Internet Marketing Promotion

November 2011 Issue --> Internet Marketing Promotion Article

Don't Take No For An Answer: Capturing Lost Online Sales

By: Kat Gordon

There are lots of reasons why a mom might leave your site before buying. Sure, some of them center around your offerings - and I could write a book on that topic alone.

But sometimes her departure is less a concern and more of a consequence, due to:

phone interruption
boss interruption
kid interruption
doorbell interruption
credit card not handy
laptop battery running out
urgent bathroom need

What's great about the web today is that you don't have to take no for an answer. Second chances abound for smart web marketers.

Here are a few tools to use to your advantage:

- Pop-Up Ads: One tip is to create an "abandon" pop-up ad for the website of your product, To be specific, create pop-up advertisements that offer the consumer a free trial of the product they were last viewing. Website viewers are given the option to accept a free trial, which raises conversion significantly and lowering the risk that the viewers will leave the site without making a purchase. Keep website viewer's attention with a straightforward tagline: "Not ready to sign up yet? Take a free 30-day trial."

- Email Coupons: Sweetening the pot is a proven way to recapture customers, especially those who have abandoned a filled shopping cart. Because abandoned carts are often due to frustrations with the order process, a short message of concern about your service does wonders.

- Retargeting Banners: Now this is brilliant. Imagine a potential customer leaves your site. But you have cleverly dropped a simple piece of code onto your site that allows you to serve ads up to that prospect as she navigates elsewhere online. Seeing an ad for a product she's just been evaluating feels a bit like kismet: like you were meant to connect.

- Pick up the Phone: Not every company can afford to do this (or has captured a prospect's phone number). But if you can, call. Just this week I received a call from a representative of a Web service I began to order but didn't complete. Just as described above, my failure to complete was completely circumstantial. That one phone call got me back on track and scored points with me about the company's service model.

Lastly, and this goes without saying, always give a consumer an opportunity to save what she's doing on your site to revisit later.

Whether she's creating an online profile, ordering a product, setting up a registry - have a persistent "Save for Later" button throughout the path.

About the Author:

Kat Gordon is founder and creative director at Maternal Instinct, a Bay Area agency that specializes in marketing to moms. Kat writes not as a mom, but as a mom marketer, blogging about trends, myths, best practices, and observations from the frontlines of her mom-centric agency.

http://www.maternalinstinct.com/blog/

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