What can or does your LDS need to do to EARN your business?

[olphart]

These are just a few of my thoughts on the subject, based on observation and experience:

Online buying is a fact of life, so you could be proactive, look around at what is being offered online and at what price so that you have a chance at being knowledgeable about what your customer would be paying. Then you can discuss the advantages of buying from you as opposed to ordering on line.
Take a positive stance toward online buying to encourage customers to discuss possible purchases openly. Even though it sounds counterintuitive, encourage them to buy that fantastic deal online. You're not going to be able to come close to the price anyway, and you're just shown them that you want them to get the best deal. It will pay off down the line, when they come to you to buy because you can be trusted to steer them in the right direction.

Encourage browsing. Create a "sittin' 'round the pickle barrel" atmosphere. My favourite music store encouraged customers to sit and play, or just gab and he was very successful. My LDS set up a reading centre with books and magazines. It's amazing how much stuff I end up with after just stopping in to say Howdy.
If a customer buys something online invite him to bring it in and offer any tips on its use or improvements, etc. You can often sell accessories and/or improvements
All of this is to foster an open relationship with the customer that will have him/her buying far more from you than otherwise.
Trust me, these customers will always at least consider your deal before buying online.

One other strategy is to offer courses. I see an incredible amount of gear being bought by students, and when you're the one teaching and suggesting appropriate choices, that you just happen to have in stock, or can get within a couple of days you get the reputation as the "go to" guy.

 

[k ellis]

What is your input in attempting to improve the model?

Id start by saying first scuba shops are rarely site dependant. At least in my neck of the woods so going to prime corner locations where the property tax is 10 times higher then just an average location would be a bad decision. People who come looking for gear and education are rarely store hopping and JUST decide to stop in.

Second Id say remember that people are hurting just as bad as the industry is hurting. When you buy a bcd (Hypothetical here) For say 200 dollars dont expect the customer to be willing to pay the MSRP of 800 dollars. we need to save money as bad as the shops are.

People need to know that a shop cares enough about them to give them a break. I have heard of shops where the owner beleives in ONLY charging MSRP with no exception. Thats a doomed shop in just a matter of time.

Also like so many have said courtesy at first entry but also maybe a nice sign that just lets potential customers know something to the effect of "We will attempt when possible to price match any authorized dealer" would be nice.

One very important thing to me though is on the touring side of sea side LDS and thats when I go out I tip and try to do so nicely (though sometimes foreign currency throws me for a loop since it can be a large amount like say 17 pesos to a dollar)but I absolutely hate when they spend 5 minutes talking about how they need our tips and how bad things are in the local area. Then when you get up and walk to the tip jar they eyeball you as if though your going to cheat them. Its important to remember a tip is a sign of good service but is not required by law. Let the people tip for good service but dont stare them down like your going to tackle the first one that puts less then expects in the jar.

 

[tbone1004]

one of the things that was mentioned was the little stuff.
On top of that, hold reasonable hours on the weekends. Do you really need to be open at 10am on weekdays? Not so much, not a whole lot of diving during the off season in weekdays. This is the time for service and stuff so don't keep a flock of staff on board.
But on the weekends? If you open at 7 or 8 you'll have a lot of divers coming through. This past weekend a buddy bumped one of my tank valves and I found my tank dry. I was planning a quarry dive the next morning, and had to pray that my SAC was low enough compared to my buddy to survive on one tank. Luckily it is, but the earliest the LDS's were open was 10am. That's a little ridiculous.

I've never really understood why retailers do that... Be open when the customers want you, not when "normal" business hours are, because we're working then, not diving.

The small stuff. O-rings. Don't try to make me pay a buck for an o-ring. Come on, you're making almost 1000% profit on that. I'll pay you a buck for 10 of em though. Sell o-rings by the type, not the variety packs. How often do I need O-rings for my DIN regs? A helluva lot more often than I'll need O-Rings for a yoke *Yes some of the LDS's around me have both in a pack and you can't buy them separate*. Same with the o-rings for LP and HP hoses. I go to Lowes or Home Depot now if I need O-rings because they have them for about 10x cheaper and I can get just the o-rings I need.

I think a big problem with the LDS's is they are bound by whatever manufacturer they're representing.
Speaking of, when I want to go buy a pair of Jet Fins, do you really think I want twin jets? NO!
Most newbies don't know about jet fins because they're old, and sure you can push the twin jets then. If I call and specifically ask you about jet fins and if you have x-size in stock, don't try to push other fins. I want those ones, otherwise I would have asked for your opinion.

