Brand Interaction: the Oft-Neglected Element of Online Branding

• Brand awareness -- specifically your dot-com brand awareness -- is a key contributor to driving traffic to your online storefront.

• Brand association has a lot to do with whether your prospective customers have sufficient trust to make a purchase from your online store.

• And brand interaction -- the quality of the experience your online shoppers have while visiting your store -- has a lot to do with whether they make a purchase and whether they will ever return.

This last aspect of brand, brand interaction, is receiving insufficient attention from many online retailers -- even retailers who in the physical world -- have invested millions of dollars differentiating themselves from their competition by creating a unique, memorable, positive shopping experience.

Admittedly, it is difficult, if not impossible, to emulate physical world environments in the virtual world. However, it is equally important in the virtual world that the user experience be positive and that the experience create a value-added perception of your brand. So what can you do to ensure that your brand interaction is a positive experience? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Don't keep your shoppers waiting. If your pages load too slowly, then you're starting the relationship off on the wrong foot because you're making your prospects wait too long to get at your merchandise. Remember, the average length of time Web users spend viewing a single page is less than a minute. So if you give them slow-loading pages, chances are they're getting very frustrated.

2. Don't hide the goods. Many visitors to an e-commerce site are on a mission; they've got their credit card in hand and they're ready to buy, so don't put obstacles in their way. Offer them multiple navigation options that allow them rapid access to the products they're looking for. For instance, if you offer a range of products in different price categories, allow your visitors to search by price point. If you offer multiple brands, allow them to search by brand name. If you offer multiple types of products, allow them to search by product category. The faster they can get to the products they're looking for, the happier they'll be.

3. Build trust. Online shoppers are still a skeptical bunch. Trust is a huge issue. There are a lot of things you can do to build trust, such as:

• Feature name brand products
• Make it easy to contact you by phone
• Display testimonials from existing customers and kudos from the press
• Offer an up-front statement of your privacy policy
• Become a member of TRUSTe and featuring their logo
• Assure shoppers that you'll cover the $50 credit card company charge if they are a victim of credit card fraud while shopping at your store
• Promise a no-hassle return policy
• Allow customers to view the merchandise in detail. Technology from companies like Live Picture (http://www.livepicture.com) facilitate this.

4. Don't hide the prices. One e-commerce store I visited recently did not reveal the price of their product until I had already put it in the shopping cart.

5. Make human contact. There are a number of ways to do this, such as featuring a prominent phone number, offering live chat, and showing photographs of employees along with brief bios in relevant areas of your site. The bottom line is, people still want to do business with people.

Remember, the top 5 reasons people do not buy online, as identified by market research firm IntelliQuest, are:

• Worried about fly-by-night retailers (81%)
• Don't want to deal with the hassle of returning something (72%)
• Worried about using their credit card online (69%)
• Think they are going to get a bunch of junk mail (63%)
• Want to see, touch what they buy (62%)

Implement some of the suggestions I've outlined, and you'll see a marked improvement in your conversion rate of store visitors into customers -- and enhance your brand interaction.