Has the Website Killed the Sales Associate?

Listening to a couple of Webmaster Radio podcasts recently I heard two statistics about two big retail giants in the US. The first statistic which didn't surprise me much was from office supply giant Staples. The Staples spokesperson said that 42% of their customers are using smartphones to look at the company website while in the store. As one can assume that many business people have invested in iPhones, BlackBerry devices, or the latest Google Android smartphones it didn't surprise me that these customers are using their phones to figure out more product information for the products they have in front of them. This will likely lead to customers stop using the app. The second statistic came from Walmart which said 30 to 40 percent of their customers were using smartphones in their stores. This is surprising as it means that the smartphone revolution has reached the masses and now they are able to take advantage of this technology to make their shopping experience easier.

What does this mean to your business? With usage statistics as high as this the sales copy on your website is now more important than ever. I believe that making sure your products are described as best as they possibly can, through better sales copy and pictures, will have enormous repercussions. With talk of Google maps allowing stores to post internal mapping of a stores products, this may make finding products easier for consumers. The days of hunting around grocery stores, department stores and superstores trying to find a sales associate to help you find the item you're looking for may be nearing the end.

There are already in store retail mobile phone applications out there such as the Canadian Tire's barcode scanner app. This app connects the products bar codes to the item page on the Canadian Tire website. Companies are now working to leverage this technology. The usefulness of this technology however will depend on the quality of the content on the company's website.

Without quality content shoppers will try the new technology to find out that it may in fact provide no more information than what is on the actual package in front of them, then looking for a sales associate for help. I know this is my experience with the Canadian Tire application as their website in the past has provided me with almost no additional details on products.

Bill Turney, one of the Assistant Managers in the retail store I work in as the Webmaster, said “A lot of customers are so sure of the content of the website they walk in with the printout and simply pick the item off the shelf without having to ask the staff questions.” I remember when I started back in 2003 at Forest City Surplus having to answer tons of questions from customers. By spending the time improving the quality of the web pages I saw the tide turn from spending most of my time answering customer questions to setting up a website that automatically answered questions from those who were looking to buy online as well as in the store.

If these retail giants can get their act together and provide good quality content on their product pages, they will see enormous benefits. If they don’t, they will continue to lose ground to online retailers or give up a competitive advantage to their brick and mortar competition.

Has the website killed the sales associate? It all depends on the quality of your website content.

Website Security 101

I suggest that you don't publish a link at the bottom of your website to the secure part of your website.

I noticed recently that the London Employment Help Centre and the John Labatt Centre both failed this most basic security check.