A pitch-man whose fame and success made him the target of more pitches than he ever gave.  Pitches made by desperate inventors looking for him to save them after they’d already mortgaged the house, spent the kids’ college fund, and invested all their life savings trying to bring some gadget to market.  People who showed up saying, “If only you, Billy Mays, would represent me on TV, I know we’d be able to sell my ________”

So what was the one product quality Billy INSISTED on? The one thing a product absolutely had to have if he was going to take on that kind of responsibility?

Demonstrability.

And Billy talks about the importance of demonstrability within the first 23 seconds of this video – the last interview he ever gave.  Watch:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Billy knew that so many of us forget, is that a conclusion that the audience comes to on their own is a conclusion they’ll believe and act on. No normal advertising claim can achieve that, no matter how much evidence you throw behind it.

SHOW someone an “I can’t freakin’ believe it” demonstration, and they’ll walk away convinced. Try to persuade them with a stack of studies, facts, and figures, and they’ll likely assume you rigged the tests, got your testimonials from all your friends, and “interpreted” the facts with all the abandon of Jim Cramer telling people to hold onto their Bear Stearns stocks 6 days before the bankruptcy filing.

In Web terms, put your Social Security Number on the front page of your website and I’ll be a lot more likely to believe you can also keep me safe from identity theft.  Forgo the demonstration in favor of detailing your 14-step process to keep me safe, and I may not even read it, let alone believe your claim(s).

And, yes, dramatizing the benefit has long been the specialty of the infomercial, whether it was the ginsu knife cutting through the tin can, the sham-wow pulling up spilt coke from a carpet, or, yes, the incredible stain removing feats of oxy-clean.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So the question for you Web copywriters out there is, how can you inject demonstrability into your copy?

And if you can’t fully create demonstrability with copy and static pictures alone, how can you use a little video to bring that info-mercial magic to your sales pages?

And as a warning, this Zappos video is a clear case on how NOT to do it.

Do these guys show the product in action?  No.  Do they show you any parts of the shoe a visitor can’t see from the multiple images Zappos’ site already provides.  No.  So what the hell is the video for again?

How about showing me the guy’s foot in the flip flop, with a close up on the arch support?  How about showing me how flexible (or not) the flip flop is – how much it bends with the foot vs. how hard it slaps up against the heal with each step.  How it fits a narrow/medium/wide foot.  Etc.  Going a few thousand steps further, how about showing me how well the shoe looks after a few months of use?

C’mon, Zappos, why use video if you’re not going to actually SHOW the product in action?  Why use the video if you’re not going to actually help answer more questions than could have been answered with just text and pictures?

Anyway, Billy Mays’s family has my deepest condolences.  And you readers have my sincere wish that you take one of Billy’s last marketing lessons to heart.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

This one is from Harry and David:

Here is one that shows an ordinary product like paper, that is hard to distinguish, in an extraordinary way:

Do you have a product image that tells a story? One that invites visitors to imagine owning your product? Please share it with us by adding a link below. The best ones I’ll add to this post and link to as well.

Some pet peeves around bad product images include:

• Not showing enough detail
• Not being able to enlarge or zoom
• Only showing one side of a product (especially in clothes)
• Showing color swatches of variations but not showing the actual products with those choices
• Linda Bustos from the GetElastic blog said it yesterday, show off your clothing on the right size model.

Better product images can boost sales. However, fixing your product images is not something you can do overnight, so plan now.

For added fun, which is the worst product image you have seen?

Those are probably the 5 scariest words in website optimization today.  More and more visitors are asking themselves that question and then not buying.

They’re applying a considered purchase mindset to much lower price-points than ever before.  And most websites’ copywriting is coming up short in the face of this new challenge, since most of it was written to describe rather than to intensify desire or persuade.

