I hope at this point you have had an opportunity to read the GSQ you received two weeks ago. If you were not already solving retailers' Internet problems, then your are now well on your way. Obviously, as with all other selling you need to learn the lingo and be able to give reasonable sales advice. Listed below are the most frequent reasons consumers fail to buy from a Web site:
1 It looks amateurish--The Web has no built-in credibility. A site must earn trust by having professional looking pages.2 It has too many links--Imagine having to go through four links to reach a product description. Each link takes time to access. No one will stay at a site like that.
3 It lacks information--A page with little of interest forces the user to go to the next page, enduring the slow redrawing process. To stick around, prospects must really want your product, more than is probably reasonable to assume.
4 Ordering options are limited--Many people are still hesitant to enter credit card information on-line. Allow them to order in the way they are most comfortable, whether by phone, fax, snail-mail, or online, and don't forget ChecksByNet.
5 Bad products. Bad prices. Bad descriptions--If you can't compete against local real-world merchants or the best mail-order catalogs, you'll die on-line.
6 The pictures are too largeóLarge pictures take too long to display.
7 The backgrounds are distracting--One Web merchant put a brown striped logo on its Web site. The stripe covered the black type and made it unreadable.
8 The Webmaster forgets to put contact information on each page--If a consumer prints out a product page and puts it in his portfolio, when he or she is ready to buy, they will pull out the page and can't figure out how to get in touch with the business.
9 The Web site address is too hard to remember--For customers, the easiest address is your prospect's company name. If that's already taken, add the word "company" to the end, or "this is" to the beginning.
10The site doesn't ask for the order--As in any sales game, merchants can increase their chances of making the sale by offering incentives such as discounts, free shipping, limited-time offers, or using other traditional marketing techniques.
If you think this is a passing fancy or something that will not affect you as a salesperson selling in the financial services marketplace anytime soon, then you need to know that Information technology, including business on the Internet, is growing twice as fast as the overall economy, according to the U. S. Commerce Department.
The recently released Commerce report, "The Emerging Digital Economy," found that the telecommunications industry employs 7.4 million workers, some of whom earn among the nation's highest average salaries. Traffic on the Internet has doubled every 100 days and Internet commerce among business will likely surpass $300 billion by 2002. The report further found that in 1994, a mere 3 million people were connected to the Internet, however, by the end of last year, more than 100 million were "surfin' the Net."
Keep in mind that just as most traditional marketing merchandising approaches work on the Internet, so most store construction, inventory system and payment system metaphors will work for you in your sales efforts to the merchant as well.
