Weather you are selling an expensive bottle of wine, an architectural house plan or an expensive art work there’s often more than meets the eye in making a successful online experience for both the seller and the buyer, according to Ecommerce Guide.
"No matter what you’re selling online, your customers need to feel confident about your products. But if you’re selling high-end items, like antiques or jewelry, there are other things to consider when creating and designing a successful e-commerce Web site.
You need to develop a personal relationship with your customer, convey your expertise in the area, make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for and make them feel secure with the transaction.
After all, if you want a customer to fork over $500 for a bottle of wine, for instance, it’s important that they know what they’re paying for and are certain that the people selling it know what they’re doing.
Many of my architectural house plan clients, for example, while trying to do that, opt in for web traffic while they jumped over the much more fundamental issue of their Branding - that people won’t buy a house plan for 500 -1500 dollars unless they feel comfortable with the BRAND. That’s right - all the search engine work is really about getting people in the consideration set to know THE BRAND - as they probably won’t buy from you just because they just came from the Search Engine. And I’ve seen in over and over again with clients who sell considered purchases. What branding work they did was often an afterthought to get more traffic to convert - but it did not work.
It’s wrong to say they don’t do impulse buying - the purchase will often be done on impulse - but not before the customer gets comfortable with your BRAND. That’s the deal for considered purchases. Forget about Search Engine work if your brand sucks! If you have a good brand, use Search Engine traffic to build the brand, don’t look for sales originate directly from the Search Engines - they probably won’t be enough traffic that converts to justify the expense if you look at it that way.
That’s why we see so much of the conversions going on in the Architects NAME - because it is how most customers want to buy a house plan. Again, Search Engine work (IE: country house plans, craftsman house plans, etc) are useful, but more from the standpoint of outreach to a client who does not yet know you and will learn about the BRAND. The generic term will probably not convert on the first visit and by the time this visitor decides to come back and buy (if they do) they will probably just use the Search Engine as a navigational tool (search on the Architect’s name) or they have book marked the site and come in as a direct customer (so you don’t have any idea of how you acquired them). Tough Cookies (literally - there often is no cookie data on Direct sales - either the customer erased them or they were 3rd party cookies that got wiped out with Virus and Spy Ware Checkers). Therefore, the value of Search Engine work for Luxury Purchases is much harder to trace because conversions will usually take place on the BRAND name, not the generic name.
I would think the same thing is true in a Bottle of Wine, say a 1961 Figeac, St-Emilion (High shoulder fill) for $499.95 - would I buy this from anyone? I’d probably want to know if the company selling the bottle is Legit. Do research by searching for the wine and getting a spread of where I can buy it and for how much - then pick the place I’m most comfortable with making the purchase.
Because it’s a luxury item and not a commodity, the most inexpensive price might not be my consideration here - I may care more that the bottle is legit and the dealer will stand behind the sale because if I am going to buy a 500 dollar bottle of Figeac, St- Emilion Red Wine, money is not my issue - I can afford to spend 500 dollars.
"A simple Web site, knowledgeable staff and a personal touch are also the keystones of the Newel Web site, according to owner Lewis Baer. Newel, a bricks-and-mortar antiques store that opened in New York in 1939, has been online since 1998. The site is being completely redesigned to allow customers to see the store’s extensive 10,000-item inventory within just a few clicks, according to Baer. "We did an analysis of the site and our customers want a fresh look and simple functionality," Baer said.
That, more that Search Engine traffic, will probably contribute to sales. I do search but I have a difficult time explaining to clients who sell high end things like house plans that Search is really not the answer for them if they are looking for massive sales - improving the site should be considered as a partner to the search promotion work - it’s almost as if the search engine work is a way to work on the site, and as the site gets better from a customer standpoint and a web usability standpoint, it gets more search traffic.
Being a search engine expert, for me, also means being a Web Analyst and a usability expert - because the three are one. No longer should SEO be thought of as just getting traffic and "we’ll take care of the rest"……sorry, it doesn’t work that way, not any more - the competition is way too much and customers are very, very choosy.
