ProFlowers, Office Depot, and the others see profitable results from not only driving their customers to the site, but in satisfying their needs once they arrived at the site.

Good user-experience design is not just about designing a flashy UI, it’s about the entire experience, and the website is just part of that experience. Having worked with the ProFlowers staff, I can assure you that they leave no stone unturned. I’m sure the same us true for Office Depot and Land’s End, etc. I do know that Office Depot has a User-Experience Team (I’ve met them) and it’s quite likely that has an impact on their successful conversion rates.

That’s not to say that a user-experience design can make bad products, sites, or services successful, but a bad one can certainly kill a good product. User-experience is only one part of the recipe, but without the chocolate, it’s just not a chocolate cake.

The same doesn’t necessarily hold true for other products. I might just be having a hard time getting my head out of the box tonight though.

This same approach has been just as successful on a host of other projects, including medical devices, such as Pyxis (Cardinal Health), and web apps, such as FedEx Kinko’s Print On-line tool. Both of which we designed.

No, I’m not trying to beat my drum. I’m trying to help you understand that there are some really talented teams out there that use a task-oriented design approach that really works. Be sure your team knows how to do real User-Centered Design and you, too, could be a success.

You may also be interested in reading the analysis of January’s numbers that Bryan did. I think you’ll find that it’s a good baseline explanation of what happens month over month in certain sectors.

In this case, ProFlowers.com’s strong email campaigns clearly helped it convert all of that Mothers’ Day traffic it must have gotten. Still, whatever the circumstances, I think we can all agree that 36% is highly impressive.

But I encourage all of you to check it out for yourself. Go to the ProFlowers homepage and click just about any link. You’ll end up on a category page with a URL ending in “SplitA” or “SplitB”. There’s no question that the secret to their success stems from our motto: “Always Be Testing!”

Hope that helps!

I’d like to know how they ties back into the published general “referral conversion rate” and if you have any data showing which channels are most likely to feed the 35% figure.

Apologies if this is self-evident.

That’s just begging for a Case Study and some serious reverse analysis by the rest of us wannabe conversion rate superheroes.

Where’s my cape Alfred?

Coremetrics LIVEmark has the benchmarking data and Nielsen Online publishes the ecommerce conversion data. Both sources are linked to in the post.

Here’s a cornucopia of great stats for affiliates, niche marketers & PPC affiliates. Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate, Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, Average PPC Cost per Click by Category by Month so far this year.
……