The unbearable lightness of click

The unbearable lightness of ... click or e-commerce fidelity. My sincere excuse to Milan Kundera for this appropriation in such a frivolous setup but it is fundamental that we understand that in e-commerce just in “normal” life “emotion” normally rules.

In the first days of e-commerce we used to say that competition was just a click away meaning by that phrase that unlike traditional commerce in which distance was an impeachment in the digital mall no such thing existed.

That much is true but it is in fact misleading in its interpretation. It is in fact unlikely that someone goes in an online store and changes its mind during the single purchase that brought  him/her there. After all its normally a closed decision that brought our potential buyer on our electronic premises. We will not lose him for a whim or a change of mind. We will lose him for very specific reasons that we better analyse and try to correct. More about this in a latter post I promise.

But more importantly for most businesses and that’s where the choice factor and Kundera comes in, is that humans are normally “lazy” … they like their routine, they like their interfaces to be consistent over time. In most cases of repeated purchases they will reach a state where only half attention is paid to the process. That gives them confidence and the feel of power of predictability. Competition by enticing prices may be just a click away but the brain is not in that wave length.

That′s one of the reasons why for most e-commerce’s that run user acquisition campaigns, as needed as they are, maybe just maybe they should take equal care to user retention. Okay I hear you: but we do that. Yes, you probably do. However it is most probably just a part of another program and not a single objective on itself.

Why that happens when we are all probably in agreement with most of what I have said? Well again laziness. It′s so much harder to measure retention when compared to acquisition … and results … results are so much more visible …