Nov 07
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.
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Ouch, you’d think Apple could do better. Everything they produce is aesthetically pleasing, there packaging should reflect that!
How do you guys package your Yuppie Chef products? I’d obviously test run your services if i was in Cape Town, will have to wait a little longer though.
The actual iPod comes in a nice shiny plastic box, but my point is that the iPod itself is almost a commodity - the 10 different online stores in SA who sell iPods all get the same little box. ZA Store (who aren’t owned by Apple, but are linked from the main Apple site) needed to include their own brand-building bits and pieces in the package so that I remembered where I got the iPod from.
All products on Yuppiechef are packed in a box with bubble-wrap and pink tissue paper, and include a hand-wrriten note in a silver envelope. We also throw in some of our badges, and the occasional “free prize inside” like a voucher, or some other goodie.
We look forward to your order!
It’s all about creating that experience. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling ice cream on the beach or funeral policies to the poor. Clever marketers know this - the rest just supply a product and don’t really care.
Online shopping in SA is in its infancy still. But that is no excuse for poor customer service levels.
They should be so very happy that someone decided to test the waters and whip out their shiny credit card/debit card to make the purchase, and not go to the physical store.
Or how about receiving a sub-standard copy-paste/cookie cutter response from one of these guys when enquiring about a product? AND they get my name’s spelling wrong??
That’s just irritating.
Sheesh, I’d be hacked off if I ordered a laptop which arrived in a squished box!
I couldn’t agree more with you about the E-commerce awards. They need to look at the full picture and not just which sites are the most popular!
On a good note - I ordered from http://www.scrappingsa.co.za and was delighted that I received a free gift along with my purchase - and everything was packaged beautifully.
A Brick-N-Mortar experience - Reminds me of La Senza who package everything in tissue paper with wonderful smelling beads. Everytime I smell that rose odour I think of La Senza. Excellent brand association tip I plan to use in my own business.