Beef Up Your Site Search With How-To Videos

A couple weeks ago, I posted on 22 features for site search nirvana. We can add one more to this list. Staples.com is leveraging “how to” buying guides at the top of search results for its most popular terms, like “paper:” This attention-grabbing tactic can help reduce bounce rates on key search pages (the percentage of visitors that abandon the page within 5-10 seconds), and help customers understand which search results to click. For example, the video explains page weight and brightness and which types of usage (e.g. double sided printing, advertising) they are appropriate for. If you’re thinking of using this technique, consider not only the most popular search terms but also product categories that have the most variable product attributes (and thus, decision criteria) or whose product descriptions include a lot of jargon. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-06 11:03:22</div>

Losing Customers With Price Discrimination?

If you offer products and services that generate recurring revenue through subscriptions (including software, music, games, media or wireless plans), remarketing to your existing customers is the most important part of your business ? as they say, it costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to satisfy an existing one. An upgrade or renewal email is an effective way to keep the customer ?in the fold.? Some businesses bank on existing customers taking action directly from these emails, even charging the existing customer segment higher prices than resellers or their own website. This works if consumers are content to purchase without comparison shopping ? but Elastic Path?s research into the buyer trends of software consumers shows this is not the case. Sign up for our September webinar Selling software to Consumers, Upgrade Now! to get a free copy of the research). We found that 79% of software consumers actively look for a better price when renewing or upgrading their software. This makes sense – for years software publishers have been trying to generate high yields from upgrades, with little attempt to compete with the low prices available via their retail distribution channel. This example highlights the issue: McAfee would like me to auto renew my subscription for $79.99 which seams okay, because that’s what I’ve always paid since I purchased 3 years ago but the retail price is now only $69.99 and today it’s on sale on McAfee’s site for $49.99 ! but a bit of comparison shopping finds that I can buy from BestBuy for $39.99 and finally I find the cheapest price in the Amazon Marketplace at $34.95 Shopping around and buying a new copy of McAfee Internet Security 2010 from a reseller (Amazon) would have saved me $45.04. In the end using the online chat feature on McAfee’s site I was instructed to do a manually renewal via my account, which enabled me to get McAfee’s current online offer price of $49.99. However I suspect had I just let the auto-renewal do it’s magic my credit card would have been charged $79.99. Inflating the price may drive a significant percentage of customers to purchase from other selling channels, eroding your margins and potentially cutting off opportunity to remarket to them in the future (the reseller will send competing renewal notice or other cross-selling tactics). The Threat of ?Free? Alternatives 46% of the software consumers we surveyed reported that the availability of...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-03 17:16:42</div>

Oh Deer: 3 Reasons To Pull in the Reins on Holiday Email Frequency

The holiday season is sneaking up on us, and most online sellers (83% according to Smith-Harmon) are gearing up to send more promotional email ? and LOTS more of it. The Retail Email Index, which monitors the promotional email volume of the top 100 online retailers, reports that retailers on average sent a whopping 14.3 emails to each subscriber per month during November and December 2009, with 3.9 messages in the week ending December 18th (typical shipping cutoff date). While increasing frequency may result in higher sales, there are dangers of sending so many messages. Smith-Harmon?s latest research report, the 2010 Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season, asks you to consider the drawbacks: 1. The cost of replacing subscribers lost to higher churn 2. The sales lost because increased spam complaints caused delivery problems 3. The opportunity cost of lost sales due to higher ignore rates as subscribers tune you out because you are over-sending On top of the spam issue, ISPs are factoring engagement (opens) as part of their reputation score calculation. Sending a lot of messages that subscribers ignore signals to ISPs your messages are not relevant, which can hurt your future delivery to subscribers across that ISP. Does that mean you shouldn?t ramp up frequency at all? Heather Blank, vice president of strategic services at Responsys, recommends that marketers be strategic about increasing volume, identifying customer segments that are more tolerant of high volume. You can segment out these customers by looking at previous engagement metrics like open rates, click throughs and purchase rates. You can also ask customers to update a ?preference center? where they can choose frequency, types of offers and so on (but don’t rely on this tactic, as only a few will actively manage preferences). For more holiday email tips, Smith-Harmon is offering their latest report free of charge. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-09-01 11:09:02</div>

5 Marketing Checklists: Bloggers Digest August 2010

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. August 2010 will go down as “checklist month” as I found a lot of great checklist style posts in my feed reader, check ‘em out: The 5 Minute Conversion Health Scorecard by @unbounce The SEO Audit Checklist via @lunametrics What to look for in your web analytics by @richpage Another SEO Audit Checklist via @smartinsights Qualitative Web Analytics: Expert Heuristic Evaluations by @avinash Now for 5 noteworthy, non-checklist posts: More folks are reading their emails on their mobile devices – including retail email. What does this mean for email marketers? I wrote recently about 10 reasons why you shouldn’t copy Amazon. Jakob Nielsen answers the question Should You Copy a Famous Site’s Design? Smith Harmon has released its Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season 2010 (it’s free) Econsultancy contributor Paul Boag asks is choice paralysis damaging your online sales? Rand Fishkin explains how to turn product pages into SEO ranking machines in the video Making Product Pages into Great Content ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-30 11:02:28</div>

Applying Consumer Research to Persuasion: An Example from the Software Industry

As eommerce marketers, often our opinions about our customers’ shopping behavior clouds our judgment and leads us to make decisions that may harm our conversion rate. It’s easy to make incorrect assumptions based on web analytics data, or worse, to presume that our customers think and behave the same way we do. Research into the real attitudes and behavior of our customers can provide insights that contradict our assumptions. Here at Elastic Path, our research team recently conducted a study on the buying trends of software consumers (sign up to our September webinar Selling Software to Consumers, Upgrade Now! to get a copy of the research). Use consumer research to shape your personas and persuasive messaging to address the preferences, fears, uncertainties and doubts about your purchase. This post will use the software industry as an example of this application. Example Business Issue: Software Delivery A pertinent business issue for the software industry is the delivery of its product, which can be digital (download), physical (CD/DVD) or a combination of the two. The COGS (cost of goods sold) of digital goods is obviously much lower for digital goods, and it’s in the vendor’s best interest to offer only downloads, saving inventory (or print-on-demand costs), warehouse and fulfillment costs. The customer also benefits, with instant access to their purchase and no garbage CD lying around. Makes sense to us tech savvy folk to offer only digital product, but is that what customers want? Our research found that 41% of US software consumers stated a preference to have a physical CD or DVD of their software shipped to them rather than download their purchase. In today’s digital world this may seem high, but considering software installed on consumers PCs, laptops and mobile phones may have a longer shelf life than the devices themselves, it makes sense. We also discovered that 69% of US software consumers use the same software on multiple machines in their home – for example, a desktop and laptop computer. For these consumers, owning a physical copy of their software purchase is both offers convenience and protection should they change, damage or corrupt their PC or laptop. Many software publishers offer a backup CD/DVD or download insurance as an upsell for customers who decide to download their purchase. Of the 59% of US software consumers who preferred to digitally download their purchase or had no preference, 40%...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-27 11:04:46</div>

Does Your Log In Make Them Drop Off?

Error-handling is one of the most often overlooked pieces of usability and conversion optimization. We can become so focused on cart button design, home page layouts, featured products, promotional offers, email subject lines and the like that we forget that the biggest points of friction are when the customer inputs something incorrectly in a form field. When customers don’t understand what they did wrong or how to correct it, they abandon your site. And this kind of site abandonment is more damaging than “that price was too high” or “I didn’t find the product I wanted.” When someone abandons your site because it was difficult to use, they are far less likely to have the faith to return again. One common place of friction is with log in screens. While you should absolutely use guest checkout whenever possible to reduce the need to sign in, it’s inevitable that existing customers who want to track orders, view wishlists, write product reviews and participate in your user community will face the dreaded log in box. And unless they have the memory of an elephant, they’ve got a good chance of forgetting the username/password combination (especially if you’re a stickler for strong passwords, requiring numbers or other special characters). The worst practice is to tell the user their login information is “invalid.” Equally bad is to say the login “didn’t work.” Sounds like a system problem rather than an input error. Better is to explain that the address entered does not match account records. This way, the customer understands it’s not that the system doesn’t believe the email address itself doesn’t exist, rather that it was not the email address the customer signed up with. Target goes the extra mile to provide inline feedback and a detailed explanation of how the user can remedy the situation, including checking out with their Amazon account instead. (Problem is, folks don’t remember their Amazon account info either!) Bad practice is to use red notification text, but to make it really small, or to camouflage it below the login box: Can you read this? Login screens are not the only place your visitors may be experiencing frustrating errors. Make sure you explain what the CVV is if you use ask for it, and explaining what format you require for telephone numbers, postal codes and password creation. Your web analytics will show you which pages have...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-25 11:03:34</div>

Search Illustrated: 22 Features for Site Search Nirvana

What makes for great site search? Here are 22 features to consider to optimize your site search tool for usability, guided selling and customer satisfaction. Search Box 1. Placement 2. Size 3. Scope Placement Search boxes should be easy to spot where customers expect them (top right hand corner or top center). Avoid “Search” links in navigation menus – most will scan your page for a box. Also avoid placing email sign-up boxes where a customer expects a search box – they will use it incorrectly! If you must show search and email sign-up close together, include instructions like “enter keywords” or “enter email address.” Size Search boxes should be long enough to accommodate longer search terms, it’s easier on your customers when they can see the bulk of their search phrase input before hitting “Search.” 30 characters is a minimum, but you can certainly go bigger. Scope Scoped search allows customers to search within a particular section of your site, for example Books vs. Music vs. DVDs. Sounds helpful in theory, but not always necessary. Usability research by Jakob Nielsen from over a decade ago revealed common problems, such as users selecting the wrong category to search within, or users not realizing they are searching within a scoped section, rather then the whole site (especially when one section is selected as the default, rather than “Entire Site.”) In my opinion, it is better to allow the user to search the entire site, then narrow results by department, as Amazon allows: One exception – if your store is bolted on to a parent site (as is common in the software industry), it’s a good idea to offer scoped search to allow visitors to search within sections like Discussion Forums, Corporate Info, Product Info and Store. Search Tools 4. Autosuggest 5. Autocorrect 6. DId you mean? 7. Related searches 8. Search within results 9. Sort by 10. Filtered navigation 11. Advanced search Autosuggest Another workaround for scoped search is autosuggest, which reduces typos and helps avoid “zero results found” as suggestions are always for products and categories you carry. Notice how Apple.com not only scopes results by site section, it also uses “rich autocomplete” by including thumbnail images. Autocorrect Rather than show “0 results found,” showing something can reduce abandonment. Tweaking your tool to handle misspellings saves the...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-23 11:06:00</div>

Tax and Shipping Estimate: Customer Favorite But Source of Friction

According to Oneupweb, 59.1% of consumers expect your website to offer a tax and shipping calculator to help them estimate the total cost of purchase before checkout. Our consulting practice recently conducted a quick-and-dirty user test for a client and found that 4 out of 4 test participants believed that the tax and shipping estimator was a required step on the shopping cart page – even though the box clearly stated this was an optional tool. And, all had trouble with the feature. The results of this little test is not to be taken as gospel. For one, it doesn’t have statistical significance (nor, as a user test, is it meant to have). But it points out an unexpected area of friction in the checkout process that can apply to any site. Most folks want to see a tax calculator, but 40% don’t expect one. And it’s possible a good chunk of your visitors will believe it’s a required step, which may hinder them from moving through to your checkout if the tool is difficult to use or just looks complicated. Food for thought. It also validates the adage that you can’t expect people to read everything on the web. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-20 11:03:40</div>

How To Manage Really Really Large Paid Search Campaigns

A Get Elastic reader emailed me a question about paid search advertising: How do you maintain a keyword list when the SKU count is large and the product turnover is high? Think of all the money a large advertiser wastes sending traffic to out-of-stock product pages! To answer this question, I commissioned my friend George Michie from the Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG), one of the most respected paid search agencies in the SEM world, working with many advertisers of this size. George very graciously gave such an in-depth answer, we decided to turn it into a blog post and share it with you all. Thank you, George! Question: “How do you maintain a keyword list when the SKU count is large and the product turnover is high?” The answer is: “Very carefully.” We manage campaigns for a number of companies with over 100,000 SKUs and huge product turnover rates. These folks end up with programs with millions of unique keywords and it is incumbent upon the paid search manager to make sure that the keyword list: Has coverage of new products; Ties keywords to the optimal landing pages; Has targeted ad copy; and Is purged of keywords as the products they reference drop out of stock This is no small feat and requires smart tools. We’ve developed our own tools and systems for helping RKG’s analysts do some of the heavy lifting using a clean product feed. Core Keywords: category, subcategory, non-product specific head, torso and tail. The first and most pressing order of business is to make sure coverage of the head, torso and the top of the tail is well done.* We advocate a careful, machine-aided but human-driven process that starts with landing pages and works backwards. Building out keywords, assigning landing pages and writing copy for these core terms is of paramount importance and this piece needs to be separate from, and to an extent protected from, the ongoing product-level keyword process that follows. *Linda’s note: Head, torso and tail refer to the pieces of the bell curve. In the context of paid search, the “head” consists of the keywords that send the highest volume of PPC traffic to your site, individually. The “tail” is made up of less popular terms that might occur only a few times per year but collectively can add up to a big chunk of your keyword referrals. The “torso” is all the good stuff in between. For example, Nike might have the head term “nike shox,” the tail term...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-18 15:53:48</div>

Optimization Testing: Should You Avoid Testing During a Traffic Spike?