So with that in mind, here’s a quick and dirty list of 7 ways to intensify your visitors desire for your products:

1.  Show your product/service in action
This one is especially good for your spontaneous and competitive customers.  Don’t just describe the thing, write copy that’ll cause the reader to imagine using it.  Take something like:

“The Nikon SB600 Speedlight Flash provides Accurate, seamless fill-flash capability under the most difficult, tricky lighting situations”

and amplify it with:

“Mount your SB-600 to your Nikon DSLR and move from indoor to outdoor and from overcast to sunny without ever having to worry about lighting. The TTL metering takes care of everything – and you can even manually dial the flash power down to 1/64 full output, and everything in between; perfect for fill flash.  And for taking perfect pictures in any lighting”

2.  Show prospects how to test your performance claims
This one is good for all buyers, but especially powerful for your more skeptical temperaments (read Methodical and Competitives).   Here’s an example, using the same Nikon flash as before:

“If you’ve never used anything but your Nikon’s built in flash, we recommend you immediately do this upon taking the SB600 out of the box:

• Just take indoor photos of your kids, your pets, or whatever you have pre-Sb600 comparison photos of.
  
• Then put the new, unedited shot side by side on your monitor with your old post-processed photo.

If you’re not blown away at how much better the raw photo is, send it back for a full refund.”

3. Stretch out your benefits in time
While everyone wants to know that they’ll look back on a purchase as money well spent, this can be especially important for Humanistics, as their slow decision-making style and longer time frame make them especially concerned with how they will feel about a purchase after it has been made. So copy like this can really help to make the sale:

“Imagine getting 5 fabulous shots you wouldn’t have on every photo shoot you do over the next year – including night shots of your family and friends.  How many magic moments will you have captured?  How many albums will you fill with what would have been lost photos?  How many times will you have saved the day by being the only one in the group to have taken a decent photo?”

4. Show experts (or loved ones) approving
Logical temperaments look for the approval of experts, emotional temperaments hope for the approval of loved ones.  So give it to them in your copy.   When possible pull quotes from expert reviews, awards, magazine articles, etc.  Make the reader visualize the approval of family members, colleagues.  For instance if the Nikon SB600 flash provides perfect white balance for night shots, you might take a feature like:

“White balance is optimized through the use of flash color information obtained by the Speedlight.”

And create something along the lines of:

“Your family and friends will finally rave over your control over night time shots – especially when everyone else’s is washed or blown out by too white/bright flash settings.  And it’s all automatic!”

5. Prove superiority or value over other alternatives
Showing how great the Nikon SB600 is helps, but showing how it’s way better than competitor’s products or 95% as good as the SB800 at half the cost is even better.  Do this on a general use and feature-by-feature basis and you’ll win over your logical decision makers.  Assume that your visitors ARE comparison shopping and set out to win the race.

6.  Show how easy it is to get the benefit
In a time-starved world, the perceived difficulty of actually learning to use the product well enough to get the benefit is often the biggest deal killer.

The camera flash might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if I still have my DSLR stuck on “P” mode, all those features might convince me that I’ll never be able to figure out how to work the darn thing – and then I’ll opt not to buy.  And simply claiming that the flash is “easy to use” isn’t going to help.

But if you show me how the flash is automated and will start making my pictures better just by sticking it in the hot shoe, and that the rest of the features are easy to learn one at a time, then I’m much more likely to buy.

7. Put your guarantee to work
It’s one thing to state a guarantee, it’s another to make your reader imagine the security that comes with it.  So take a summary statement like:

“Your new flash is guaranteed to be the best camera accessory you’ve ever purchased, or your money back”

and amplify on it with something like:

“Use the flash for a full month and if you’re not taking the best pictures of your life with this new Nikon speedflash, you’ll STILL have another 30 days in which to return it for a full refund.”

If you’re an e-tailer with lots of SKUs implementing this list might not be feasible for all of your items, but do yourself the favor of testing a few of these techniques on your previous top sellers and see what kind of results you get.  I’ll bet they’ll be big enough to make copy improvement a priority for all your popular items.

And if you’re only selling a limited range of items or services, then what are you waiting for – get started improving that copy before the holiday rush!  Remember, you want to leave your readers feeling like the little boy in this picture:

Have a wonderful Thankgiving. Best of luck on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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?

