At Groove Commerce we work closely with our clients in designing and developing custom eCommerce websites. This process is very collaborative and requires both Groove and our clients to work together to ensure that we launch a high performing website. In this process we receive a lot of requests for features and functionality that are “must haves” and I am sometimes left shaking my head. These requests usually relate to custom functionality around attributes (i.e. price, size, color) or images. The reason I shake my head is not because I don’t think these items are important, they are, but because I feel that this provides little in terms of improving conversion or average order value.
To illustrate what I mean, I will walk you through the buying experience on three different websites to replace The North Face fleece I am currently wearing. I went to a popular search engine (it’s called “Google”), typed in the product name and the top three results were Moosejaw.com, Backcountry.com and Thenorthface.com.
All three sites offer the same fleece at the same price – $55 (kind of, more on this later) so I decided to visit all three to see which one makes the most sense to shop from.
The Moosejaw Category Page
Upon going to these sites I see that all three are offering free shipping. Moose Jaw offers free shipping on orders over $49, Backcountry offers on orders over $50 and The North Face (TNF) offers free shipping on orders over $99. I am immediately skeptical of chances of TNF getting my money. I understand the theory behind increasing the cart amount but it is a long walk from $50 to $99. But I continue on to find the actual product (while my search results provided product page URL’s I decided to navigate from the home page).
The Backcountry Category Page
Navigating to the Category Page Moosejaw offers the price range for this product with the sale price in red as well as the average customer reviews. Backcountry lists the price “from” and the customer reviews. It is worth noting that Moosejaw’s starting price was far lower than Backcountry’s (27%). TNF has by far the best category page of the three. While it doesn’t have reviews it has a banner telling me it is a “Best Seller” (I know, I am wearing it) as well as a button to play an informational video telling me about the product. Also, on the category page I can click on the color swatches and the category image changes. Upon hover of the main image I get the option for a “quick view” where when I click there is a window where I can order directly from the category page. The ability to add to the cart is a great feature to offer customers but at what cost?
While I can continue to the product page the category page illustrates the point I would like to make.
The North Face Category Page
As a shopper my biggest concerns are “What does it cost?” and “When will I get it?” Since all three sites have the same price I look at shipping cost. Moosejaw and Backcountry are offering me free shipping while The North Face charges $7.95 for FedEx Ground so I have removed one choice from the running. So on to answer my next question; “When will I get it?” Moosejaw’s free shipping will get me the fleece in 6-10 business days or up to 2 weeks from now while Backcountry’s free shipping is 2-days. Knowing I will have the fleece by the middle of this week versus hoping to get it by Thanksgiving once again made my decision easy – Backcountry. For comparison 2-day shipping from TNF is $17.50 and 2-day $22.95 from Moosejaw.
Now is the time in this post when I went from providing a tutorial on comparison shopping to getting very technical (and to the point of this post).
In a typical eCommerce platform there is very little that is “out of the box” and the majority of what you see needs to be designed, configured and customized.
Looking at Moosejaw’s product listing on the category page I noted the following customizations: price range, sale price in red, discount percentage (I question the accuracy of the calculation), repeating the free shipping minimum on products under the threshold and average customer reviews.
For Backcountry I noted reviews and “from” since there is a price range.
As I previously mentioned The North Face had the most complex category page and includes; the “best seller” flag, video pop-up, “quick view” on hover, product comparison and changing the image when clicking on color swatch.
Since we are talking about the same product at all three sites I would challenge any consumer to quantify one shopping experience as better than another and then ask if that experience was worth $17.50 to $22.95. But working everyday with a design and development team I can easily tell you what these features cost to design and implement.
I recognize that it might sound completely crazy for the COO of a design and development agency to tell you to design and develop “less” but it needs to be said. One area Groove Commerce measures customer success is conversation rate and cart abandonment and having shipping rates that aren’t competitive is a big reason for abandonment. So, before spending money on features that you think a customer wants make sure you are running your business efficient enough to provide the best price.
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