In our most recent webinar Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing, an audience member asked a great question about site testing near a product launch. A perfect industry example is packaged software. A software product may release a new version every year or two. For the first few months after release, marketing runs a number of campaigns, traffic volume spikes and sales go through the roof. For the rest of the version’s life cycle, sales are made less frequently, and the site attracts a mix of new customers and existing customers looking for product information and support. Should the ecommerce team conduct optimization testing in the months before the new release? Many testing gurus wisely advise you to avoid testing near a predictable traffic spike such as the holiday season, major marketing campaign or new product launch. It’s easy to misinterpret this advice as “never test during a traffic spike – ever.” But this is not the case. What you want to avoid is a change in consumer behavior (traffic volume), motivation and purchase roles (like gift-giver) during your test period that may introduce bias into your experiment. Testing during a traffic spike has advantages. Higher traffic volume means a shorter test, and your test findings will reflect consumer behavior during your most critical time period. So long as the test begins and completes before significant drop-off occurs, you can benefit from implementing “winning” elements during your most valuable selling period. But you must test smart. What to test before launch As features and value propositions are likely to change, for or any product that will be essentially “replaced” by a new model or version, avoid testing persuasive elements such as: Product copy Headlines and page titles Thumbnail images Screenshots and video Promotions Cross-sell, upsell Testimonials, 3rd party reviews Pricing Rather, if you have enough time to begin and complete testing before launch, consider testing elements that are not product-related that may increase conversion across your entire site, including: Checkout process Point-of-action assurances (privacy policies, security icons and messaging) Placement of price, cart button, thumbnail images and other content Image sizes “Enough time” must account for the analysis, hypothesis formation, designs and approvals involved, not just the duration of the test. Testing...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-16 11:07:22</div>

Top 5 From The Archive: The Best of Get Elastic

Get Elastic is on holidays this week and will return on Monday, August 16. But never fear, we won’t leave you sans Elastic. In High Fidelity style, here are my top Five 13 personal favorite posts to take you through to Friday the 13th. Social Media Top 10 Web 2.0 Activities for Ecommerce Customer Reviews Thinking Positively About Negative Reviews Site Content Can Product Images Improve Conversion? Showing Products in Context Paid Search Should You Remove Keywords With Low Click Through Rates? SEO Google Keyword Tool: Research and Application Tips Mobile Marketing Should You Have a Mobile Version of Your Website? Checkout How to Reduce Cart Abandonment: 10 No Brainers Analytics Tips for Tracking Offline Orders: PPC and Catalog Mobile Development So You Want to Build A Mobile App? 8 Things to Consider Merchandising Merchandising Usability: Better Ways to Display Product Recommendations Promotions Free Shipping: Got It? 10 Ways to Flaunt It Web Usability Registration Usability: 87 Registration Forms Tested Just For Fun Why Ecommerce is a Lot Like ICanHasCheezburger Happy reading! ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-09 11:00:12</div>

The Psychology of Prices & Percentages in Promotions

What’s a more persuasive offer in a headline — “25-50% off” or “up to 50% off”? According to Marketing Experiments‘ Yoda-smart Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, when shown an X-Y range of numbers in an ad, most people will revert to the first number as the mean (average) standard. So with a headline of 25-50% off, it will be assumed most items are 25% off, and very few are 50%. (This is not surprising when you think about scratch-and-win tickets with prizes ranging $5 to $50,000. You assume most prizes awarded are at the lower end of the range.) vs. Based on his research, Dr. McGlaughlin recommends using the “up to X% off” tactic instead of a range. Similarly, “up to 50% off” is more persuasive than “over 25% off.” On the flip-side, when dealing with dollar figures rather than percentages, you want to use your lowest price point in your ad. “From $50″ is better than “$50-$150.” Customers are also not rational when it comes to shipping offers. Professor at the Wharton School of Business, Dave Bell, found that consumers preferred free shipping worth $6.99 in savings over a $10 discount on the product. This understanding can help you craft more persuasive email subject lines, banners and pay-per-click ads to create higher response. Of course, here at Get Elastic we encourage you to test everything. Have you tested price ranges or shipping offers and found the opposite to be true? ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-06 11:35:00</div>

5 Common A/B & Multivariate Testing Mistakes

Though site testing can have many benefits, these common A/B and multivariate testing “gotchas” can lead you down the wrong path. Don’t make these mistakes! 1. Leaving Web Analytics Un-Optimized Before you get started testing, you want to make sure your web analytics are set up properly, not only so you can do proper analysis before designing your test, but so you are tracking the right things during and after the test. Make sure your “goal paths” (the common navigational paths your customers take to reach your conversion goal, e.g. checkout) are configured so you can view your funnel abandonment. Also ensure revenue is properly tracked. If possible, include your COGS (cost of goods sold) to determine profit per visitor. In Google Analytics, “Profiles” allow you to slice and dice your data by applying permanent segmentation rules, such as filtering out international traffic or restricting data to a sub-domain or store section of your website. Profiles do not work with historical data, so they must be applied before you start testing. 2. Not Understanding Customer Segments Your site testing exists to improve your website performance, but averages may be hiding the real issues on your site. You may have an average bounce rate on your home page of 59%, but if you segmented by visitor type, you would discover new visitors bounce at 75% and returning visitors at 34%. So instead of setting a goal to reduce overall bounce rate, your goal might change to reduce new visitor bounce rate. Likewise, there are differences between domestic and international visitors, email subscribers, affiliate referrals, paid and natural search and comparison engine referrals. Your site may have a mix of B2B and B2C offerings. If you only analyze your data in aggregate, you’ll design the wrong tests and apply them to the wrong visitors. Sadly, not all testing tools allow you to segment visitors – including Google Website Optimizer. There are workarounds – if your ecommerce platform uses targeted selling, you may be able to create custom pages that are only served to certain visitor segments, and then split-tested by your testing tool. 3. Applying the “Radical Redesign” Concept to Individual Variables If you caught our recent article Choosing Between A/B or Multivariate Test Design, you’ll recall that there are 2 approaches to A/B tests: univariate and radical redesign. Univariate tests variations of one...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-04 11:09:08</div>

mCommerce: What You Can Learn From Amazon

You may have heard the recent news that Amazon has topped $1 Billion in mobile commerce sales over the last 12 months. Though this figure may be highly exaggerated because it includes digital goods purchased for the uber-popular Kindle device, the announcement gets us hyped up on the potential of mobile commerce again. Judging by retweets and backlinks, Get Elastic readers enjoyed our recent posts on why you shouldn’t blindly copy Amazon, and 5 things Amazon does that everyone should consider doing. So in light of this news, today’s post examines 3 areas where Amazon excels in m-commerce. Personalization Amazon’s famous for personalizing the shopping experience of registered and non-registered users alike on the Web. If you’ve signed in in a previous session, it welcomes you back with your name and populates your home page with items you’ve looked at and that you might like based on your on-site behavior, purchase history and now even connects with Facebook. Amazon’s mobile experience is no different. Once you’ve signed on through your mobile, Amazon remembers and delivers a modified personal experience. A recent study found there is a strong desire for a personalized mobile experience, with “recommended for you” statements converting 74% of mobile consumers. Keeping customers signed in across mobile sessions allows them to access saved shopping cart and wishlists. Accessing private account information is simpler as the email address is pre-populated in the sign in field – less to type. The quicker and easier it is to access personal account items, the less abandonment and the more useful the mobile channel will be to your returning customers. Merchandising Amazon chooses to merchandise its mobile home page with product images, in contrast to many other retailers who have opted for a simple search/menu format, such as Barnes and Noble. I’m not advocating one approach or the other. The rationale behind bare-bones mobile home pages that focus simply on search and menus is the belief that shoppers only use mobile devices to “hunt,” not “browse.” That is, visitors already know exactly what they’re looking for, and they only need to search or navigate directly to the product. That may or may not be true in general or for a specific site. To find out what’s right for you, it’s a good idea to survey your own customers, run usability focus groups or...<br/><div align='right'>2010-08-02 16:39:34</div>

Bloggers Digest July 2010

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. Treepodia shares the results of 2 A/B experiments with product video. Great news for PPC advertisers, Google Adwords has opened up Broad Match Modifiers to the US. The RKG Blog describes the benefits here. George Michie clears the air on Misinformation and Disinformation about paid search, myths that even the paid search vendors themselves are propogating! Speaking of myths, check out 16 Multichannel Marketing Myths. My favorite myth is “Multichannel customers are the best customers.” SEOmoz’ Rand Fishkin warns: Don’t Fall Into the Trap of A/B Testing Minutiae with tips for testing the things that matter, not the things that provide minimal impact. In A/B Testing Gone Bad, Kevin Hillstrom shares which metric really matters – and it’s not conversion rate. VKI Studios talks about the psychology of free with 2 very interesting social experiments. Big news for F-commerce, Amazon and Facebook have teamed up to provide even more product suggestions. Is this a reason to copy or not to copy Amazon? Do you know how to read a site performance waterfall chart? Web Performance Today teaches you how. David Dorf shares what the semantic web means for retail, with an example how Best Buy uses it. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-30 11:03:42</div>

Developing a Site Testing Process: Site Optimization 101

This is the fourth in a series of posts based on the material covered in our latest webinar: Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing. The ultimate goal of a Web optimization project is to improve revenue and profits driven through your site. Success is measured by tracking changes in KPIs (key performance indicators), most commonly AOV (average order value), conversion rate, days to purchase, bounce rate, cart and checkout abandonment. But don’t forget the metrics that matter — revenue, revenue per visit, and if you can track it, contribution margin. Remember, your conversion rate can skyrocket if you drop prices below cost and give free shipping, but you?ll quickly be out of business! Your strategy may involve optimizing your website?s usability, or experimenting with product offers, promotions and messaging. Through site testing, you can quantify the impact of site changes and promotions against a ?do nothing? control. Uncovering opportunities for improvement Though there are many approaches to site optimization, I am going to outline a process that uses Web analytics to discover and prioritize opportunities for improvement. What are you looking for in your analytics? Checkout Funnel Abandonment The checkout is the best place to start your optimization. Visitors who make it all the way to your checkout are far more likely to convert than those who hit your home page, which means success is measured in completed sales rather than ?reduced bounce rate? or ?increased click through to a category page.? It?s also the process that can cause the most anxiety (giving personal and credit card information) and usability problems (forms, etc.) It?s important that you configure your conversion goals in your Web analytics tool, including every step in the funnel process (from shopping cart review to thank you) so you can see visually where people abandon your checkout. The page with the highest percentage drop off should be top priority. After you?ve tested your checkout to the point of diminishing returns, you can move on to other content pages, such as… Top Entrance Pages Your home page is not your only home page. When your visitor lands on your site through a search engine, online ad, referring website or email link, every ?landing page? acts as a home page. These deep pages may receive more entrances than your home page, so they deserve more attention. The terms entrance pages and landing pages are sometimes...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-28 11:06:29</div>

