As a new retailer we are trying to understand what is most important to triathletes who shop online and would like your input. Options are:
Low Price
Product Selection
Free & Fast Shipping
Website shopping experience (easy to use)
Service (phone, live chat, email)
We have set up a poll where you can cast your vote on our website here: http://www.thetrishop.com/apparel.html in the right column, or you can post your vote here and we will try and include in the results. We will post the final results next week for anyone who’s interested.
This information will ultimately help us serve our customers better by providing what they value most, which is our goal. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone with the commercial nature of this post. Thanks in advance for your help and support!
as a fairly heavy online shopper, I think it’s hard to answer that by picking a single most-important factor. by that i mean… if a website isn’t laid out thoughtfully and i can’t easily a) browse all product offerings and b) find and select the product i’m looking for i’m not going to continue. there are enough online retailers that it’s not worth trying to find your way through a poorly laid out system. that said, assuming the website is laid out well, it needs to be clear from the “add to cart” phase of shopping what shipping charges will be. personally, i will try to avoid shipping charges wherever possible. For example, beating amazon on price by $5, then charging $7 for shipping would lead me back to amazon and my free 2nd day shipping.
Price is typically what brings me to an internet retailer initially, but this goes back to my above point about shipping. i love nashbar’s prices for certain items, however, i rarely order because paying $8 to ship two tires strikes me as absurd. in terms of service, i’m not too enamored by sites with live chat. truthfully i never really use the customer service. but you definitely want to make sure that there are actual people at your company who are able and willing to be responsive to problems with an order. it seems to be that negative shopping experiences travel much faster and farther by word of mouth than positive shopping ones.
Not sure if your site does this, but don’t require people to make accounts to buy something from you.
For sites like Amazon.com this makes sense, but for the average Mom & Pop online shop I get tired of always having to create user name and password everytime I want to make a purchase.
Your return policy should be clear and should at least meet or exceed your competitors. Free shipping for returns is a plus!!!
If it’s back ordered that’s fine, but make sure you tell the customer before they click and complete the purchase. I bought a pair of Conti Gatorskins from a retailer 10 days ago. No mention of back order. No answering of emails. Finally get a person on the line and they tell me it’s another ‘week or so’ and I get he order cancelled. Come to find out they stock very little and they are just like an LBS: they take the order and then order it from the supplier, it comes to them and THEN they send it to you.
Back orders happen, but I would make sure this is something you don’t do!
A couple of things come to mind. First, is product availability. If I add something to my cart I want it to be in stock and ready to ship. I had a recent very bad experience with an online tri-shop where I bought a pair of jammers. After two weeks of waiting I had to contact them to find out they werent in stock. Their system allowed me to add them to my cart, telling me they were in stock. I will never buy from that shop again. Second is shipping costs. I buy all of my running gear from runningwarehouse. com because they ship free. That feature totally sells me on buying my shoes from them.
Product selection and fast shipping (not necessarily free). I’ll go online when I can’t find what I need locally or without my LBS having to order it. If you are selling it, I want it at my doorstep in less than 4 business days with reasonable shipping. It shouldn’t take 3 days to get a product on the truck. I hate to wait so that pushes me towards my LBS given the price is close enough to an online price. I like fast communication (<12h turnaround) and prefer email. I’ve tried the chats but they all feel like chatbots, either let the people loosen up when chatting or don’t do it.
For clothes I love having a fit chart for that brand/model of clothing easily visible while browsing the item (the way Bonktown generally does).
My daughter ordered a pair of Van’s shoes online, and in the box with the shoes were return shipping labels. So, if the shoes didn’t fit, returning them would have been ridiculously easy. If they did, that was easy too. (I like this better than the double items where you are guaranteed to have something not fit.)
I selected price in the survey, because price does matter, but, time is money. If you make the rest of the experience slick, quick, and convenient enough, then that factors into the value received.
I think a fair price and shipping balance is important. There’s no such thing as a free lunch so I accept that mail order packing and handling is going to be factored in somewhere so please make it simple and straightforward. A next day option and standard shipping should be enough just be clear on time cutoff’s for dispatch of stock items.
As a couple of others have mentioned, ensure that at the item selection level (for example size and/or colour choice etc) that you have an accurate method of showing what items are in stock or on back order. If an item is not in stock then that’s fine but let me make the choice now. I too have chosen never again to do business with a company that shows items as in stock only to take the order (and sometimes full payment) but then find out with a part shipment once it is too late to make alternate arrangements.
Try and keep the web store slick and efficiently coded. A busy site showing how “cool” the web designer is with too many un-necessary things to slow it down is can translate into a tedious experience and going somewhere faster.