Seems I’m not alone. A recent study provides more evidence of the online/offline buying connection.

Media measurement company, Nielsen Online, conducted a survey to examine the relationship between online research and offline purchases. They found that 80% of participants who had recently bought consumer electronics from a brick and mortar store whose site they visited first.

• 53% bought from the site where they spent the most time.
• 58% would choose the internet if they could only use one channel to conduct product research on consumer electronics. Only 25% chose the brick and mortar store.

It’s certainly not breaking news that customers do research online before they buy. But how much that online experience affects offline purchases may have been underestimated.

Are you answering your customers questions?

I was in Petsmart the other day stocking up food and gourmet snacks for my pups. I’ve been considering changing dog food. But was that a decision Petsmart’s brick and mortar store could help me make? Maybe, if there had been a doggie nutrition expert standing in the aisle, or they had a “food tasting” aisle where I could let my picky Boston Terrier sample different foods and choose his favorite. But no such help was provided.

The Neilson Online study found this about pet food purchasers:

Here’s the percentages of pet food survey participants who would use the internet to research each topic.

48% Learn about nutritional specifications

45% Learn about product ingredients

45% Learn about recalls

40% Learn more about safety issues

40% Find sales/promotions

This works both ways. Find better ways to answer your visitors’ questions on your website, but also look at better ways to answer their questions in your brick and mortar store.

Defining & Measuring Success

With the average conversion rate under 3%, it doesn’t mean that 97% of visits fail.  How do you determine if you give your visitors what they want, whether you communicated effectively with them and whether you influenced their thinking and buying behaviors as well as those of their social-media-connected friends.

Defining success or failure, not only through your metrics but also through measuring the perceptions and actions of your visitors is challenging but possible if you understand the value of qualitative metrics and of quantitative metrics using Persuasion Architecture; just ask us how.

The presentation was remarkably transparent. Raul is an engaging presenter, who established a wonderful rapport with the audience. I obviously cannot share everything in his presentation (you just need to attend next time), but he did put forth this elegant framework of principles which  apply to many companies who want to present better online.

Value: Immediately upon arriving to a page a visitor must see the value that you offer. For Walmart, it is there brand promise and they use various techniques to do this.

Assortment – Highlight the best and then show the rest of their wide assortment.

Easy – Everything about the experience must be easy. They want it to be easy to find and easy to buy. Raul showed examples of all the efforts they make to keep their categorization consistent and improve internal search.

Content – Have great product info, multiples images, etc. He spoke about the value of Rating & Reviews (they work with Bazaarvoice on this) and the importance of showing product availability across channels.

Simplicity is what makes these four concepts so powerful, and obviously Walmart.com has been achieving outstanding results because of it.

Continuous improvement is what it is all about.

If you need some help getting that process working effectively in your organization, I’d love to talk to you about it.

Congratulations to Scott, Larry, Artemis and the rest of the Shop.org and NRF teams for putting on another great event.

Ever wonder how often other people return an item you want to buy online?

Honestly, it never occurred to me before, but now that I’ve seen Shoeline.com’s Return-O-Meter™, I wish other online retailers would borrow the idea (especially since I’ve learned it’s actually lowered returns and raised Shoeline’s conversion rate).

If you own or are in charge of a marketing budget for an e-commerce shop, you should take a close look at the latest webinar from the good people at Elastic Path Software.

In “9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next,” Elastic Path co-founder Jason Billingsley showcases the latest e-tail trends in these hot categories:

• Video
• Customer Service
• Real World Guided Selling
• Multi-store Retail
• Navigation
• Merchandising
• Social Shopping
• Loyalty

(If you need to bookmark the webinar for now, check out Linda’s recap at Get Elastic.)