Choosing Between A/B or Multivariate Test Design: Optimization Testing 101

If you?ve been trekking along with us in our Site Testing 101 series, you?re already familiar with the difference between A/B and multivariate testing (opens in new window if you haven?t read the article and would like to get up to speed). Today?s installment looks at choosing the appropriate testing method for your experiment. A/B Split Testing Use A/B split testing when: You are just getting your feet wet with testing. A/B testing is simpler, so you can complete tests faster. Get a few ?wins? under your belt before moving on to more complex experiments. You need to test only one variable. Your hypothesis may be “showing testimonials on the landing page will increase conversion.” You need only to test the presence of the testimonials against the absence. Or, you may hypothesize that a security seal will improve conversion. The security seal is one variable, but you test it in the top right hand corner, the bottom left, the top left, adjacent to the cart button and no security seal at all for an A/B/C/D/E split test. You are testing a radical redesign. Radical redesign may refer to a completely new web site look-and-feel with different content template, logo, search box design, navigation menus, categorization, etc. Or, it could refer to a radically redesigned landing page. It?s a good idea to test radical concepts before multivariate testing to avoid micro-tweaking a sub-optimal design template. You are restricted by your tool. Though less common now that Google Website Optimizer is available to all, you may be restricted to A/B split testing by the tool you use (perhaps it?s a part of your ecommerce platform). The page or process you are testing has relatively few conversions per day. It’s not just about traffic. To reach statistical significance, you need to measure completed goals. If conversions are too low (despite high traffic), you simply can?t test more than a few versions at once. It will take too long. The longer your test runs, the more bias the test is exposed to which may skew results (users whose cookies expire or are deleted may see multiple versions of your test, your product catalog may turn over, economic changes may change consumer behavior, your promotion strategy may change, seasonal traffic spikes may occur, etc). It also takes longer before you can benefit from your learnings. Multivariate (MVT) Testing Use MVT when: You?re tweaking a winner. If you?ve performed radical redesign tests with A/B testing and have...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-26 11:00:37</div>

4 Reasons for Site Testing: Optimization Testing 101

This is the second in a series of posts based on the material covered in our latest webinar: Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing. According to Jupiter Research, 73% of marketers aren?t doing any testing whatsoever, with 49% having no plans to do so. Before I share 4 compelling reasons why you should be testing, let?s look at some of the reasons why marketers aren?t testing: Lack of resources (in-house talent, budget for tool or consultants) Lack of tool (now with Google Website Optimizer this is less of an issue) Lack of buy-in from upper management Lack of ownership of the testing process IT bottlenecks Lack of understanding of the value of testing / don?t think it?s important Not sure what to test, how to prioritize testing opportunities or how to take action on results Lack of understanding of tools or testing methods Despite these challenges, serious Web marketers should push to overcome them and get testing capabilities because testing is the only way to truly know what works and what doesn?t for your site based on the combination of your industry, customers and product mix. 4 Reasons to Perform Site Testing 1. Lose that gut (feel) Since 73% of marketers are not doing any testing, we can assume that at least that many are making decisions purely on intuition. And this is dangerous, not because marketers are not Yoda-smart, rather, it?s because our gut leads us astray more often than not. Anne Holland, founder of Marketing Sherpa, runs a fun site called WhichTestWon. Every week, WTW posts a new test where you can ?test your gut? on which version of an A/B test outperformed the other one. According to Anne, 82% of expert marketers guess wrong! It?s dangerous to trust the marketer?s gut, because the more of an expert you are about your products and business, the tougher it is to wear the end customer?s hat (who understands little and needs to be educated or persuaded). And the longer you?ve been a marketing expert, the more you trust your own intuition. Leaving design decisions in the hand of a designer is also risky. Many designers are more concerned with visual aesthetics rather than business performance. Slick designs make nice portfolios, but not necessarily usable websites. Another danger is when the HiPPO?s gut is the final word. (HPPO = Highest Paid Person in the Organization). Often the HiPPO has strong opinions about branding and image (especially regarding the home page), and sacrifices to usability are...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-23 16:14:56</div>

Introduction to A/B and MVT: Optimization Testing 101

This is the first in a series of posts based on the material covered in our latest webinar: Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing. Part 1 provides brief overview of what site testing is and describes the differences between usability testing, A/B split testing and multivariate methods. What is optimization testing? First let?s talk about what it?s not. Optimization testing is not the same as ?user testing? or ?usability testing.? With usability testing, you ask a small sample of Web users from your target market to perform various tasks under observation in a ?lab? environment. The goal is to use qualitative research to uncover usability issues on your site, and to understand how people navigate your website. The insight you can glean from user tests is very valuable. Often test subjects talk out loud as they perform tasks, so you can discover not just what people get stuck on but why they get stuck. For example, a comment like ?I hate when sites ask for my email address in the checkout. I don?t want to receive spam? may prompt you to put a brief explanation of why you ask for an email address (to send confirmation email and receipt, rather than promotional messages). The shortcomings of usability testing, however, are many. User testing requires time to select test participants, write questionnaires, conduct tests, analyze them and compile meaningful data. You may also need to compensate test subjects monetarily. Users are also under observation performing prescribed tasks, which may not be how your users really behave in the wild. And working with a small sample, you cannot collect statistically significant data. Quantifying the impact of a design on conversion rate, and more importantly, revenue, is impossible with usability testing. Enter A/B and MVT A/B split and MVT (multivariate testing) allow you to quantitatively test the impact of changes to your website on your key performance metrics. Rather than implement changes based on your gut-feel, the design bias of an agency or the opinions of a HiPPO (highest paid person in the organization), you can test your ideas on your real customers and use hard numbers to prove or disprove your hypotheses. A/B testing A classic A/B test sends 50% of traffic to a ?control? version (existing page, element or process on your site), and 50% to a ?treatment? or test version. If you want to be conservative, you might show 80% your control and 20% your treatment to reduce the...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-21 11:06:02</div>

Optimization Testing 101: Part 3 ? Choosing Between A/B or Multivariate Test Design

If you?ve been trekking along with us in our Site Testing 101 series, you?re already familiar with the difference between A/B and multivariate testing (opens in new window if you haven?t read the article and would like to get up to speed). Today?s installment looks at choosing the appropriate testing method for your experiment. A/B Split Testing Use A/B split testing when: You are just getting your feet wet with testing. A/B testing is simpler, so you can complete tests faster. Get a few ?wins? under your belt before moving on to more complex experiments. You need to test only one variable. Your hypothesis may be “showing testimonials on the landing page will increase conversion.” You need only to test the presence of the testimonials against the absence. Or, you may hypothesize that a security seal will improve conversion. The security seal is one variable, but you test it in the top right hand corner, the bottom left, the top left, adjacent to the cart button and no security seal at all for an A/B/C/D/E split test. You are testing a radical redesign. Radical redesign may refer to a completely new web site look-and-feel with different content template, logo, search box design, navigation menus, categorization, etc. Or, it could refer to a radically redesigned landing page. It?s a good idea to test radical concepts before multivariate testing to avoid micro-tweaking a sub-optimal design template. You are restricted by your tool. Though less common now that Google Website Optimizer is available to all, you may be restricted to A/B split testing by the tool you use (perhaps it?s a part of your ecommerce platform). The page or process you are testing has relatively few conversions per day. It’s not just about traffic. To reach statistical significance, you need to measure completed goals. If conversions are too low (despite high traffic), you simply can?t test more than a few versions at once. It will take too long. The longer your test runs, the more bias the test is exposed to which may skew results (users whose cookies expire or are deleted may see multiple versions of your test, your product catalog may turn over, economic changes may change consumer behavior, your promotion strategy may change, seasonal traffic spikes may occur, etc). It also takes longer before you can benefit from your learnings. Multivariate (MVT) Testing Use MVT when: You?re tweaking a winner. If you?ve performed radical redesign tests with A/B testing and have...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-26 11:00:37</div>

Optimization Testing 101: Part 2 ? 4 Reasons for Site Testing

This is the second in a series of posts based on the material covered in our latest webinar: Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing. The on-demand version will be available shortly. According to Jupiter Research, 73% of marketers aren?t doing any testing whatsoever, with 49% having no plans to do so. Before I share 4 compelling reasons why you should be testing, let?s look at some of the reasons why marketers aren?t testing: Lack of resources (in-house talent, budget for tool or consultants) Lack of tool (now with Google Website Optimizer this is less of an issue) Lack of buy-in from upper management Lack of ownership of the testing process IT bottlenecks Lack of understanding of the value of testing / don?t think it?s important Not sure what to test, how to prioritize testing opportunities or how to take action on results Lack of understanding of tools or testing methods Despite these challenges, serious Web marketers should push to overcome them and get testing capabilities because testing is the only way to truly know what works and what doesn?t for your site based on the combination of your industry, customers and product mix. 4 Reasons to Perform Site Testing 1. Lose that gut (feel) Since 73% of marketers are not doing any testing, we can assume that at least that many are making decisions purely on intuition. And this is dangerous, not because marketers are not Yoda-smart, rather, it?s because our gut leads us astray more often than not. Anne Holland, founder of Marketing Sherpa, runs a fun site called WhichTestWon. Every week, WTW posts a new test where you can ?test your gut? on which version of an A/B test outperformed the other one. According to Anne, 82% of expert marketers guess wrong! It?s dangerous to trust the marketer?s gut, because the more of an expert you are about your products and business, the tougher it is to wear the end customer?s hat (who understands little and needs to be educated or persuaded). And the longer you?ve been a marketing expert, the more you trust your own intuition. Leaving design decisions in the hand of a designer is also risky. Many designers are more concerned with visual aesthetics rather than business performance. Slick designs make nice portfolios, but not necessarily usable websites. Another danger is when the HiPPO?s gut is the final word. (HPPO = Highest Paid Person in the Organization). Often the HiPPO has strong opinions about branding and image (especially regarding...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-23 16:14:56</div>

Optimization Testing 101: Part 1 ? Introduction to A/B and MVT

This is the first in a series of posts based on the material covered in our latest webinar: Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing. The on-demand version will be available shortly. Part 1 provides brief overview of what site testing is and describes the differences between usability testing, A/B split testing and multivariate methods. What is optimization testing? First let?s talk about what it?s not. Optimization testing is not the same as ?user testing? or ?usability testing.? With usability testing, you ask a small sample of Web users from your target market to perform various tasks under observation in a ?lab? environment. The goal is to use qualitative research to uncover usability issues on your site, and to understand how people navigate your website. The insight you can glean from user tests is very valuable. Often test subjects talk out loud as they perform tasks, so you can discover not just what people get stuck on but why they get stuck. For example, a comment like ?I hate when sites ask for my email address in the checkout. I don?t want to receive spam? may prompt you to put a brief explanation of why you ask for an email address (to send confirmation email and receipt, rather than promotional messages). The shortcomings of usability testing, however, are many. User testing requires time to select test participants, write questionnaires, conduct tests, analyze them and compile meaningful data. You may also need to compensate test subjects monetarily. Users are also under observation performing prescribed tasks, which may not be how your users really behave in the wild. And working with a small sample, you cannot collect statistically significant data. Quantifying the impact of a design on conversion rate, and more importantly, revenue, is impossible with usability testing. Enter A/B and MVT A/B split and MVT (multivariate testing) allow you to quantitatively test the impact of changes to your website on your key performance metrics. Rather than implement changes based on your gut-feel, the design bias of an agency or the opinions of a HiPPO (highest paid person in the organization), you can test your ideas on your real customers and use hard numbers to prove or disprove your hypotheses. A/B testing A classic A/B test sends 50% of traffic to a ?control? version (existing page, element or process on your site), and 50% to a ?treatment? or test version. If you want to be conservative, you might show 80% your...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-21 11:06:02</div>