LDS's that are better than most have migrated to do both online work as well as brick and mortar
Examples, Cave Adventurers, Northeast Scuba Supply, and Divers-Supply. They've realized this. Edd and John are some smart dudes when it comes to where the money actually is in scuba, and where the people they need to cater to are. They are making a lot more money because of this.
Piranha is another one. Strictly online, but they've realized that they'll sell more of stuff because the normal diver doesn't give a rats a** about brands. If it works and it lasts, I'll buy it.
A buddy blew his long hose and went to the LDS to see if they had one. They quoted him $85 or something and they had to order it from Aqualung or Scubapro. He went to Edd and got one for $30. That's a smidge ridiculous...

 

[Kingpatzer]

We offer 3 levels of product/price point. What are your thoughts on that?

If it is done consistently and with clear, upfront objective descriptions of how to earn those discounts that's fine. If it is applied haphazardly it can be a source of consternation to customers who believe they deserve it.

as for our web

www.AdventureSportsofGJ.com

First, in a google search of "scuba colorado" you aren't on the first page of the results. You are #1 on "Scuba grand junction" so that's good.

Overall, it's a not a bad page, what follows are meant as constructive criticisms, and not meant to be taken as me 'slamming' what I see. I am not a professional designer though I have built a few business web pages using established templates from professionals. My thoughts should be taken as those of a moderately sophisticated user, not as gospel!

General impressions: your logo/name in the upper left corner is a bit difficult to see/read. Consider revising it somewhat. You have a lot of pictures crammed into the top of the front page, and not much negative space, the result for me was it took me a bit of time to figure out where to start. Your right sidebar more or less repeats everywhere. Thus, it is superfluous on most pages and doesn't do anything but take up space making the overall design more dense, which isn't particular advantageous.

Having a number of paragraphs for a person to read in order to figure out what to do or where to go is, in my view, counter productive. Your site should present an intuitive response from a user with minimal effort. On my browser, opened up in it's normal screen size, I have to scroll down to see the entire front page. I'm on a 17" macbook monitor, so it's not a small screen area either.

Your news and events sections are clean and easy to follow. Links in the events to more information might be useful. for example, your st. Kitts package link is at the bottom of the page rather than linked into the calendar event itself.

Your photo page is not well integrated into your page. It doesn't have the same look and feel, some of the albums don't have thumbnails. The first one I clicked on is actually EMPTY! The photos themselves do not have descriptive names, but serial numbers. Seeing a picture of "hawkbill turtle at <dive site>, little cayman" would be more engaging than "24348_1336893676443_1654162813_779499_765818_n.jpg"

Most of your training pages seem fairly well done. However, there's some small issues. For example, on the Open Water page, it doesn't say anywhere that you'll be able to dive independently. It implies it, but doesn't actually tell the potential student precisely what they'll gain in terms of capability. It speaks only to skills.

Your specialities pages could provide links to the course description and schedule for the next quarter at least. Your "course schedules" link doesn't provide a schedule for courses -- it only provides a calendar, that's not the same thing. I want to know when the course I'm interested is scheduled next, not all of what's going on for the next few months, with nothing about the course I'm looking for being mentioned.

I'm not certain that the "forms" page should be off of the training menu. It's not intuitive why I should click there if I'm a new customer.

On your travel page, having the trip link to a detailed description would have all of the trips visible without scrolling. Anytime you ask a user to scroll you risk them not bothering.

You don't provide anything linking for social networking that I saw -- foursquare, twitter, facebook and the like. Your links page does not point to any local dive boards or groups -- if there aren't any, start one! On the links page, on my browser anyway, the menu item drops BEHIND primary frame, making the entire menu it inaccessible. This is not true of any other page. You have a CSS error on that page.

There's no store! I can't sign up for classes off of your web page. You have a descriptive front end, but you don't have a full on-line presence because I can't shop there!

To sum up, the biggest improvements I, in my admittedly limited knowledge of good design, would make:

• Create more negative space on every page. Just generally clean it up
• Be less wordy pretty much everywhere. Short phrases are more easily parsed by a casual browser than paragraphs
• Make certain your page will display entirely within a standard browser window on a laptop
• clean up any CSS errors and get every page to have the same look and feel.
• Eliminate duplicate information (such as the right hand column)
• Try for a constant link structure. At most 2 clicks deep.
• Make the entire page more community oriented
• Add an on-line store, including the ability to sign up for classes!
• Get local with your links!
• Don't claim to offer something you don't have! You say you teach through instructor, but there's not a single professional course scheduled that I could find, no link to that course page, no pricing . . .

Again, it's no where close to the worst I've seen. But I doubt I'd spend much time trying to figure out when I could take a particular speciality from you, for example. I click on "Specialities," I get a list with no links, so I click on "calendar" and I have to search for the speciality I want. That's too much trouble. If I clicked on specialties, got the list. Clicked on the one I want' And got a page with schedule, pricing, and description, I'd be in much better shape!

 

[Herk_Man]

There are a couple of dive shops in my area. The one I use most often treats me very well no matter what I come in for. I sometimes send them an email asking a question. I always get a polite personal response.

