28 replies to this topic

[Farhan]

Once you have your potential customer on your order form, do you still need to sell? 90% of the order forms I have seen are set of required fields with instructions helping the user to fill the form.

I assume that many potential customers leave the order form (for various reasons). Can the copy play some role here? Is it okay to keep selling on the order form page?

Input will be much appreciated.

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Farhan,
the golden rule of selling is 'as soon as a sale is made, stop selling' once the customer has made the commitment to buy then let them do just that. If you continue selling after this you run the risk of introducing doubt in their decision, and raising more objections/questions after all what more can you do if you have sold them? the whole point of your site is to get them to buy, if they have made that decision your job is done

You should only be consolidating the sale after agreement to buy so by all means confirm delivery etc, but IMO nothing but the information needed to buy should be on the form.

[Farhan]

Okay fine, I agree.
But what about explaining features like (money back guarantee, after sales support, order tracking facility etc) on the order form. Will it help?

[SearchRank]

I think once someone gets to your order form, they are already sold. The only thing we add besides the fields of information that will be required is a statement telling them that their transaction will be encrypted for their security but nothing beyond that.

I think if someone wants to provide additional information, that can be displayed on the screen they see after they complete the order.

[OldWelshGuy]

Okay fine, I agree.
But what about explaining features like (money back guarantee, after sales support, order tracking facility etc) on the order form. Will it help?

This is asking for trouble , it can not help, you have to ask yourself, help with what?.

The sole purpose for an order form is to take an order, the selling is done, this is order time, then you have the 'thank you' page' sale consolidation time. This is the place to put all the nice stuff to prevent cancellation such as after sales contact numbers and delivery times etc the 'what happens next side of things.

You should Always start your order confirmation with a 'Thank you for placing an order with us' message for two reasons, the first being common courtesy by acknowledging the order, but the second is to 'close the door' on the buying process, and move the customer mentally away from decision making and onto looking forward to delivering, raising up their anticipation of actually receiving their purchase. Doing this will minimise cancellations by countering the 'buyers remorse' many feel after making a purchase.

Hope this helps
OWG

[SEOCub]

IMO, Links to guarantee, after sales support, etc - which open in a small new window should be available off the final checkout form. We have seen behavior where folks will leave at the checkout form. They will not complete the order. Focus group experiements have also shown us that they often back out of the form or simply close it because of lack of information or rather lack of accesible info. Also, we have had customers call us to complete the order because they were insecure about completing the order online and if they had had that extra bit of info online itself they would have completed the order. Our conversions shot up when we added these links.

So, brief explanations that pop up in new windows have gone a long way towards helping us retain our customers and having them complete the order. It also reduced our costs in terms of accepting orders by phone.

If you clutter the page with the information or sales copy however that is not good. And I don't advocate that inthe least.

What is a deterrent is stuff like Promotion Code or Coupon Code on the checkout form. Customers leave because they feel they could have got a better deal. What is really funny is that the offline coupon system is often emulated online and according to our studies it just does not work. We have found that it is BETTER to accept the coupon code or promo code att he very beginning and display all the discounted prices BEFORE the customer puts them in his cart. That way the customer KNOWS what price he is goin gto pay instead of wonder how much discount he will get on his order at checkout.

So I guess I disagree with OWG. This is based on direct feedback and focus groups studies from my own sites ie sites where we sell tangible products. Perhaps OWG's experience with e-commerce sites is different or our markets may be different.

[Farhan]

Help in converting potential customers who may not buy otherwise. On sites selling low price products, there are a number of visitors who click the 'order now' button just out of curiosity. They may or may not buy! And I think that at this stage a great ‘money back guarantee’ or similar features may help converting these potential buyers.

On the flip side, I know that this might slightly hurt the real customers.. and that’s what is bothering me..

yeah the 'close the door’ theory is really important. No question about that.

[OldWelshGuy]

So I guess I disagree with OWG. This is based on direct feedback and focus groups studies from my own sites ie sites where we sell tangible products. Perhaps OWG's experience with e-commerce sites is different or our markets may be different.

And that is the beauty of a forum like this where instead of finding out the hard way, we can feed off the experience of other that have gone that way before.

