1. It’s often where “low-hanging fruit” grows. Conversion obstacles can often be removed quickly, leading to large gains in a short period of time.
2. It’s an area where you’ve already succeeded in persuading the prospect. They are in the Late Stage of their buying process, so a relatively low investment can give you a relatively high return.  In other words, you don’t have to produce pages and pages of persuasive content to move the visitor forward in her buying process.
3. Customer expectations regarding their online shopping experiences are rising every day. If your competitor has a more optimized checkout, they may be taking market share from you.

There’s a very wide spectrum of online selling solutions, from a PayPal button on a single sales page to a highly-customized checkout with a floating/sliding/shining interface and behaviorally-targeted cross-selling.  Still, FutureNow’s clients tend to fall into 1 of 2 camps:  those with a 3rd-party cart and those with a custom-built cart.

There are pros and cons to each, which I’ll touch on briefly, but please don’t consider this brief post the authoritative work on the subject–there’s lots of research and reviews out there on the various shopping cart investment options.

3rd Party Shopping Carts, also known as “canned”: Some of the pros are lower cost, quicker time to market, and the efficiencies/convenience gained when you buy a package that handles payment gateway, fraud protection, SSL encryption, etc.  Some of the cons are lack of control over look and feel, lack of control over the user experience, and more difficulties encountered with testing and optimization.  The tradeoffs seem pretty straightforward, but a lot depends on the IT resources you have at your disposal.

Custom Shopping Carts: Some of the pros are a user experience that’s more tightly integrated with the rest of your site, better tracking for better analytics, easier to make changes and add features, and easier integration with testing tools like Google Website Optimizer.  The obvious cons are higher cost, more operational overhead, and slower time to market.  Again, the tradeoffs are the same, and a lot depends on your company’s resources, budget, and business goals.

Those prospects we speak with who are interested in optimizing for a higher return on their eCommerce investments often ask questions like: Can I optimize my 3rd party shopping cart? The answer is a definitive “Yes!” even on the most restrictive 3rd party carts. One of our clients enjoyed a 38% increase month-over-month in their “funnel conversion rate” just by adding some reassuring copy and links only in the areas of their cart they had access to: the header and the footer!

That’s an extreme example, but with our guidance, clients can make the best of their current platform, whatever it happens to be.  And many clients, after getting a few “wins,” decide they want to upgrade from a 3rd party cart to a partially or fully custom cart.  In that situation, we often work to optimize their checkout before it goes live, saving them time and money, and then continue to refine the customer experience and persuasiveness of the live cart through more formal testing. We also work with several implementation partners who grok Persuasion Architecture and can build custom carts based on OnTarget recommendations.

The point of all of this is that you shouldn’t defer or avoid Optimization based on what type of checkout platform you have.  Persuasion Architecture is “platform-agnostic,” and the best time for Optimization is always “Now.”

The ones who make it through will be those who are passionate about the customer experience, AND who are able to prioritize their work between now and the “Holiday Crunch” so that the hours expended actually impact the number of sales they make.

Where do you start if you want your site to be a stellar performer this Holiday Season?  A great place for most to start is on Shopping Cart Abandonment.  That’s low in your sales funnel, where you’re losing customers who were already acquired via marketing and persuaded to buy from you!

Let’s examine a prioritized list of reasons shoppers listed that caused them to abandon shopping carts.  Then, we’ll offer actionable suggestions corresponding to each concern.  The data comes from the 8th Annual Merchant Survey, conducted by PayPal and comScore in April of this year.

#1 High shipping charges

We’re all aware of this challenge, and it’s somewhat out of your hands, but there are things you can do.  One is to thing is to test different shipping offers in the cart.  Another, if you have a certain order value that qualifies for free shipping, is to display how much more the customer needs to qualify.  For example, “You are $xx.xx away from free shipping!  Continue shopping »”

#2 Wanted to comparison shop

Make sure you’re saving customer carts for at least 30 days, maybe more for the Holidays.  A recent study sponsored by McAfee showed that the average time span between visiting a site and checking out was 34 hours! Acknowledge that this behavior is occurring and plan for it.  If you’re sending “cart recovery” emails inside of 24 hours, you may be really annoying your prospective customers!

#3 Leaving to Google a coupon code

If you have a coupon code capture field on your “View Shopping Cart” page, you may consider moving that capture later in the checkout process, when prospects are more ‘invested’ in the process and less likely to bail and go “coupon Googling.”  Some of our clients offer coupons right on their site as a way to combat this behavior, and it works.

#4 Couldn’t find preferred payment option

Most eStore owners offer a proper assortment of payment options, BUT are your customers seeing them at the point of concern?  We call these Point of Action Assurances.  When the prospect is in your cart, and wondering about their payment options, are you reassuring them at the point of action that you offer BillMeLater, PayPal, etc.?  Test different placements of those assurances.

#5 Item unavailable at checkout

Yikes!  This issue simply needs to be dealt with on your product pages, before the cart.  If an item is out of stock, why not capture an email so you can notify when the item is back in stock?  Zappos.com does a good job of this when a certain size of shoe is out of stock.

#6 Couldn’t find customer support

Similar to #4, most online stores do offer good customer service options, but sometimes your prospects aren’t seeing them at the appropriate point in the cart.  Test those placements.  Also, if you use live chat support, and the chat service is “offline,” what is the customer experience like?

#7 Security concerns

Similar to #1, this is somewhat out of your hands…the Web isn’t 100% safe for shoppers, and they know it.  But, Point of Action Assurances, 3rd party security seals, and credibility of design are key.  Another great opportunity for testing different placements and different seals in the checkout.

Blogger’s Note: Apologies for excluding other winter holidays in the title of this post; I was just going for alliteration

As I relate the following three eCommerce mishaps, be thinking about whether you can eradicate all of them from your business by the time the “Holiday Rush” hits. ALL are preventable, if you start today and take one item at a time.

Let’s start at the “precipitating event;” the spark that lit my desire to shop online…

1. An email with a promo code arrived.  w00t!  They paid attention to past purchases, and sent me a great promotion: 10% off a brand I’ve purchased before, and free shipping if the order exceeds a certain amount.

How They’re Losing Sales: Despite not mentioning an expiration date for the promo code, it was expired by the time I reached checkout.  I’m notoriously slow for opening emails from online retailers, but I bet I’m not alone.  Creating a sense of urgency with an expiration date is fine, but remember that shoppers sometimes go weeks without going through their personal email accounts to read your promo codes.

And now it’s Customer Service’s turn…

2. When the promo code came up as expired, I was understandably disappointed.  I’d just spent a fair amount of my weekend building up enough value in my shopping cart to qualify for the free shipping (Yes, I’m cheap.)  My credit card was out of my wallet.  So, I clicked the live chat in the cart to see if they’d extend the promo code, or give me an equivalent one.

