Forum Moderators: buckworks
My tip from my early days: we seem to be getting good results from a "most popular products" list (based on how many times that product has been viewed), they are getting good clickthroughs, and while I haven't formally tracked it, anecdotally I've noticed when I tweaked the database to force particular products onto that list there was a definite increase in sales on those items. So, our customers like to both look at & buy popular products.
What's worked for you?
Amen! Amazon should consider this...
I'd guess this is the rate for affiliate links for specific products, with the latter being a "buy at Amazon" button or similar. I'd be surprised if they convert 8% of random visits from web searches, etc., into orders.
I do believe Amazon's conversion rate is probably much higher than a typical merchant, though - many customers have dealt with them in the past or are even "recognized" when they arrive on the site. The combination of ease of ordering and confidence in the vendor is likely to produce much better results per visit than ErniesExcellentElectronics.com, no matter how well the latter site is designed.
>>If you don’t sell an item, remove it from your site.
While at some point this is true, much has been made of Amazon's success in "working the tail", i.e., generating sales from the "long tail" of the sales volume curve. While a low-volume product might not sell much, in aggregate they add up; plus, Amazon has been successful in converting slow-sellers into best-sellers with their community features - reader reviews, recommendations from collaborative filtering, etc.
That tiny part of the site must:
1) Identify the site
2) Engender confidence. One spelling mistake and you're dead.
3) Show the site's purpose (if it's a commerce site, make that clear)
4) Show a few best-sellers to grab the customer
5) Show at least one sale item "this week" or a new hot product (to grab old customers)
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Somewhere, not necessarily above the fold, should contain clear site navigation with links to cart, FAQs, email sign-up, policies and contact info which should ideally be a prominent #800.
Front page should contain some key word text for search engines and the page should load fairly fast.
All of this is a very tall order for a small piece of real estate.
Re-read your front page and fine tune it once a month, at least.
I've experienced many clients reducing the spend on a keyword or group of keywords at Overture/GAW claiming low conversion rates. But after we begin to gather analytics data, with path analysis, and exit link analysis, many times we find out the problem is in the website, not Overture/GAW.
Path Analysis is critical to monitor which Category level, Product Level, Product Detail Level pages are experiencing unacceptable exit ratios.
Could you shed some lights on how to get a 1800 phone number?
Do I have to have a landline for 1800 number?
Thanks much
-Steve
GrokDotCom is an EXCELLENT source of info about increasing conversion rates. Scour the back issues for tons of tips. Also they have lots of free conversion tools.
Linda
[edited by: lorax at 6:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 23, 2005]
[edit reason] removed DN [/edit]
51) Have your buttons say 'ADD TO CART' not 'BUY NOW' - Buy Now implies a much higher commitment level that they may not be ready for, coax them em and make em comfortable before getiing a commitment.
52) When someone adds something to their cart, take THEM THERE and show the cart, just adding a little indicator is confusing.
53) Make a summary of the cart available on all page which includes a total including shipping as well as clear buttons/links to view the cart and/or go to the checkout.
54) Make sure your credit card input field allows the user to input spaces/dashes or whatever they want, then parse that date before passing it on. We missed this one on our site until a few weeks ago. We had limited the field to 16 characters. We looked at our logs for the past year of 'invalid credit card numbers errors' and estimate that it may have cost us as much as $50000 in lost sales!
55) Make links blue and underlined - People know they are clickable! Don't make people think or wonder if something is clickable.
Sites are often designed by bright 22 year olds with 22 year old eyes. The web is not about youth, it never was. The 1977 TRS-80 crowd shopped online before most kids heard of the web. We're OLD and pretty blind now
And when I'm buying a $40 gizmo, I'm not going to take time to read pages of instructions, attempt complicated navigation, figure out too-many ship and bill options, and learn how your oddball cart works. If I can't get the hang of shopping at your site instantly, I'm outta there.
(in that regard, Amazon and many other commerce are just too complicated for my brain--eliminate the extraneous)
Ultimate site failure: Customer wants to hit the "buy button" but can't find it amid the clutter
Also agree with otc_cmnn about the blue hyperlinks. I currently have 'Buy' buttons, but would love to change them to 'Add to Basket' (add to cart sounds too American (i'm in the UK')), but it makes the buttons too big, and messes with the deisgn of the site.
I offer free delivery, and make this known. I have it clearly written on the top right hand side of my website, and it has increased conversions since I've done it.
Always answer customer emails quickly.
"5. Subscribe to a service like VeriSign, Thawte or ScanAlert. Prominently place these logos to reassure your customer that you care about the security of their information."
If you've got the money to get a nice professional looking site design then you don't need the logos. The user's impression of credability is what's important and the logos are only useful if there is doubt from the quality of your design.
"17. Don’t use a drop-down for the “state” list in your order form."
So what do you use? Type in? I've found people always jack up type-ins.
"35. If you don’t sell an item, remove it from your site."
Unless you've sold that item in the past, in which case, recommend an alternative. Nothing's worse than a customer comming back to buy from you again and the product has just dissappeared with no explanation.
Do you have a question?
We'd be happy to help.
<link text>Send us your question</link text>
The link sends the user to a contact form (you do not want the link to open an email client). We average about as many questions a day as online sales. The majority of questions convert into sales.
1-800 #You must have one. 60-70% of our sales are offline.
BTW - This concept is easily extended to other common searches as well. It's not a far stretch to do a bit of research to determine what keywords are used by your audience and then to develop landing pages for these keywords with the products right there and ready to be placed in a cart. I've seen this technique used and they went so far as to make each landing page a 1 step buying page. The visitor simply selected the products they wanted and provided their CC and shipping info. Once they clicked Submit the deal was done. That company increased their sales by more than 200%. The lesson they learned was to make the checkout process as quick and painless as possible.
