Archive for November, 2007

Mark Forrester blogged recently about his experience in buying T-Shirts from Oddica.com, a US-based online store. The package arrived along with free stickers, badges and postcards. He was so impressed that he wanted to tell the world.

Contrast this with two online purchases we have made recently in South Africa

Shane bought a laptop bag from PCMall. Can you imagine his excitement opening this delivery? Me neither.

And today I received my new shiny iPod Nano from ZA Store:

Inventory of the contents:

- 1 x Large Jiffy Bag.
- 1 x Crumpled Invoice, titled "ZA Apple Online Store". That's not who I bought from?
- 1 x iPod Box and iTunes CD.

That's it. I checked the corners of the Jiffy Bag twice, just to be sure.

What a wasted opportunity for ZA Store and PC Mall. They made the shopping experiences completely unmemorable for us. The products themselves are great, and the price was fine, but in the future when I need a fancy widget to plug in to my iPod, I would have completely forgotten who I originally bought from.

Where was the ZA Store fridge magnet? The voucher to give to a friend? The hand-written note from the guy who packed my order, saying how jealous he was of my new iPod? The invitation to join the exclusive club of ZA Store customers who get regular freebies and first option on new products?

When 10 different online stores are selling iPods and Laptop Bags in South Africa, you have to differentiate yourself, and the only real way you can do this is when the package arrives at the customer's door. He will tolerate clumsy, poorly designed websites, but unless you blow him away when the product arrives you've lost a potential repeat customer. E-commerce doesn't end with "Thank you for placing your order with us". It continues long after that.

I just hope the SA E-commerce Awards judges take this aspect into account when they dish out the prizes later this month.