Is Your Gift Basket Web Site User Friendly?
Do you have an on-line store for your gift basket business? If the answer is yes, you need to make sure that your customers have a positive experience while shopping on your site.
Keep in mind that shopping at your on-line is much like shopping in a brick and mortar store. Think about a store that you like to visit. It is probably clean and well organized. Merchandise is displayed attractively and in a sensible order. At your local department store, women’s clothing is probably grouped on one floor. Then, departments that feature sportswear are separate from evening wear. If you’re shopping for a gift for your mother, it is fairly easy to find what you want once you get to the right floor. At a really well organized store, accessories that can be worn with sports wear or evening wear would be shown near-by. This can result in add-on sales: the buyer may purchase something she didn’t originally intend to buy once she sees how it all can work together.
In the same way, your web site should be organized so that customers can easily find what they want. Obviously, birthday baskets should be displayed separately from baskets designed for corporate buyers. But within the birthday basket category, you can go further by showing baskets for children, then baskets for women, for men, for sports enthusiasts, etc. If you sell other gifts on your site, make sure that they are displayed where they’ll have the most impact. For example, spa products may be shown on your site in a separate area, but also in the section that show gift baskets for women. Don’t be afraid to display your products in more than one section of your site.
Some final tips: make sure that your home page is appealing and invites the shopper into your store. Check all your links and make sure that they work correctly. Try to educate the shoppers who come to your store: why should they buy your products? Include product information (eg. a specific list of items included in each basket) or suggestions about other items they might like (eg. customers who bought this item also bought _____).
Visit other web sites and think about what appeals to you. What makes it easy to shop at other web sites? If you shop on-line, spend time at that web site and consider what you like about it. Then go ahead and make your site the best it can be for your customers.
7 comments May 25th, 2008