"Use Your Own Holiday Shopping to Learn About Your EBiz"
Paying attention to how YOU buy this Holiday Season can help you learn how to sell better in your online biz.
The Holiday Shopping Season, for most people, has already begun. In some cases, weeks ago; in others, very recently. The official kick-off for Holiday Shopping is usually recognized here in the US as the Thanksgiving Weekend. That's when all the big retail chains go wild with their big sale-price promotions in order to prime the pump and get money flowing from your pockets into theirs. Once that flow starts, it's like a gravity siphon...it just keeps on flowing until the Holidays are here.
You, me, and everybody else will be caught up in that spending frenzy. While we Online Entrepreneurs are spending, though, why not learn a few things that will help us earn that Holiday money back? Paying attention to the things that we do and the reasons we spend money on particular products and with particular stores can tell us a lot about how to run our own online stores and auctions better. Your own Holiday spending is a prime opportunity to learn from yourself!
For example, if you're an EStore Owner or Auction Seller, do you shop online yourself during the Holidays? I certainly do. In fact, I do almost all my Holiday shopping online. My house looks like a freight transfer station during this time of year, and I get to know the UPS and FedEx guys by name. :o)
I'll buy new products that I want to give as gifts from Online Stores. I'll buy special gifts like unique, rare and hard to find items from eBay Auctions. I won't buy from just any EStore or Auction, though.
When I shop in EStores, there are certain things that will put me off and cause me to leave an EStore without buying anything. When I see these things, I'll go look somewhere else:
* A shoddy looking store site. If I find an EStore that has messy graphics, a blocky, amateurish look, or looks like something somebody slapped together in an hour, I get the feeling that the person or people behind the EStore are shoddy and amateurish, and I won't trust them with my money.
* A widely varied product line. When I see an EStore that sells Electronics, Shoes and Umbrellas on the same store, for example, I know that the seller is trying to move anything that they can get their hands on just for the sake of making a buck. When I buy something, I like to feel that the company I'm buying from specializes in what I'm looking for, and knows something about the products they sell. I would much rather place three different orders for those three items on three different, more specialized stores than buy them all from one store. Of course, if the online store site we're talking about is Wal-Mart, that's different, but I don't shop the big chains like that online. If I want something from Wal-Mart, I'll just drive over there in person.
* Misspellings. When I see an EStore site that contains a noticeable number of misspellings, it puts me off. It's not that I expect everyone to be a perfect speller. It's just that it's so easy to use the simple spell-checkers that are available in all ECommerce software, that people who don't bother to take that simple care with their store don't impress me enough to trust them with my Holiday purchases.
* Too much hype. EStore sites that push the sale too hard are a put-off for me too. It's like those TV commercials that tell you to Buy Now, and you'll get This Free Bonus, and That Free Bonus, etc. Even worse are sites that put a time limit on their prices, by saying that if you Buy Before Midnight Tonight, you get a Special Discount. To me, that's cheesy, and I don't trust it.
* Too flashy. EStore sites that are crammed with flashing graphics and way too much advertising copy jammed in every corner put me off as well. That tells me that the store owner is more interested in using gimmicks to get you to spend your money than he or she is in providing you with quality information, products and services. Flashy, gimmicky sites are amateurish to me, and I won't by from them. concentrating on getting you to spend your money.
Those are a few of the things that will cause me to leave an EStore without buying.
When I shop eBay, I'm usually looking for some very special collectible or rare item that I can give as a special gift. There are things that put me off eBay Sellers as well. Some of those are:
* Flashy, gimmicky auctions. Again, too much hype equals too little experience when dealing with an eBay Seller. Yes, eBay is a market that's much more used to using buzzwords and hype to make sales, and I'll take that into account. However, there's such a thing as TOO much, and I know that when I see it.
* No About Me section. If an eBay Seller can't be bothered to create an About Me page in order to let his or her buyers know a little about who they are, that makes me feel a little suspicious that I may get ripped off.
* No eBay Store. If the Seller doesn't have an eBay Store, or at least lead me to a web site where I can see a little more of their products and the way they conduct business, that makes me suspicious as well.
Remember, these are all things that affect MY Holiday Shopping. They're just examples of the things that put ME off, but overall I think they are things that would put most other people off as well. When I see the sites and auctions that bother me, I don't really pay attention to the actual individual REASONS they bother me. I just feel less than impressed, and I leave. I actually had to sit down and think a little harder about what CAUSED me to feel that way, in order to write this article.
Use your own Holiday Shopping this year to improve your own EBiz. When you buy from a site or auction this Holiday Season, stop for a minute and think about why you did it. Make a note of the site or auction seller and try to include some of the things you liked about it, that made you want to buy. Incorporate those things into your own EBiz.
When you find yourself looking at a product you want to buy on a site or auction, and you realize that you don't want to buy it from that PARTICULAR site or auction, stop for a minute and take a couple of notes before you leave with an empty shopping cart, to remind you why you didn't buy. Look for those things in your own EBiz, and if they're there, get rid of them!
Our own personal Holiday Shopping online is a great way to learn how to improve our own EBiz in the eyes of potential customers. Don't wait another year before you take an opportunity to learn from yourself!
Chris Malta
Founder/CEO
Worldwide Brands, Inc.
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