When it comes to online shopping, consumer confidence is increasing. More folks are turning to the Internet for their shopping needs – this holiday season alone, online spending was up 25% over the last holiday season (according to one statistic I ran across). That’s cheery news for all of us. But don’t whoop it up too much just yet. Truth is, the mere presence of more traffic isn’t going to net you higher conversion rates.

Formulating how to interact with the nameless and faceless hordes isn’t an easy task, but that’s where your solution lies. And it’s the reason why you want to construct the persuasion architecture of your site based on personas and their buying-path scenarios.

By sharing with you Danielle’s online shopping experiences based on her participation in our 2004 Online Retail Study for Customer-Focused Excellence, I tried to make those visitors in the trenches more real to you. Now, suppose I offer you some insight, collected from the same survey, on the etail shopping experiences of two experienced conversion rate specialists? Think the “real guys” have substantially different online buying experiences? Then think again!

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