I guess in general my complaints against stores that I will no longer use are down to inaccurate stock information and timelines for order processing and shipping. If you can get those basics right then you should get a loyal following.
Very well executed, congratulations. There is a little bit of duplication in the navigation and I am not a big fan of rotating ads (I am nitpicking here), so going forward, you may want to do some A/B testing for optimal clickthroughs and conversions.
I do see a real issue with the registration requirement (Are you hosted by GSI by chance?). You will lose conversions because of it.
Unfortunately for you, there are hundreds of other retailers and it is so easy to shop around. With the web, service is important, but not as much as in a traditional store. If I can get the same item cheaper elsewhere, I probably will.
I don’t necessarily want free shipping, I’m just looking for reasonable shipping. For example, the other day I was trying to track down some ipod headphones that don’t seem to be available in stores anymore. I found a pair online for $14. They wanted $32 to ship them. On the other hand, I just bought a bunch of stuff from swimandtri.com. $6 to ship it all to me. So while free shipping would be great, mostly what I am looking for is fair shipping. Just charge me what it actually costs, don’t gouge me on it.
Just taking a look at your site, you are obviously focusing on a niche within triathlon.
The point I made in my previous post about “one stop stopping” is definitely lacking, but I understand that isn’t your business model (at least is doesn’t appear to be). The majority of people will probably be drawn to your site for a particular brand and one or two items opposed to a big order covering a wide range of items.
As an example, I was just looking at my last order from chainreactioncycles, and I spent approx. $500 on a wide assortment of things like: tires of different sizes, a cassette, single speed cog, latex tubes, dura ace pedal inserts (little plastic pieces), merino wool arm warmers, campy lock ring, etc. This is one of the main reasons I shop there, plus the prices are very good and they have free shipping to Canada when spending over $250.
“A couple of things come to mind. First, is product availability. If I add something to my cart I want it to be in stock and ready to ship. I had a recent very bad experience with an online tri-shop where I bought a pair of jammers. After two weeks of waiting I had to contact them to find out they werent in stock. Their system allowed me to add them to my cart, telling me they were in stock. I will never buy from that shop again.”
X2 Nothing is more fricking infuriating than ordering a product that is not in stock ( and not being told so)!!!
I appreciate you coming here to get our input. It’s a bad idea to try to disguise commercial motives, but when up front about it I think it’s fine.
I voted for low price.
But on those rare occasions when I do need customer service, I will be a lost customer if I don’t get passable assistance.
I consider shipping costs+price to be ‘price’. If you gouge on shipping it’s the same as gouging on price.
‘Fast’ shipping? Na. I’m patient or I wouldn’t be shopping online.
Website can be crap, just take my credit information in a secure manner.
Product selection would be great of course…then when I need a number of items I can get them all in one place and pay shipping once. But if you don’t have great selection, I can easily place orders all over the internet to get what I want.
So for me it’s in this priority order:
1, 3, 2, 5 (unless it’s BAD!), 4
I took your poll, but it isn’t useful to pick one over-riding option. FYI my online shopping decisions are made like this:
Does Retailer ABC have what I want. If not, I move on.
Is Retailer ABC less expensive (or equal) to Retailer XYZ?
How quickly can Retailer ABC get the product to me without giving up my first born child
In cases where the costs in question 2 are the same or very close, then 3 will usually prevail. Bottom line, I look at the total cost of the product *plus *the cost of getting it to me by the time that I need and/or want it.
I normally shop online for specials and deals. Full priced stuff I buy at my LBS or other local dealers. Deals are great and I love them. And when I am getting a great deal I can certainly wait on shipping. If I were paying close to full retail then I would want really fast shipping.
I took your poll, and as I was thinking through it and reading the replies, I remembered an issue I had last week;
I have no problem really paying for shipping on a bulk order, but it’s the smaller orders that really bug me; the idea of paying $5.00 shipping for a $20.00 item. It’s even more frustrating when you place a decent sized order, pay shipping, then realize 2 days later (after order shipped) that you forgot to add a small item to the order. Now I’m either just going to source that product locally, or wait and a.) never get it, or b.) get it sometime down the road, maybe not even at your store.
Would it make any sense to allow for free shipping on items purchased within 4 or so days AFTER a user’s order if said previous order either met a dollar threshold or included shipping? I would imagine this would drive incremental sales…right? You would have to have a clause saying that the original order be tied to a user in the system (not applicable for guests) and all the same billing information would apply (address, credit card, etc), but this would be a nice addition.