Are There Any Hidden Charges?
A while ago, there were junk-mail ads offering products with
incredible prices. They also, however, charged incredible
shipping and handling fees. So it turns out those were
actually bad deals. How about your site? Are you hiding any
fees? Products or services are well presented on most web
sites, but not all charges are presented well. This prevents
potential sales from closing.
Don't Give Customers a Surprise
Here's a simple example. A potential customer, Mr. Smith,
visits your web site and picks a product. Your site
instructs him to "proceed to checkout" when he's made his
choices. He types in his name and shipping information, and
the total charges appear on the screen. Now, suddenly, extra
shipping and handling charges appear. Those charges are
reasonable, but he wasn't aware of them when he began the
checkout process. It's a total surprise. Customers don't
like this type of surprise!
Don't Hide Extra Charges
Okay, so maybe today's Internet shoppers are expecting
shipping charges. Now your customer is trying to find out
what those shipping charges will be. A good way to annoy a
shopper is to make it more difficult to find out about
shipping charges than it is to choose a product from the
thousands of products on the same web site. After looking
around a while, they may finally figure out that the only
way to determine the charges is to go though the checkout
process. Just before giving his credit card number, Mr.
Smith (from the example above) will finally view the
shipping charges. You could have saved him a lot of time and
aggravation by telling him this in the beginning. Of course
it could be even worse. You could ask for his credit card
number before showing total charges. But surely you're aware
that, in this security-conscious era, no one will give out
credit information until the total charges are revealed,
right?
How to Make Extra Fees Acceptable
While this is just about shipping charges, just one simple
example, there can be lots of hidden charges that won't show
up until the last minute. If this happens, even though those
charges are reasonable, your customer won't be happy with
them. People accept things more easily if they are expecting
them. For example, if customers are aware that there will be
shipping charges and are told about those charges properly,
they will accept the charges more easily. Also, they will
feel comfortable with the checkout process. Customers will
click the final "order" button more willingly.
You can't make money just showing people your products or
services. You have to ask them to give you their money. But
here's the problem: they won't give you that money unless
they trust you. One way to earn that trust is to make all
charges easy to find... just as easy as finding a
product. As it gets harder to find out about extra charges,
people become more resistant to them. The sooner your
customers know about extra charges, the better they will
feel about them. Feeling better means a better shopping
experience, and a better shopping experience encourages
return visits.
About the Author
Akinori Furukoshi, owner of http://www.thatswise.com
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