But as you say, people and markets are different as are product market buying patterns, the more input we get the more educated the decision, god i love this place lol

[OldWelshGuy]

there are a number of visitors who click the 'order now' button just out of curiosity.

I have often had to go right to the point of order on a website simply to get the actual price including delivery as the site did not have the information displayed, and there was no other way to get it.

AS cub said, displaying the actual final costs upfront would stop this happening.

[SEOCub]

'Those who click just out of curiosity' pose a challenge. It is often difficult to tdetermine whether they are potential customers or if they are doing comparison shopping or just the odd Curious George. This is said, given that all required information is available. Often times, the final shipping is available only after entering your details in the checkout form and prior to final submit. Sites that have shipping by weight often fall into this trap. Again it is not difficult to specify what the shipping will be - even by weight - at this point. Others just don't have a clue and display the shipping at the end.

You can determine whether they are potenital customers by seeing what infomration is lacking and what prevents them from completing the sale at that point. If conversions don't change then you may want to look at your marketing copy - the actual selling that occurs before they reach the checkout form.

[Scottie]

Often, people get to the checkout form to check shipping rates. It's hard to provide them until you've finished shopping, and often they can scare people away.

I think there needs to be a balance. The form should be streamlined and easy to use for people who are ready to hand over their money, but with easy-to-locate links for more information like guarantees, shipping info, special orders, etc.

[SEOCub]

It is not really all that difficult to provide shipping rates.

You can have a fixed rate per item.
Or just a fixed shipping rate.
Or a base rate plus a variable rate per item.
Or if it is by # of items or by weight, it is very easy to provide that information in the cart itself. It's but a simple calculation.

Of course, if you use readymade carts, you won't have as much control and be limited by what the cart allows you to display. Which is why a link to a shipping chart is therefore of great value

[sheriw]

Hi, it's not infrequent for businesses to use an order page as a chance to cross sell (in fact, I think Amazon and several others do this). When you order an item, they may say, "Can we also suggest this?" or "Customers who bought this have also bought..."
It's the online version of "Would you like fries with your hamburger?" and can range from letting folks know that the batteries that they need for their new digital camera are on sale at half price. The key is that the cross selling be highly relevant to the purchase, and not pushy or "in your face."
I've found many online businesses to be divided: some go with cross selling on the order pages, and others don't.

[OldWelshGuy]

Upselling is ideal for a number of reasons, it consolidates the initial purchase, it increases order value, and it conveys a sense of customer care as well.

I regularly use ebuyer for puter bits and they say 'buy this +this for £xxx often i do , thats why i have a nice new surround sound speaker system winging its way to me, to go with the sound and video card i bought to edit some video footage and make vcd's

I also agree that having LINKS to information is a good idea, but not volunteering the information. This has been a good thread :-)

[copywriter]

Hi All,

A couple of thoughts here.

OWG... not to gang up on you but I'll have to disagree with this as well.

This is asking for trouble , it can not help, you have to ask yourself, help with what?.

...'close the door' on the buying process, and move the customer mentally away from decision making and onto looking forward to delivering, raising up their anticipation of actually receiving their purchase. Doing this will minimise cancellations by countering the 'buyers remorse' many feel after making a purchase.

Buyer's remorse IS linked to overselling, but it is also genetically linked. Women tend to suffer from this more than men as a rule. While you should stop selling the product the customer is about to buy, you should most definitely provide links to guarantees, support, service, etc. Those links do reduce the cognative dissonance experience.

SEO Cub... good points!

SEO Cub

...they often back out of the form or simply close it because of lack of information or rather lack of accesible info.

I agree 100%. Give them what they need.

There was a discussion of shipping rates. It's true that many customers want to know the shipping cost before buying. I sure do! They should be estimated and offered as early as possible in the checkout process.

As for upselling on the order page. It works wonderfully as long as you don't over do it.

SheriW said:

When you order an item, they may say, "Can we also suggest this?" or "Customers who bought this have also bought..."

It's the online version of "Would you like fries with your hamburger?"

I wrote an article about this very thing. You can find it here.

Farhan, also keep in mind that including necessary information and upselling information (relevant to the purchase at hand) also gives you yet another opportunity to optimize your order page for the engines