Forum Moderators: skibum
To get even more specific, the pages that I am most interested in discussing are the actual product pages themselves (as these are clearly the best possible "conversion page" for both affiliates and merchants based on my experience - as well as the experience of others).
Therefore, to get some discussion going on this topic; and after reading an offer from killroy [webmasterworld.com] to:
...post my top 10 of the big mistakes merchants make in my opinion that spoil the sale
I decided that I would be the first to post my own list of "The top 10 of BIG mistakes merchants make" (unfortunately too many of these mistakes are from personal experience).
In no particular order:
1. Make the page difficult to arrive at in the first place due to difficult or confusing categories
2. No product image on the product page
3. Failure to have an "easy to find" BUY button on the product page
4. Shipping and tax information that is difficult or impossible to find from the product page
5. A BUY button that does not work, or returns an error
6. No "real" Product Description listed (blah, blah, blah filler text excluded as being a genuine description)
7. No Features or Benefits listed
8. No way to tell if the product is "in stock" or not (especially bad when the product is not in stock)
9. Placing the BUY button "below the fold"
10. Bad product images (e.g. badly sampled images, images with the wrong product, images with the wrong image proportions specified in the HTML)
Well, this is by no means all of the things that I have done wrong before, but these are what I would consider as my own top 10 BIG mistakes. I hope that other's will post their own "top 10 BIG mistakes" list.
11. Slow loading pages.
12. Side scrolling.
On this one:
4. Shipping and tax information that is difficult or impossible to find from the product page
Sometimes there's so little text on product pages that I wonder if shipping information were listed on each page whether there would be a big percentage of duplication for those pages in the indexable text.
Don't expect the customer to understand *anything*, but don't be condescending in explaining things. It could be nanna's first time at ordering something online, and nanna might be wealthy ;)
As for a real mistake, just unprofessional looking pages in general, where menus change style from page to page or there's no template or theme throughout the site. Clunky sites just don't inspire me to trust them with my money.
I've gone to web sites for software and been unable to determine if I'm looking at $50 to buy the program or $50,000. They force you to call to find out anything about the price or ordering.
Affiliates aren't happy if you have a big image or some text saying order on the phone now, affiliates don't get commission for those sales. Unless your using seperate phone numbers for each affiliate.
A big UK ecom site has just removed such a phone number for all visitors coming from affiliate links to keep the affiliates happy.
I know it makes sense for an ecom site to have the number there, but we're discussing in an affiliate forum and I'm looking at it from the affiliate perspective.
We just recently hired a dedicated telephone salesperson and put our ordering number at the top of each page. Our sites sell home decor items, and there are a LOT of both retail and wholesale customers who simply don't want to place an order online.
We dearly WANT to pay our affiliates for sales, because their success is our success - but if a customer will either order by phone or not order at all, it doesn't make sense for us to turn away sales.
If someone has some common-sense alternative, I'd love to hear it. We're trying to grow our affiliate base and need their participation, but don't want to blindly lose sales, either.
I've got no idea how it would work or even if it is effective, but I think you have to respect them for making the effort.
An 800# IS important for sales, but affiliates still deserve the commiss for referring the sale. Many of my clients pay commission on affiliate phone sales. We program variable headers that will add the affiliate ID next to the phone number. Some merchants label the aff id as a phone extension, some say priority code or department number. The key is A) getting your phone reps to ask for it B) making the number sound important enough to the customer that they will write it down along with the 800# if they are calling when they are offline.
I can't tell you exactly how the programming is done, cuz I'm not technical and hire programmers to do it - but they are basically grabbing the aff id from the cookie on incoming links and then the aff id shows up on the site.
Contact me if you want to see how we do this and I can show you an example on one of my client's sites.
Affiliate really appreciate phone tracking since so very few merchants bother to do it - so it can really help your program stand out and shows that you are very partner-centric and FAIR!
Linda
It's technically very simple to do.
Would make a very interesting thread.
TJ
Soft pastel purple/pinks for an art site.
Sounds awful but it does works.
The landing page should be the specific product page the visitor thought they were clicking on.
Completely agree with that one! I've turned away from many sites because of that. I think I read once that most internet users have an attention span of about 3 seconds when using a search engine. If a site in the SERPS does not offer what they want, and obviously within 3 seconds, they click back and try elsewhere.
Re: colours - thanks Essex-boy. The art site sounds hideous! But if it works, it's a beautiful thing!
TJ
1. Affiliate link cannot target a url of choice (i.e. have only pre-defined links)
2. Product name and price are not visible on landing page above the fold. I've seen too many web pages with 3 screens of solid text and a font-size 8px name and price at the bottom.
3. International shipping conditions aren't shown clearly on each page. The internet is big. In fact it's so big it even reaches beyond the borders of the US of A.
4. Not letting me add a custom tracking code. for example CJ lets me target a url of my choice, but lobs different urls together under a single label ("the link"). So I cannot track which page and link caused the sale. I need to know this, so I can dump you if you don't perform, or, more importantly for you, NOT dump you if you perform better then others.
5. Give me access to a list of products,urls and prices (descriptions and details too if you can. I havea large site with volume and many affiliates. You will NOT cover all my products. None of my affilaites will. Don'T make me click on a form button for a popup to get the "ad-code" when all I need si product names and URLs IN A LIST!
6. Give me click and impression tracking, not just sales.
7. Keep me informed about my payments. Don't throw around dates associated wit hobscure labels that don't mean enything. If my check is send, tell em so. Don't say "amount caclulated", "check prepared" or "payment considered". What the heck is that suposed to mean?
8. Don't (i.e. DO NOT) make your site with a black background. Under ANY circumstances.
9. Reply to emails promptly. ESTECIALLY if the refer to more sales for you. How often ahve visitors contacted my for multi $k volume orders, urgently, and I didn't even get a quote on shipping in less then 3 days from my merchants.
10. And last but not least, don't ask for exclusivity. It's insulting, and gets you dumpedmore likely then not, unless you'Re so great that I've never encountered the liks of you.
I appologise if any of this sounds harsh, but it's salt in an open wound. The basic, stupid mistakes merchants make every day are astonishing. My same site, has made 1000s of $ to little mom and pop stores, and zilch to big established lines, with the same pages, same visitors, same links and same products, simply because th ebig store made some of those simple mistakes. I don'T know how they make any business at all.
SN
Ted
Merchants should remember the rule "KISS - Keep it simple stupid".
Ted
International shipping conditions aren't shown clearly on each page. The internet is big. In fact it's so big it even reaches beyond the borders of the US of A.
Give me access to a list of products,urls and prices (descriptions and details too if you can.
Reply to emails promptly. ESTECIALLY if the refer to more sales for you. How often ahve visitors contacted my for multi $k volume orders, urgently, and I didn't even get a quote on shipping in less then 3 days from my merchants.
P.S. Never have a black background. Ever. Agreed ;)
~ Not being able to handle orders to Alaska, Hawaii, or Military addresses
~ Java that bogs the browser down from loading
There have been some really good posts made about what to do and what not to do from both the merchant and the affiliate side of things.