How They’re Losing Sales: The live chat agent, while polite and earnest, was not able to do anything to help me (be a cheapskate).  They weren’t empowered by their employer to get creative and save me from abandoning my cart.  They suggested I call the “real” Customer Service during regular M-F business hours.  So my guess is that the live chat is being outsourced, which is fine, but if they aren’t empowered to save sales, they’re probably not giving good ROI.

Now stepping up to the plate, Technology…

3. I came back the next day with the intention of calling the retailer and trying to get them to extend the promo code or give me the equivalent deal.  So, I returned to the site and clicked “My Cart” to review what I’d put in there, and have it on-screen when I called.

How They’re Losing Sales: They didn’t save my cart! So many sites are saving cart items via cookie that I assumed my items would be there the following day or week.  So now I’m definitely not going to re-build my cart AND call them to try and negotiate the promo code.  I’m going to just repress the whole memory…maybe I’ll even forget the retailer’s brand in the process!

These 3 blunders may seem unconnected from a business perspective, but from a buyer perspective, they were all part of a persuasion scenario that broke down and turned a VERY motivated shopper into a lost sale.

I do like the site, and hope they can address these issues and stay in business.  But they and others will have a very painful holiday sales season if they don’t treat the disparate parts as a unified buying experience that must be nearly flawless to be profitable.

Here are 5 key, unanswered questions (beyond shipping costs) of the shopping cart:

1. Do you offer alternate forms of payment (aside from credit card)?
2. Are you safe and secure?
3. Why are you asking for this information?
4. Do I have to set up an account to buy?
5. Do I get to review my order before we transact?

I recently bought a Father’s Day present online from a gift retailer, and their overall shopping cart process was “OK.”  I would give it a “B-” grade; it was good enough to get me through the purchase without bailing, but not nearly good enough to earn brand loyalty.  But, they did a good job of clearly answering the 5 Questions, and it was enough to help them “Get The Cash.”

I captured some elements of their billing page so you could see how their design answers the 5 unanswered customer questions.  When you click on the screenshots, can you pick which design element answers which question?

Are you adequately answering the 5 unanswered questions? Whether your confidence level is low, high, or somewhere in between, we know you could run some interesting tests to validate your assumptions about how well you’re doing, and you might increase your funnel conversion rate in the process!  Want help?  Let us know.

Never?

You mean no one has ever blocked the exit and said something like, “Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart, why didn’t you buy it?”

It sounds funny until you realize that most online remarketing services offer to do exactly that to your website visitors.  They’ll pester them with e-mails, pop-ups, and phone calls should they have the bad fortune of visiting your site, adding something to your shopping cart, and then not buying it.

Why would otherwise sane e-tailers revert to such uncivil, gorilla-like tactics?  Really bad assumptions about both human nature and the nature of online shopping.  They simply haven’t compared what they’re doing to that kind of offline analogy.  So here are the bad assumptions, along with a few suggestions on how to correct them and what to do instead:

Assumption #1: Everyone is a late stage buyer

Related assumptions: Everyone who puts something in your shopping cart has a full-blown intent to purchase that item, and it was just chance or a shopping cart flaw that caused them to “abandon” your cart.  Cart abandonment is caused within the cart itself.

Corrections:

• Lots of people research and comparison-shop before they buy.
• Adding an item to cart is often a means of comparison shopping
• Adding an item to cart is often the only way to get important information for making the buying decision – stuff like shipping costs, whether express delivery is available, gift options etc.
• Most lost sales are caused by a lack of information and persuasion on the product page and the rest of the website – not by the cart itself.

Assumption #2: Long-term effects will parallel short-term gain

Related assumptions: sales that you recover from abusive or annoying tactics are easily tied to increased revenue and therefore are more important than the much-harder-to-measure ill will and annoyance created by those same techniques.  That the successes are as cumulative as the ill will generated.

Corrections:

• “He who would run his business with visible figures alone will soon have neither business nor visible figures to work with.”  -    W. Edwards Deming
• Don’t mistake a lack of hate e-mail or complaints as a lack of passionate response.  Or at the least, find out a way to measure the offense or annoyance you’re causing amongst the visitors who you don’t convert through your remarketing efforts.    If more people are converted than are pissed off, and the converted become repeat buyers, then keep doing what you’re doing.  But have the discipline to find out for sure.
• Pissed off people are a lot more likely to share their experiences than a visitor converted through remarketing tactics.  And even the converted visitor will be less likely to do ANY further early stage shopping from you now that they know what to expect from putting an item in your cart or visiting your checkout page.
• Ask any remarketing service what the longer-term trends for their customers have been.  If they can’t tell you overall impact on their clients conversion rates for periods of at least 1-2 years, you should be very, very suspicious.

Assumption #3:  It never hurts to ask.

Related assumptions: that the mere form of a question /offer renders it impossible to offend visitors’ sensibilities or violate their sense of privacy and online safety.

Corrections:

• Read this Seth Godin post
• Imagine that you had only started to fill out a check-out form, had not ever hit any kind of “submit” or “enter” button before closing out, but now have that website e-mailing and calling you because they pulled the info off of their server in real-time, as you typed it into the form.  How do you feel about that?  Think this thing doesn’t happen?  It does.
• A website forces you to create an account in order to checkout.  You create one.  Then you see that they gouge their customers on shipping charges.  You close out of the process and now you’re receiving spam from that company/website.  Are you EVER likely to do business with them in this or any other lifetime?

So are all automated responses and attempts to “save the sale” a bad idea?

Absolutely not.  Just let your offline sense of what’s appropriate guide you in your applications of this online technology. Pushy sales clerks can kill brick and mortar sales just as easily as over-aggressive re-marketing techniques for the simple reason that human nature doesn’t change just because a person goes online.  In fact, I frequently recommend Why We Buy to Web optimization specialists and online copywriters for exactly this reason.

So to use that offline analogy, let’s say you are looking at a more expensive bottle of wine and that the store owner sees you put it back on the shelf to grab a few other cheaper bottles.

Would it be ok for the clerk to approach you, mention that the bottle you were looking at is one of the best buys he has in the store, guarantee you’ll love it, and offer to give you a discount to get you to try a bottle?   Or for him to show you similar bottles closer to your price range?

As long as the clerk was respectful and took “no” for an answer, there’s no problem with that at all, right?  So how could you do it online?

• You could show special offers on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise during the checkout process
• You could have a button on your product page that says “alert me to any specials or discounts on this product,” and then follow-up with a special e-mail offer AFTER the visitor has given you permission to contact them.
• For completed sales – and completed sales ONLY! – you could send a follow-up e-mail with special deals on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise
• And a few other techniques that I’m sure you’ll come up with yourself if you spend some time thinking about it.  I don’t want to give away all my secrets without exacting any mental work from my readers

All of these things work just as well online as their offline counterparts, which is far more than can be said for most “gorilla” (re)marketing tactics.