The Ecommerce Get-Started-Now Guide for the Holiday Season

Though we’re only half way through the year, the holidays are just around the corner in the ecommerce world. If you want to grow your holiday sales over last year, you need to get very busy. Today. What should you be doing now to ensure a successful holiday season? Here are some ideas: Performance Ten years ago, web users were more forgiving of slow page loads. But according to Forrester Research, 47% of today?s web shoppers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. 40% will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. 64% would purchase from another store, and 75% would be less likely to return after a bad experience. Think that?s scary? Heavy site traffic can bog down your servers and slow page load speed even more. Response times can spike as high as 50 seconds during the holiday season. Think your performance is fine? Don?t rely on testing your site speed from the office or even your home computer. Response time increases the farther you are from your data center. Acceleration technologies like pre-fetching uncacheable content closer to your user location (intelligent caching) helps optimize your load speed around the globe. Services like Akamai, Gomez and Strangeloop can help you with this. Check out our site performance webinar recap for more tips on speeding up your site. Site Testing You don’t want to be running tests in peak season, as customer mix and behavior can be very different than at other times. Also, you want to be showing an optimal version of your site to maximize success, not sending 50% of your traffic to a hair-brained experiment. So it’s best to get your testing out of the way before traffic starts to spike. Check your analytics to see when traffic began to ramp up last year to give you an idea how much time you have to test. Focus your attention on elements that will remain constant through the end of the year, like the checkout process, shopping cart summary, product page templates and navigation elements, rather than promotional offers, merchandising strategies and headlines. For more site testing tips, attend our webinar tomorrow (July 20): Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing Search Marketing SEO Make sure you’ve taken advantage of webmaster tools with search engines. They’ll help you identify crawling errors and other issues with your site so you can fix them well in advance of the holiday season. You can also geo-target your stores for better...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-19 11:00:27</div>

Top 10 Things Customers Expect from Your Online Store

Oneupweb has recently put out some interesting research which includes the top 10 consumer expectations that influence purchase decisions. Let’s take a closer look at these items: Pricing/shipping information clearly stated – 95.5% No surprises here, as several studies have found that “sticker shock” (the unexpected inflation of final price due to shipping and taxes) is the number one reason for cart abandonment. Crutchfield does a good job presenting not just the price but shipping, warranty and servicing prices on this product page: Looks credible and trustworthy – 76.5% If you’re not a household name, you can improve your site’s “trustworthiness” by having a clean and professional design (yes, first impressions count). Security badges, store ratings and a mailing address on your contact page can also help. You must also avoid things that scare off your customers like expired SSL certificate warning messages (even the largest sites can fall victim to this). Product displayed on homepage – 70.8% Most online stores show products on the home page, but not every site. For example, Abercrombie and Fitch: The study does not specify whether customers prefer to see individual products merchandised on the home page (such as bestsellers, new arrivals, featured items, etc) or simply be shown product (in a banner, rotating Flash presentation, or other creative). But when you consider that the goal of the home page is to keep the customer interested and win a click deeper into the site, it makes sense that the customers would like some idea on what to explore on your site without fudging with menus or search boxes. Just showing product is not enough. The way you design and merchandise your home page has an impact. If you’ve been reading Get Elastic for a while, you will recall some A/B tests we did for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store. One test looked at home page design. We actually found better results showing categorized mini-menus above featured products. Bounce rate, conversion rate and average order value all improved with the test version. Shameless plug alert! Want to get your feet wet with testing? Start by attending my webinar on site optimization Tuesday, July 20. Visually appealing – 66.7% Similar to looking trustworthy, consumers also consider the look and feel of your site. There are several low-cost tools to help you gauge whether your site is aesthetically pleasing...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-16 11:06:17</div>

8 Tips for Permission Based Email

Asking for permission to add someone to your email marketing list is not just a courtesy, it’s an important part of your email program’s long term success. If you fail to ask for permission, email recipients may end up marking your messages as “spam” – hurting your sender reputation with ISPs, which can hurt your delivery rates, meaning your messages may not beat spam filters for your other subscribers. Permission Based Email Checklist 1. The Golden Rule: No pre-checked opt-in boxes in sign up forms Though it is completely the web user’s fault for not reading your sign up form instructions word-for-word, it doesn’t matter. When someone receives email he or she does not expect, is not relevant to him or her, or is otherwise annoying, that email can be marked as “spam.” In fact, some folks believe marking a message as spam unsubscribes them from your list, which it does not. It only hurts your sender reputation – it also hurts your brand’s trust in consumers’ eyes. 2. Consider using a ?double opt-in? system to confirm permission. I say consider double opt-in, since it’s the topic of much heated debate in the email marketing world, and not as common in online retail. Double opt-in means the subscriber must open your confirmation email and confirm subscription before being added to your mailing list. This protects you against “spam bots” that can subscribe with fake email addresses. Some fake email addresses are actually traps to identify spammers. If you send an email to a spam-trap email, you are flagged by ISPs and your email won’t get through. You also risk being added to blacklists that organizations use to detect spam (especially risky for B2B businesses). Also, some ESPs (email service providers) won’t take you on as a customer unless you use double opt-in. Another advantage of double opt-in is you have “proof” of subscription intent if you are ever legally challenged for spamming. Remember, as mentioned above, many email subscribers use the “Report Spam” button incorrectly. The tradeoff for these advantages is 20-50% of subscribers won’t bother to confirm, or won’t (ironically) see your message because of spam filters. If you can live with a smaller list in exchange for better deliverability, then consider double-opt in. Also consider that the subscribers who don’t confirm are less likely to be engaged in...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-13 11:05:13</div>

5 Reasons You Should Copy Amazon

Last post I outlined 10 reasons not to copy Amazon, with a promise to follow up with reasons why you SHOULD copy Amazon. While I could easily have compiled a list of 50-100 tactical items that could improve your conversion like unusual shaped cart buttons, delivery cut-off dates, customer reviews, mobile apps, triggered email or point-of-action assurances, I chose today to focus on 5 strategic things Amazon does really well, that could make you or save you millions of dollars. Amazon Never Redesigns Its Site (Anymore) Hands up if you remember when Amazon looked like this: Or this: It was Amazon that popularized “tabbed navigation” for online shops. Who could forget Amazon’s tombstone menu? Which evolved into this: In Amazon’s early days, it launched redesigns much like any other business would. But now that it’s older and wiser, it makes piece-by-piece changes with slow roll-outs. Amazon doesn’t pull the rug out from beneath its customers with a complete facelift. Rather, changes are made gradually so it’s easy for customers to learn the new piece within a familiar UI. In fact, many customers will hardly notice a change has even been made. The dangers with major design overhauls are many: You risk confusing the heck out of customers who have taken time to learn your old site’s processes You risk “breaking” something that’s working, and you can’t just roll back to the old design It takes a lot more resources to design a new UI from scratch than to make smaller, incremental changes The resources you place on the redesign project are often taken away from your existing system, so the existing system may go without crucial updates for a year or longer If you outsource your design to a 3rd party, decisions may be made based on aesthetics/design trends rather than your business interests If you change too much at once, you can’t measure which change is responsible for an increase or decrease in revenue (or other KPI) Usability expert Jared Spool once shared a story of a big-box retailer that spent $100 Million on a redesign. Sales dropped 20% after its roll-out, and it took 3.5 years to recover from it. Radical site-wide redesigns are very risky, especially when design decisions are made without input from customers. Amazon Understands Its Customers When Amazon decided to radically redesign its navigation, it had already conducted extensive usability tests and customer surveys....<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-12 11:08:02</div>

10 Reasons Not to Copy Amazon

Amazon has for years been held up as the gold standard in ecommerce because of its rapid growth and dominance in online retail. This success has created a halo effect, where some automatically assume ?if Amazon does it, it must be right.? Many have implemented Amazon?s designs and features on their online shops based on these assumptions alone. This is dangerous. And here are 10 reasons why: Reason #1: You Are Not Amazon (My apologies to Jeff Bezos and his gang ? if you are reading, of course you may take exception to this. You ARE Amazon. High five.) For the rest of you who are not Amazon ? consider this, Amazon.com: Is ranked #18 in all website traffic, according to Google (and we know Google is never wrong) Boasts a user base of 73 Million Attracts 81,000 81,000,000 unique visitors every month Processes 24 sales per second Raked in $24.5 Billion in revenue last year Has 107 Million pages indexed by Google. While not all of these are product pages, that?s still a LOT of SKUs Unless your site is comparable to Amazon?s product assortment, traffic and sales volume, it?s safe to say your target customer is different than Amazon?s. Amazon targets and attracts anyone and everyone. You likely have a smaller universe of customers with different motivations, expectations and needs. Your goal is to optimize your site for your customers. Reason #2: Amazon Love Covers a Multitude of Sins Familiarity with Amazon makes people more accepting of its shortcomings. For example, in a 2006 usability study, despite having the slowest perceived page load speed and one of the most confusing home pages, users said before and after usability testing that they were likely to use or recommend Amazon to a friend. Customers who have never heard of you or visited your site before may not be so tolerant, so you cannot benchmark your site performance against Amazon and think you?re doing okay. Neither should you copy design ideas ? especially when it comes to Amazon?s shotgun method of filling pages with as much content and calls-to-action as possible. Reason #3: Amazon?s Business Model is None of Your Business Amazon is not just a pureplay online retailer (meaning it has no brick-and-mortar stores) ? it?s also a marketplace. A formidable competitor to eBay, anyone can sell their wares both new and used on the ?Zon and leverage its user base, search engine optimization, reputation etc. Amazon also allows external websites to advertise through its pay-per-click and display...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-09 11:05:51</div>

The 4 Pillars of Ecommerce Copywriting

When writing content for your ecommerce website, the challenge is to craft copy that is usable, search engine friendly, persuasive, that will build trust and communicate your brand promise. How can you satisfy all of these objectives? It begins with an understanding of the 4 pillars of ecommerce copywriting. Writing for usability As many usability gurus have said, your visitor decides in 3 seconds or less whether he or she is going to abandon your site. “Bounce rate” in Web analytics tells you how many visitors “came, puked and left” (the famous words of Avinash Kaushik). If your bounce rate is high, you need to investigate reasons why that might be. While there are many ways to gag your customers with a spoon, formatting issues such as tiny type, white text on black backgrounds, loooooong sentences and long paragraphs are common culprits. Example: grey text, run-on paragraph Visitors need only to eyeball your site to figure out if the copy is “readable,” so use headings, subheadings and bullet points liberally, and pictures and icons where appropriate. It is recommended that you keep sentences and paragraphs as short and sweet as possible. Always define your jargon, and keep in mind that the average American adult reads at an 8th or 9th grade level – so shoot for 6th-7th grade difficulty. (This is especially important for international customers and English-as-second-language). However, bullets can’t save you if you don’t use them wisely. Example: bullets to the head Example: Walmart bullets Altrec.com puts headings, short paragraphs and bullets to work: Writing to persuade Unique value propositions One important piece of text that is often missing from ecommerce sites is the UVP (unique value proposition, sometimes called unique selling proposition). This is a statement that clearly communicates the one thing that you do better than any of your competitors. This statement is not “free shipping” or even “free shipping both ways!” These are value propositions, but not unique if any of your competitors also offer them. With the ease of comparison shopping the Internet provides, it’s crucial to make this statement very clear and easy to find (tagline, headlines, all throughout your body copy and marketing messaging). Make sure you have watched Marketing Experiments’ Web clinic In Search of a Value Proposition and read its companion blog post. Many folks *think*...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-07 11:06:25</div>