They also are a wealth of information when it comes to planning dive trips. I wanted to take my family to a dive destination that had certain criteria I needed met. They sat down with me and went over options, then when we settled on one, they booked the flight/lodging/car/diving/etc. for me and sent me a package with everything I needed. And none of these things had a markup. They get points from the services they booked that they can trade in later for free dive trips.

I gladly pay a little more for stuff from them because of these other things they do for me. They offer a monthly basic underwater photography class for FREE! (And they do a soft upsell of camera equipment during the class.)

They are very accomodating when it comes to scheduling classes. Will throw something together if they can get the instructors to support it.

They hold periodic free product testing dives in a local pool where you can come try the latest products on the market.

They offer both traditional BCDs and BP/Ws in their sales dept.

A DIFFERENT shop has rental equipment for about 1/3 the price of the dive shop I've spoken about above. If I'm going on a week long trip, I rent from this other location. With a family of 4 this saves me about $700 a week!

In short, I understand why an LDS has to charge more than on line stores. And if they provide lots of personal services that make diving convenient for me, I don't mind paying the extra. And none of the things I mentioned are really costing the LDS anything more than a little extra work in the course of doing normal business.

 

[tomfcrist]

What it comes down to for me is service. If I walk into your shop and you are BSing and joking with your other employees, you can surely say hello to me. Nothing is worse than not being greeted in 20 minutes of browsing.
Try to sell items within all price ranges and styles....Not everyone needs or wants the top end regulators and such, and if you try to upsell every customer you will piss them off.
Dont be a snob. you may think you know more than your customer, but what do you really know about them. I have been diving for 20 years and have been in the industry for 8. I walked into a dive shop recently, and was warmly greeted by the staff. They asked me if i was looking for anything in particular, and I told them that i was just looking around to see what kind of new doodads they have. Who would have guessed that he immediatly started showing the "newest Regs" that he just got in? "Really?" i said. "That MR22 Abyss is the NEWEST GREATEST thing to come out this year? I owned one 5 years ago and they are ok, but i didnt pay $850 for it back then either and I sure wont pay it today!"

Be good with customers, and they will be good to you. Bottom line.

 

[cerich]

An active, well-thought out net presence is a vital part of the modern retail operation. But the key is it has to be quality. It is often going to be the first impression your potential customers will get. A poor net presence can be very damaging. This is an area where most people need professional help to do it right.

yeah, me too!

 

[Snorkelboy]

Every thing Cave Diver said, and most importantly try to remember my name or at least ask me what my name is if you don't know, thats not offensive. An introduction goes a long way. There is a dive shop locally that I go to when ever I need some thing, I like to window shop alot too. The guy that owns the place his name is Wayne and when ever I see him he makes me feel as if I am an equal, although I know he has alot more experience than me. He takes the time to meet each of us in my family when we are there, and does alot of explaining. It is a highly friendly atmosphere. Some times when I am there it feels more like a hang out with all the story telling and such than a store, then again maybe I am just comfortable around these people I feel know who I am.

 

[Crush]

as for our web

www.AdventureSportsofGJ.com

Hmmm....

I would imagine that most new divers would want to come in and try out the items or talk to someone in person. You buy a starter kit once in your life. Now, for those who want to buy a reel one week and bolt snaps the next, followed by some staging bottles, your site is not helpful. I really hate to say it, but look at LP's site, as well as scubatoys.com.

 

[fjpatrum]

As I posted recently in one of the threads about buying online versus at the LDS, for me it is all about the personal service.

I have a lot of options for shops near me... something like 12 within a 30 minute (ish) drive from either my office or my house. The one I frequent the most was not my original choice but they won me over with a better schedule (for me) for training and then by consistently providing a more personalized level of service than the other shops I visited.

I've visited the shop 10 times or so, and they know my name. I dropped my new (to me) tanks off for hydro and viz and they offered me free rentals while my tanks were out for inspection. With tank purchases they throw in free fills I think 10 or 20.

They do things like organize barbecues at the local quarry and they bring the food.

I went in the other day looking for some info on back inflate BCs and the manager gave me pointed advice that was germane to what I want to do with my diving.

All in all, it's a level of comfort, for me. They have had better selection than a couple of the other shops, as far as gear, but it's more that they treat me like a valued customer, not like some unknown schmoe walking in off the street, even when I was an unknown schmoe.

EDIT: A PS I just thought of... don't complain about where I buy my gear! I buy used gear because I'm a new diver with limited experience and budget. I don't know what I want yet, but I know that. I'm buying "starter" gear and I'm not interested in dropping $1500 on it. Service my gear (or send it out for service for me) at a reasonable price and don't give me a lecture about it. Don't be a dick and curse me out of your shop for not buying the latest and greatest gadget from you.