If yours online retail sales are not as strong as you would like them to be, you may want to think about the research completed recently by the Harris Interactive, one of the worlds leading polling organizations. Although their research was focused on U.S. purchasers, it is reasonable to think that the results could be applied to many other countries consumers as well.

Over twenty two hundred adult shoppers were surveyed about their buying habits and perspectives. Not surprising, Harris learned that seventy four percent of those surveyed had made a purchase online in the past six months. They purchased:

Clothing Forty four percent
Books Thirty eight percent
Music Twenty eight percent
Health/ beauty Twenty eight percent
Travel Twenty eight percent
Sporting goods Nine percent
Automobiles Four percent
Real estate One percent

However, almost eighty percent of those purchasers said that they would have preferred getting human assistance from a customer services representative before making the purchase. They are especially interested in getting help when it comes to purchasing these types of items.

Real estate Fifty six percent
Automobiles Fifty four percent
Insurance Fifty one percent
Computers Forty two percent
Computer hard or software Thirty nine percent
Home appliances Thirty five percent
Mobile phones Thirty one percent

Also not surprising given the cost of providing live assistance ion a twenty four hour, seven day a week buying environment, over eighty percent of people say that they were unable to get the help they needed. Maybe not surprising but chilling nonetheless, over fifty percent of people said that the lack of human help affected their purchasing decision with sixteen percent noting that they chose not to buy for that reason.

Do you think this issue is affecting your sales? If you are selling one of the categories of items mentioned above, it probably does. However, even if you do not sell automobiles or computers, do you sell another product that might be complicated to understand, for example, a product that comes in many variations making it harder to know which one to buy? Or a product that cannot be returned if it is incorrect, such as a consumable?

The easy but not necessarily practical answer is to provide twenty four or seven live assistance. Short of incurring that expense, here are some other strategies you can try to satisfy your customers needs.

Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have a FAQ area on your site? If not, you probably should. Consumers look for these pages and often read them even if they do not have question, just tube sure they understand everything possible before making a purchase so, actually, the FAQ section can be a real selling page as well as a help page.

Media Rich product options
Sometimes people simply need to understand the product better. In a bricks and mortar stores they can pick up the product to feel the weight and texture, view it from all sides and so on. Try to replicate that experience by providing options such as zoom, 3d view, and images next to other items that give scale and so on.

Limited Live Help
Try adding live help just during your busiest hours and offering the opportunity to provide a call back to a customer who is not on line during that time. Just the option being available may give enough security to encourage a visitor to buy.

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