P.S.  Before going through all this trouble to remarket, why not make sure you’ve fully optimized your checkout process to begin with?  Bryan Eisenberg’s initial and follow-up blog posts on this are a great place to start.

We at FutureNow are big proponents of setting up a business culture of testing, optimization, and continuous improvement.  There are lots of advantages like improved conversion rates, bigger bottom lines, surviving tough economic times, getting past draining internal debates, and so much more.

Another advantage that we haven’t talked about as much is that an optimization culture can get you past the dangers of “best practices.” Many of our clients have implemented the “best practices” of other sites (or even other industries) and then wonder why they aren’t seeing big gains.  The main reason is that they’ve merely copied other sites’ ideas, and not tested to validate that those practices will work for their own unique site and business model.

I saw an interesting deviation from an industry “best practice” the other day, and whether it’s true or not, I imagine that testing allowed the site designers to go their own way instead of following the herd.

See the screenshot from Amazon.com’s “submit order” page.  Take a look at how they’ve handled the common issue of getting the purchaser to agree to terms and conditions before purchasing.  Many sites and site designers struggle with their Legal departments on how to secure agreement to terms while not reducing the quality of user experience (and conversion rate).

If you’ve read Always Be Testing, you’ve seen how we reference Amazon.com’s many evolutions of their site designs over time which come out of a very disciplined testing and optimization culture.

The common “best practice” in this scenario is to either:
a) have a checkbox near the call to action button that says something like “You must check the box to agree to terms before you submit your order.”
b) have copy near the call to action button that says something like  “By clicking the button below, you agree to our terms and conditions.”
In either case, the common design pattern is to hyperlink to the terms and conditions (near the call to action) so concerned visitors can read them in full.

Now note the subtle deviation from “best practice” on Amazon.com’s current page:

• They have no checkbox.  One less click between the visitor and Getting the Cash.
• They have the standard legal language at the top of the page in a much less prominent position.  It’s outside of the ‘box’ that contains the order information.
• The hyperlinks to the terms that the visitor is accepting are in the footer of the page; nowhere near the call to action.  You’d really have to be looking for them to find them.

So how did Amazon.com get the gumption to leave “best practice” design in the dust?  Again, I can’t be sure of this, but we wager that testing results and analytics data played a major part in the design.  I highly doubt that their Legal experts are playing fast and loose with legal and financial risk!

So there you have one of the less-thought-about benefits of a testing and optimization culture.  Only through testing can you gather the data you need to safely and comfortably make the decisions that work for your business, not your industry.  Best practices are pretty dangerous when you haven’t tested to validate and re-validate them.

As we’ve said many times, don’t copy Amazon.com’s design just because they’re an industry leader.  Do your own testing to gather insight, then make the design decisions that work for you.  And in the spirit of shameless plugs, we’re here to help if you need us.

As obvious as that statement is, many still seem to deny the equally obvious implication: you won’t keep profit margins healthy unless you actively take business away from someone else – either from direct competitors, or from businesses outside your market/category.  If the pumpkin pie gets smaller, you’ll have to cut a fatter slice in order to get the same amount of holiday pie.

But how can you do that on the short term?  With the holiday season upon us, what can you do right now to ensure window shoppers actually buy from you (instead of someone else)?

Watch this video and take a hard look at how you can improve your websites with holiday focused Point-of-Action assurances.

Then read this article to get 10 outstanding “must do” action items.  Some of them will take longer than others, but many of the earlier recommendations could be executed so as to yield results for the Christmas and holiday seasons.

Plus, don’t forget to register for our upcoming webinar tomorrow so you can leverage Google’s Quality Score – the Secret Factor to PPC Success for your holiday pay per click campaigns.

1. The Homepage Dump: You add an item to your cart and are thrown into the checkout process.  You’ve got another item on your shopping list, so you click the little link that says “Continue Shopping.”  You’re dumped on the homepage.  This is especially bad when you’ve done a lot of searching and results-filtering, and now it’s all gone.  It really does feel like you’ve just been dumped!  I can’t think of any good reason why the homepage is the proper place to land a visitor to continue shopping.
2. The Painful Multi-Item Purchase: Many shopping carts make no distinction between adding to cart and checking out.  As soon as you add to cart, the website assumes that you want to checkout and sends you down that path.  But what if you’re not ready?  We all know from the offline world that putting a bag of chips in a real shopping cart, and standing in the checkout line secretly reading tabloid headlines are two very different things, right? More robust shopping carts allow an item to be added to the cart without interrupting the browsing process.  When visitors are ready to checkout, they intuitively know how to initiate that process from any page with one click.  Threadless.com and Amazon.com both do decent jobs of this in their own unique ways.  A good test for this one is to go through a multi-item purchase on your site without using any of your cross-selling or up-selling elements.  It should still be easy to browse >> add to cart >> browse again >> add to cart again >> check out.

Hopefully, you’ve skimmed these two issues and they don’t apply.  Pat yourself on the back and maybe focus on testing and optimizing your cart instead.

So as you ramp your sites and marketing up for the Holidays, do you have a few innovations up your sleeve?

Let’s face it. Despite the economic troubles, people are still going to want to give gifts, and find the best gifts they can for their loved ones.  They’re just going to be more cautious and spendthrift.  So empathize with that sentiment as they shop with you.

Encourage them to take their time and find the right deals.  Advise them to buy multiple items to save on their overall shipping spend (Amazon has always ruled this game in my opinion).  Heck, if you’re really bold, cross-sell them with similar items that cost less…it’s sounds crazy, but they might convert instead of abandon.

For a more concrete example, think about gift cards.  A certain percentage of gift shoppers will always end up giving gift cards, and that means a certain percentage of your early-2009 traffic will be gift card redeemers.  The buying path for gift cards is usually OK, but have you optimized it?  Do you plan to test and optimize it in the weeks leading up to the Holidays?

Now think about the card redemption process, which I think has even more room for improvement.  Here’s the experience I’ve always had when redeeming Holiday gift cards online:

1. Receive the card, note how much is on it.
2. Sometime between and 12/26 and 7/4, decide to redeem it (I’m a notoriously bad procrastinator).
3. Look on the back of the card for redemption instructions.
4. Following the instructions, type in the URL and land on the homepage.
5. Now I’m overwhelmed with thousands of products to choose from and no assistance offered.
6. I poke around a bit, maybe try to search by price range, and maybe buy something.

Boring.  Uninspired.  A bit tedious.