OK. Now that you’re about to have a bunch of new ideas for cool features to add to your site, let’s not get carried away just yet. What works for Amazon, NetShops, Shoeline, Zappos, Martin + Osa, Borders.com, Endless.com, American Eagle, Shopatron.com, Backcountry.com, Knicker Picker, Vitamin Global, WineLibrary.com, and Shoeline . . . [deep breath] . . . may not work for you — which is exactly why strategy must come before tactics. Always.

How will you know if these innovations will add value to your visitors’ online shopping experience? Well, if the change you want isn’t too expensive to implement — and if it’s not overly disruptive to your current business model — try it out by running a split test.*

. .

*Split testing is the only way to know whether your site’s new features are A) worth keeping, or B) setting off the Return-O-Meter™. Don’t know where to begin? Join us on Wednesday, July 9th for the first installment of “Always Be Testing,” our free monthly webinar series, co produced by FutureNow and the Google Website Optimizer team.

Such was the case when I sat next to Jeff Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & eBusiness for the Hudson Bay Company at the CMA Geek dinner (courtesy of my friend Mitch Joel) in Toronto last week.

Jeff was telling me all about his efforts to relaunch his company’s websites this past weekend. Of course, my conversation went to customer experience, analytics, optimization and testing. For numerous reasons, Jeff didn’t really have any analytics for the old site, so he was figuring it would make sense to launch the new site — with its vastly improved customer experience — and wait six months to collect data before even considering any testing. His approach is not all too uncommon.

Let me make this clear: Jeff and his team are top notch. These are just the realities of online retail; it’s difficult, and sometime more so in a company that has such a long retail tradition as HBC.

Jeff and his team made assumptions about new technologies, features and layout for every page of their website. Some of these assumptions were explicit (launching customer reviews with Bazaarvoice would improve the experience and conversion rates) and some implicit (we’ll talk about that below). Some I am sure would be validated right after launch. Others would require testing.

Right there on the table I had Jeff draw the product page layout they had developed. (Well, it was on a piece of paper on top of the table cloth, but you get the point.) Jeff and his team had made the decision that product images would be on the right side of the page. One of the other retailers at the table said theirs was on the left side. So I asked Jeff, “How do you know it won’t cost you a million dollars during the next six months by having your product image on the right-hand side?”

While it might be easier for readability to have it on the right-hand side of the page, the majority of retailers have the product image to the left of the copy. I could see the agita stirring right there (and it wasn’t the Italian food we just ate). “You made an assumption that your product page would work better this way during the design process,” I said, “and you know what happens when you assume. Why not take it to the court of last resorts, the folks who vote with their dollars — your website visitors — and test it?”

I know how smart Jeff is, but do his bosses appreciate everything he brought to the table? He doesn’t have analytics showing lots of benchmark data, but testing would let him prove the assumptions and, most importantly, continuously improve the website. He could then show his organization the value provided by testing his assumptions, learn from both the successes and failures, and focus on improving the experience by adopting a culture of “Always Be Testing.”

I only gave Jeff one or two simple test ideas because I didn’t have the sites in front of me, but they are now live. You can check them out and feel free to offer suggestions in the comments below for things you think Jeff should test or things you’d would like to test if you could:

TheBay.com
1. department page
2. product information page

Zellers.com
1. department page
2. product information page

HomeOutfitters.com
1. department page
2. product information page

When would you like to prove how smart you are and make more money with your website?

It usually starts with a feeling that something’s not right. That’s what happened when I kept seeing banner ads for Amazon’s new reading device, Kindle.

When I looked closer, I realized the problem – this is a first-person view, but those aren’t my hands. They’re very nice hands, but they’re a man’s hands. I thought I was being pretty nitpicky here, but it still bothered me that those weren’t my hands. So imagine my surprise when I went to Amazon to do a little holiday shopping and there it was: My personalized homepage with an ad for the Kindle. But this time… Those ARE my hands! (Well, not my hands, exactly, but a woman’s hands nonetheless.)

I wonder, does Amazon change the Kindle ad on your homepage based on whether your name indicates you’re a man or a woman? I don’t know. Anyone else have an Amazon homepage? Is the Kindle held by a man’s hands or a woman’s?

