Dollars & Sense

Do You Agree Defaults Are Important? ✅ Yes ___ No

When you look at your driver’s license, it lists if you’re an organ donor. Twenty years ago, only 20% of people were donors, but today 80% are—thereby saving millions of lives. Did people become more kind? No, the question on the application was changed from opt-in to opt-out. People signing up for or renewing a license are now by default enlisted in organ donation. Lesson: the right default answer in medical care can save millions of lives. Similarly, the right defaults in software can make—or cost—an industry millions of dollars.

When a merchant signs up for our online store, called the Shop Local Store, we set many settings to “Yes” by default. These settings can be thought of as providing furniture and accessories in a new house. Our default is: a furnished digital home. We give our retail members a turnkey move-in. You come in and there is a sofa, TV, kitchen table, and bedroom furniture. The walls are sheet rocked and painted; there is a faucet in the kitchen and bathroom, and there is toilet paper. 

The same can't be said of other platforms. If you were moving into Shopify ‘house,’ for example, you’d likely have no stairs and no sinks.  One reason that other platforms gives merchants an empty house is that they make money on each app that they sell the merchant.  They have an economic incentive to give the merchant a shanty that needs fixing up. 

When a setting’s default is "No,"  retailers overthink decisions and believe the default is “No” for a reason. But that’s not true. Merchants aren’t meant to live in digital shanties, only to be shaken down by their digital landlords to buy apps. Bad default settings are the software’s fault.

I believe it’s my responsibility if the defaults aren’t activated when they could be.   Our platform defaults to “Yes” because yes means more features for the retailers and quicker results.   Indie stores will sell more—and this benefits us: we get a small commission on sales.   We win when they win.  Rule of thumb: good default settings produce good customers. 

It’s notable how much of Shop Local is ‘on’ by default. We may have more features that are on than off.  Let’s review a few notable features that our Shop Local Store includes by default:

• Our Store allows a customer to checkout. A merchant doesn’t have to input their banking information or setup a merchant account. 
• Our gift registry service is active.
• Our registry service includes two different marketing programs (the 5-step incentive program and the new registry sign-up bonus for $20).
• A retailer can add an item and immediately place it in one of 60 default departments (e.g. Dining & Entertaining, Decorating & Accessories, etc.) and 200 sub-departments. 
• Our Store includes a default brand directory with 3,100 brands.  A client can assign items to these. (We have the brand’s logo, description, and keywords.)
• Our software allows one to book an appointment online.
• Our review software is active. (The software emails customers after a purchase asking for a review.)
• Our Store includes abandoned shopping cart emails. These are sent to customers that don't complete a purchase.
• A retailer can instantly contact their brands and the sales reps online. We track the contact information of 3,100 brands and 500 sales reps. (We allow messaging, and also display their  telephone number and website.)
• Our software shows retailers wholesale pricing for 60,000 products from 110 brands. 
• Our software shows stock levels from 60 brands.
• We include the retailer in our Shop Local Directory.

Other software doesn’t offer this same turnkey, move-in ready digital home.  Many, if not all, of our default features are not defaults in other e-commerce software. For example, when you sign up for a Shopify store, many of the defaults we have are not active.

On Shopify and other e-commerce platforms:

• A merchant has to add the brands themselves.(A merchant may need to add hundreds of brands.) 
• A merchant has to add the departments themselves. (This could be hundreds of departments.) 
• There is no default gift registry. And, one can’t just turn a registry “on.” One has to install an app from a third-party developer. It’s not a matter of simply clicking “Yes.”  
• There are no built-in marketing programs active. 

Because the right defaults matter, let’s see if we can expand our default settings to include more yes’s. For a feature that is currently set to “No" and turned off, let’s consider activating it by default for new members. (Of course, the merchant can turn it off.)

What are other areas that we can opt the merchant into?

• We recently discovered that retailers that don’t offer free shipping have a 600% higher abandoned cart rate. Idea: let’s turn on free shipping for stores by default. We can set the default at $190 because that’s the average set by retailers currently offering free shipping. 
• We could turn on price matching by default. Successful stores offer this, including Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods. 
• We’re creating more referral programs for our members. By default, I propose we have these active.

We want to take the thinking out of running an online store to make it easier and more successful. That's our default strategy. 

To my team, thank you for creating a beautiful digital house for our members to move into quickly. 

Tags:
Default settings bridge store Shopify e-commerce strategy organ donation

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