback. how does that affect, the whole process?

[00:09:07] JOSHUA WARREN: so you ignore your customer feedback and you are not going to build trust. And if you do not have trust, you are not going to drive sales and conversions. So definitely this can be product reviews.

[00:09:19] JOSHUA WARREN: This can be, um, feedback questions that get emailed to you. Make sure obviously you're, posting product reviews. I've seen more and more conversations about how consumers are getting smarter and realizing that if all the reviews for a product are five stars, then you're probably only approving the five star reviews.

[00:09:38] JOSHUA WARREN: Don't do that. definitely if there's a negative review that is completely off base that, you know, isn't even about the product, it makes sense. Don't, you know, remove that

[00:09:46] DARIN NEWBOLD: Right.

[00:09:47] JOSHUA WARREN: But if someone has a legitimate gripe with a product, post it, but then respond to it. And then I think the smartest brands then take that back to their either purchasing team or their product design team and say, Hey, here's both [00:10:00] the good and bad feedback we're getting on this product.

[00:10:02] JOSHUA WARREN: How can we make the product better? How can we buy a new product that maybe is a better fit for what these customers are looking for? Um, there's a lot of value in even those negative reviews.

[00:10:13] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting, and I don't know if you've noticed this or not, uh, we've talked about the big, uh, a store out there, but, uh, they're now showing, how common something is to be returned, which I find, I have started to find that quite interesting, uh, and helpful.

[00:10:29] DARIN NEWBOLD: So, all right, for those of you that have been staying tuned for that number five sin, here it is. Neglecting post purchase communications. This one's a biggie.

[00:10:38] JOSHUA WARREN: Oh yeah, and, uh, I had a little bit more fun with the LinkedIn article about this, and the article actually called it Post purchase silence, the art of ghosting your customers.

[00:10:49] JOSHUA WARREN: And that's really what some brands are doing is they're just completely ignoring their customers. Um, basically when you go to, if a customer goes to your website, you serve them, [00:11:00] you let them purchase from you, but you're not following up. You're not reaching out. And so it's so important. They give you their, uh, email address.

[00:11:07] JOSHUA WARREN: Some of them will even give you their cell phone number. You need to be messaging your customers. Um, this can literally be as simple as order updates. So here in Texas, we all love HEB. HEB has done some cool stuff with curbside, but I actually noticed just this week that when you pick up a curbside order from HEB, you immediately get a text saying you picked up your curbside order, but that's literally all it says.

[00:11:31] JOSHUA WARREN: There's no bounce back. There's no encouragement to sign up for a loyalty program. There's no link, there's nothing. And that is such a huge missed opportunity where. They could simply say, Hey, you know, some of the locations have a barbecue store. Say, Hey, pop in, pick up some barbecue, 5 percent off if you show this code.

[00:11:47] JOSHUA WARREN: so many things you could do to kind of drive more sales and incremental revenue. obviously then also some brands will have a welcome series depending on your product and what you're selling. Um, you could have a series of emails after [00:12:00] someone makes a first purchase. Um, loyalty programs and loyalty programs don't have to be as complicated as some people think.

[00:12:07] JOSHUA WARREN: I have seen amazing things done just with free Facebook groups. and personalized recommendations, obviously building in some personalization into the post purchase communication.

[00:12:18] DARIN NEWBOLD: building its personalization into the post purchase communication. Yeah,

[00:12:35] JOSHUA WARREN: so obviously make sure you have analytics installed. Make sure it's working. Um, we have taken on clients from other agencies or that were doing things in house and we'll ask them, Hey, you know, can we get access to your Google Analytics?

[00:12:47] JOSHUA WARREN: Like, oh yeah, we have it. We have Google Analytics. Okay, can we get access to it? Oh. Well, that was Bob that set that up and Bob's not here anymore. So we'll get back to you. And then maybe a few months later, we get access and we discover that, oh, it hasn't [00:13:00] been working for years. And so obviously make sure you have some sort of analytics installed and working.

[00:13:06] JOSHUA WARREN: To me, analytics, it's almost like backups. A lot of IT professionals say that You really only can say that you have backups when you actually try to

[00:13:14] DARIN NEWBOLD: use them exactly 

[00:13:16] JOSHUA WARREN: restore something. So use your analytics, make sure you can actually pull data from it. and then really, um, you know, just dig in.

[00:13:24] JOSHUA WARREN: There's so much information. It's so exciting. Honestly, being on the e commerce side of things, we get so much more data than.

[00:13:32] DARIN NEWBOLD: stores do,

[00:13:33] JOSHUA WARREN: Because we can see exactly where your mouse was hovering over and we can see where you clicked and how long you spent in each step of the purchase process. Um, so definitely use that information.

[00:13:45] JOSHUA WARREN: Also use it though to segment out your audience, your customers. You may actually have 2, 3, 7 different audiences. Personas that are buying from you. And if you can really dig into the analytics and segment that out, that can help you in your personalization efforts. And [00:14:00] also look at your site search, look at what terms are people searching for.

[00:14:04] JOSHUA WARREN: we, and actually for some of the, the omni channel retailers we work with, we've seen some interesting things in the site search that help us basically realize, hey, Y'all have a problem with people not knowing how to navigate your stores. And so we're able to dig into that and actually help on the store and the physical retail side of things just by looking at the analytics and looking at the site search terms.

