2019

Shop online, not bloody likely….

Get something on the internet….naah don’t trust it

Got shops at the bottom of the road , don’t need web shops….

Wind forward to present day ....

What would we do without Internet ?

Bloody good job we can get our stuff online …

With 12 months of home imprisonment, retailing has changed. Having the best part of twenty five years of Amazon & E bay,web sites struggle big time with Keywords.Or rather, they don’ t but we do .Type in electric nail clippers (oh yes big item or so I am told) and the first three on Amazon are manual. Type in Seychelles History and on the first page you will get holiday villas and on the first page of Amazon you will get a book about Shoes and a book about Wildlife in Madagascar .

During the present pandemic online shopping has gone from being 18% of total retail spend to the best part of 40% . The reasons are pretty obvious and as to whether it will remain at this level is debatable. Despite the dramatic increase I suspect the consumer has not become any the more savvy as the odds are against them. Its all about who has the deepest pockets. Most of the major search engines are profit centres. They need to generate revenues. The costs to run search engines , or at very least effective search engines are astronomically high. There are open source search engines, but therein can lie some issues such as security, and who runs it and who polices it. But for the most part we are lumbered with the likes of Google, Bing and a handful of others.

So what’s the beef ? For those whose English is not their first language beef does not mean what we have for Sunday lunch but what are we moaning about (yet another British obsession, or so we are told ). Two things …

1. Relates to the big players eg Amazon etc…
2. The smaller web shops.

Lets start with point 2 , as it is a bit more straight forward . If you put a Search Bar on your site, you are suggesting that there products or services on your site that not be that obvious by the menu system. Yet in many sites if you do not search by the exact description as transcribed by the web shop you will not find it. Please think out the box a little . Do not assume the purchaser has a full knowledge of the product or service they are looking . Just take sometime and think through how the consumer may categorise products. They may not realise Lime Green trousers , may described in any other way . So when searching they get no result when you are selling a pair described as Citrus Green. Sorry its your lost sale. As a consumer if find it it very frustrating not be able to find a product I know exist but cant think of the exact description, so end up not making the purchase or buying something else.

Point 1 . Ok you need to make money just stop treating us as complete idiots . Just because you don’t sell swimming goggles don’t think we will buy night vision goggles instead . Well, some might, if they are Ultra Ironman triathletes and they have 100 km to run through a tropical jungle in the middle of the night as well as swimming for eight hours in shark infested waters. Or if you are just plain stupid . But most are neither.

So lets see if we can reach a compromise. Web retailers you supposedly have this enormous benefit of Artificial Intelligence . Please use it intelligently. Act like a good bricks and mortar retailer offer what the customer is really looking for . If they don’t know and AI is as good as it is supposed to be, guide them to products or services which are more relevant. Consumers use your natural inbuilt human intelligence. If you cant find what you are looking for , ask yourself …

Maybe you cant buy it anymore

OR

Try and be a little more descriptive in your searching. Things that hang on your legs to stop them getting cold ..are perhaps not the best words to use when you are looking for winter trousers…..

Seek and ye shall find….

The Bible and various preceding texts…so it must be true