Creating Bundles from Advanced Search

Every once in a while I come across something truly unique on an ecommerce store. This time it’s Alibris, which does a very cool thing with its Advanced Search tool. Customers can create a custom bundle at the lowest price by entering multiple ISBN numbers in Advanced Search. While this makes sense for a site like Alibris which is a marketplace of competing sellers (with cheap, cheap, cheap prices), this approach can have application to other types of businesses. For example, you could build custom bundles based on attributes like highest star rating. On a telco site, a customer could enter a mobile handset model and click to find a bundle based on lowest prices or highest star ratings. Other cool stuff I’ve blogged about online retailers doing include: How to Grow Your Email List from Your Shopping Cart Getting Digital With Physical Goods RueLaLa Uses Calendar-to-Action in Emails A Simple Way to Promote Your Loyalty Program Prescription for A Targeted Shopping Experience: Drugstore Dot Com Viva innovation and creativity! ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-05 11:03:06</div>

Five Bold Predictions About Mobile Ecommerce Development

The way that consumers access the Internet and shop online is changing. Desktop computers, laptops, mobile Internet devices, and mobile phones are converging into a larger category of Internet enabled devices. Millions of new users and new shoppers come online daily. By way of example, last year eMarketer estimated that by 2013 74.9 percent of all Canadians would be Internet users. Put another way, essentially every Canadian between the age of 5 and 65 will have web access within a few years. In the U.S. there were an estimated 234.4 million Internet users at the end of last year or about 76.3 percent of the total population. Meanwhile, TechCrunch has reported that mobile Internet use in North America grew 110 percent in 2009 according to Quantcast. That number would be impressive except it trails worldwide mobile Internet growth, which was pegged at 148 percent in 2009. With so much change and so much growth, the technical side of ecommerce is also evolving. It may no longer be enough to simply think about having a web site, or even enough to create a mobile optimized version of your site for, say, the Google Nexus One, Motorola Droid, or Apple iPhone. With this in mind, I am making five predictions about how expanding Internet access will change ecommerce and ecommerce design and development in the next few years. 1. Dozens of New Internet-Enabled Devices Will Emerge The mobile phone is not the end of the line for the great, expanding, and ubiquitous Internet. By way of example, Internet-driven streaming radios and web-guided navigation have been available in some cars for more than a year already and soon more cars and trucks will have Internet access. Thanks to technologies like near-field communication (NFC), which allows passive devices to communicate?and potentially access the Internet?even seemingly mundane objects like your credit cards, store loyalty cards, and commercial packaging (yes even food boxes and cans) will access the web and display messages like your available credit, special deals or coupons, or when you last used seasoned breadcrumbs. For ecommerce this means that you need to be ready to address potential customers in many different formats and form factors, for example, some consumable products may include reorder messages, so that consumers can simply responded to an on package message to order from an ecommerce-enabled merchant. Liquid web design could be making a comeback very soon too. 2. Merchants Won’t Process Credit...<br/><div align='right'>2010-07-02 11:07:28</div>

Bloggers Digest June 2010

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. This month I’ve added Twitter accounts for the contributors of this great content so you can connect further with the gurus. Hope you like! Advanced segmentation in Web analytics is the most powerful way to extract true insights from your mountains of data — but most folks need a little help figuring out what to segment. VKI Studios has a great tutorial on 6 Google Analytics segments that can help you analyze your search engine traffic. Do you know how to identify known unknowns? Avinash Kaushik shows you how you can leverage custom alerts in your web analytics tool to deliver meaningful information on a regular basis. Econsultancy’s Graham Charlton takes a look at ecommerce sites on the iPad and reports the most common usability quips you should be aware of when designing your own iPad-friendly version of your site. This in light of studies by both the Rimm-Kaufman Group and Shopatron that found conversion rates on the iPad are far better than mobile phones, and almost as good (or better) than desktop computers. Hubspot released a free ebook on How to Use Facebook for Business. Yours truly submitted the chapter on ecommerce. SEOmoz has updated its Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization. Once available to paid subscribers only, this guide has had a timely refresh to its content (as the SEO game changes by the minute) and its appearance (the Moz deserves a design award for this). You can view it online for free or download the PDF. Even if you’re an SEO rock star, someone in your organization will benefit from this resource, so pass it on! Continuing the free love, Wordstream has just launched the first negative keyword research tool. As I’ve mentioned before, negative keywords are key if you want to minimize money wasted on broad match campaigns in PPC. Joost de Valk shares 4 ways to optimize your site’s video for search engines. Kevin Hillstrom says “If there is one segment of customers you want to track every single day, it is the first time buyer with a purchase recency of 0-3 months.” Find out why. Geno Prussakov shares some interesting stats on why online coupons are important for online retail. Finally, Smashing Magazine has compiled a most excellent roundup of A/B testing tips and case studies aptly named The Ultimate...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-30 11:07:59</div>

International SEO: Keyword Research With Google Trends

If you run multiple stores for different English-speaking countries (geo-targeted with subdomains, subfolders or top-level domains like .co.uk, .co.au, .ca etc), it’s important to pay attention to the keywords in your category names and product page titles. The terms that your countrymen (and women) use to describe your products may not be the same as the lingo abroad. And the keywords you choose to describe your categories and products have a huge impact on SEO in your international markets. Example: “flash drive” vs. “USB drive” vs. “memory stick” According to Google Trends, the term “USB drive” is most popular in US and Canada, and “memory stick” most popular in the UK. Example 2: “slow cooker” vs. “crock pot” vs. “crockpot” Americans love the branded term “crock pot” and are most likely to use the 2-word rather than “crockpot.” The rest of the English speaking world is more likely to call it a “slow cooker.” Ideally your category labels and product page titles will be optimized to reflect the most popular search for each respective region. (Make sure you’ve geo-targeted your domains using webmaster tools). Synonyms should be included in your meta data so customers who use them can still find your products in your on-site search, and in product descriptions so you can still be found in search engines for any of the synonyms. Another reason to use the more common term in navigation menus is users tend to scan menus with a “trigger keyword” in mind. They’re thinking “memory stick” and if they don’t find that quickly in your menu, often it’s off to the search box or off to another site. Not only can you apply this research to on-site optimization, but also pay-per-click and email campaigns (hint, geo-segment your PPC and email campaigns). Even if you don’t target geographic regions, you can still benefit from using Google Trends data — find out if the keywords you’re using are really the most popular of its synonyms in your region. Can’t think of synonyms? Google’s Keyword Tool can help you out. I suggest you start with your most profitable category. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-28 11:03:28</div>

17 Ways To Minimize Friction in the Sales Process

In landing page optimization, friction describes “the psychological resistance to a given element of your sales process that causes aggravation, fatigue or confusion,” according to the Yoda-smart Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments. The goal of the “ecommerce optimizationist” (yes, a totally fabricated term) is to minimize this resistance as much as possible. Where do customers experience friction in your sales process? Let’s examine some of the common areas: Home Pages 1. Slow loading pages As recent Forrester Research has shown, 2 seconds is the new acceptable perceived threshold for page load speed. Slow rendering Websites lead to lost sales online, with 40% of customers stating they would leave a site that took longer than 3 seconds to load. 79% of dissatisfied shoppers claim they are less likely to buy from the site again, and 75% would be less likely to return. Therefore, every effort to speed up your website should be taken. Services like Akamai, Strangeloop and Gomez can help you speed up your site. (Check out the Strangeloop Website Performance Tester to see how much faster your site could be after optimization). Need more tips for speeding up your website? Check out our webinar recap of Every Second Counts: How Website Performance Impacts Shopper Behavior and Justin Palmer’s 25 Ways to Speed Up Your Website. 2. Where’s the search box? No one should have to search for a search box. Make it easy to find. Larger search boxes tend to attract more attention, but be careful not to make them too big. 3. Too much choice You CAN have too much of a good thing, just ask Barry Schwartz (or better yet, watch his TED talk on the paradox of choice). Navigation Menus 4. Sidebars We’re trained to look for navigation options in horizontal menus across the top or vertical menus along the left side. Avoid the right hand side for important links and calls to action. Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, who has conducted thousands of conversion and usability experiments, says “don’t put anything in right hand sidebars unless you don’t want [people] to see it.” My pet-peeve on ecommerce sites is when important calls to action look like Google AdSense. 5. Tombstone navigation Stacks of tabs reminiscent of Amazon’s “tombstone” navigation of the mid-2000’s are far less usable than the beautiful AJAX-y goodness of mega-menus. After much user testing, Amazon ditched the...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-25 11:01:17</div>

Visual Search: A Vision For Ecommerce

Though it’s rare to find visual search implemented on an ecommerce site (Zappos had it but took it down), visual search and image recognition technology has a lot of potential in online shopping. I’ve been asked in the past what I think they can do for ecommerce. This post is a brain dump of a bunch of ways I could see retailers benefiting from image recognition and visual search. Visual Search 1. Retailers with large product catalogs Like.com is an affiliate shopping site that aggregates fashion items from a large number of retailers, and is an example of how helpful a visual search tool can be as an alternative to other forms of filtered navigation. Clicking on any product’s Visual Search button re-sorts a page to show items that most resemble the item clicked. This helps customers find items they like faster. It can also improve conversion. Say a customer likes a handbag that appears on the first page of your “Handbags” category, but the price is too high for her. A simple visual search may expose hidden gems that fit her budget, but may have appeared on page 14 of your category results. EyeAlike is a tool already available for retailers who want to use visual search on their sites. Image Recognition 2. Eyewear I blogged before about EyeBuyDirect’s Wall of Frame which has become a big hit with its customers. The Wall of Frame is a collection of photos customers submit of themselves using the eyewear retailer’s try-before-you-buy tool. Imagine uploading a picture of yourself and allowing face recognition to filter the Wall of Frame to people with your face shape. You could find a pair that flatters your face without trying random styles on with the tool, then try them on your own photo after you found one that you liked on another’s photo. The less time customers have to spend searching for a good pair of glasses, the more likely they are to convert. 3. Apparel retailers MyShape is a site that offers “custom shops” to members based on their style preferences and their actual body measurements. This takes the guesswork out of finding brands and styles that fit, because the whole catalog is filtered based on what will look good on you. You can fill in a full profile including all of your body measurements, but if you’re lazy you can just filter the shop by SHAPE (each letter applies to a different body shape). You could upload a photo of yourself dressed in black and have image recognition...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-23 11:08:34</div>

Slaying Sales With Expired SSL Certificates

Question: What’s the most effective way to make site visitors flee in terror? Answer: Forget to renew your Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. If for any reason your certificate expires, your customer’s browsers may serve up warnings like this: Imagine what goes through the mind of a novice or security-concious Web user when presented with warnings like: ?Safari can?t verify the identity of the website? ?This connection is untrusted? ?This is probably not the site you are looking for!? ?There is a problem with this website?s security certificate? Not to mention calls to action like ?Get me out of here!? and ?Back to safety.? The suggestion that a site is not safe to visit could even mean the customer never returns to your website. Think this couldn’t happen to you? Think again, even Google and Yahoo have slipped up. Sometimes the renewal is missed because the person who set up the certificate moves on from the company, and there is no process in place for the successor to be notified when it’s time to update, and no one bothers to check up on it. Other times it’s just negligence. How to check your SSL certificate 1. Visit a secure page on your e-store (beginning with https:// vs. http://), double click the padlock icon in the bottom, right hand corner. A window should open up with the issue and expiry dates, or a button “View Certificate” (which should present issue and expiry after the click). Take note of the expiry date and set up an alert for your IT team. 2. Even easier, run your domain through this SSL checker. If there is an error, you can click a link for more information, like this example below: You can even set up a renewal reminder right from the tool. (Here’s a tip: sign up a few addresses in case you are no longer with your company.) ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-21 11:03:12</div>

Can Your Search Box Be Too Big?

