Every day issues like environment and global warming are discussed. No surprise that shoppers are trying to make a contribution to the sustainability environmental movement in several ways. Consumers prefer to purchase energy-efficient products and appliances as well as locally-made items. More and more shoppers choose products in recyclable packaging or buy at farmer’s market.

Ebay recently introduced the Ebay Green Team as a result of record number of customers choosing to buy items that could be classified as “used”, “organic”, “refurbished”, “vintage”, “sustainable” or “remainder.”

The good news for online retailers: Ecommerce itself is green and in order to become a “greener” online shop all you need is to make a few environmental changes. The rewards will justify the effort.

Green Online Shopping

Online shopping is “greener” than shopping via traditional models. A study by the Carnegie Mellon University  compared the impact of buying online vs. driving to and from a store. It concluded that the online transaction reduced the environmental impact with 35% less energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

• Green effect 1. Less vehicle miles: Shopping is one of the most frequent reasons for car travels. Each time that a customer decides to buy online rather than go shopping by car CO2 emissions are saved.
• Green effect 2. Less printed materials: Online e-newsletters and brochures replace their physical equivalent therefore it saves paper and reduces distribution costs.
• Green effect 3. Less waste. Across the whole supply chain of procurement, manufacturing and distribution, the Internet can help reduce product and distribution cycles. Auction services like eBay and Amazon Marketplace even enable redistribution of second-hand items promoting recycling.
• Green effect 4. Dematerialization. Better known as digitization, this is the availability of products like software, music and video in digital forms.

Green Online Shop

• Packing Material: For mail-orders, packages are indispensable. Nevertheless avoid e.g. disposable packaging and use environmentally friendly, recycled wrapping materials instead.
• Bulk Mailing: Offer to ship several items in just one packing instead of several separate packages.
• Email instead of paper: Send invoice, newsletters etc. by email instead of paper and offer for example paperless payment.
• Whenever paper is unavoidable, use 100% post-consumer recycled paper.
• Offer to withdrawal old batteries and other electric appliances.

Green Online Retailer

In order to become an environmental Ecommerce retailer it might be worth to share your own green office efforts with your customers. Further reducing energy usage is good for the planet as well as for your business as it translates into lower operating costs.

• Use compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs in the office and warehouse.
• Setup the energy saving features on computers during the day.
• Turn off all computers, monitors, printers, scanners, etc. through a power strip at the end of the day in order to prevent “standby” energy these devices are often using.
• Use a paperless accounting system saves immense amounts of resources. A small investment up front on equipment and services (backup hard drive, scanner and online backup service) will pay for itself in costs on resources such as paper, file folders, and file cabinets.

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Online review portals continuously grow in popularity among users. Whether someone is looking for a new camera, shoes or a doctor: More and more users consult portals before buying.

Ecommerce retailers are skeptical though, because they fear criticism of their offers and services. Despite previous fears that consumers posting honest and unfiltered material could damage sales, it has been having the opposite effect in most cases.

In fact, visitors who clicked on the highest customer-rated reviews were more likely to purchase. Therefore online retailers should strengthen their presence on such sites. Only then, they have the opportunity, to use these platforms to their advantage.

7 tips for dealing with customer reviews:

1. Don’t avoid negative feedback. Nobody is perfect – and not every single customer will be content. If a company is basically highly rated this criticism is by no means a disadvantage, since it increases the companies’ credibility.

2. Resolves an evaluation in resentment, the top priority is: a deep breath. Anger is a natural reaction to subjective or provocative contributions, but should not guide your actions.

3. Try to see your company from the perspective of the customer. This will help to decide whether the criticism from the perspective of the evaluator is justified.

4. If you receive a positive critique, write a thank you. It will please your customers.

5. If you do not share the criticism make your perspective clear. Act professionally and constructively by posting a comment or writing to the author a private message.

6. If a customer is unhappy and you know that you can do better, make him an offer which will convince him. This could be in form of a discount or a coupon.

7. An evaluation is always a snapshot. You – as well as the customer – should always keep this in mind.

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This easy to use up-sale strategy is providing your consumer with promotional coupons while they receive their confirmation email. You’re giving up gross margin, but you’re not taking that dollar out of your wallet.

Coupon promotion advantages:

Instead of spending marketing dollars you only pay out if your customer redeems the coupon. So open up another avenue and offer the budget back to your existing clients to use for themselves or pass it on to friends and family.

How coupon promotions work:

1. Consumer makes a purchase for a product (e.g. Canon camera).
2. Consumer receives a confirmation email from your ecommerce site.
3. Within the confirmation email, offer shopping coupons (i.e. 15% off / $10 discount) for purchases within your online shop.
4. Put time limits on your e-mail coupon offers so customers will print them out (or click on them) and use them right away.
5. Consumer can either use the coupons for themselves or pass on the coupons easily to family members or friends via email.

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Fluctuation of opening rates for promotional emails are enormous: The best mailing generated an opening rate of 92%, the worst just 4%. The average was 34%.

So when should you send your email promotion and what can do to make sure it gets read:

Email sending time & season:

1. The best sending date is Monday evening, compared with the worst time, Thursday afternoon.
2. For the daytime in general, the marginal time of the day will lead to significantly higher opening rates.
3. There are seasonal variations: mailings towards the end of year (November and December) are much less likely to be opened compared to the beginning of the year (January, February). Generally in the months with fewer email marketing activities (for example: summer months) high rates are achieved.

Email subject line:

1. There is a clear and high correlation between the length of a subject line and the opening rate of the business emails: The shorter the subject line, the higher the opening rate.
2. Factual subject lines have a significantly (+28%) higher chance to be opened, compared to promotional subject lines.
3. Personalized subject lines achieve a 64% higher rate than un-personalized subject lines.

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