Forum Moderators: buckworks
I am fairly new to Webmaster World and have learned a great deal lurking around the site. Hats off to all the posters here.
I have for the longest time been working towards generating traffic to my website. As traffic has increased my conversion rate has dropped. While I understand that there are many possible reasons for this - my goal is to try and make improvements to my site that will help to increase the conversion rates using proven principals.
1. What are good phrases or things to include to help build consumer trust? "In Business for 30 years" , "We are number one in our field, etc?" " Our toll free number is X" Where on the page should these phrases be displayed.
2. When selling a product what are the most important features that should be on the product detail page.
Product Part No, Description, Weight, Price, List Price, etc. Which of these features produces the best conversion rate. How many should be above the fold?
3. Colors - Should "Buy" Buttons stand out or blend in? What should the text on the buy button say. What Colors seem to help customers make the "Buy it now" decision?
4. Check out - Is three steps to many? What features or statements make consumers feel more comfortable?
5. Product Titles - Should the title include the price for better search engine click thru rates,
Any other tips for increasing the conversion rate on an e-commerce would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Bill
I suspect this thread will get moved to the eCommerce forum.
That said, here's a general article on improving conversion rates that might be of interest to you:
[clickz.com...]
From Brian Eisenberg at ClickZ.
Personally, I think that openness and honesty with your potential customers is better. Yes, put a call to action on your buttons, but don't hide them. You want them to buy, and for folks who already know what they want you don't want to frustrate them by hiding the buttons.
As for building trust, all those phrases you mention are good ones. Pictures help too; put in a pix or two of the bricks-and-mortar, the founders/owners, the goods themselves. We've also put a guarantee on our site and clarified returns policy. Privacy policy goes without saying.
I'm also of the opinion that more product details are better than fewer.
Hope this helps!
Christi
A privacy policy seems to improve "consumer confidence" in sites - but this may be anecdotal.
Make it as easy as possible for them to go from viewing the item to paying for the item. If you use paypal, make buttons, or use textlinks - don't just say somewhere on the page, "make paypal payments to wally@widgetworld.ws".
Somewhere around 1995 someone must have pontificated that a highly visible privacy policy page is an absolute must in order to sell online; a zillion retailers followed that practice. What a waste of bandwith unless your customers are terrorists or criminals who are really concerned about privacy.
We're a legitimate brick/mortar company and I think most people understand that the last thing we want to do is clog their in-boxes with spam from others.
Besides, by now, many people have figured out that the web's worst scum don't tell the truth about privacy anyway! (remember: "I am not a crook!")
--
So what is important to skittish customers?
We've been in business for decades and we say so on our site. We show a picture of our building. We give our real street address and real people (who work for us) answer the phones 60 hours a week. We urge people to phone for any reason.
Never once has anyone said, "I bought from you because of your strong privacy policy." But many customers say they pick us because we look rock solid.
As for privacy policy, they certainly have become simpler over the years, except for companies where Legal is overly involved.
I still think a simple, solid privacy policy posted somewhere on the site is a good idea. We get maybe one look-see at our policy every couple days. Its presence adds to the "rock solid" image.
Providing real-world contact information can help. I maintain a prepaid cell phone just for my web businesses. Every once in a while a customer or potential customer will call to ask a question, or say thanks...
At the time, I initiated adding a "privacy policy" section to the shopping cart that my firm produces, so that anyone who used it was automatically prompted to create a policy.
It's quite possible though that things have moved on and the absence or presence of a privacy policy no longer counts for much. However, my take would be that even if it only impacts 1% of your buyers, you should have a policy. In my opinion, when designing an ecommerce site, the objective should be to remove every possible barrier to buying.
Chris
"In Business for 30 years"
Wow, on the internet 15 years before Al Gore invented it :)
Calls didn't increase much but it made people feel secure so online orders did increase.
One tip: Try hard to get a real 800# and or at least an 888#. (in the U.S./Canada) I tested a few of our employees to see if they understood that 877 and 866 were toll-free. They didn't!
It is possible to get 800#s if you make that a condition to going with a given long distance carrier. We had a kid at Sprint spend a few days looking before he was able to get us a number with a 800-XXX-XXXX format.
800 makes you look cool, established and trustworthy. It's certainly easier to remember than 866-new-guys.
Don't let them tell you all toll-free #s are now 866. Especially nowadays, plenty of old 800/888 are coming available. One problem is you may take over a number that is still getting calls for the old company (and you'll have to pay for those calls).
At our company, call in orders are 30% bigger than cart orders, but they are very time consuming.