Here’s a dream of a better experience:

1. Receive the card, note how much is on it.
2. Sometime between and 12/26 and 1/31, decide to redeem it (Made a New Year’s Resolution about procrastinating less).
3. Look on the back of the card for redemption instructions.
4. Following the instructions, type in the URL and land on a unique landing page or a microsite, 100% dedicated to gift card redemption. No distractions.
5. I can select the value of the gift card and be shown ONLY relevant price range items, or receive a few friendly suggestions of ways to spend the $, or find out how other shoppers have been spending their gift cards.
6. The checkout flow is customized to my unique task of checking out with a gift card.

Those are just a few changes that seem achievable.  Pair those changes with optimization, and you might turn 1-time gift card redeemers into repeat purchasers.
If anyone wants to share their innovative Holiday Season ideas, feel free, but we understand why you wouldn’t necessarily want to give up your competitive advantage .

Can anyone give examples of extraordinary 2007-08 Holiday gift card experiences out there on the Web?

I clicked the nice, big, obvious “Add to Cart” button to dive headlong into the conversion funnel.  ERROR.  Some gobbledegook that only a developer would understand.  No phone number.  I did what anyone in the mood to buy would do – I clicked the back button and tried again.  ERROR.  I clicked back again, and luckily for this eTailer, the toll free number was prominently displayed in the active window, AND I didn’t have any of their competitor sites top-of-mind.

Rep:  Welcome to [store with error-ridden website], how can I help you?

Me: Well, I’m trying to buy [Item X] on your website, but I can’t, so can you start by checking whether it’s in stock.

Rep: OK, I can help you buy [Item X] no problem.

Now, let me imagine that conversation as it should have been…

Rep: Welcome to [store with error-ridden website], how can I help you?

Me: Well, I’m trying to buy [Item X] on your website, but I can’t, so can you start by checking whether it’s in stock.

Rep: Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that!  What happened?  Can you describe what you were doing when our website failed you?  Did you get an error message?  What browser were you using?

A little empathy would’ve been effective and memorable…maybe even blog-worthy. Don’t sound matter-of-fact that your website blew up, or I’ll never use your online channel again, and your brand has been damaged.

And I’m sure the technical team behind that website would’ve LOVED to get their hands on the error code that I’d written down and done some tinkering.  And they should’ve, because that website was bleeding money yesterday.

Whether it’s the Contact Us form on a B2B site, the Sign Up form on a social networking site, or the Checkout of an eCommerce site, they all have forms in common. And in every case, forms are what stands between our site visitors and the action we’ve persuaded them to take.

The irony is that companies spend thousands, sometimes millions, on making their sites functional, accessible, usable, intuitive, and sometimes even persuasive, but don’t always spend enough on making their transactional pages (forms) as optimized as possible. Add to that the money spent starting a relationship with customers via online or offline marketing.  And when it’s time to take that relationship the next level and close the deal, online forms have the responsibility.

So like the title of this post, I have questions:

• How much have you spent on your homepage and landing pages in the last 12 months?
• How much have you spent on your forms?
• How many resources work on your homepage and landing pages? Designers, testers, marketers, copywriters?
• How many resources work on your forms?
• Do you test your homepage and landing pages?
• Do you test your forms?
• Do your homepage and landing pages employ the latest technology like flash, video, AJAX, and widgets?
• Do your forms employ the latest technology?

Of course homepages and landing pages are important, and deserve lots of attention.  But don’t forget that the bottom of your conversion funnel is where all the serious action is.  It’s where dollars either flow into your bank account or…elsewhere.

So what can you do, short of reading the whole book yourself?

1. Start a “Forms Task Force” within your company–make it cross-disciplinary–and take a good, hard look at your forms.
2. Look at every question on your forms.  To paraphrase Web Form Design, consciously decide to “keep,” “cut,” “postpone,” or “explain” every question you ask your customers.
3. Once you’ve revisited your forms, begin the ongoing process of testing and optimization.

Editors note: You can also learn more about the book and read the author’s book blog here.

Our good friends at Rosenfeld Media, were kind enough to extend a 10% discount to our readers on their books; just use coupon code GROKDOT for your 10% off.

Shopping Made Easy

Shoplet makes it effortless for visitors to have their questions answered on the spot, when they need it most. It’s a stretch from the all too frequent task of searching for purchase assurance links, such as return policies and shopping guarantees. Although, there are a number of tests I’d like to see on Shoplet’s shopping cart, they’ve done a great job reassuring visitors of their purchase.

Reassuring visitors by answering their questions is not exclusive to e-commerce sites, but for lead generation sign-up forms as well. When was the last time you tested the effectiveness of your Point of Action assurances?

If you want other proven methods of boosting confidence and trust on your landing pages, sign-up for our Always Be Testing webinar on July 9th, FutureNow’s free monthly webinar series with Google. Hosted by Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder & EVP at FutureNow, and Tom Leung, Business Product Manager at Google, you’ll receive practical tips and advice on testing the effectiveness of your marketing and usage of Google Website Optimizer.

Editor’s Note: Peter knows quite a bit about the power of Point of Action assurances. One of his clients will be featured during the webinar and they had an increase in conversion of over 100%.

Jeffrey claimed to be sticker shocked from shipping cost inflation, a common reaction while shopping online. One minute, you think you know the whole price. Then — bam — you proceed to checkout, only to find that the price has shot up as much as 25%.

Was Jeff being cheap? Probably. But it’s understandable.

The truth is that online shopping has spoiled us. When Amazon ships for free — at least it feels that way if you buy into Amazon Prime — and when Zappos wants you to return those shoes (yes, really), anything less feels like a cheap plastic substitute for the real thing.

ToysRUs.com does so many things right. The product image views are clear and show multiple angles. The customer reviews are helpful and thoroughly integrated. I could go on, but the important thing — the reason they still haven’t sold Jeffrey a Fisher Price Grow to Pro Basketball hoop — is that they set a poor expectation of total cost before checkout.

Here we see Toys ‘R’ Us insisting that their price is $39.99; a price even our CEO can afford.

Sounds like a great deal!

And look at these reviews:

Wow, that’s a popular basketball hoop! You’d think he were buying an iPhone.

But when Jeffrey proceeds to checkout…

Fifteen dollars isn’t a big deal, but it’s something you’d never be asked to pay in a toy store. It’s not as though Jeff doesn’t have fifty-five dollars to spend on his nephew. [Author's Note: Jeff has reminded me that he was shown a $22 shipping fee, making the $40 toy cost over $70 after tax. This begs the question as to why we were shown different shipping charges since neither of us was asked to enter a postal code and we visited the website from the same office.] It’s just that, like you, me, and the millions of people who shop online, we’re turned off by hidden fees.