A while back, Marketing Sherpa shared a case study (membership required) for furniture retailer Black Forest Decor. “Making the logo search box bigger” boosted conversion by 20% and revenue by a staggering 84%. Black Forest Decor still has a modest sized search box when you compare it to the trend of super-wide boxes we see on the likes of Linens N Things, Overstock, Sears and PC Mall: Black Forest Decor Linens N Things Overstock Sears PC Mall Certainly you don’t want a box so small your customers have to search for the search box! And enlarging your search box, making it more prominent in design, styling, “Search” button or placement, leads to higher search box use, less site abandonment and higher conversion. That makes sense. But is there such thing as too big? I believe the answer is “yes” when the search box is so big it looks like a banner ad, or otherwise fades into the background of the other elements on your page. It’s possible that’s the case with the sites above. As always, it’s best to test a bunch of sizes and placements before you decide which search box is right for your site. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-18 13:09:01</div>

SEO Mythbusters: Are JavaScript Menus an SEO No-No?

JavaScript enabled, dynamic menus allow you to pack a lot of information in a tight space and make it easier for shoppers to find what their looking for. But for years, SEO professionals have advised against using JavaScript menus, warning that search engines can’t read JavaScript. In times past, that was true. But search engines have come along way since. Unfortunately, old information still exists on forums and in blogs, and many are confused about JavaScript and SEO, and how to do things right. Examples of fly-out or mega menus The most common form of JavaScript enabled menu is what designers call a “fly-out” or “mega” menu. Fly-outs can be seen on hundreds or even thousands of online retail sites. The key features of this sort of menu are that: Only top-level product or site categories are displayed by default Sub-category information displays when a user hovers over a top-level label All of the sub-categories are anchors, linking to very specific product category pages Mega menus may also be used for “navandising” – including images or graphics that cross-sell or up-sell related products, services, or offers. Benefits for shoppers Some online retailers have a significant number of product offerings or variations across many product lines. While that variety is often a boon for shoppers and merchants alike, it can make finding specifically what you’re looking for something of a challenge. Fly-out menus make it easier to sort through available products. SEO-friendly mega menus: it’s all in the code It is true that JavaScript can be written in a way that hides anchor tags from some search engines. For example, if we built a mega menu that was added to the document object model by the JavaScript, some search engine bots might not be able to “see” the menu. But most mega menus include all of the links and tags in the actual HTML markup, typically in the form of an unordered list. These lists are then hidden from view with a cascading style sheet (CSS), JavaScript, or a combination thereof. For example, Aldo Shoes’ mega menu sub-categories are coded directly into the HTML, creating several rich, text-based links for search engine bots to spider and index: In fact, the HTML for a mega menu can look surprisingly similar to the HTML for a site map, which most SEO pundits praise. Too many links? If there is any SEO concern with JavaScript-driven mega menus it is not that search...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-16 11:01:02</div>

Top Online Software Retailer Symantec Shares Web Analytics Secrets

There’s still time to reserve your seat for next week’s webinar Desperately seeking insights: How eCommerce leaders can harness the power of their data with our special guest, Sandy Gantt of Symantec Corporation. Sandy will discuss how to define and implement the right combination of people, process, and technology that will turn raw data into actionable business intelligence for your organization. Webinar takeaways: Understand the difference between data and insights, and what’s important about each Discover how insights can translate to big value for your company Learn how to build an organization that can effectively deliver the right combination of data and insights Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 9am Pacific | 12pm Eastern Sign up today at www.elasticpath.com/webinars ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-15 11:06:47</div>

Better Than Banners? Alternative Ways to Push Your Promotions

The shopping cart page is a common place to showcase your current promotions. Not only is the shopping cart (typically) less visually cluttered than your home page, a visitor that views his or her cart summary is closer to becoming a customer than on any other page on your site, save the checkout process itself. You may have banners throughout your site that showcase your special offers, but often customers have a short attention span, and reminding them on the cart page can boost the response to your offers (and average order value). Banners are the typical way to display your last-minute reminders, but are they the only way or the best way? Banners in the cart Here’s an example of a banner-style promotion from Bath and Bodyworks: The problem is sometimes these banners are overlooked due to the “banner blindness” phenomenon. Floating promo boxes A more in-your-face approach is a floating promo box that descends from the top of the page, as Victoria’s Secret uses: Bath and Bodyworks uses both a banner and a floating box: The tricky thing about anything that floats or pops up is it could be very irritating to customers. Novice users may not even be able to close the box, get frustrated and abandon cart. On the other hand, they can really get attention and lift sales. (If you’ve tested this, we’d love to hear your war stories in the comments.) Promos in the content space Another more subtle approach is to show the offer in the cart summary’s content area where it’s more likely to be read, like Target: Unfortunately Target’s Buy One, Get One 50% off promo is not clickable. French apparel retailer Kiabi has a creative tactic – include a call to action button right in the cart summary that lands right on the page the “BOGO” offer applies: It’s important to maintain “scent” (relevance) between an item’s promised offer and the cart summary. Unfortunately, American Eagle does not maintain scent between the BOGO offer on the product page and the cart summary, rather it shows a completely different promotion in the cart: Testing your promo tactics If technically feasible for you, consider testing 4 versions of your cart summary and find what works best for your site: 1. No promos, just cart summary. 2. Banner promo. 3. Floating box promo. 4. Clickable promotion in order summary box. We’d love to hear about your test results in the comments! ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-14 11:02:00</div>

Make it Clear: Search is for Search and Email is for Email

Often times retail sites offer search and email signup boxes that look almost identical. It’s very easy for customers to mistake one for the other (you’ll know if your email signup logs contain “addresses” like “nose hair trimmer.”) Exhibit A: Exhibit B: Rather than leave them blank, the retailers above label the fields with instructions like “keyword or item number” and “your email address.” Exhibit C: Exhibit D: It’s simple, but it can help prevent many errors! ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-11 11:07:06</div>

Adwords Campaign Experiments Brings Split Testing to PPC

Split testing – it’s not just for emails and landing pages anymore. This week, Google Adwords announced a new tool for its paid search advertisers: ACE (Adwords Campaign Experiments) (Beta) which allows you to split test your PPC campaigns. Until now, decisions to raise bids, add / delete keywords, change keyword match type or create different campaign structures have been made on gut feel without hard data on their efficacy. Results had to be measured by comparing metrics like traffic, spend, average CPC and conversion before and after a change, which is never as reliable as running split tests. When you “test” in succession rather than concurrently, your data may be muddied by external factors like seasonality, competitor behavior and consumer confidence. 50/50 vs. shifting your risk A neat feature in ACE is the ability to shift the risk of your experiment to a smaller slice of your traffic. For example, you may choose to send 80% of traffic to your existing campaign (Control) and 20% to your Experiment. If the Experiment is a bomb, there’s less impact on your total spend and conversion. Keep in mind, however, that such experiments take longer to complete because you require a certain level of traffic in the Experiment, and the data won’t be as reliable as a 1:1 relationship between Control and Experiment. Statistical significance shortcuts Another great feature for mathophobes like me is the clear markers that indicate statistical significance. A statistically significant result is unlikely to have happened by chance, so you can be confident that applying such results will improve your campaign performance. These markers make it easy to spot from a glance exactly what changes had impact. One question I have for Google is whether testing impacts a campaign’s Quality Score. If it doesn’t, perhaps there’s a loophole for advertisers with lower Quality Scores – they can set up an identical “Experiment” campaign that’s scrubbed of the click through history accrued from the existing campaign. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the video tutorial series or sign up for the public Beta (US only). ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-09 11:05:25</div>

The SEO Tip Online Retailers Still Are Not Taking Advantage Of!

A while back I posted about the opportunity most retailers miss out on – optimizing their own websites for their store names plus “free shipping.” Related searches in Google indicate the suggestions are highly searched, and therefore valuable to optimize for. Add to free shipping searches for “promo code(s),” “voucher code(s),” “coupon code(s),” “discount code(s)” et cetera. Customers are actively Googling these terms, and guess who’s cherry-picking the traffic? Affiliates, and collecting a nice commission along with it. I suggested that retailers create dedicated landing pages optimized for their own coupon codes because there’s a good chance the store’s domain will outrank the affiliate sites. Have I ever seen it in practice? No. I got excited when I spotted Macy’s linking to a list of codes off its shopping cart review page… …which links to: But, because the coupon codes are in JavaScript, Macy’s special page is not crawled or indexed in search engines. It misses all the organic traffic it could capture from the searches on “macys coupon,” “macys promo codes” etc. I’m still keeping my eyes peeled for a major brand to take advantage of this low-hanging fruit. In the mean time, why don’t you use this trick for your own online store and create an optimized landing page for your coupons and free shipping offers? Hint: Make sure your title tag includes the keywords “free shipping” and “coupon codes” at a minimum. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-07 11:00:29</div>

Ecommerce Tip: SEO for Product Pages [Video]

Did you know we (at Elastic Path Software post an “Ecommerce Tip of the Week” video on our home page? Here’s a sample: Search engine optimization for your product pages Email and RSS subscribers, can’t see video? View this post on Get Elastic. Want to catch up on tip videos you’ve missed and receive new ones? Check out or subscribe to our channels on Youtube and Vimeo. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-04 11:04:59</div>

How To Boost Conversion Rates Instantly Without Making a Single Change to Your Site

Sound too good to be true? You can absolutely change your site conversion rate (or any other important success metric) by simply optimizing…your web analytics reports! By default, Web analytics track anything and everything that happens on your site – from both quality and garbage traffic. What if you could exclude all of the garbage traffic from your report? You would get a clearer (and fresher smelling) picture of how your site is performing. The throw-away traffic would no longer be polluting your conversion rates or skewing your other key metrics like bounce rates. Cleaning up your analytics reports Think of what types of site visitors are very unlikely to buy from you, such as: Visitors from countries you do not ship to or do not accept credit card payment from Visitors arriving from non-commercial referring sites Visitors from mobile devices (if you are not m-commerce enabled) Visitors from certain social networks In Google Analytics, you can create a new Profile and add the appropriate Filters to exclude country, region, referring domain and operating system, to name a few. Creating Profiles: Adding Filters to Profiles: Advanced Segments In Google Analytics, Profiles and Filters are great, but they don’t give you as much drill-down power as Advanced Segments (if you use a different web analytics tool, this feature, if you have it, may be named differently). In addition to weeding out the long-shots, you may wish to segment out visitors whose on-site behavior indicates their intent is not to purchase, but to use your site for a different purpose. For example, visitors who enter your site through your Company or Careers page, exit after viewing your Store Locator or Online Flyer, use your order tracking tool, or surf your online forum. Let’s put this all together by applying the above segmentation criteria, including the assumptions your online store sells only to North America, is not m-commerce enabled, and receives a lot of non-converting traffic from Wikipedia, Facebook and PR Web. With segments that represent traffic with highest likelihood to purchase, your KPIs (key performance indicators, or metrics of success) are guaranteed to improve. You will have a better understanding of your “adjusted” KPIs, and can set much better goals for improvement. You’ll also have a better understanding of your customers, not just your site visitors. You can then further segment by campaigns, referral source,...<br/><div align='right'>2010-06-02 11:05:23</div>

Bloggers Digest May 2010

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. Quick announcement We’re very excited to have Sandy Gantt, VP of Ecommerce Marketing at Symantec Corporation, joining us for our June webinar: Desperately seeking insights: How eCommerce leaders can harness the power of their data. Sandy will be discussing how to define and implement the right combination of people, process, and technology that will turn raw data into actionable business intelligence for your organization. You won’t want to miss this live event, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 9am PST/12pm EST. Sign up today. Now, onto the links: Econsultancy’s Graham Charlton offers 10 best practice tips for mobile checkouts. Paginated category results (you know, page 1,2,3,4,5….) can hurt SEO, but you can do something about it. Tony Goldstone shares 2 techniques he has successfully used to optimize category pages which resulted in a massive influx of relevant search traffic to category pages. Mark Brownlow uses humor to make his point – you better pay attention to how your email subject lines appear in different email clients. “Shrink gracefully,” or you might be insulting readers. (On that note, you should also read Mark’s article 9 email preview tools and why you need one.) You may have noticed application stores are popping up everywhere…Google Analytics joins the bunch with its own App Gallery. Now you can have Google Analytics on steroids. Bring some clarity to your Web analysis – Dan Barker explains why conversion rate is a horrible metric to focus on. The title says it all. Another entry from Mark Brownlow, Shopping cart abandonment emails: issues and resources examines triggered emails from strategy to timing, privacy to success measurement. Want more action? Then leverage the “point of action” explains how point of action assurances near your calls to action can improve conversion. Thinking of adding / building a product configurator? The Treehouse Logic blog has some tips from the trenches. Stumped on where to begin your Web analytics segmentation strategy? Avinash Kaushik shares his Segmentation Selector Framework in his latest post Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try! ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-31 11:00:22</div>

Are Facebookers Talking About Your Company?

