Leave it to Geeks: 3 Ways to Engage Customers and Sell More
My all-time favorite e-commerce store is ThinkGeek. I could spend hours here, not only because I’m a nerd, but because the user experience is just awesome. If you’ve got an ecommerce store – or are even selling a service based product, here are some lessons learned from the Geek Overlords.
#1 Fun to read product descriptions
Not only are standard, straight-from-the-manufacture product descriptions death for search ranking (duplicate content multiplied by however many resellers are selling the product), they are also usually pretty boring to read.
As a reseller, your job is to find a niche, find products that your niche audience will like, and then spin the benefit of those products in a way that is dead-on with your audience. ThinkGeek found a way to make a red Swingline stapler interesting and slap on a price tag of $21.99 (yes, I purchased this). Who really wants to read lame, generic product descriptions anyway?
#2 Customer Action Shots:
The customer action shots are probably the most effective aspect of the ThinkGeek website in my opinion on the site. It let me know that other people like this site. It showed me who the target audience was and the images said a lot about their sense of humor.
#3 An Open and Honest ‘About Us’ Page
An About Us page is a fantastic opportunity to connect with and engage your visitors. Sure, people will buy something if you don’t have one, but you’re more likely to sell more and earn repeat business if the people coming to your store feel like they actually know you and like you.
ThinkGeek’s About Us page has a page rank of 8 – not that page rank matters entirely, but obviously, this is a pretty important page on their site. This crew is big on providing a serious level of transparency. They have even gone so far as to set up webcams in their office.
All of these ideas can be transformed to fit any type of website – not just an e-commerce site. If you sell something to someone, you can find a way to work these ideas in to fit the flavor of your website.
Hey, great article
geeks rulez 
Great post, you are exactly right. Giving your web site a unique voice and brand can do a great deal for you. If you want to stand out from the others selling gadgets (or widgets or whatever) let the personality shine through.
I agree. ThinkGeek is an awesome site to be at.
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I’ve bought a lot of shirts from them
That’s right Shrnan! I taught my 5 year old geek-in-training to say that very phrase with his fists held high in the air!
So true John - not to mention that by targeting descriptions for a particular audience, you can reach more niche industries, which is oftentimes more effective than trying to compete in the big giant world of general commerce.
That’s great - which ones did you get? My favorites are the “1UP” shirt with the Mario ‘extra life’ mushroom and the shirt that reads “SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0″…0 rows returned
Just about everything there is amusing - I could browse around that site for hours if I’m not careful…