Is it believable that it costs the company $15 to ship this product? Of course. It looks big and bulky, if not heavy. Is it reasonable to expect them to ship it for less than that? No! In fact, it’s very unreasonable. But logic has very little to do with it. This is about setting the right expectation.

People rationalize buying decisions with logic, but we make buying decisions based on feelings.

As Sitebrand’s Carolyn Gardener points out,

. . . when shipping becomes a pain point due to lousy check-out procedures, strict delivery options and exorbitant fees, the odds of cart abandonment increase.

When you consider the abandonment literally squashes someone’s intent to buy, not to mention the e-store’s ability to make money, it’s a very serious issue.

How to Avoid Shipping Shock

Jeffrey insists that he still plans on buying the basketball hoop from toysrus.com — and I’m pretty sure he will — but let’s brainstorm some ways for e-tailers to reduce the emotional impact of shipping cost shock.

• Offer multiple shipping options - Why should the retailer choose the shipping method? By giving the customer their choice of delivery options, the conversation becomes more about how soon they want it and how much the parcel service will charge them, not how much you’re going to charge them. Doing this also makes it easier to provide some level of free shipping. But good luck getting anyone who’s been spoiled by Zappos’ free overnight shipping policy to get excited because you offer complimentary snail mail. Still, as long as you show the costs for each shipping option right there in the shopping cart, you should be fine.
• Include shipping in price – Why not say “all prices include shipping” upfront on the product page? Some sites allow you to enter a postal code on the product page to estimate shipping rates. Others use new e-commerce technologies to show an estimated cost to ship to the visitor’s current location. If you don’t want to do either of those, at least tell the customer that shipping is not included in the price on the product page. This is especially true for larger items that are expensive to ship.
• Offer free shipping – A lot of established retailers may consider this to be a channel conflict. (”Why should we offer free shipping online? It would kill our profit margins.”) Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but if it’s at all a viable option, it will almost certainly lead to increased volume. Jeffrey would have gladly bought the same product on Amazon, but they told him it would take 1 – 3 months to ship. The irony, of course, is that without free shipping, it might take Jeffrey 1 – 3 months to actually buy it!

What other ways are smart e-tailers reducing shipping shock? If you have examples, please do share them in the comments.

. .

Want to reduce cart abandonment without sticker-shocking your CFO? We can help.

Quick question for anyone with a lead-generation or e-commerce site…

Which is easier: Getting people to trust your website and complete its web form or checkout process, or getting them to literally donate their hearts and eyeballs?

Take your time.

Apparently, the answer depends on where they live. While 99.98% of Austrians agree to donate their organs upon death, only 12% of Germans do the same. Virtually all French citizens will donate a kidney to save a life, but the Brits? Only 17% of them seem willing. Meanwhile, your chances of having a heart (transplant) are nearly four times better if you’re having a triple bock in Antwerp than they are if you’ve already had a triple bypass in Amsterdam.

Seems odd, doesn’t it? Take a look at this graph from a recent Freakonomics article:

Here’s how Dan Ariely — Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, principal investigator of the MIT Media Lab’s eRationality group, and author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions — explains this bit of research (from colleagues Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein) in the Freakonomics post mentioned above:

…It turns out that it is the design of the form at the D.M.V. In countries where the form is set as “opt-in” (check this box if you want to participate in the organ donation program) people do not check the box and as a consequence they do not become a part of the program. In countries where the form is set as “opt-out” (check this box if you don’t want to participate in the organ donation program) people also do not check the box and are automatically enrolled in the program. In both cases large proportions of people simply adopt the default option.

You might think that people do this because they don’t care — that the decision about donating their organs is so trivial that they can’t be bothered to lift up the pencil and check the box. But in fact the opposite is true.

This is a hard emotional decision about what will happen to our bodies after we die and what effect it will have on those close to us. It is because of the difficulty and the emotionality of these decisions that they just don’t know what to do, so they adopt the default option (by the way this also happens to physicians making medical decisions, and also to people making investment and retirement decisions).

[...] The moment you realize that your intuition about your own behavior might be wrong it is clear that you need another, more objective input.

This is what experiments are all about. We could have never intuited the opt-in, opt-out effect, nor could we have intuited the magnitude of this effect, and this is why empiricism is so important.

If you know anyone who’s skeptical about testing content from the visitor’s perspective, please take a moment to share this with them.

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[Image credit: Kistyn E]

He’s no hero. No, sir. Just an ordinary guy placed in extraordinary circumstances.

His mission: End the plight of abandoned shopping carts everywhere.

Fillmore has a natural talent for saving carts. He was born to do it. He is… The Cart Whisperer.

. . . everywhere I go, I see shopping carts tossed aside. Cast off. Abandoned. In super-value-store parking lots. And, more and more, on the interweb which is online. People say, “I’m all gonna fill up my shopping cart with things,” and then before they hit the BUY button, they say, “Oh, I don’t feel secure. I ain’t buying this stuff here.”

Well, boo hoo, cowards. How do you think that cart fills? Left there, full up and then abandoned before she can fulfill her cartly duties? Well, that’s why I rescue abandoned carts. And why I welcome the support of VeriSign and their EV SSL Product Thing. Join our ranks, and put your cart abandonment issues to rest.

How do you think that cart fills, indeed. Won’t somebody please think of the carts!?

Cart Awareness Starts at Home

Now, before you go door-to-door petitioning for cart awareness, you should know that — although we wish he were — The Cart Whisperer ain’t a real guy. No, ma’am. What we have here is a clever viral marketing campaign from VeriSign.

Let’s take a peek at a day in the life of Liberty….

According to VeriSign:

The … campaign is aimed at highlighting the pain companies experience as they try to understand why consumers fill online shopping carts, only to abandon them before buying. In the face of an uncertain economy, online retailers are clamoring to find ways to turn shoppers into buyers. At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues lost to abandoned carts.

From a branding perspective, this works — assuming that people actually end up going to NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com (otherwise, they’d have no idea VeriSign was behind it). At the moment, though, over 1 million people have seen “The Cart Whisperer” clip.

Only time will tell whether this campaign boosts VeriSign’s bottom line, but it sure does its part to spread cart awareness.

On our mark. Get set. Trust us!

Trustmark logos are helpful, but they’re not the whole answer. If you think adding a trustmark to your e-commerce shop is enough to “end the plight of cart abandonment,” think again. (Sorry, Liberty, but ya cain’t save ‘em all by yer self.)

Trustmarks can boost conversion rates and lower cart abandonment to a degree, but there are many other ways to build trust. Here are three:

• Simplify your privacy statement Roughly 75% of consumers assume that, as long as a site has a privacy policy, it won’t share data with third parties. Not only should you have a privacy policy, it should be clear and concise (e.g., “We value your privacy,” “We will not share your personal information — ever”). Try putting a clear statement like that next to your “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” calls to action and test whether it improves conversion.

