Online shopping discount code

Byline: HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS

I'm a fan of eBags. I like their Web site, I like their printed catalog, I like their prices, and with some exceptions I'm about to mention I like their copy. I also like a marketing ploy that's pure 21st century online salesmanship.

Whenever a glowing description begins that way, the next word has to be "But." Yep. That's the case here too.

My history with eBags was a pleasant one. This time, though, sorting through "packing cubes" for use in big suitcases, here was a three-piece set with no sizes indicated. Oh, well, faith can move mountains, so in went the order, three each of three items.

On to checkout. I signed in with the proper address and password. Oops: The next page had only my name and two strings of code. Sigh. Back to the order page and time spent reordering. Same result. Hmmm...maybe it's my computer. So I left AOL (yeah, I used my AOL address, and yeah, I know what perils that can cause) in favor of my private Web site address and then went back again. Democracy in action! The same strings of code with no additional information.

Oh, all right, where's a toll-free number? Not there. Not there. Ah, here's a Customer Service page, with a toll-free number, not featured. Obviously the Webheads were protecting their turf, a too-common aberration in what's supposed to be a dynamic marketing medium. (Note that key word, any Webmaster who may have wandered into a marketing publication: It's marketing, not technological.)

OK, here goes, using that ancient instrument, the telephone. A two-minute wait, and then I was talking to "Chad." Chad was pleasant and responsive, but he needed the SKU numbers. Just one problem: I had copied the information from the "Travel Accessories" page, and there weren't any SKU numbers on that page. Maybe the Webmaster felt adding a SKU number would add clutter to the appearance.

OK, OK. Clicking through individual product descriptions, I found the SKU numbers for everything except some combination locks and wondered why, had the system worked, I could have ordered online without them but couldn't order by phone without them. Oh, well, Chad took my order and asked how I wanted it shipped. "Normal shipping." "That'll be $8.99," said Chad.

Oh? The Web says "Free shipping." Chad was nonplused. "Where do you see that?" "Right on the top of every Web page." I read the entire text to him. "OK," he said uneasily, "you'll get free shipping, but it isn't always free."

I'm duly warned. I'm warned about another factor too: The transaction took longer than half an hour, and that just ain't Weblike.

But here's where eBags won my heart again. Two days later - the perfect interval - in came an e-mail message: "We noticed that you left the Lewis N. Clark TSA 3-dial Combo Lock/2pack in your shopping cart at eBags. Come back and order this product today and we'll take an extra 15% off your eBags purchase...." The note included a handwritten signature by the president of eBags. Hey, guys, that's marketing!

No, I didn't order the Lewis N. Clark TSA 3-dial Combo Lock/2pack, despite the apparent ease and the big "See the items left in my cart now" link. But I might have. And certainly, from a corporate point of view, it would have been suicidal for eBags to send that e-mail seconds after I'd clicked out, because then, logically, I'd have assumed this is a standard procedure and adopted as my own standard procedure abandoning the shopping cart at the 11th hour, just to get the discount.

The valid point is that abandoning shopping carts during checkout is epidemic...and too few e-marketers know why. I offer a moderately educated guess: Assign unidentified personnel to masquerade as customers, ordering from your own Web sites, and you'll know why.

Two major factors have surfaced in e-marketing post-decision failures: The first is mechanical. The customer is trapped in an electronic loop, with strange obfuscations and non-directions spurring the deadly "Aw, the hell with it" disgusted abandoning. Checkout should be a joy, a stress-free experience barely recognized as an experience.

The second factor is faulty database management. No, make that database demand. What tempers enthusiasm more than delay? Think back to the last time you bought a car, and remember how the exhilaration seeps out as you sit in a tiny office, filling out endless forms and waiting for somebody to pitch you on extended warranties and LoJack. You'd think marketers would learn from their own buying experiences: Here we are at checkout, and the seller wants two tons of information irrelevant to our ability to pay.

At the dealer, some of those forms are necessary, and you know when you walk in you'll be there for the afternoon. But the psychology of delay = deterioration is predictable. You don't need a formal title to gain possession of luggage and Lewis N. Clark TSA 3-dial Combo Lock/2packs; you do need congruence with the medium. The whole concept of Web marketing is speed. Get in. Order. Get out.

Well, eBags, I'll be back. Will you be there to greet me, arms and codes open wide?

And now for something completely different...

The Direct Marketing Association is adding two inductees to its Hall of Fame. The first, Dave Florence, is a genuine statesman who has contributed much to our industry and whose recognition is long overdue. The second is Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin? The Benjamin Franklin? Yup. Our first postmaster general has made it, more than two centuries late, into the Hall of Fame.

Certainly Franklin, an incredible intellectual (and notorious rake), has had well-deserved honors and will survive history far longer than any of the rest of us. But placing him in the DMA's Hall of Fame is a disservice to both him and the Hall itself, because he positively deserves a different kind of recognition. Why not induct Gutenberg? Why not Richard Sears of Sears & Roebuck? Why not Abraham Lincoln, who wrote the most famous speech since Cicero? Why not Cicero?

The damage inflicted by skewing the significance of the Hall of Fame is as obvious as asking a direct marketer, "The DMA Hall of Fame? Who's in it?" The answer that will have any outsider shaking his or her head: "Oh, significant marketers like Dave Florence...and Benjamin Franklin."

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS ( www.herschellgordonlewis.com ) is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. Among his 27 books are "On the Art of Writing Copy" (third edition), "Marketing Mayhem" and "Effective E-mail Marketing."