Google's V's for victory online

In the online world Swerling accuses merchants of going out of their way to make it difficult for shoppers by incorporating various forms of registration on their sites. While he says it might be fine for the likes of the mighty Amazon to insist people register he regarded it as a great hindrance to potential customers of much smaller online retailers.

"When people are asked why they did not buy any goods after visiting a site, far and away the most popular response is because they did not have the time or because of having to register," says Swerling.

In contrast, at Google he says the objective is to "get people away from the site as quickly as possible and to not try to keep them there", hence the retention of its very basic home page, and instead give the customers what they want.

2.Visibility - don't surprise your customers

According to Swerling a hefty 36 per cent of discarded shopping carts are a result of consumers finding hidden charges. He believes customers need to know the whole proposition before they click on the 'buy' button and that if there is anything unexpected then they will likely abandon the website and possibly not return to the store in the future. Swerling regards it as "absolutely scandalous" that people feel the need to drop-out from the checkout process because retailers have hit them with unwanted surprises.

3.Value

In the physical shopping world there are a great many areas where a merchant can add value - such as through their returns policy, their great branding and their expert staff knowledge - but when it comes to paying for goods the experience is very similar across all retailers. "The experience of checking out is the same across all stores as they don't look to add any value from checking out," says Swerling.

In contrast, in the online world there is an opportunity to add value at this point but Swerling accuses retailers of simply wanting to keep their customers within their store as long as possible whereas adding value should be done by just letting them pay and then leave.

4.Variation

Successful sites that 'get it' online are those that are data-driven and constantly in a state of change, according to Swerling, who believes many retailers should know a lot more than they currently do about their customers based on the level of information that the internet allows them to very easily collect.

"There is no excuse for online retailers not understanding all about what their customers do as it's all there on a plate. Never before have retailers had so much deep information for so little cost," he says. And with this information retailers should be able to constantly adapt their businesses to make them ever-more relevant to their customers.