Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi fellow Dakkites, I hope you don't mind but I want to do a bit of market research here... I've looked through various posts on these boards and made some basic searches but I can't seem to find the info I'm looking for, so hoping that you'd all impart your thoughts and wisdom?

You may or may not know, but I run an internet and ebay store selling various wargames related products. Towards the end of 2010 and into 2011 I had a banner ad on this site which generated a lot of hits each month but very little direct sales, I have my own ideas as to why this was the case - mainly being a lack of available product lines - but I'd be interested to understand what you as a customer look to purchase and what specificallly you look for in an internet store. As a gamer myself for the past 20 odd years, I know what I want, like and more to the point, actually buy...

Please don't flame other sellers, especially those that advertise on Dakka, in fact feel free to leave out any names of reputable (or otherwise) traders... Also, in the interests of remaining impartial and keeping the discussions open I've removed my website link from my signature for the time being.

I apologies if this discussion has already been covered here, but I'd be very grateful for a link / links if you have them...

So over to you...

Cheers,
R

Well, I know that free postage basically gets the Australian crowd.

Good discounts and relatively cheap shipping. Full product lines with pictures of the miniatures so that I don't have to rely on other websites to see what I'm getting. Good website design is also a plus - everything should be easy to find with a click or two, and I shouldn't have to hunt through the website for fifteen minutes to find the storage foam section, for example.

Product in stock. Good prices. Fast shipping. Easy to browse stock on the website and find prices and what not.

Here's what I want. The store I currently use has all but one of these, so I guess I would switch if I could find someone with all of them:

1) 25% off retail.
2) Stocks a wide variety of ranges. They need to have access to all of the major games. They also need to sell hobby supplies.
3) Quick shipping. I can't wait a month for things to ship. It doesn't have to be free, just reasonable and quick.
4) Good communication. One large internet retailer lost a fairly large sale because they didn't respond to an email for three days, so responding to queries is big. I also like to know when things are shipped. Finally, I like an email newsletter that shows me the new things the store has.
5) Professional looking website with cart.

Personally, I would like to see a website that accurately reflects what is in stock. I don't want to order a bunch of stuff that are listed on the website as 'in stock' and then find out I have to wait 2 weeks for them to be ordered.

What I look for in online shops are;

1: Professional, clean looking site. (No one buys off a site that looks like a kid made it)

2: Fast and smart shipping. (I would not wait 2-4 weeks when I can go to another site, and I dont want each package sent separately)

3: Secure payments or Paypal Option.

4: Nice discount off of RRP. (No point in waiting for delivery if I can have it in my hands in an hour when its the same price)

5: Quick responses to questions. (Last site I used never answered a query for 2 weeks, they lost the sale)

Quality photos of the product. If I click on a thumbnail, I expect to be taken to a larger version of the photo - not a product description with an equally small photo.

Be sure to have a well designed web site, if your site looks like it's from 1995 or is generally amateurish - I'll assume your business is equally unprofessional.

This has definitely been discussed, but Dakka's search feature isn't good at all.

Much like everyone, I like: deep discounts, fixed cost shipping and fast delivery. What makes me choose one online store over another? Two things: my complete satisfaction as a customer and having items i want to purchase (Which in my case are items that tend to be hard to find here in the States.) Which leads me to my next point. I notice your location is in the UK. There are a great deal of excellent hobby products available only in the UK that us here in States would love to get our hands on as well as have an established and reputable store to purchase those UK only products from repeatedly. This is a niche, but could work to your advantage. The other 'popular European online game retailers' have been completely unwilling to provide customer satisfaction in these regards.

Fast delivery and shipping cost, discounts, in that order really

i believe the latter of the two speak for some australian gamers

In my order of preference.

1. Clean, easy to navigate site.
2. Wide range of products available or news that new products will be available.

When I place an order:
1. I want an order confirmation, just one email, I hate being bombarded with 'thanks', 'pending', 'shipped' etc.
2. You must have stock on hand to ship, if a site says it is in stock it damned well better be (if i wanted an item in two weeks time I would order in two weeks time). yes its hard to keep everything on hand, but notify me when awaiting stock and I will decide if I want to back order something.
3. If there is a problem contact me before I hear about it on a g'damn internet forum!

A discount doesn't mean gak all to me if service is gakky. Give me reliable service and you will get my business, be professional and your preferred payment solution will be getting my payment authorisation.

Free shipping likewise, I work in packaging and know how much boxes, jiffy bags, mailers, resealable bags, labels, voidfill etc cost. Add in cost of postage and its a large on cost for nothing. You want to offer free shipping? Kudos to you but do not skimp on the wrapping of my goods because everyone else is doing free shipping.

