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Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing and Sight On Your Web Site...What?
July 27, 2007

You know when it comes to your store you need to engage a customer's five sense:  touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.  They love the sensory experience they receive as they debate about their purchases, and the better they feel subconsciously--or consciously--the more they will return.  How can you apply this same strategy to your web site?  Easy.  Here's how:

• Touch:  give them the virtual experience of playing with the merchandise.  There are many free or fee based software options that allow visitors to design rooms, change fabrics, and try on clothes.  Giving your customers an option to "touch" as much as they like, they'll trust buying from you online and in your store.

• Taste:  it is hard to give out free food samples for people to munch on while they're visiting your web site, but you can offer them food-for-thought.  How many times have you read a description of something and found your mouth watering, your taste buds engaged, and you run to the fridge trying to find food to satisfy the craving?  Ahh the power of the written word.  Keep this in mind when writing copy and draw a comparison with your merchandise and what they can be eating...a bag of buttered popcorn on their new couch, a wearing their new necklace while enjoying manicotti at an exotic restaurant...

• Smell:  this can make or break a retail experience.  If your store smells funny, people run out the door in droves.  Realtors encourage baking fresh cookies before an open house to engage the taste and smell element (and it reminds people of happy childhoods, or something like that).  What is your favorite smell?  Describe it and incorporate that sensory appeal in your content.  Set the moment on your web site by talking about your store and how you can smell jasmine in the air.  Get creative.

• Hearing:  this is very easy to do on your web site.  Podcasts anyone? Video showcasing your store, commentary about specials, interviewing good customers...these are all ways for people to actually hear about your place of business.

• Sight:  visualization is key and a sloppy, poor, hard-to-navigate web site turns people away quicker than a closed sign on your front door.  Seventy percent of purchases made my consumers are impulse buys, so show a lot of quality images.  Add color, ensure the font is smaller than 12 point and it's NOT Times New Roman (looks amateur). 

Posted by Suze Bragg on July 27, 2007 | Comments (0)