Tips on Using the Buying Experience for Increasing Repeat Customers

Monte: And you know that’s an interesting point as well because in our business, people are registering domain names; but we have other products and services that maybe aren’t as urgent. So, you know, in a domain name scenario, you’re worried about someone else registering the domain name that you have. So there is a sense of urgency; and we have a different kind of a product line in that particular case; and maybe they should be treated different, because somebody might get the idea or somebody might register the domain name before you get to it. So, lots of times you don’t want to keep that in your cart and come back later; but adding “hosting” to that domain name or “URL forwarding” or something like that might be something that we may want to save in the cart and then come back later and buy because it’s not an urgent matter.

Stefanie: That’s a great point. I hadn’t thought about it from a domain perspective; but, you’re right. I know every time I’ve registered a domain name, I always feel like it’s a race against the clock. So, I think you’re right there. But, yea, it’s…you know, just a matter of trying to get inside your customers’ heads and thinking about what is their particular situation and then making your site cater to that. Even just adding additional features, like giving somebody the ability to…on a product site, maybe place a repeat order. You know, if you retail food products, giving the ability to come back and look at a previous order and fill up your cart with those same items with the click of a button. For example, ….

Monte: Cutting out the steps. You know, just cutting out the number of steps involved.

Stefanie: That’s right. I always tell people, if you didn’t save your customers’ time, that’s why they’re shopping online most likely. They’re there looking for something they can’t find elsewhere or they’re trying to save time, and anything you can do to help them achieve that goal, you really are going to win a repeat customer, which is everybody’s…that’s the mission. You know, if the Moniker.com gives people a great domain buying experience, they’re going to come back and buy domains there every single time, probably regardless of price, even if it’s a couple bucks more expensive than another place that is a couple bucks less. It doesn’t matter. It’s that very good user experience that web users are looking for.

Monte: Right. Definitely, definitely. Because that’s…you know, it’s all about experience and then the experience they have on a particular site that they can trust the site, they have a good purchasing experience, and that they have a…, you know, we focus on a lot on building the relationships with the customers afterwards, and it sounds that you do as well with your high degree of focus on support and service. How may people do you guys have dedicated to supporting your customer base?

Stefanie: Dedicated to support alone, I believe we have about 25 people in that department. That’s all they do is speak with customers on the phone and make sure that their sites are up, running, and selling well.

Monte: That’s great. And then the pricing structure for Monster Commerce, how is it different than some of the other products and services that are out on the market? Is it something that’s more on the affordable side, or you have various offerings for different solutions?

Stefanie: Sure, we do have various offerings; but Monster Commerce is very affordable. It’s $99 a month across the board for just about any merchant. We do have a lot of high-volume merchants, big sellers, and we do offer some dedicated hosting. And things like that for those merchants would drive the price up a bit. But, it’s just a $99 flat fee. We don’t take a percentage of sales. A lot of ecommerce providers do take a percentage of sales, and we’ve never gone with that motto. I think our customers seem to appreciate that, you know, they don’t get penalized for success that way. But, yea, it’s fairly easy to understand and at 3 bucks a day, there’s…it’s fairly good rates in terms of looking at the price of the software that powers your entire online business.

Monte: Yea, that’s very important; because one bad sale or one bad user experience costs you more than that in a day.

Stefanie: Yep.

Monte: I mean, it’s so hard to acquire a customer to begin with; and if you were to lose that one customer because they had a bad experience, you’d lose far more than that $99 in one minute, one hour, than you would spending that in a month and having a good format for that.

Stefanie: Yea, you’re right; and you know that, it does bring up another great point is that, when you do have customers having a good user experience and giving you testimonials, I always tell people testimonials, each one is like a nugget of gold for your site. You can never have enough testimonials out there. People are always wanting to get that…they’re looking for that little piece of confidence they need to go ahead and make a purchase from your site. Your gathering testimonials is another great way to increase your conversion rate and letting customers know that your site is secure, you know, either through a partnership with somebody like Scandle, who has the hacker-safe produce, they’re getting pretty popular. There’s a number of other ones out there; but, anything that you can do to your site to increase customer confidence through testimonials, great user experience, security, and clearly defining your company’s policies…those kind of things really make lifetime customers, and that’s what we’re all looking for.