With a six-fold increase in sales over the past five years, the Apple Stores are a textbook example of how to market premium electronics. Three pillars behind this success are successfully applied online.

Empty shelves: is it a crisis at the Apple Store?

My search for an adapter cable for a Macbook Air led me to the newly opened Apple Store on Amsterdam's Leidseplein. Apart from the sleek design, it looked like a store from behind the pre-1989 ice curtain: lots of staff and space but hardly any products to be seen, say ‘empty shelves.

Now they have gone very far in ‘design above all else,’ I thought. But as so often with Apple, ‘there is a method to the madness. On Emerce there is a remarkable article on how Apple increased its sales in Apple stores sixfold: lots of staff and space, few shelves and ..... make sure you touch the products. The beauty for the online professional is that these three tactics also have online variations.

I touch = I buy

Apple is doing everything in their stores to make visitors touch their products. The news report on Emerce suggests that Apple deliberately puts screens at such an angle in its Stores that it is not a fine ‘viewing angle. Employees are even said to have a special app to determine the optimal ’unfavorable‘ viewing angle. The reason: visitors have to touch the screen briefly to ’straighten‘ it. And that touch would lead to more sales. Apple's almost mythical status regularly leads to ’wild‘ stories, but conversion specialist and psychologist Bart Schutz of Online Dialogue finds this tactic familiar.

“There are several reasons why this works. One is known as the ‘Foot in the door’ effect. The fact that people are touching the Apples causes those people to perceive themselves as having something to do with Apple, and that works to promote sales. It is an example of a seduction technique. Such ‘persuasion’ techniques primarily capitalize on the fact that people make their buying decisions subconsciously / instinctively for +/- 95%, and consciously rationally only for 5%. This is easily explainable, because evolutionarily speaking, ‘reason’ is a very recent addition to the brain (and therefore barely developed). As a result, the sale is usually concluded before ‘the ratio’ realizes it. It explains afterwards and allows us to convince ourselves that we are conscious consumers, with a free choice.”

These seduction tactics and techniques work online as well. Once you have clicked on a page, your ratio wants you to operate consistently and logically as a person. So after that first click, more and more easily follow. Take online surveys for example, do you want to participate? “No” many think and they click it away, not knowing that with that first click they multiply the chances of them buying something on that site or filling out a form (see for example this KRAS.nl case). Touching the computer screens that Apple Stores employees deliberately skew works the same way. It helps you cross a threshold, and especially with Apple's materials, the deal with your subconscious is already ‘on the way.

Help, I have to choose!?

Reducing the number of products on the shelves at Apple Stores is at odds with the thinking that many supermarkets apply. There, the shelves are overflowing with varieties and many inches of floor space next to the shelves are crammed with offers. At Apple, they have long been masters at reducing choice stress. The countless varieties of Windows laptops are competed with the Powerbook or the Macbook Air, and opposite Nokia's more than 50 device variants, they put the ‘iPhone’ five years ago. The rest is ‘history,’ shall we say. Apple is now the most valuable company in the world and has more cash in the bank than a small European country needs to resolve its debt crisis.

Conversion specialist Ton Wesseling says the following about choice stress: “Offering a few choices is enough to make people feel like they are making a good trade-off. Offering more options leads directly to choice stress and dropout. Sales drop because people think ”well I'll do that tomorrow,” or “I'll have to look at that tonight at my leisure.” And since another buying impulse from another provider has often passed by then, you convert less.”

I wish you many staff

The article on Emerce refers to a blog by Apple follower Horace Dediu on his blog Asymco. He calculates how Apple Stores occupancy has more than tripled and how that has contributed to the sixfold increase in Apple Stores sales. Amazing? No, service sells, as I also pointed out in my blog: ‘Service is the new marketing’. Customers are helped quickly, so you don't get the effect you get in many other computer stores: after waiting five or ten minutes and looking around, you soon think, I'll buy it online. Visitors get a lot of attention from the staff in the Apple Stores. They take their time quietly: an average of 15 minutes per customer in the calculation example.

You can imagine that the calmness of the Apple employees radiates on the customers, that they take better time to explain their desire, are helped better and as a result buy more and have a pleasant shopping experience and come back faster. At least I myself was very pleasantly surprised by the time the employee took to get my adapter, explain how it works and ... by asking if I was otherwise comfortable working with my Mac..... Now how do you translate this to online? Lots of attention means good explanations of the product and a service department that helps you well with questions.

An example that immediately comes to mind (but there are many more) is www.allekabels.nl. Fully specialized in computer cables, this webshop excels because of the knowledge of the staff and the quick response of the people behind the site. No question so crazy or a response comes back within minutes with a link to the relevant cable. Also the return policy of Bol.com, or the confidence that their ‘pay with giro’ exudes fall into the category ‘service sells’ as far as I am concerned.

Emerce Conversion Training

Want to know more about ‘online persuasion’ and how to sell more by ‘smartly’ anticipating people's buying behavior with your online proposition? Bart Schutz and Ton Wesseling are partners at Online Dialogue and will give ‘persuasion tactics’ on July 5 at the Emerce Conversion Training.

UPDATE:
The training is sold out. Sign up here for the newsletter to be notified of when the next date is announced.