Put it this way, I have yet to be let down by GW (placing orders and receiving them) and I have shopped online with them since they opened a web store, I go back to them when a discounted site lets me down.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm seeing a recurring theme on what the customer wants from a webstore... Handily I have a background in the retail sector so appreciate how important good service is to a business.

In terms of products what do you look for that you can't always find easily? i.e. plasticard, tools, dice, etc...

Miniature obviously
random bits too
Conversion materials (Putty, Green stuff and it's siblings, plasticard)
-bases(scenic one)
-Tools(sculpting tools like clay shappers and other stuff, paint brush, hobby knife , clipper, spraygun, air brush, and whatever else)

Stuff I can't get at the LGS.

Ruglud wrote:Thanks for the feedback, I'm seeing a recurring theme on what the customer wants from a webstore... Handily I have a background in the retail sector so appreciate how important good service is to a business.

In terms of products what do you look for that you can't always find easily? i.e. plasticard, tools, dice, etc...

I tend to get Plasticard from places like Hobbbylinc or Tower hobbies, but hate doing so because it's always terribly, terribly organized. Other then that, I don't think I can contribute anything new to this thread: a working shopping cart, thumbnails that become photos that are, at a minimum, 640x480, an email when the order is placed and another when it's shipped, etc etc.

If the store is large enough, a search feature, and one that works.

For instance, i typically use FRPgames.com they have seriously more miniatures from companies i had never heard of, games that are equally obscure, etc. i can narrow down a miniatures search by scale (if i know what size i want), company, game, or genre. the ONLY problem i have with the site, is that if i type "Sniper" into the search, only a few models with that word actually in the name pop up (and not always at that). What i would like, is if customers could place certain tags onto items, so that others can search and include those tags in the search.

I know its risky, and GW can be a pain, but pictures and item names of 40k and WHFB stuff on the webstore are always nice (but almost impossible if you are a large enough discount retailer).

I think most of it has been covered: selection, accurate stocks, price point, shipping costs/time, etc.

Solid information on the product, a good ability to search for what I need, the ability to pay without doing business with paypal/ebay (I think your store is out for me).

Ruglud wrote:Thanks for the feedback, I'm seeing a recurring theme on what the customer wants from a webstore... Handily I have a background in the retail sector so appreciate how important good service is to a business.

In terms of products what do you look for that you can't always find easily? i.e. plasticard, tools, dice, etc...

Green Stuff, Brown Stuff pro create etc
Glues.
brushes.

Personally I get my supplies froma model supply shop, I expect them to have a wide range of equipment, for a budding games webstore a couple of glues and a raneg of paints may suffice to start since these would be nice bolt on products. The same for s simple selection of dice and templates.

In addition to everything that's been said so far, enough flexibility in the ordering system to handle different counties' formats for addresses and phone numbers. Things are getting better as web businesses get used to being global, but I still occasionally come across sites I can't order from because of silly issues like a "State" field that only contains a combo box to select American states or a mandatory phone number field that won't allow me enough digits to type in a Japanese phone number.

You must allow me to calculate shipping without me first having to create an account. The web makes it easy to window shop and compare prices. There's dozens of other stores that sell exactly what you are, so the moment you impede me from doing an apples to apples comparison, I'm gone without so much as bookmarking your site.

Good luck. Asking your customers what they want is a great step.

JOHIRA wrote:In addition to everything that's been said so far, enough flexibility in the ordering system to handle different counties' formats for addresses and phone numbers. Things are getting better as web businesses get used to being global, but I still occasionally come across sites I can't order from because of silly issues like a "State" field that only contains a combo box to select American states or a mandatory phone number field that won't allow me enough digits to type in a Japanese phone number.

Also for APO addresses, i have run in to this problem as well. I have an "American" address, but a German phone number, and webstores just cannot seem to compute that i put APO in my address, and so i MAY not have a "valid" U.S. looking phone number.

syanticraven wrote:What I look for in online shops are;

1: Professional, clean looking site. (No one buys off a site that looks like a kid made it)

2: Fast and smart shipping. (I would not wait 2-4 weeks when I can go to another site, and I dont want each package sent separately)

3: Secure payments or Paypal Option.

4: Nice discount off of RRP. (No point in waiting for delivery if I can have it in my hands in an hour when its the same price)

5: Quick responses to questions. (Last site I used never answered a query for 2 weeks, they lost the sale)

This pretty much sums up what I look for in a webstore as well.

Mr. Burning wrote:

When I place an order:
1. I want an order confirmation, just one email, I hate being bombarded with 'thanks', 'pending', 'shipped' etc.
2. You must have stock on hand to ship, if a site says it is in stock it damned well better be (if i wanted an item in two weeks time I would order in two weeks time). yes its hard to keep everything on hand, but notify me when awaiting stock and I will decide if I want to back order something.
3. If there is a problem contact me before I hear about it on a g'damn internet forum!