I was so impressed to see my own hands holding the device, I actually clicked through to read more about it. It looks pretty cool. But I had one big question: “Can you adjust the text size?” I can’t see. Really. It’s a problem. I sometimes won’t buy a book if the text size is too small, and it’s not like you can adjust the text size on a book. I didn’t end up seeing any information on the product page about adjustable text size until I scrolled way down to the bottom. Finally, I saw that, yes, you can indeed adjust text size on the Kindle.

Amazon, you’re doing a lot of things right here — (as of today, Kindles are sold out, so check back with Amazon for updates) — but if I could make one suggestion: Make the adjustable text size a main selling benefit and have it in a large, bold font. For those of us with poor eyesight, this could be the main reason for buying the gadget.

It’s sort of ironic, but the Kindle page should be a lesson to all of us. Showing benefits right away is a must, and readability matters — especially when “readability” is the main selling point for some people. Behavioral and demographic targeting is one thing, but the experience falls flat without persuasive copy.

People have used many of the same tactics for centuries to focus potential customers on the value they’d receive if they were to buy now. But here is a question for you:

Would your customers rather a product be marked down from $203 to $192, or would they prefer a markdown from $199 to $188?

Either way you slice it, they get an $11 price reduction. For you, it changes your final price from $188 to $192. Four dollars more for you sounds better and, believe it or not, customers perceive they’re getting a larger discount at the $192 price point. This is definitely an area that many more retailers need to test regularly.

A recent Journal of Consumer Research paper examined the notion that responses to pricing differs based on the right-hand digits in sale price figures. In fact, participants reacted as though low digits were farther apart than higher ones as well as they were about 20 percent more likely to actually buy.

Are you slashing prices so low that it is “insane“? Are you not getting the best possible effect from your discounting? Do something about it.

Awhile back, I found myself in the middle of a conference call with the CEO of a young Internet company, in preparation for a consumer research project we were about to launch. The company, a west coast-based service firm, allows customers to securely file emergency contact information and medical files online for an entire family (pets included). Backed by a 24/7 call center, the business is a slam-dunk in giving caretakers peace of mind should any emergency arise.

Our initial work for the company had been to help create more compelling content for their website, with the goal of converting more visitors into customers. At the time of our conference call, web stats showed that while a percentage of people were following the content all the way through to the sign-up page, they bailed out before actually signing on to the service. The CEO was flummoxed.

As we sat there talking, I kept flipping back and forth between the homepage and the sign-up page. Suddenly, it hit me: they were saying the right thing, but not the right way.

CEO: “I don’t get it. Our service costs less than $35 a year, yet the process comes to a screeching halt when visitors have to sign up. What’s the hang-up?”

MM: “Well, your service is still a fairly new business model and perhaps with all you’re promising, it seems too good to be true. Have you thought about offering a free trial?”

CEO: “We do… you can see it on the sign-up page. We give two months for free.”

MM: “That’s great.  So, why aren’t you advertising this on your homepage? Surely there are those folks who are a bit more impulsive and will want to check it out right away.”

CEO: “You’re right.  We’ll get on that, first thing. Where do you think we should put the info about the $4.95 handling fee?”

You can see where this is going, right? My client was making two common yet potentially dangerous marketing mistakes. Mistakes that are easy to make, yet simple to rectify:

1.) Dangle the Carrot Right in Front of Their Nose
With an Internet business that is appealing-yet-unfamiliar to the consumer, this company needs to work a little harder to convince people it’s worth their time and money to buy the service. The company does offer an option to break through the price-resistance barrier, but they hadn’t thought of placing it on the most important page for price-conscious visitors: the homepage. By creating a graphic on the homepage that links to a detailed offer, the company will see an immediate increase in sign-up; customers looking for an easy way to dip their toe in the water can try the product without obligation. And the company now has a customer’s information to not only follow-up and sell a yearly subscription, but conduct ongoing consumer research directly with users of the service.

