Attracting the greatest amount of online customers relies on a number of factors, from allowing easy product browsing to a readily understandable point of sale. The more transparency that ecommerce merchants offer into their pricing, discounts, shipping and payment options, the better the chance that they can win a sale based on those benefits. 

According to Internet Retailer, the home page of 37 of the Top 1000 online merchants feature price-matching policies. While Best Buy's offer is only visible through a bottom page banner ad, the No. 2 ranked Top 500 Guide online retailer, Staples, is using a pop-up overlay to attract viewers' attention. 

While many more retailers chose not to provide price matching, many are including free shipping options. Staples' own minimum purchase order dropped from $45 to $19.99 and it is joined by 622 other merchants from the Top 1000 list with a similar holiday offer. Of these, 255 will not charge for delivery regardless of the order's size, while the threshold for the remaining businesses averages out to a $94 order. 

But while any of these bargains may be the difference between completing a sale or not, they will only work if customers are aware of them. Drawing consumer attention to their existence is at least as important as the promotion itself. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, November 21st, 2013 at 6:00 am .