Podcast script for: Episode [ 6 ]

 

(Intro)
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(Welcome Monologue - recorded)

Welcome to The Susanna Hutcheson Power Marketing Show, brought to you by Power Communications, the #1 online copywriting service. I am Susanna Hutcheson and I’ll bring you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques to increase your income by using unique methods of advertising and marketing. Join me each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you develop your business and your brand. It’s never been easier to get a real education in professional marketing. This is truly a learning experience you won’t find anywhere else!

 

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Program Script: This week I want to discuss a problem that affects most all of us. It either affects us as a consumer or as a seller. If you sell a single product or service online or if you sell a lot of products, you have a checkout system. You may or may not have a shopping cart. But one thing I can almost guarantee you --- a certain percentage of prospective customers leave the checkout because of mistakes you’ve made in design or copy. We’ll discuss this when we return in about one minute.

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Program Script Continued: OK. Do you find that you have lots of abandoned shopping carts. Or, if you sell just a single product, do people get to your order page and then just give up and go elsewhere?

 

The terrible fact is that more than one half --- let me repeat that --- more than one half of all shopping cart sessions or end of sale sessions end up not being completed. Now, that’s a very bad thing. It’s a very costly thing. Moreover, it’s unnecessary.

 

The first thing you need to do is make the end of sale experience a good one. It must be easy and transparent. Users expect to know immediately what they’re buying, how much it costs, what the shipping charges are. They want to know the sub-total.

 

Don’t play with the customer. Make all of this information transparent right after they click on the order button and have committed to buy. If you don’t, a large percentage will leave.

 

You should not use any more than six pages to complete your checkout process and it’s best if you use less. Shoppers want to make their purchase and get on with life. They buy online because they hate lines and they just prefer the convenience. So, make it convenient.

 

Your usability should be flawless. Make sure the user sees all of the details of his or her purchase before he commits to buy. None of us likes to see missing information.

 

I leave many shopping carts and many order pages because I fear that when I click “continue” I’ll have a done deal and not be sure exactly what I’m getting and what I’m paying.

 

Now, let’s talk about fear. People making online purchases generally trust sites like Amazon. But they’re unfamiliar with many others. The biggest reason that people decide against making an online purchase is fear. They’re afraid that their credit card information will somehow get hacked or intercepted. Well, it’s happened.

 

They’re also afraid that their personal information will get sold or rented to third parties or otherwise get into the wrong hands.

 

So put up lots of security information and privacy reminders in and around your shopping cart or order form. Give the buyer a real sense of security in making a purchase from you. Take the fear away and you’ll keep more business.

 

Make your call to action reminders easy to read and understand. Too many designers and copywriters don’t seem to understand the natural sales process. So they write and design using no logic as to the way people really think and act.

 

Some shopping carts are totally disorganized. Users constantly run into problems. Perhaps they can’t update their cart or change quantities or they don’t know how. Perhaps they have a promo code but you don’t tell them when they can enter it. Is it the next page? Or do you shock them by taking them all the way through without allowing them to enter a promo code? If you do, they’ll never return and they may even cancel the current order.

 

So, we’ve talked about the problems. What are the solutions?

 

Make the process simple and transparent. Don’t ask for any more information that you absolutely must have. People get sick and tired of entering lots of information into forms. Don’t do a survey. This isn’t the time. Get what you need and no more.

 

Don’t ask them to create an account just to order. Invite them to do that later if you like. That’s fine. But don’t make them do any more than necessary to order from you. If you do, they’re gone. I promise you.

 

Make the call to action buttons or next step buttons prominent and easy to read and see. Put them in expected places. I’ve been ready to check out on many sites only to have to look and look for a button telling me how to continue. There’s just no excuse for that and it’s very costly to you as a seller.

Also, be sure and put remove buttons next to each item. Perhaps the customer changes his mind. Let’s say he’s decided he wants three bottles of vitamins instead of one and he wants to remove one item. Make it extremely easy to do that. Then, make it easy for him to click an update button that shows what he owes at that point and what he’s buying.

Let him know if there are any taxes and what the shipping will be. Give him his shipping options and costs.

If you’re selling a digital download, let her know exactly at what point she’ll get the download and what to do if she runs into trouble. If you don’t, she’s apt to leave and not return.

The final impression that a person has of your Web site and your business is the order process or the shopping cart. You should make that impression a good one. If you do, customers will return. They’ll tell others about you and recommend you. If, on the other hand, that experience is bad, they won’t return and, if they tell others anything about you, it won’t be good.

So clean up your order process or your shopping cart. If you don’t, you’ll lose money and face.

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Closing:  (recorded)

Thank you for listening to today’s podcast. Don’t forget to visit my main web site powerwriting dot com. My blog is susanna hutcheson dot com. You can email me at powerwriter at powerwriting.com. You can always listen to any episode of the show by going to the podcast home at powerwriting.com/podcast.html.

 

You’re going to hear me say this in my show for the next couple of months: We’re taking a survey of our listeners, and we’d like you to participate. It will help us learn more about you – no matter how long you’ve been a listener or how frequently you listen to the show. So please take a few minutes and visit our Web site at powerwriting.com/podcast.html. You’ll find a blue listener survey button. Just click on it and complete the survey anonymously.  Oh, by the way --- I would appreciate your feedback. You’ll also find a Skype link to click. Just click on that and leave me an audio feedback message. Thank you!

 

In the next show, I’ll cover another exciting way for you to increase your income. See you next time. And remember, if you don’t take push yourself to the next level, you’ll never know what you could accomplish and how far you could go.

 

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