Adding fuel to the fire that “Facebook Privacy” is an oxymoron, a tool built with Facebook’s own API lets you search Facebook status updates. Though Openbook is intended for entertainment purposes and public awareness about the insecurity of your Facebook information, it can also be used as a social media monitoring tool for businesses. Facebookers Talk About Retailers and Brands I ran through a few searches for top online retailers and found Facebookers are quite chatty about companies. For example, Office Depot and Newegg: I was surprised at how many Facebookers were updating their statuses with their shopping experiences, positive and negative. Facebook Users Are Influenced By Word of Mouth A recent survey by Morpace, Facebook’s Impact on Retailers (PDF) reveals that consumers do like to evangelize products and businesses with their friends on Facebook. The study found 68% of Facebook users would be more likely to try a product or visit a retailer when a friend has made a positive recommendation. Facebook Status Campaign? I spotted a few Facebookers sharing Diapers.com promo codes in their Facebook statuses. I’m not sure if these are affiliates or if Diapers.com is doing a customer campaign – but asking customer to share coupon codes is a good idea, given that recommendations from friends carry so much influence. Retailers with loyalty programs may be able to offer kickbacks to customers based on how much business they refer. They may have more influence on customers than affiliates, and offering credits toward future purchases rather than commissions to affiliates may also be more profitable. Other creative ways you can encourage your customers to “share the love” about your company or products is ask them to post links to their wish list/registry, “Like” your products or join your Fan Page. The Morpace study found that the average Facebook user is a fan of 9 Pages, and the number one reason for joining Fan Pages is to let friends know what products they support. Did you know Get Elastic just launched a Fan Page? Like monitoring Twitter and other mentions of your company on the web (through services like Google Alerts), you should be keeping tabs on what folks are saying in Facebook as part of your social media monitoring efforts. You can use this information to identify problems with your service, gauge customer sentiment about your brand, develop customer personas and measure the...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-28 11:02:16</div>

11 Tips for Advanced Search Usability

“Advanced search” means different things to different people. Some ecommerce vendors describe their filtered navigation or guided selling capabilities as advanced search, as does the Internet Retailer 500 Guide. This post considers “advanced search” to be a tool separate from the regular search function, that allows searchers to specify more detailed criteria that is not handled by keyword search or filtered navigation. Advanced search is rare Advanced search is rare in B2C ecommerce (aside from Book/DVD sellers). You’ll find it more often on B2B sites, marketplaces with thousands of SKUs, or for specialized products. For most ecommerce sites, filtered navigation is better for users than advanced search. Searchers can quickly scan available filter options and refine results without leaving the search results page. Because “Advanced Search” is often overlooked (a tiny text link), or avoided because it sounds difficult, more searchers will actually use the filtered navigation. Filtered navigation has been around for years in ecommerce, and Google has recently added filters into its search results: Do you need advanced search? Though filtered navigation typically covers what advanced search is supposed to do, there are cases your business might require advanced search in addition to filters: 1. If your filtered navigation can’t accommodate all the things your advanced search must do. 2. If an advanced search function is table stakes in your industry. Not offering what your customers are used to forces them to learn a new process, which may hurt your site’s effectiveness. 3. If a guided, stepped process where the options are configured at once (rather than one-by-one with filtered navigation) makes the most sense (e.g. when your customer is “hunting” vs. “browsing”). Advanced search usability tips 1. Remember, you don’t have to name it “Advanced Search” Unless your industry demands “Advanced Search,” you can soften the label like Orbitz’ “Expand search options,” sounds more useful than complicated: Orbitz appends “Expand search options” with examples of what to expect from it (preferred airlines, first/business class, etc.) 2. Provide instructions Most people will gloss over text, but a brief description of how your advanced search works can be helpful. Keep instructions as concise as possible, and link to more...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-26 11:06:13</div>

International SEO Strategies

On the heels of the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, I caught up with one of SES’ expert speakers, Michael Bonfils, to pick his brain on international SEO issues. Michael is the International Managing Director for SEM International, where he provides expert multilingual search engine marketing and management for global advertising agencies, search engine marketing companies and Fortune 100 firms. Linda: Every online business wants to know what’s better, one domain that serves all countries, or country-specific domains (top level domains like .co.uk, .ca, .it etc). How does a business decide which approach is best for them? Michael: Having a country-specific domain the best choice. Country-specific domains allow for a “localization trust factor,” (searchers perceive localized domains as more relevant to them), they can attract links from the target country, and are therefore your best bet for organic SEO in the target country. However, if having international top level domains are not feasible, sub-directories can work too, but not as well. Sub-domains are better than sub-folders, which should be your last option. Also, pay attention to create sub-directories country by country, not language by language, or else you’ll face the duplicate content problem. Linda: Duplicate content is a major concern for site owners running multiple geographic stores in the same language. Is the fear warranted? How can this risk be minimized? Michael: Yes, duplicate content is a big problem. It’s not a “penalty” from Google’s standpoint, however when you find your US pages ranking better than your UK pages in Google.co.uk…you’ve got a problem. A separate site with a separate country-specific domain along with unique re-written content will help reduce the duplicate content issue. Also, have your in-country address on the site, and make sure your Google Webmaster Tools also reflect your intentions by telling Google what sites (subdirectories/folders) belong where. Once all the localized content pieces are fixed, make sure you have a matching link building strategy with in-country links from relevant sites and in country directories linking to them. Linda: It’s great that search engines support geo-targeting of domains in Google Webmaster Tools, it’s such a quick win for webmasters. Linda: Many large brands have splash pages with country selectors, which force the user to choose their...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-24 11:02:18</div>

15 Things to Ask Your Site Search Vendor

When working out your site search requirements for your ecommerce system, do you know what to look for in a site search tool? O’Reilly Media has granted Get Elastic permission to reprint this excerpt of Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender’s Search Patterns. The following is a checklist of things you discuss with vendors when evaluating a site search solution: System architecture Formal description of the hardware and software components, including crawlers, indexers, data models, and query parsers. Performance How many simultaneous queries are supported? What’s the maximum number of sources? How about the size of the data repository? File formats What types of conent and data (e.g., HTML, PDF, mySQL) are supported? Can the system handle both structured and unstructured data? Integration Is there a standards-based Web Services API for embedding search functionality in other sites and software? Is there a list of available connectors? Access control Does the system support multiple levels of access for different user types and individuals? How does it manage privacy and security? Features How does the system handle full text and metadata? Does it support Boolean operators, wildcards, stemming, stop words, phrase and proximity searching, and spellcheck? What algorithms are used for ranking? What are the options for query refinement? Can results be saved, printed, and shared? Implementation What sort of expertise is required for installation, configuration, and maintenance? How does the vendor handle training and support? Pricing model Is the product priced by data or activity volume, CPUs, features, and/or number of unique application? How about support, maintenance, and professional services fees? What’s the total cost of ownership? Vendor credentials How long has the vendor been in business? How are they positioned in the market? Can we see their financials and customer references? These are all necessary questions, but they’re also insufficient. Because there’s so much ground to cover, it’s easy to lose sight of the goal. The designer’s role is to repeatedly refocus attention on the user experience. A supplemental checklist that’s informed by an information architecture strategy and empathy for the user might include: Speed What will it take to ensure subsecond response in the real world? It’s worth asking this question early and often. Don’t take “slow” for an answer! Relevance...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-21 11:05:23</div>

Getting Digital With Physical Goods

I recently spotted a (relatively small) ecommerce website that cross-sells mobile applications with its physical goods, and even sells bundled products with soft and hard goods. Bundle Cross-sell Could this be a trend that picks up with the bigger sites this year? Think of the potential for application developers to team up with traditional e-tailers (in an affiliate relationship) for all sorts of industries – like travel, music, books, fitness/lifestyle, software, home improvement… ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-19 11:02:59</div>

A/B Case Study: How MEC Found a 404 Page Winner

Last year, Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) shared its case study on 404 “Not Found” pages with Anne Holland of Which Test Won. This test won a Gold Ribbon in the Ecommerce category in the 2009 Testing Awards. If you missed it, go on and “test your gut” – see if you can guess which design converted best. If you guessed the 404 page with the image, you are correct. It achieved not only a 3.56% lift but also a 73.2% boost in revenue per visitor. What you didn’t see on Which Test Won were the other versions tested by Amadesa, the conversion optimization firm that conducted the experiments for MEC. Check ‘em out: Control Click image to enlarge V1.00 ? Text only Updated text ? messaging why a user might have reached the 404 page Conversion rate of 37% Click image to enlarge V1.01 ? Text ,Image, & Shortened Links Updated text ? messaging why a user might have reached the 404 page Addition of image Addition of search Shortened link list Conversion rate of 33.74% Revenue per visit lift of -29.12% Click image to enlarge V1.02 ? Image, text, & shortened links Updated text ? messaging why a user might have reached the 404 page Addition of image Addition of search Shortened link list Conversion rate of 37.74% Revenue per visit lift of 38.44% Click image to enlarge V1.03 ? Large image, text, & dropdown Updated Text ? messaging why a user might have reached the 404 page Addition of image Addition of search Product dropdown Conversion rate of 38.32% Conversion lift of Revenue per visit lift of 14.83% Click image to enlarge The winner The winning version had a conversion rate of 38.32% and a conversion lift of 3.56%. Overall, this version presented a revenue per visit lift of 73.2%. MEC found that providing users with an abundance of links (in the first version) did not engage the user, rather overwhelmed them to the point of abandonment. The winning version provided readers with an apology for the error, as well as more appealing imagery and color scheme that better fit the lifestyle of MEC customers. It also provided a search field and drop box that simplified the re-navigation process for users ? a successful vehicle for re-engaging. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-17 11:03:22</div>

Showing Percent Discount on Cart Buttons

Last week we shared some wacky cart button shapes, based on Bryan Eisenberg’s tip that unusual call-to-action buttons can improve conversion. This week I came across a site that uses a very creative tactic with its cart button, which I have never seen before. ChristianBook.com includes the percentage discount right on the call-to-action button: This is very persuasive on a product page: Each product’s button reflects the discount off list price, and is proudly displayed in category results: And cross-sell suggestions: This takes some serious custom programming, but it likely has a powerful impact on conversion. Are you taking notes, Amazon? ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-14 11:06:48</div>

The Pros and Cons of One-Page Checkout

Shopping cart abandonment is an epidemic in online retailing, with some companies reporting that more than 60% of checkouts end without a conversion. Preventing even a relatively small percentage of these abandoned carts would significantly improve revenues and profits. While purchase price and shipping costs are the leading reported causes of shopping cart abandonment, ease of use is close behind. Fighting Frustration One increasingly popular method used to slash cart abandonment rates is to introduce single-page, Ajax-driven checkout forms that combine the convenience of a single page format with asynchronous form validation. As we start this discussion of the pros and cons of single-page, Ajax checkouts, I need to describe why these two methods?one pagers and Ajax?are employed and what frustrating problems they seek to solve. Single-Page Checkout is Faster, Easier to Understand Single-page checkout is faster and easier so that more customers convert. When you’re trying to decide if your checkout process should be a single page or several pages, consider the analogy of a supermarket. When grocery shopping, consumers always gravitate toward the shortest checkout lanes or fastest cashiers. By definition, a single-page checkout is faster than a multi-page checkout if for no reason other than there are no additional pages to load. Single-page checkout forms, particularly those that use JavaScript to march shoppers through the process, also provide better step-by-step visibility. Shoppers know what they must do and where they are in the process. If you need more evidence, consider a simple A/B test conducted on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics online store earlier this year. In the test, half of all potential customers were directed to a two-page checkout and half to a single-page checkout. Almost immediately, the single-page checkout proved to have a better conversion rate. In fact, the successful completion rate for the entire checkout process rose some 257.26% thanks to the single-page form. Ajax Validates Forms Before Users Submit If you have ever filled out a long online form, clicked submit, and then had the form erase everything they input and return a message like “address not valid,” “passwords don’t match,” or “please answer question #2,” you will understand the value of Ajax. Ajax stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and it is a web development technique that uses several client-side languages and...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-12 11:08:51</div>