• Get a decent “About Us” page. It’s amazing how few small e-tailers make the “About Us” page a priority. If your brand’s logo isn’t trustmark enough, customers need to know more about who you are if they’re going to be comfortable giving you money.

• Optimize your shopping cart. Don’t blame Liberty Fillmore for an 80% abandonment rate. It’s possible you’re not giving would-be customers enough information. Do visitors need to click “Add to Cart” to see your pricing and shipping rates? If so, maybe your cart abandonment rate is misleading. Maybe it’s time to learn a few tricks from Amazon.

Godspeed, Liberty Fillmore. Your noble quest is our own.

. .

Shopping cart lonely? Gonna be in New York on June 3rd? Want to become a cart whisperer?

PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).

Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.

But I’ve got a different request altogether.

I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.

In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.

Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.

Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”

I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.

What do you think?

Chances are, many of you click this “Add to Shopping Cart” button several times throughout the year.

So, why does it always stump audiences of online marketers when I ask them where in the checkout process Amazon has us select a quantity for the item(s) we’re adding-to-cart?

Before you scroll down for the answer, let me give you some popular Add-to-Cart methods to choose from:

#1 — A form field that defaults to “1″ or “0″
#2 — A blank form field to enter the quantity desired
#3 — A drop-down menu (usually from 1 to 9) to select quantity
#4 — A plain Add-to-Cart button that adds a single item to the cart (where you can adjust later)

Did you guess which one yet? Feel good about your choice? Hold that thought.

Amazon’s Add-to-Cart Evolution

I’ll let you know the answer in a moment, and don’t feel bad if you guessed incorrectly. It’s only been a few months since Amazon last changed its checkout process. But that’s not why you haven’t noticed what’s changed. The reason you’re unsure of how Amazon has you Add-to-Cart is because that’s exactly what they’re counting on.

Amazon doesn’t want customers to notice when they’re making changes like these.

Why? Because, for better or for worse, something as simple as an “Add to Cart” button can have a huge impact on the business. Amazon knows this, and they’ve built a culture of website optimization. It’s this foundation that’s made them one of the top-converting websites, month after month.

For Amazon, success comes from a continuous cycle of optimization (measure, refine, test). Compare this rigorous approach to the fact that over 75% of online retailers don’t do any optimization testing, and you’ll begin to see why Amazon remains the envy of e-commerce marketers.

I’ve been snagging images of Amazon’s Ready-to-Buy area (on their product pages) for many years. Let’s look at the evolution of this critical first stage of the checkout process to see what you can learn from it.

PLEASE NOTE: Just because Amazon does it, doesn’t mean you should. They make decisions based on their business needs, not yours.

Point-of-Action Assurances

Here’s an early version of Amazon’s ready-to-buy area:

Their Add-to-Cart button was one of the first to use an irregular shape; a circle with a cart icon on the left, blued to a rectangular button with the “Add to Shopping Cart” message. Notice how many point-of-action assurances there are (”you can always remove it later” on the button, and the lock icon with “Shopping with us is safe. Guaranteed.” right below).

These were the early days of e-commerce, when customers feared that the Earth might implode if they hit the wrong button. Back then, few people felt comfortable putting their credits cards online and Amazon, for the most part, sold books.

The objective: Make people comfortable clicking on the Add-to-Cart button.

“Buy now with 1-Click”

Notice how the wording at the top goes from “Buy from Amazon.com” to the more productive “Ready to Buy?”…

While the Add-to-Cart button stayed the same, with this incarnation, Amazon launched its “1-Click” feature and added it to the “Ready to Buy” area. This design expanded the renamed “Ready to Buy” area to 262 pixels tall.

The objective: Make sure everyone sees the bordered, stand-alone “Ready to Buy” area with the Add-to-Cart and 1-click buttons.

Note how the secondary action (”Add to Wish List”) is roughly the same color as the Add-to-Cart button. That will change.

Removing “you can always remove it later” + Button Shrink

I managed to snag this one while Amazon was running a split test…

Amazon decided to test removing “you can always remove it later” from on the Add-to-Cart button. They replaced it with a similar message (”you can always cancel later”), just below the “Ready to Buy?” header. What’s important here is that the buttons were now condensed, so this cluster of calls to action took up less space.

I think the little notches by the word “or” is a nice touch, don’t you?

The funny thing that happened when Amazon made these changes was that many of our clients at the time decided they should also remove point-of-action assurance from their Add-to-Cart buttons. We told them it would hurt their conversion if they changed it — and, sure enough, against our advice, the clients changed it and conversion dropped. Yet Amazon kept the new buttons. So the question remains…

Why would they switch to buttons that don’t convert as well?

Because conversion isn’t the only metric that matters. If you look closely, you’ll notice they made the “Ready to Buy” area take up about half the space of the previous version. Why? Because they quietly launched a marketplace to resell used goods, deciding it would boost profits if they didn’t have to stock and ship everything themselves — a fundamental shift in their business model.

The objective: Increase profits by showing used books higher up on the page.

(Don’t copy what other people do if you aren’t fully aware of the business issues involved.)

Amazon 2.0

Here we can see that Amazon has gone through a major redesign, and their iconic Add-to-Cart button gets a face-lift:

Notice that it’s the same shape, same colors, but now has a 3D effect. The “Ready to Buy” verbiage is no longer there, and the secondary “Buy with 1-Click” button now requires users to log in if they’re to see it. Also, the used book marketplace gets much more screen real estate. They’re also heavily promoting the A9 Search Engine.

Did you see that they changed the color of the “Add to Wish List” buttons so that only the Add-to-Cart button is the main focus of the page? They’ve even added another secondary action (”Add to Wedding Registry”).

Here’s what it looks like today…

They’re no longer promoting the A9 search engine, the marketplace isn’t taking up as much room, and they’ve added a few more secondary actions (”Add to Shopping List,” “Add to Baby Registry,” and “Tell a Friend”).

As you can see, they’ve added a pull-down menu to adjust quantity, so you don’t have to wait until checkout to change it. So, if you guessed option #3 at the beginning, congratulations, you’re my kind of e-commerce geek.

The objective: Increase Average Order Value by keeping customers engaged in the buying process. This should also lower shopping cart abandonment by reducing the number of steps in the checkout process.

Big Money. Small Change.

Changing your call to action buttons doesn’t guarantee the highest return on investment from website, but it is an easy and popular test.

Amazon has spent many years testing this area, but they’ve tested countless other variables as well. They’ve tested the size and viewing functionality of product images, putting images on the left vs. the right side, the location of product reviews — you name it, they’ve tested it. Still, they continue to optimize this area (formerly known as “Ready to Buy”), making adjustments based on business cycle and market circumstance.

