For me, I think customer engagement is a big one. A lot of stores pop up and shift merchandise from distributors to customers, and that’s it. When they’re active on the forums and Reddit, talking to customers, asking questions like this you can tell they care about what they’re doing and they care about their customers. Make some fun YouTube videos. As a customer I know that when you have a problem, I can go to them and get it fixed, rather than getting ignored until I get frustrated and give up. Build a reputation, and maintain it. Be honest and up-front when there’s a problem. Don’t bury it and pretend it’s not there until it gets so bad that you have to fold. Everyone makes mistakes and I find it easier to forgive people when they’re honest about it (and learn from it).
A couple of things that bug me about the shopping experience:
Some web sites don’t explain what things are. When they show a list of things with no thumbnails and I have to just guess what the different names mean and click it to learn more, I get pretty frustrated. It really helps to have a list or tiles that have a picture, name, and a brief description. Also have meaningful categories. For an example of what I mean look at EagTac. They have a bunch of buttons that just say “D Series, P Series” etc. but no explanation of what those represent, you have to click a lot to see what’s inside, and on the main page they have a few pictures and names, but no explanation for how big the lights are, what they do, price, etc. Lots of clicking and scrolling to compare things. Illumn mainly has a list of brands, where you kind of have to know what you want. After you click a brand you can apply filters, but it’s not great. GoingGear sells a lot of non-flashlight gear, and it causes the filters to have a lot of irrelevant junk. Two examples of a great experience in this regard are BatteryJunction and BrightGuy, you have a bunch of different ways you can browse, or you can easily look at everything. The filters are comprehensive and relevant.
The other is when they omit specifications or don’t keep their data clean. If I’m comparing lights, and using filters, it helps if each light I’m comparing has the same specifications available, listed the same way, and produced using the same test criteria. If one light lists their output as 95000cd, and another is listed as 200kcd, or one is 3000 estimated lumens vs 1500 ANSI FL1 lumens, you can’t compare the two. Often times things end up duplicating due to a typo or change in punctuation. Say I want to buy an 18650 light, but in some cases I might need to select “18650” AND “1x18650” AND “18650/2xCR123”, etc. If the only criteria I care about is being able to use an 18650, the rest should be inclusive. It’s very annoying. There might also be a filter called “Output” and “Lumen Output”, they mean the same thing, but because the site just dumped data from two manufacturers who call it different things, they have two filter categories which only contain a subset of the lights. This drives me crazy. I shouldn’t have to visit a bunch of different sites to compare, I’m less likely to come back to yours to make my purchase.
I couldn’t care less about a free t-shirt. I think it’s cool to have a t-shirt or hat or pin, but maybe make it an optional at-cost add-on. Customers know that nothing’s free (even if they enjoy it), and I’d rather save that money on the light, especially if I order frequently. If you have good store and people order a lot they’ll just pile up t-shirts.
Shipping should either be free or at-cost, with clear expectation around processing time, and good communications through to delivery. With modern tools that shouldn’t require a lot of work on your part. For what it’s worth, I’ve been impressed by the Shopify.com process lately.