2.) Swing the Carrot to Make It Irresistible
Then there is the matter of that $4.95 handling fee. In a world where individuals are barraged with advertising and special offers everyday, consumers are highly sensitized to hidden fees and obligations. The customer’s first reaction to a “free trial” with a $4.95 handling fee is going to be, “Free, my foot!” Hyped advertising or offers with strings attached, either intentional or unintentional, will often do more harm than good. In the case of my client, I recommended either offering a “two month trial for $4.95” or, better yet, removing the handling fee entirely, depending on what their marketing budget can handle.

Honest, informative and persuasive copy is the key to convincing customers to take action. If you’re the person responsible for marketing your business, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “being stuck inside the bottle,” hindered by tunnel vision without being able to objectively view your marketing campaign. What can you do?

Well, for starters, share your strategy, message and copy with a small group of colleagues that can be trusted with giving you objective feedback. If they support you, they’ll work hard to look for holes in your message and make suggestions for developing an airtight strategy. Take what you learn from your support system to create a powerful, honest message that comes from your heart and resonates with consumers, convincing them to do business with you. Finally, don’t expect your message to be perfect the first time around – the most successful marketers constantly tweak and develop their marketing strategy with research and feedback from customers.

Spend some time with your advertising, website and peripheral marketing materials. Does the most important part of your message reveal itself in all the right places? And what is it you’re actually saying to customers… is it really what you meant to say? Only when you take the time to carefully develop and place your message will you have a carrot worth biting into.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen//NetRatings, and Harris Interactive Inc. reported online sales grew 30 percent year over year this holiday season. That’s great news. If you were one of the businesses that experienced this level of growth (or better), your online business should get lots more attention in 2006. On the downside, you’ll be challenged to hit some lofty growth goals.

A few weeks ago, I shared some thoughts and advice on what you should work on in 2006. This week, I want to share some profound wisdom from my friend Sam Decker, former e-commerce and customer-centricity leader at Dell. Decker recently joined Bazaarvoice, a new company providing managed technology and services to bring word of mouth closer to a company’s online experience (it’s still in stealth mode, and, in full disclosure, I’m an advisor to the company).

Bottom line: when it comes to online success, Decker knows what he’s talking about. He spent seven years at Dell, four of them leading the consumer site, Dell.com, to double conversion annually in the midst of a struggling PC industry and online sales slowdown after the dot-com crash. By 2003, Dell’s consumer online sales reached $3.5 billion, making it the largest e-commerce site (according to comScore).

For several years, I’ve tapped Decker’s expertise and shared his advice in this column as well as my recent book, “Call to Action.” I asked him to reflect on his 13 years of online experience and share his top 10 principles for lasting e-business success. Like orange juice concentrate, below I’ve attempted to squeeze in as much of Decker’s great ideas on e-business strategy, operations, metrics, and merchandising:

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…

When women browse Gap.com’s T-shirt section, they do not have to click to a new page to see details about the 16 shirts shown on each page. Rather, when they put the cursor over an item (called “mousing over” in industry parlance), they are invited to click on a “quick look” link for the shirt. That link yields a pop-up window that shows a model wearing the shirt alongside swatches of the colors it is available in. Mouse over any swatch, and the shirt takes on its hue — and the window tells you what sizes are in stock.

When a shopper clicks “add to bag” from within that window, the site does not shuttle her to a checkout page, as many electronic retailers do. Instead, another small window replaces the previous one, showing the shopping bag and asking her to consider multi-item discounts. If she ignores that window or clicks the “close” button, it disappears and she continues browsing shirts from the original page.

From a technology and usability perspective, the new Gap.com product interface is leaps ahead. The use of AJAX (define) is impressive. The site developers should be proud; this interface will be the envy of many.

The site was down over the past few weeks for the upgrade. PR from that, however, might be helping rather than hurting. Whether or not this was by design, it’s successfully working many up into a frenzy.

The redesigned site will certainly spike sales in the short term. But if Gap really wants to maximize this opportunity, I have a few tips.

Continue reading my column over at ClickZ…