[00:14:25] DARIN NEWBOLD: That's awesome. Yeah. And, and I know there's episodes that we've talked about many of these things. So even going back and reviewing some of the episodes that we've had on specific on analytics can always be helpful. Well, Bringing it to a finale. Number seven. Sin number seven. Providing subpar customer service.

[00:14:45] DARIN NEWBOLD: This is almost as bad as ghosting them, but not quite because now you've talked to them, but it wasn't any good.

[00:14:50] JOSHUA WARREN: Exactly. So, I mean, the basics are provide good customer service, train your customer service people well, have the right policies in place, but even with all [00:15:00] of that, something's going to happen.

[00:15:01] JOSHUA WARREN: I mean, there's, it is not possible to have a perfect, uh, 100 percent satisfaction rating with anything that involves customer service. So also has some recovery procedures in place. And I know we've had episodes where we've talked about Disney and Disney's approach to quality service and how they have kind of recovery processes.

[00:15:20] JOSHUA WARREN: And I think that's such a Good thing to go back and listen to that episode or look up what Disney says about that. so just knowing that, Hey, somebody can have a bad experience and then how you react to that. Like, I'm, I'm amazed when I see a brand go viral because some customer service person. When off on a customer and it's like, Oh, that's not like this day and age.

[00:15:41] JOSHUA WARREN: You have to realize anything you say in a customer service interaction could be screenshot and pasted all over Reddit. So, um, just train your people, give them the right resources. Um, set really good, clear time expectations. Like if it takes you three days to get back to an email, at least true. Say in your [00:16:00] autoresponder, you will get a response back in three days.

[00:16:02] JOSHUA WARREN: then this is another area where AI is making leaps and bounds. Um, so many companies now I've seen 50 percent or more of their customer service interactions are able to be answered by an LLM or an AI. and then also just having a knowledge base. If you don't want to go full AI, at least have a good customer service knowledge base that is exposed to your customers so they can self serve some of those things.

[00:16:26] DARIN NEWBOLD: And one of the things that I've seen even a little bit in this whole customer service range is make sure you're monitoring and, and, uh, measuring the things that you just mentioned, Josh, the, the time and the response, because if you don't measure it, or if you don't keep track of it, then even, even if you have great customer service, but yet it takes, three days to get any good customer service, you may not be really meeting what the customer needs.

[00:16:53] DARIN NEWBOLD: All right. Well, as a quick recap of our seven deadly sins, we, we talked about [00:17:00] mobile optimization, how important that is, can't be neglected. We don't want to complicate our checkout process in any way, shape, or form. So make it work, make it work right. And please, for the love of goodness, make it so that if you have Apple, it will autofill.

[00:17:15] DARIN NEWBOLD: Credit card stuff, at least for me anyway. Thank you. All right, moving on. Sin number three, under, underestimating product content. It's got to be great. Got to be, valid and important. We don't want a number four, ignoring customer feedback, never, never do that. You want to be able to provide that and have that there.

[00:17:32] DARIN NEWBOLD: Don't want to neglect or ghost our customer. So note, neglect, note, neglect post purchase communication. Sin number six, overlooking data analytics. You got all the data there. Take a look at it, use it, analyze it. And then lastly, provide great customer service. Don't provide subpar customer service. With all that Josh, I know you have a final message here to kind of share with everyone about, uh, about this.

[00:17:59] DARIN NEWBOLD: Commerce today, as [00:18:00] well as your posts on Joshua Warren at LinkedIn.

[00:18:03] JOSHUA WARREN: Yep. So definitely please follow me on LinkedIn. I'm Joshua Warren. You'll see a creativity gold background behind my headshot. cause there are many Joshua Warren's on LinkedIn. Um, I had four Joshua's in my kindergarten class. My mom picked, I think the most common name of the year I was born. That rant aside.

[00:18:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Sorry, mom. Um, I would say also subscribe. Um, if you follow me on LinkedIn, LinkedIn will automatically recommend that you subscribe to e commerce insights. It's a little weekly LinkedIn newsletter. I do. It's where this content actually originated and I'm really excited about next week's episode. So I've been saying for weeks that want to have more merchants on the show.

[00:18:43] JOSHUA WARREN: and inviting y'all to reach out to me if you'd like to be a guest and next week I'll be interviewing Nick D. Nichols. He's a 10 year veteran of e commerce marketplaces and Amazon leadership. He's been a conference speaker. Um, really the list of accolades is, is long [00:19:00] and I'm really excited to have him join commerce today and give the merchants point of view.

[00:19:04] JOSHUA WARREN: I think it's going to be a great episode. So keep an eye out for that next week.

[00:19:07] DARIN NEWBOLD: That is so awesome. Well, with that, we appreciate you being here. As always, we look forward to hearing from you, feel free to, uh, reach out to us at any time

[00:19:15] JOSHUA WARREN: We won't ghost you.

[00:19:16] DARIN NEWBOLD: we won't ghost you. We won't ghost you. Yep, that's right. and as always, thanks again.

[00:19:20] DARIN NEWBOLD: You guys have a, uh, you have a great day and we'll see you next time here at Commerce Today. Take care. 

[00:19:24] ​