According to Forrester Research, only 11% of consumers report their last abandoned cart was due to a long or confusing checkout. Only 12% believed the site was asking too much information, only 14% were unwilling to register with a site.*
The most common reasons customers bailed boiled down to “sticker shock” (due to high shipping charges, taxes or other fees, or a high product price), the desire to comparison shop, and simply not being ready to check out at that moment. (Good ol’ FUDs).
No matter how pretty your cart button, how short your checkout process or how clear and usable your form fields, you can’t save these sales. But that doesn’t mean you can’t optimize your site for non-usability factors of shopping cart abandonment.
Let’s take a look at 5 top reasons why customers abandon, and how you can address each Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Checkout #Optimization: Are You #Testing The Wrong Thing? « Get Elastic #Ecommerce Blog
Monday, April 4, 2011
Multivariate Testing 101: A Scientific Method Of Optimizing Design - Smashing Magazine
Do’s And Don’ts
I have observed hundreds of multivariate tests, and I have seen many people make the same mistakes. Here is some practical advice, direct from my experience.
Don’ts
- Don’t include a lot of sections in the test.
Every section you add effectively doubles the number of combinations to test. For example, if you’re testing a headline and image, then there are a total of four combinations (2 × 2). If you add a button to the test, there are suddenly eight combinations to test (2 × 2 × 2). The more combinations, the more traffic you’ll need to get significant results.Do’s
- Do preview all combinations.
In multivariate testing, variations of a section (image, headline, button, etc.) are combined to create page variations. One of the combinations might be odd-looking or, worse, illogical or incompatible. For example, one combination might put together a headline that says “$15 off” and a button that says “Free subscription.” Those two messages are incompatible. Detect and remove incompatibilities at the preview stage.- Do decide which sections are most worthy of inclusion in the test.
In a multivariate test, not all sections will have an equal impact on the conversion rate. For example, if you include a headline, a call-to-action button and a footer, you might come to realize that footer variations have little impact, and that headline and call-to-action variations produce winning combinations. You get a powerful section-specific report. Below is a sample report from Visual Website Optimizer. Notice how the button has more impact (91%) than the headline (65%):
- Do estimate the traffic needed for significant results.
Before testing, get a clear idea of how much traffic you’ll need in order to get statistically significant results. I’ve seen people add tens of sections to a page that gets just 100 visitors per day. Significant results from such a test would take months to accumulate. I suggest using a calculator, such as this A/B split and multivariate testing duration calculator, to estimate how much traffic your test will require. If it’s more than what’s acceptable, reduce some sections.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Testing Checkout Sign-In Pages: Inspiration Gallery « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog
The checkout process is a popular area of your site to test, and for good reason. When a visitor has added items to cart and clicks the “proceed to checkout” button, it’s a good indication of purchase intent! But often carts are abandoned early in the process – even at the login screen. Your design and copy on this page have a major impact on whether customers figure out which option is right for them (sign in, create account or guest checkout) and make it smoothly through to the next step.
As I’ve written about before, Amazon and Sears’ radio button approach is likely the “path of least resistance.” But if you want to test for yourself, the following is an inspiration gallery of 4 different approaches to log in: the aforementioned radio button, two-option, three-option and expanded/one-page.
Must read for anyone involved in usability and web design..
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Benchmarking digital marketing Presentation > Smart Insights Digital Marketing
View more presentations from Dave Chaffey.Why benchmarking your online capabilities matters
I believe that external and internal benchmarking of your digital marketing capabilities is important for managers reviewing their online strategy since it answers these types of questions:
- Are we effective+efficient in our digital marketing?
- What is the “size of the prize” – are we tapping into the market effectively?
- How do we compare to direct competitors?
- How do we compare to out-of-sector competitors – we need to know this if we want to be best in breed?
- How can we see where we’re strong and weak through internal data?
So benchmarking helps highlight failings which can be worked on, but also shows how we companies can strive to be best-in-breed as they progress towards their goals.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Landing Page Best Practices: the definitive guide #infographic - Visual Website Optimizer Blog
Importance of Landing Pages
How important are landing pages for paid marketing? Why can’t a company simply redirect traffic to its homepage? What is the actual purpose of landing pages?
Landing pages are critical for any promotion specific marketing – but in particular for paid marketing where a measured ROI is essential to your success (and your ability to gain budgetary approval). The reason why you want to direct your paid traffic to a landing page vs. your homepage is that your homepage is often designed to be a generic entry point to your brand and business. It may contain references to many products or services – rendering the ability for a potential customer to find your intended conversion path amidst 40-70 links unlikely at best – impossible at worst. Which leads nicely into the third part of your question. The purpose of a landing page is to provide a hyper-focused experience that is designed to accomplish the singular conversion goal of your marketing campaign.
Monday, September 27, 2010
20 Fantastic Usability & Conversion Analysis Tools | SpyreStudios
Once you’ve built or designed a website, it’s absolutely vital that you perform some degree of usability testing to ensure that it’s functioning as it should. Analyzing conversion rates (the percentage of visitors to your site who perform a desired action) is also a must.