99 Ecommerce Acronyms

If you’ve ever found yourself scratching your head at a 3-letter acronym in an ecommerce related article or document, this post is for you. We’ve compiled 99 of the most common 3 letter acronyms you’ll find in online business, from a wide range of functions including IT, marketing, web development, SEO, web analytics, web design and logistics. Roll over any acronym to see its title, or click its link to see a full definition. Or quiz yourself, and see how many of these acronyms you know off the top of your head! 3PL AOV API B2B B2C B2E BOM BPA BPM CDN CMS COD CPA CPC CPI CPM CRM CRO CSC CSE CSR CSS CTR CVC CVV DFO DIM DNS DOM DTP EAI EDI ERP FAK FAQ FTP FUD HCI ISP KPI LPO LSA LSI LTL LTV MMS MP3 MVT NLP OOS OPM ORM PCI PHP PIM POS PPC QSA RDF REP RFI RFP RFQ RFT RIA ROI RSS SAS SEM SEO SKU SLA SLR SMO SMS SOA SOW SSI SSL TCO TLD TLS TOS TPL UCE UGC USP UVP VAR VAT VTP VTR WAI WAO WAP WML WMS W3C XML ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-10 11:09:26</div>

Can Unusual Shaped Buttons Increase Conversion?

Though small, the call-to-action button (add to cart, begin checkout, continue, submit, etc) can have a major influence on conversion. The size, placement, color, wording and even shape matters, but you don’t know what’s optimal until you test variations of each variable. In a recent interview, conversion optimization legend Bryan Eisenberg recently shared one of his secrets for great call-to-action buttons, using irregular shapes (rather than typical rectangle or oval shapes). This includes buttons with icons like big plus signs or shopping carts. It’s the “unusualness” of the button that catches the eye and captures the click. There is no shape proven to work best (remember, everything must be tested as every website’s design and target customer is different). Your website may even convert better with a conventional button shape. But if you’re daring enough to test an irregular shape, here are some shape ideas to get your creative juices flowing: (All these button shapes were created with Microsoft Power Point’s shape tool!) And here is a collection of outside-of-the-box call-to-action shapes actually used by online retailers: Going funky can be risky, however. Unusual shapes may not look like cart buttons at all – users are conditioned to look for something rectangular. So you may not want to go too crazy with your test designs. Have you tested irregular shapes? Please share your experiences in the comments. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-07 11:03:28</div>

Dealing with the Emerging Threats in the Cloud Computing Universe

Those who move their ecommerce systems to cloud computing typically take that path for the cost efficiencies and the on-demand scalability. Moreover, the hype is deafening. It almost feels like there?s a party going on and you weren?t invited. While there are certainly benefits to move to the ?Cloud,? there are also threats to your cloud computing implementation. It?s helpful to consider those threats before you journey into the cloud. Threat 1: You?re way over budget. Recent analysts? reports have pointed out that cloud computing can provide significant cost savings to some organizations, but can actually cost many organizations more than their traditional on-premise or third party-hosted systems. The reasons for this will vary, but in most instances the cost of migration to the cloud and the ongoing operational costs were much higher than expected. Threat 2: You get arrested. One would think that moving to cloud computing is a technical challenge versus a legal challenge, but in many instances there are very strict laws as to where the data can reside and how it?s secured. In the world of ecommerce, you need to consider the laws around customer data and financial data, which cannot reside outside of the country in some cases, and has to live up to a certain security standard. Same goes with systems that interact with government systems, health care systems, and many banking systems. Threat 3: You are hacked. Cloud computing often gets a bad rap when it comes to security. However, there are many more security threats that must be considered when moving to the cloud since cloud computing systems are going to be easy targets for hackers. This was best demonstrated with the recent Gmail attacks that came out of China, where some mailboxes where compromised. The reality of cloud computing is that many cloud providers don?t have the degree of security required to protect your data for the existing, and more importantly, emerging threats. Threat 4: You are locked out. In most cases, companies will not find that they are harmed by hackers, but harmed by the cloud computing providers themselves. Just as you?re at the mercy of your cell phone provider around service cancellation policies, your cloud computing provider could consider a missed payment, or a spike in processing load, as an excuse to cancel your service. You need to consider all policies going into a relationship with a cloud computing provider, including what can cause you to be locked out....<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-06 11:01:22</div>

10 Considerations for User Generated Content

If your ecommerce site has (or is thinking of adding) user generated content (UGC) like product reviews, questions and answers, forums, knowledge bases, photos, video, blogs, comments and social tags, here are 9 things to keep in mind: 1. What?s Right for You? Just because Amazon is doing user-submitted video and photos or product tagging doesn?t mean it?s right for your business. It’s important to consider what makes sense for the types of products you?re selling, your customer behavior and even sales volume. If Amazon’s ratio of purchases to traditional product reviews (slide 31) is 1,300 to 1, imagine how high it would be for video and photo, which take a lot more time and computer savvy from customers than text reviews. 2. “Everything in Moderation” To protect your brand integrity, you really do have to moderate everything – whether product reviews, video, photos or comments. Make sure you have the resources and processes to moderate in a timely manner. 3. Privacy Customers want to have confidence that you respect their privacy as an aggregator of their contributed content. 4. Content Ownership Think carefully whether you or your customer owns content. Keep in mind some third party platforms like customer reviews and even web analytics may actually own contributed content. You may not be able to take it with you if you switch platforms, so make sure you own the content when choosing a vendor. 5. Storage User generated content may “live” in your CMS, custom database or in variety of third party, hosted applications. Whenever possible, consolidate this content so it’s easy to access in one place. 6. In-site Search User generated content is ideally indexed by your site search tool to appear in search results. If data exists in multiple places, this becomes more difficult. Sophisticated systems may use federated search to solve the problem. 7. SEO and Indexing The major search engines realize the value that videos, images and reviews deliver to searchers. Google has even partnered with Bazaarvoice recently to deliver product reviews in search snippets. Fresher content may also give your page a boost in search engines, as will more content (more text means more opportunities your page text will match a search query. Also, customers will use synonyms and misspellings that you don’t use in your product copy. But you can’t benefit from UGC unless search engines index it. Avoid using Javascript or...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-05 11:01:22</div>

When Should I Do Performance Testing?

Your store’s performance should be on your mind from the moment you have initiated an ecommerce project and for as long as your store is online. The truth of the matter is that you cannot test performance into the system. You need to design, develop, and deploy online store implementation while maintaining continuous focus on performance. Project teams that delay performance testing to the last moment before going live are setting themselves up for nasty surprises. The diagram below shows how performance testing activities should be aligned with standard phases of an IT project. Sizing and Capacity Planning You should start by developing a capacity planning model to predict your store’s traffic based on the expected number of store visits, conversion rates, and typical store usage scenarios. During this stage you need to: Understand and size your data: catalog size and structure, number of stores, number of registered customers, number of promotions, etc. Understand site usage: number of unique visitors, user sessions, page views, orders per hour Define performance goals Define reliability goals Performance Engineering With load requirements documented and understood, it is time to design your tests: Identify high-load scenarios Design benchmark and focus performance tests Review design of proposed customizations to understand their impact on performance and reliability Select and obtain load-generating tools Design and prepare a load test environment Develop test monitoring and test result processing scripts Define requirements for deployment environment and hardware Performance Testing Now you are ready to start testing. As I mentioned at the beginning, doing a performance test right before the launch day is not helpful. You need Calendar time! Many people compare performance testing with pealing an onion. You achieve performance goals by laboriously identifying and removing layer after layer of performance bottlenecks in multiple test/analyze/fix and test again cycles. Your performance team needs to have the right mix of skills to be successful. You need to have people proficient in networking, software development, and web application tuning. Otherwise, you may end up with a Java developer optimizing his Java code while your real bottleneck is caused by a misconfigured load balancer. If you don’t have the right expertise in-house, look for external help. Monitoring and Troubleshooting An ecommerce site is a constantly evolving...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-04 11:04:37</div>

Improving View Through Rate for Product Video: 4 Hypotheses Tested

There is no lack of case studies that demonstrate video has a positive impact on conversion rates, sometimes a very dramatic improvement. (The most dramatic I?ve seen is eBags, claiming 138% increase in conversion. There’s also evidence that the mere presence of video can improve conversion, whether the video actually is viewed or not. While conversion is often the de facto KPI to measure, because the customer cannot reap the benefits of a product video without interacting with it, a video?s ?view through rate? (VTR) should not be overlooked. VTR is the number of videos watched divided by the number of impressions (number of times a page loaded with a video.) If you can optimize for VTR, you’ll likely improve your conversion rate as well. To answer the question ?How can an online retailer maximize View Through Rate??, the folks at Invodo, a video ecommerce platform, conducted a study across 53 of its own customers. With an average of 138 product videos per site, the study tested 7,413 product pages. (Invodo has granted us permission to share the study results on Get Elastic. You can download the full report from Invodo’s web site). To answer the research question, 4 hypotheses were tested: Hypothesis 1: Placing video above the fold results in a greater View Through Rate than video below the fold Hypothesis 2: View Through Rate declines with an increasing number of elements competing for clicks on the page Hypothesis 3: Adding a video with a text call to action increases View Through Rate Hypothesis 4: Increasing the size of the video player increases View Through Rate Results Hypothesis 1: Placing video above the fold Though usability pundits profess that you don?t need to worry about the fold, (the fold refers to the bottom of a user?s computer screen, whatever portion is visible without scrolling down), video players above the fold achieved an average 25.7% VTR versus 15.1% VTR for players below the fold. That?s a 70% increase! Hypothesis 2: View Through Rate declines with an increasing number of elements competing for clicks on the page This test had mixed results ? while videos on pages with only 1-5 and 6-10 clickable elements outperformed pages 11-15 and 15-20 competing calls to action, the surprise was that pages with over 21 clickable items had the highest view throughs, an average of 26.4%. Why might this be? It could be that the more cluttered a page is, the more the prominent elements (like a shiny video player) stand out. ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-05-03 11:05:35</div>

Bloggers Digest: April 2010

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. Big news: site speed is now confirmed as a ranking factor in Google. But don’t freak out just yet, Google says: “While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point. We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven’t seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.” How can retailers benefit from Facebook’s new Instant Personalization program? Armando Roggio has already spotted Sephora using the new “Like” social plugin, and we can expect more online retailers to follow. Check out all the Facebook social plugins you can add to your site today. Todd Michaud from Storefront Backtalk explains Why IT and Biz Heads Always Think the Other Wants Them to Fail. Do you know how to calculate lifetime customer value? Avinash Kaushik walks you through it. Larry Chase catches up with conversion rate optimization expert Bryan Eisenberg to discuss the secrets of calls-to-action. There’s a very juicy tip on how to design your cart button to really convert. Don’t touch your URLs until you’ve referenced Checklist for Changing Your URL Structure. Hat tip to VKI Studios for this one. Graham Charlton from Econsultancy answers the question:When should etailers empty customers’ shopping carts? Quick – can you name guide on 10 ways to segment visitors using Google Analytics? If you’re not taking advantage of Google Analytics’ segmentation capabilities, this article should give you guidance. Jeffrey Eisenberg reminds us that your landing pages must be relevant to the customer’s search query if you expect strong conversion rates. Does your helpdesk need help? Matthew Curry suggests four ways to help your helpdesk (and your users too!) ...<br/><div align='right'>2010-04-30 11:02:17</div>

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