Science of Sales & Marketing

According to a study, a man most likely tends to trust people who are a part of their group, preferably someone who is from his team, company or club. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to trust strangers to share some personal connection such as a friend of a friend, or a family friend’s third cousin or any other such association.

According to Marilynn Brewer, co- author of the study & professor of psychology at Ohio State University, ” There are different ways to determine who is a part of your in group, to decide who you can trust when you first meet a stranger. For women, this in-group is ‘I & my friends & family & their friends & family’. And for men, the in- group is limited to their basic surrounding & their environment.”

Adds brewer, “Men look for symbolic connections that you get from belonging to the same group, rather than from personal connections that women prefer.”

While earlier, researchers have claimed that men are less socially oriented than women, but Brewer’s study seems more acceptable to present social structure, and help to find out how socially oriented either gender is. Men always trust their own group, whether it’s about changing a job, relocation, buying property and even which brand of laptop or mobile phone to buy, while women extend a willing ear to even a very tenuous connection. Men can easily connect to other like-minded people, only in a different ways such as through social networking, joining a party and club, these area are place where men confide in a very polite manner to a person sitting next to him who share a common interest, i.e. drinking.

Another reason for a men trusting just a fellow mates over their other relatives might be they feel more comfortable and a sense of belongingness to shares common interests easily with their group, whereas women shares problems easily especially with their relatives and even to a charming stranger.

For women, it works more on the basis of an extended friendship network, if you check their online activities, they gather online as a more textured and through interactive process and exchange information through chat, email while men put more efforts on search engines to find information about different topics aggressively using engines more often. So don’t forget to add women as your target customers during planning your marketing strategy.

To be realistic if you think a targeted user will read the entire content of your web pages, you are erroneous, this is fact that a visitor only spend a few seconds staying on your site and scanning information, no matter how much useful information you put into your web page, they immediately decide whether to stay or leave on. You need to keep them occupied and engaged with short paragraph and tailor made information, try to include useful point in very beginning preferably with new headers. Try to keep your sentences, paragraph as short as possible. Keep your home page clean and concise don’t place too much content on a single page only, if you have large content break it into parts and place on different pages.

The navigation structure should be common for all the pages, don’t use too much hyperlinks inside your text and don’t play relevant tricks. The download speed must be as minimum as possible otherwise the visitors may leave your site, for this you may consider to remove some of your flash/graphic or multimedia content if that take longer time to download. Try to get input from a lot of people with different skills and knowledge about your site through relevant forums, take the criticism softly and improve your site through genuine feedback from real users and experts. This will definitely help you to make your site most suitable for your users of current age.

E-commerce marketing is all about appealing web surfers to your site and to elevate surfer best shopping experience that can intend them to buy your product or service, for this you need to figure out what is that you want your site to convince people.

I think this two vital aspect- Trust & feeling should be prime focus area during your marketing process which can add value to your ecommerce site  and elevate the interest of your visitors – to build trust you can use trusted seal on your site and highlight the secured transaction process so that the visitors should feel secured and comfortable during the shopping and checkout process.  The design and positioning of your product should be such that the users should feel that they are touching your products when they browse and click on your product. If you make feel of the product assuming as they are touching defining its quality & the potential, it would allure your customers to buy it instantly. Also you need to add a knowledge base where the customers can find their reply of some usual Questions like “what if it turns out to be something different after delivery? Will it ever get delivered to my place or what if it get damaged on the way? Will the company give replacement guarantee?

If you have new site, and you want to gain confidence of your customers you may consider to offer, “pay on delivery services” limited to a certain amount.

Most of the advanced online buyers do their homework in advance and take instant decisions for online purchase so your e-commerce site should contain a tailor made information and it should interactive in nature to provide them immediate solutions

Video is worthy to capture attention of viewers and increase traffic; you can use this tool for self-promotion through social networking sites and blogging.

Making your video content;

It is important that you should create good quality of videos without any technical errors so that it can generate interest when you post it.

Follow few tips as below;

* Shoot your video in sequences & with professional touch, your video should look like film trailer.

* Use proper lighting, and avoid shadows, shoot in a well-lit area but not in bright light.

* Use high quality of microphone for clear audio.

* Make it smaller the size so that it can be downloaded faster without losing the quality of your video.

* Make a ratio of shot 40 percent close-ups- 30 percent medium shots, and 30 percent wide shots in large frame as per your requirement.

* For wide shot if you need a “zoom for effect”, consider doing a reverse of the zoom.

* If you shot in home or a small frame go for close-up shots, as it can be clearly visible in small window displays.

* Carefully observe people to find cool angles.

* The picture quality should be clean and clear.

* When you edit keep the highlights and cut the scene that you think can be boring for your audience and make sure the shot must look professional.

* When you shot in large frame shot the important scene on left side of screen means the right side of your audience, as viewers feel comfortable and give more concentration on their right side view.

Distribution

* You can take video streaming services or ask your host if you want to put it on your site

* Use youtube/google video, they provide video uploading and distribution which has million of visitors every day.

* Use caption ” share this video” below your video if you go for video streaming hosting yourself.