Skip to main content

Seven great benefits; how do you shape up?

In Time magazine's review of the first decade of the current century it followed up on the software pirates who threatened to undermine the publishing industry by creating file sharing software. One bullet point was particularly interesting - the way to compete with free on the internet was to make something easy. This is partly why the pirates did not win. Free is not enough.

Today, Google has launched its book store on line. On the front page is a great list of benefits of its web reader:

  • Unlimited storage of ebooks
  • 2-page reading mode
  • Search within book
  • Adjust text size, typeface, line space, justification
  • Free samples of books
  • Information about book
  • Worry-free archive
The last bullet is particularly compelling as so many people worry about shopping on the internet or storing stuff on the internet.

In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin writes about Marissa Mayer, who works for Google. Her job is to make interfaces work. She makes sure that the start page has the smallest number of words on it as this makes Google easier to use.

What has this to do with your shop? Think about the seven benefits you offer shoppers. List them. How do they compare with Google's?

Think about Marissa Mayer's job. Who does it in your business? Who solves the shoppers' problems before they know that they are going to be problems? More on this in my next blog.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Think before you delist your slowest seller

Retailers need to introduce new products to provide their shoppers with "good news" and to generate interest. But for each new product that you introduce you need to consider delisting an existing line. Easy, you might think. I will just print out the list of products in the category and take off the one with the lowest sales. However, if you do this research from the US suggest you might be wrong. What you need to consider is what sort of demand you have for each product, a white paper by Demand Tec, a US specialist software provider shows. It says that there are two kinds of sales: incremental sales, when products add to the total shopper spend and are not readily substituted by another item transferable sales, where shoppers find an alternative easily when it is not available. Using its software, it shows a category with 50 products from top seller to bottom seller. At the same time it also measures the incremental sales each product provides. The number 50 in ove...
1 comment
Read more

Busy street, empty shop, missed profits

True in part to my New Year resolution, I held a business meeting in an independent coffee shop today just next door to a Starbucks. The cafe was presented well and four staff were busy preparing for the lunchtime rush, at 11am. As my guests were late, I had a half hour overview of footfall on the street outside and in the restaurant. Six customers. Barely enough to form the queue in Starbucks or Pret-a-Manger just down the road. Plus one Italian girl who dropped off her CV. Some people stopped to look at the posters in the window and moved on. The owners seemed quite happy. When I left just after 1215, they were doing brisk trade. However, I have the impression that the business is not working hard enough. It could easily have managed 120 customers between 11 and 12, instead of 12. This is lost profit as the fixed overheads and staff costs are already in place. The owners are clearly busy - perhaps too busy to take time to look at the potential that their cafe has. What shou...
2 comments
Read more

Sticks and stones do hurt

My 17 year-old son returned from a rock festival this week wearing a wristband proudly declaring him 0ver 18. He explained how easy it had been to use someone else's ID to get the identification and said it was ironic that he had not needed to show the over 18 band when buying alcohol. Today, Scottish retailer Abdul Qadar is complaining that public authorities are asking people to lie about their age when making test purchases. What trading standards officers may be forgetting is that the fact that retailers invest in a business premises and trade consistently from it make their job much, much easier. The alternative, a world of markets and itinerant traders, will be far harder to police. Mr Qadar's sense of injustice is fair. Those retailers, like Mr Qadar, who value their investment will seek to trade legally and will not sell alcohol to people under the age of 18. Asking children to lie about their age to local traders is a slander on all retailers.
2 comments
Read more