E-Commerce Wishlist When Times Are Tough
Written by Evan SchumanMarch 11th, 2009
A reader was visiting Walmart.com this weekend because she was about to run out of printer paper and knew she had to drive by a Wal-Mart that afternoon. Her mission was simple: She wasn't especially picky about which plain printer paper, but she just wanted to make sure it was in stock at her local store.
She hit Walmart.com and found tons of different printer paper, all of which looked quite acceptable. But she tried one or two and searched if it was in-stock at her store. Nope. She simply wanted to ask the site, "Limiting your answer to this one store, what printer paper does it have in stock?" If she was only interested in one very specific brand and paper type, she could have searched that store. The generic searches made so easy on the site, though, wouldn't work when focused on one store.
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4 Comments | Read E-Commerce Wishlist When Times Are Tough
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Readers, specifically those who want to comment on a story:
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Ed
March 13th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Why are sites so limited when a known store is indicated?
As a sideways corollary to the first item, I am always annoyed when browsing a site that has lots of items to display, but when you look at them, the are ‘not available at stores’ and on-line only.
Sorry, but some of us might just want to check what is AVAILABLE AT THE STORE that we already indicated on your site!
We want to go, see and inspect it in person, and then buy it.
They sometimes have an option to limit the views to On-Line only, but I’ve never seen one to limit to available in stores.
Grins,
R
March 14th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Customers need to have options – buy online and ship, buy online and pickup in-store, reserve online and buy in-store, research online (with availability) and then go to store and shop the old fashioned way. Indigo’s bookstore, in Canada, charges approx 20% less to buy online and have goods shipped, rather than buying int the store. I don’t get that?? They don’t want me in the store?
March 30th, 2009 at 1:31 am
I like this idea – we’ve talked about building this functionality with some of our customers – but have never implemented it.
One option for implementing it is as a refinement using a drop down box to select the store. If you have lots of stores this may be a little cumbersome – so I think it would be nice to give your visitors the option of selecting their local store and remembering that.
You could also guess their location based on their IP address and show some of the local stores at the top of the drop down.
If you know the visitor’s local store you can use this information to personalize the search results and show the avaialability of each product within the local store.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Your point is a valid one, but remember for many retailers the website enables them to offer more choice than they can fit in a store. Knowing what visitors look for can aid in development of local assortments adding items not currently carried in that market due to web demand/interest.
That being said, it should be common practice to allow the visitors to see whats stocked locally by some type of flag or note indicating available in nearby stores…
Knowing their location also allows for options such as localized pricing, delivery options & costs, and market specific promotions.