Amazon Wasn’t Built in a Day

Think your website is beyond repair? Tell it to Jeff Bezos. Once upon a time, his website looked like this:

Soon enough, after significant trial, error, and observation, he turned it into this:

Yes, it’s still ugly, but what Bezos realized early on is that, to be a successful online merchant, you need to get a hypothesis and test it if you want something that works.

Are you this dedicated to website optimization?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

So, let’s take a look at some of the changes to their product pages and shopping cart to get a better sense of what they’ve done a good job of so far, and share a few ideas for other changes worth testing…

Better Image Views on Product Pages

As you can see, the site allows you to easily zoom into the product you’re looking at by using your mouse as a virtual magnifying glass. This saves the visitor time by not requiring them to open a pop-up window to view the product in detail — although they provide that option as well, it’s not as helpful as this excellent zoom view. By not forcing the customer into an extra step, the zoom feature will likely reduce Bounce Rate. But more importantly, better product views make people more likely to buy.

Easy Size Adjustments + Cart View

When you add items to the cart, you’re not taken directly to the cart and away from the shopping process. Instead, they acknowledge that your items are in the cart with this mini-cart drop-down on the upper-right side of the screen. After you’ve added the item, the mini-cart retreats to a simple checkout summary (# of items in cart and total price). Of course, you still have the option to go to checkout if you’re done shopping, but they’re not in a rush — in fact, they’d like it if you bought more stuff — which should help increase Average Order Value.

Adjust Your Order Without Leaving the Cart

Once again, OldNavy.com is looking out for the customer — right in the shopping cart, this time. They make editing item details as easy as I’ve seen it on any e-commerce site. One click of the “edit” button brings up this slick tool (pictured above), which allows you to change the size and color of your items in case you have a last-minute change of heart. Now that’s a smart way to lower cart abandonment. (Here are a few more.)

Ideas Worth Testing…

• I’m not sure why they’re advertising “free returns on all womens plus styles” when all the items in my cart are menswear; nor does it make sense that they let me know they have the product “Up to XXXL” when I’ve already chosen “Large” as my size; but those are minor details that shouldn’t have much effect on the shopping process. Still, this is prime real estate they’re wasting by delivering me a message that’s meant for someone else. The OldNavy.com team should consider tailoring these messages based on what customers have already added to cart, and testing whether it improves conversion and/or average order value.

• When planning an e-commerce site, ask yourself at least this one question: “What do I hate about shopping online?” I’d be interested to hear your response in the comments section, but in the meantime, I’m sure that if I were to poll everyone at Future Now, most of us would answer, “When sites make me ‘register’ before checking out.” They should test getting rid of that immediately. If you want to a customer’s permission to be contacted when they’re not currently trying to give you money, the least you could do is ask them instead of forcing the issue. If you do ask — and you most definitely should — please do everyone (your customers and your CFO) a favor and only ask people to ‘register’ after you’ve got both their money. You’ll have their email address by then, anyway, so it’s not as big of a deal at that point.

[Editor's Note: Want more tips on how to optimize your e-commerce site? Read our free white paper on website optimization. Need specific ideas for your checkout process? We can help.]

Bad news first. In aggregate, online retailers fall far short of offering good or even adequate customer experiences. A pathetic 4 out of 330 sites would get a passing grade in Customer Experience 101. It’s frightening to consider how much money is being left on the table and how many conversion opportunities are missed.

The good news? Companies show improvement over the last survey, though they’re falling short on many basics. These basics, however, can be relatively easily addressed and fixed. Companies committed to improving their customers’ online experiences can prioritize lower-cost and less-complex changes to improve their customer experience scores.

Improving Customer Experience Basics

While it’s easy to stare at the puddle of spilled milk and fight back the tears, there’s little profit in it. It’s a bit painful to get a less-than-stellar grade, but the smart marketer will look at missed opportunities and be sure not to miss them again. Provide an intense customer focus, and you’ll see more customers vote for you with their wallets.

Here are some actions retailers can take in the four key customer areas:

• In product presentations, provide:
  • Better and more enticing product descriptions.
  • Better-quality product images.
  • Multiple images.
  • Customer reviews.

• For fulfillment options, offer:
  • Product availability.
  • Easily visible return policies, shipping policies, and guarantees.
  • Customer-friendly and easy-to-read and -understand return/exchange policies.
  • Gift options.

• For checkout options, include:
  • Multiple payment options (e.g., by check, PayPal, etc.).
  • Estimated delivery times, and show in-stock availability for items.
  • In-store pickup where physical stores exist.
  • A progress indicator in the checkout process.
  • Simpler or fewer steps or both in the checkout process.
  • Third-party seals and security assurances.

• For customer service options, implement:
  • Faster and more accurate replies to customer e-mail inquiries.
  • Chat options.
  • A visible phone number for questions and problems.

All these are significant factors that customers have come to expect online. Your customers notice little things that can make a huge difference. Companies that lavish attention on improving customer focus will reap more sales and will experience superior customer-retention rates in the long term.

You can continue reading on my column on ClickZ or read the full study on GrokDotCom.

…seams are important.

Try throwing a baseball or a football without seams.

Wear clothes without seams and you look like you’re on Star Trek.

Seams make it possible to get a grip.

The goal, it seems to me, is not to create things that are seamless. It’s to put the seams in places where they are actually useful.

That’s exactly what Threadless.com does for its customers. If you’ve done business with them before and have selected an item that’s running low in their inventory, and you abandon the checkout process before buying, they’ll send you a follow-up email like this:

Their shirts come with seams, as does their marketing. The copy is spot-on without being pushy. They seem to be doing us a favor. Threadless knows that their customers know that the t-shirt designs they print sell out fast. They don’t shout “buy now!” when we’re just browsing the products. Nope. This message is tailored for people who’ve shown genuine interest. And despite the exclamation points, it reads something like this: “Sorry to bother you, but here’s what you should know about our inventory. If you really do want to buy this item, you should probably do it soon-ish.”

(Hat tip to Rishi at the Better Retail blog for the subtle link to this via comment. Great seam!)

Meanwhile, shoppers go about their lives. Time ticks. The burden of seasonal shopping grows bigger as the number of shopping days until Christmas gets smaller.

Each year the season seems to start earlier. Shoppers are faced with more choices than ever, and online retailers are getting savvier, offering better wares and new technologies all designed to increase sales, average order values, and conversion rates.

How can you get a leg up on competitors? How can you ensure visitors buy from you and not the guys and gals on the domain just a few clicks away?

One powerful tactic is the return/exchange policy point-of-action (POA) assurance.

With current economy concerns, gift buyers are likely to be more frugal than they were in 2006, and online retailers must address that reality.