Y'all are on a roll. :)
Just make sure its a "take it or leave it" option. put all the info of the products on that page otherwise you will force your client to look for that product in your website leaving its basket at a very crucial stage!.
Another thing regarding customer questions,
When a customer wants to ask a question about specific products it's very important to be able to give the answer quick...a contact form is nice but its not quick enough...check your emails and talk to your customer service staff ..grab information about specific products that people usually ask about and put a clear "FAQ About this product" button. on the product page. The trust you build when answering question quick is huge and will convert to sales!
[edited by: asher02 at 8:04 pm (utc) on Nov. 23, 2005]
Spikey, to respond to your points...
Kevin,
Fantastic! Your points are right on the money. I've worked in ecomm for years and my experience verfies this.
A couple of comments/questions:
"5. Subscribe to a service like VeriSign, Thawte or ScanAlert. Prominently place these logos to reassure your customer that you care about the security of their information."
If you've got the money to get a nice professional looking site design then you don't need the logos. The user's impression of credability is what's important and the logos are only useful if there is doubt from the quality of your design.
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KF - I have been involved in Web design, dev, marketing, usability, etc since 1997. With experience from a 1-man shop to leading the web team for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, I can say that it is all about credibility & trust. Without that, the consumer will not feel confident enough to give you anything. Yes…a well-designed site is an indicator of credibility, however, consumers have been trained to look for & trust the VeriSign, Thawte & HackerSafe (ScanAlert) logos. I actually did a pretty extensive AB test in house with one of the above-mentioned logos and there was a significant increase in conversions when the logo was visible.
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"17. Don’t use a drop-down for the “state” list in your order form."
So what do you use? Type in? I've found people always jack up type-ins.
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KF - Believe it or not, I use an input field for state entry. Its much easier to recognize Dalaware as Delaware when someone makes a type-o then it is to recognize Georgia as Delaware when someone accidentally scrolls with their mouse when focus is left on the form field. Most usability books that I have read (including NNG) concur.
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"35. If you don’t sell an item, remove it from your site."
Unless you've sold that item in the past, in which case, recommend an alternative. Nothing's worse than a customer comming back to buy from you again and the product has just dissappeared with no explanation.
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KF - I agree with this if there is a replacement or alternative product. We usually point to the replacement item as well. And while I do agree that the product details pages for these “extinct” items should be left on the site, I don’t think that they should be referenced by the product category pages.
I hate long drop down forms, but I'm not sure a better way exists. Two letters works better for analyzing stats even if there's a rare error.
Not hard to know St.Louis MT is wrong either especially when the zip is included.
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With all these conversion ideas, don't forget to make a profit. Verisign and free shipping won't help if you go out of business. Conversion rate is a minor consideration. The bottom line is what counts.
You don't have to sell many aircraft carriers to do well.
"17. Don’t use a drop-down for the “state” list in your order form."So what do you use? Type in? I've found people always jack up type-ins.
The State, like the credit card Type, should be irrelevant. They are defined and made redundant by the zip code and credit card number, respectively.
We have them on our cart pretty much only because customers expect to see them. Credit card type is completely ignored and state is pretty much never used. Our addressing software validates the exact address against the postal database.
At this time of year conversion rates soar for general merchants.
What should we be looking at after the holidays to clear out overstock and prepare for he next quarter?
1.) Good time to do snail mail, and emailings of discounted items.
2.) Start looking at Valentines day promos.
3.) Sprucing up the spring line ups.
- Product
- Price
- Place (on the internet, this translates to access - think email shopping, aff shopping and not just website shopping)
- Credibility
- Buying life cycle stage
- Comfort (ease of use and access)
- Relevant information (including visual info)
- Communication
- Brand
- Awareness
- Industry situation
- Competition
- Season
- Policy
These value triggers also interact with each other. For example, if there is generally low areness of your website, you will have to work that much harder to build credibility.
Please suggest additional value triggers.
- Target Group (TG)
We average about as many questions a day as online sales. The majority of questions convert into sales.1-800 #
You must have one. 60-70% of our sales are offline.
if you have an online business where most of your sales are offline and mostly come from questions asked about your products etc, then you must be doing something very very wrong .............
whatever the problems, fix them - you could (and probably should) be making 90%+ of your sales direct from your website without any questions / phone calls etc
On a sit where we sell software products, I have found that having a testimonial right at the top in a dashed box is great also.
My suggestion, if you can find a 800 number that you like take it... its a small price difference for a "brand"
P.S: If you are concerned about wrong number calls use 888, 877, or 866 number since these toll-free area codes are newer and likely have been used by fewer owners, helping to reduce the likelihood of wrong number calls.
if you have an online business where most of your sales are offline and mostly come from questions asked about your products etc, then you must be doing something very very wrong ......
This is partially true, Railman. Most of our buyers have a very specific and unique situation which needs to be addressed in order for the product to work. It's much faster to discuss this over the phone then to correspond via email. That being said, our database is limited and some of these issues could be addressed with a better one.
800 implies that you have been in business for years. But you can still get 800 numbers if you work at it. Wrong numbers can be a pain for a few years. Find out who used to have the number.
thanks,
peter
I would suggest 2 things.
1.When out of the office make sure you can get a service that sends you sms to your cell, stating that you have a message and then do your best to listen to it and see if you can handle it from outside your office.
2. You must have 2 voice openings for your customer the first is when they call you outside of your working hours. Let them know that you are not available and ask them to leave a message with the best time to reach them and that you will call them as soon as possible.
During working hours when you are away the voice opening should say that your service is currently busy handling other callers and that you will return to them again as soon as possible.
What ever you decide to do, if this 800 number is going to be not available for long times during working hours I would skip.