Luxury Items Selling Well as Market Matures
Newel was one of the first antiques stores to go online, he said, and its Web sales are growing every year. He estimates that sales from the Web will comprise 30 percent of his total sales this year, reflecting an industry-wide trend. Overall, online sales of luxury goods will grow to an estimated $4 billion this year, up from $3.4 billion last year, according to the Shop.org State of Retailing Online report, conducted by Forrester Research.Newel’s customers tend to be sophisticated and knowledgeable about antiques, so they want to be able to browse the offerings with just a few clicks. The redesign will let customers search by style, category and sub-style (such as French, Empire, and seating, for example), so they can really hone in on what items that may suit their taste.
Value of Search Engine work here is to make sure that Newel’s changes are search Friendly - and not to generate massive traffic that converts into antique buyers - because thats not going happen most of the time with what they sell (antiques).
"And when you’re selling items for as much as $15,000, that personal touch is very reassuring to customers, Baer said. "We can give them more detail on the item, or we can talk about other items we have that they might be interested in."
Worked so hard to make clients see that -including one that’s no longer mine.- sometimes they just did not get it.
If it takes 1500 visitors to sell one house plan (an industry average) there’s no way you can make a profit on House Plans if you can’t lower that number to say, 300 visitors per sale, and there’s no way that Search, alone, can do that for you…… if the site sucks, that’s probably why more plans are not sold. The work we did was mainly to improve the site, not so much search, the client wanted quick fixes while overlooking their more fundamental problems, which, by the way, are shared by their competitors. Good Luck!
"Another high-tech way to build that customer relationship is to include a tool like Volusion Live Chat, an application that gives customers instant access to the experts at your site. Volusion recently announced a free version of its application; you can read the ECommerce-Guide report here. "
Another idea I often mention to my clients - works for House Plans and Wine, not for Artists though - they have to paint. Maybe Art Dealers can play in this arena.
"Customers also like to see feedback about a seller or merchant, according to Lynne Danon, a lawyer from San Francisco who has bought jewelry, appliances and even a car online."I don’t expect perfection in the ratings, but I look to see whether the seller cares enough to address the comments," she said.
And none of my clients yet even wants to go there! Yet that is where they need to go.
Like any relationship, forging a sense of community at your site will take time and constant nurturing, but it pays off in loyalty. Danon said that once she has established a relationship with a seller, she sticks to that site for her purchases. "Once I’m satisfied," she says, "I don’t look anywhere else."
That’s much more my focus and I use Search Engine traffic to drive traffic that will learn about the brand and Web Analytics to measure the effects of that traffic and come up with Web Usability improvements - it’s a cycle in other words. Search Engine work, as site promotion, for Luxury Items, is probably a waste of time unless your willing to make the investment and include the new forms of media. Most vendors can’t even even take you there - they don’t have the creativity to do.
If you look at a bottle of wine, all this stuff is really important (if it’s a 500 dollar bottle of wine) or a 1000 dollar house plan -same thing - a dream home is not going to be something that people will buy the plans without knowing something about the Broker or Architect.
With Artwork, I think the sale is entirely Branded. If your a well known artist, they’re looking for you. I posted about "After The Bath" the other day, a painting I did while back - I get a couple of visits a day on that from Google Image Search. Are they looking for my painting? Nope. I’m glad they see it though. It’s not like anyone contacted me to buy it (even though I still own it), they’re looking for a bunch of images, and they’re probably in the Learn stage of the Buying Cycle.
If your an artist, like some of the well known artists I know, your goal is not to get massive traffic, it’s to build your BRAND and get other dealers to see it. You may sell prints or things like that - but a purchase over several hundred dollars will come only with a relationship with either the Artist or the Dealer. It won’t happen because your #1 in Google for that term - that’s not how it works with Luxury Items.