Continue reading my column on ClickZ…

All of this makes for a case study. Persuasion isn’t a problem for this particular brand; they have legions of fans around the world and have tens of millions of records in the past 15 years. Still, e-commerce is new territory for them, so it’s time for a crash course in conversion rate marketing. I’m going to show you how, despite selling a reported 1.2 million downloads before the album was even released, Radiohead left £’s (tons, actually) on the table — most of which could have been recovered with better planning, minimal web copy, and a simpler checkout process.

Web Copy in its Right Place = No Alarms + No Surprises

A couple weeks ago, when the band announced they would release their new album online — through their own shopping cart, letting people pay whatever they like — Radiohead was widely praised by media and fans alike. The move was hugely disruptive (especially coming from such popular act) and record executives at the major record labels were left shaking in their boots as the likes of Madonna, Oasis and Nine Inch Nails dropped their recording contracts in favor of (non-iTunes) online distribution. Although they’re said to have changed the record industry with the move online, the impact would have been far more substantial had Radiohead anticipated fan’s customer’s questions in advance and addressed them with proper web copy.

Of the four dominant personality types, the slower-paced Methodical and Humanistic fans were the worst hit. Methodicals were upset because, since past Radiohead albums had been available at 320 kilobits per second (kbps) — a superior bitrate, twice that of the 160 kbps version they received — they assumed they’d be getting the best possible bitrate. Methodicals, and people in methodical mode, don’t like being duped over technical specs. Humanistics, meanwhile, were upset because once their Methodical friends (the detail-focused mavens they are) informed them they were given a second-rate product, and they’re likely thinking this is very “un-Radiohead” of them. This video clip from MTV illustrates the variety of reactions among personality types:

Here’s Radiohead’s In Rainbows website. Although “keeping it minimal” seems to have been a considered design choice, some basic copy at each stage to let people know something, anything about the album would have kept word-of-mouth focused on the you-choose-what-to-pay conversation — or even, say, the album — instead of what they didn’t do. The good news for the band, though, is that if they really did want to start a conversation about what music’s worth (as their guitarist mentioned to Rolling Stone), they’d done an amazing job of it. For instance, PureButtons.com paid $1,000 for the album — but the difference between them and Radiohead is that the button company has its online marketing in order (evidence).

A Fitter, Happier, More Productive Checkout

Before purchasing the album, I wanted to see what my friends in the music biz had to say. For instance, URB Magazine editor Joshua Glazer offered this anecdote:

“Funny thing, I couldn’t be bothered to figure out the shopping cart on Radiohead’s site. I tried to enter something in the ‘amount’ space (or what I think was the amount space) and it stayed blank. It was just too vague, so I still had a friend IM me the MP3s. “

As promised, I bought the album at the full, would-be iTunes price of $9.99 (or £4.90). Josh was right, though. They didn’t exactly make this easy.

Unfortunately, this is all too common. There’s no good reason to ask people to register before checkout. In this situation, all they really need is a name, credit card number, address (to verify credit card), and check-box to agree to terms and conditions, and a button that says something like “Place My Order.” If there’s any registration you’d like to lure people into, they need to know why they should do it. It’s like proposing marriage on the first date. Still, it’s the next step that makes the least sense.

Of course, there were two additional steps. I had to enter my credit card info on the following page, with a confirmation page after that. But all of this could have been handled in two steps had they offered registration as an option on the confirmation page instead of hitting me with this hurdle. Also, it would have been nice to know how many steps there would be. A simple breadcrumb indicator at the top to illustrate the steps (e.g., “Step 2 of 4″ or “Register”) would have been nice, as well. People — especially fast-moving Competitive and Spontaneous types — like to know how long things will take. Nothing bleeds the joy out of music like signing a web form. They could have also made this easier for Competitive and Spontaneous types by adding Google Checkout or PayPal as one-step options.

I did finally receive my digital copy of the album. After a couple of listens, it’s pretty good. Not exactly a departure from what they’ve done over the past five years, but they’ve definitely still got it. I’m not quite sure why people are complaining, either. The sound quality is good enough for me, as was the price.

P.S. — If your b(r)and wants to convert multi-channel to multi-platinum, we can help.

[Hat tip to the Wizard of Ads Group's Tim Miles for linking me to the MTV News story, and reminding us that "you can't outrun word-of-mouth." And, in case you're interested in how the music business shot itself in the foot, leaving room for bands to go it alone online, Don Dodge can tell you all about it.]

They give customers the information they need, stated clearly and in the visitor’s language. “About how long before I get my package?” Great question — and they’ve already asked it for you. Estimated shipping and delivery times are nice, but if you really want to make the customer happy, let them know when they’ll receive their order.

There’s one way they could improve upon this. Instead of showing the shipping options on another part of the page, SheetMusicPlus.com would be better off if they were to consolidate all shipping info and options in one place. They’ve already got me focused on the box in the top-right corner. Why squeeze “Shipping method” just above “Payment info”?

This may seem like small stuff, but these “minor details” are a big deal when it comes to closing the sale.

Now, I understand how valuable executives think it is to have these customer accounts, but — of the hundreds we’ve analyzed — how many retailers do you think actually tested whether requiring people to register pre-checkout is costing them conversions (read: sales)?*

Retailers spend so much money driving new traffic to the site, only to force visitors away by asking them to register up-front. Most of the information you need to create an account will be asked in the checkout process, anyway. Get the cash (GTC) first, then do like TravelSmith does and offer the option to create an account after the order is complete.

The silliest thing I’ve seen in awhile happened as I was reviewing one of the retailers in our study. I was working my way through the account registration process for one of the sites. After filling out most of the form, I kept getting an error message. I couldn’t figure out. This site demanded an answer:

• “Yes, I would like to receive e-mail from Schwan’s.”
• “No, please don’t send me e-mail.”

On most retail sites, you just uncheck the check box and avoid their e-mails. This one used radio buttons, altering the standard experience by having me choose just one. Why?

*Share your best guess in the comments.

According to the news release:

HACKER SAFE integration will offer its certification throughout a network of more than 11,000 sellers and over 300 co-brand partner Web sites that incorporate PriceGrabber.com’s CPC (cost per click) product listings. According to a November 2006 Gartner report, nearly half of online U.S. adults, or 46% of more than 155 million people, say that concerns about theft of information and data breaches have affected their online transactions.

“Security concerns strongly influence many online decisions – especially when using comparison shopping engines,” noted ScanAlert CEO Ken Leonard. “Trust is a significant factor in comparison shopping. Confidence in a retailer’s trustworthiness can make the difference between shoppers clicking the buy button, or continuing their search.”

Pricing engines are a great tool for customers looking to get the best deal on a given product. But getting the “best deal” means precious little if the customer doesn’t feel confident giving you her money.

Is this a step toward creating a “value engine”? That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?