I just want to say I disagree with #1. I love the fact that my favorite webstore sends me an order confirmation and then another email with the tracking number. Different strokes for different folks though, maybe having an option where you can turn the email bombardment off would leave both my crowd and Mr. Burning's crowd satisfied.

econtutor wrote:

syanticraven wrote:What I look for in online shops are;

1: Professional, clean looking site. (No one buys off a site that looks like a kid made it)

2: Fast and smart shipping. (I would not wait 2-4 weeks when I can go to another site, and I dont want each package sent separately)

3: Secure payments or Paypal Option.

4: Nice discount off of RRP. (No point in waiting for delivery if I can have it in my hands in an hour when its the same price)

5: Quick responses to questions. (Last site I used never answered a query for 2 weeks, they lost the sale)

This pretty much sums up what I look for in a webstore as well.

Mr. Burning wrote:

When I place an order:
1. I want an order confirmation, just one email, I hate being bombarded with 'thanks', 'pending', 'shipped' etc.
2. You must have stock on hand to ship, if a site says it is in stock it damned well better be (if i wanted an item in two weeks time I would order in two weeks time). yes its hard to keep everything on hand, but notify me when awaiting stock and I will decide if I want to back order something.
3. If there is a problem contact me before I hear about it on a g'damn internet forum!

I just want to say I disagree with #1. I love the fact that my favorite webstore sends me an order confirmation and then another email with the tracking number. Different strokes for different folks though, maybe having an option where you can turn the email bombardment off would leave both my crowd and Mr. Burning's crowd satisfied.

To be fair even I would accept a thanks AND a shipped email.

My main concerns (in order) are:

1. Easy to navigate
2. Safe payment system
3. FAIR shipping (If I order a ton of lead I don't mind paying for the shipping, but if you overcharge I will cancel my order.)
4. Clear pictures that bigger than an inch across.

Describe what's in each box: "You get 5 terminators, with weapon options..."

Yes, I can look it up on GW's website, but then I'd buy from them.

Clear pictures.

List of what's in stock.

Hobby tools, particularly the big sticks of GS.

And in contrast to Mr. Burning, I like a confirmation email ("Thanks for your order, details below") and a shipping email ("we've shipped")

Make newsletters opt-in. Maybe put a big picture that says "OPT IN TO OUR NEWSLETTER AND GET AWESOMER DEALS". But I hate it when stores automatically assume I want their email newsletter three times a week.

Let me buy without making an account. Or at the very least, don't make me sign up, go to my email, click a link, then build a new shopping cart.

I want a simple search feature to find what I want. I hate having to look through whole product lines to find a single mini.

An easy to navigate site is good as well.

I like 2 emails for a purchase: One saying "We got your money, here is your payment info and invoice" and another saying it shipped.

Price is by far the most important though. I have an FLGS that I love. I like to support them. Through a customer program there I basically get 10% off everything. So when I see prices plus shipping, it has to be a much better deal than going the whopping 2 miles to the store. I'm talking about at least 25% off SHIPPED from MSRP. Otherwise, it isn't enough of a difference to me.

Thanks for all this, it's really great info. Please feel free to keep the comments rolling in, the more people with the same or similar view points reinforces how important each one is and at the end of the day I want to provide the best possible service to my customers. Equally though, I'm also interested in the niche areas of the hobby and how these can be served.

Here's another one for you... How important are regular or even irregular discount schemes such as promotional vouchers, loyalty schemes, etc...?

Cheers,
R

Ruglud wrote:
Here's another one for you... How important are regular or even irregular discount schemes such as promotional vouchers, loyalty schemes, etc...?

Personally, they are nice, but not that important. A periodic sale would be nice as well though i understand how you are serving such a niche market, and profits tend to be slim as it is.

Ruglud wrote:Here's another one for you... How important are regular or even irregular discount schemes such as promotional vouchers, loyalty schemes, etc...?

Maelstrom got my business the first time because of one of their sales. I didn't actually buy anything during the sale (missed the deadline by a few days) but the fact that they were offering such a discount got enough of my attention that when I finally decided to buy, I bought from them. I don't know if other people are as much creatures of sloth and habit as I am, but basically their sale is what broke my resistance to ordering online in the first place.

Ruglud wrote:
Here's another one for you... How important are regular or even irregular discount schemes such as promotional vouchers, loyalty schemes, etc...?

Goes without saying that you'll need to be as cheap or cheaper than anyone else. How to do that and stay in business is the trick.