Why were shoppers abandoning their carts?

46% of online shoppers said high shipping charges were a “very important reason” for emptying carts. Is free shipping a must in this economy? Have you tested personalized shipping offers based on location?

Other reasons for abandonment included:

• Wanted to comparison shop: 37% – Are you saving their cart for at least 30 days, so they can return to it?
• Lack of money: 36% - Can you make them an offer they can’t refuse?
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27% – Are you prompting them to look for coupons? It could be costing you a huge percentage of sales.
• Wanted to shop offline: 26% - Are you offering them options to pick up items in store?
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24% - Find a way to GTC. Get The Cash!!!
• Item unavailable at checkout: 23% – Ooooops! This has to be dealt with on the product page or it will erode your brand trust.
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22% – This could be dealt with by using POA – point of action assurances (see the video below).
• Security concerns: 21% – This is also handled with point of action assurances and establishing more trust in your website.

Do you think you may need a cart whisperer? How many of these have you tried to deal with recently? Are you testing and optimizing you shopping cart? If not, why?

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the spirit of continuous optimization, may we have 5 minutes of your time to watch the video and maybe let us know what you think before we work on our final version?

P.S. Please don’t forget to sign up for free Webinar with guest Jim Sterne: Turn Web Analytics Into 2009 Revenue.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What obstacles do you face in getting your organization to adopt a continuous optimization process? Do they need to see more success stories like these?

Editors Note: If you want to learn more about marketing optimization and meet Ralph, Jim and Bryan, register for the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington DC, October 20-23rd. If you want, you can use discount code FN10 for a 10% discount.

Ah, yes, the four buying modes; Spontaneous, Competitive, Methodical and Humanistic.

Since I was stuck in Competitive (fast + logical) buying mode, I ended up blogging about how Mint’s site addressed my trust concerns by using trigger words — “does not store your account numbers”; “bank-level data security”; “anonymous” — that appealed to me. Meanwhile, our former client, Patrick from JigsawHealth.com (see small picture above), was looking at the big picture.

Patrick even did a screencast to show how understanding the four buying modes is essential to creating a website that converts by speaking to many types of visitors at the same time.

If you’re interested, you can read the Inc. Magazine case study on how Patrick worked with FutureNow to double his landing page conversion rate from 10% to 20% making just a few copy and design adjustments in order to speak to these different buying modes.

There’s no doubt that Patrick’s a smart guy, but this is hardly the first time one of our clients has outwitted me with our own methodology. To be perfectly honest, it happens every day. Brian Bond, our VP of Marketing and Product, the guy who markets the marketers, is a former client.

I’d like to think the reason our clients consistently get strong results is because everyone who works here is a genius, but that’s not true. Could it be that only smart clients hire us? (As much as I’d like to say that and mean it, past experience suggests otherwise.) No, it’s much simpler than that. The reason FutureNow’s clients get results is because, once you optimize your website from the visitor’s perspective, you’ll never look at websites — any website — the same way.

In this screencast, we’re going to show you how two brands — Tide to Go and Under Armour — continue to miss out on converting browsers into buyers, even after the post-game traffic surge is over. Depending on who you ask, these sponsors’ ads (”Interview” for Tide and “The New Prototype” for Under Armour) were pretty decent. The products don’t seem to be the problem, either.

Nope. What we have here is a failure to convert. So, much like the New England Patriots are doing right now, let’s see what we can learn from some video analysis:

Let’s take a look at some post-game stats from Reprise Media’s Search Marketing Scorecard:

• 6% of companies included a call to action, asking viewers to visit their websites–a decrease of nearly two thirds from last year

• 93% did not buy search placement for concepts relating to their ads, including spokesperson names, slogans and taglines. Among the brands that failed to buy featured stars’ names as keywords were Bridgestone Tires (Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons) and Sunsilk (Marilyn Monroe, Shakira and Madonna). Unfortunately, notes Reprise, given that the celebrities are often the only thing that viewers remember about an ad.

• 74% still neglected to include a call to action on their Web site landing pages, leaving users “directionless.”

These figures are important because they illustrate a common misconception among multi-channel marketing campaigns: While the TV ad’s success can be measured by the traffic it drives to the website, the traffic alone is meaningless. When visitors can’t convert, you lose.

Want help converting online? Download “10 Tips to Start Optimizing Your Site” for free!

In this edition of Screencast, I’ll show you how some e-tailers are helping their online shoppers navigate the gift-giving season, while others are, well, let’s just say they’re hoping to receive (your money). For instance, WalMart.com doesn’t seem to do anything special to help gift shoppers. Meanwhile, Etsy.com — a site where independent clothing designers and artisans from around the world their wares — proves you don’t need a Wal-Mart-sized budget to sort merchandise into gift guides for the customer. BarnesAndNoble.com has a nice gift guide that helps you find gifts to match the person’s style, but good luck finding it; their guide is hidden in drop-down menus and poorly phrased navigation buttons. Amazon.com does it best, and although there’s room for improvement, as you’ll see, they engage gift shoppers front-and-center on the homepage (a smart thing to do in December) and they do a good job of limiting choices. That’s right. When it comes to deciding between gifts, less is definitely more more — just be sure to show them things they’ll like.

Our gift to e-tailers? How about some holiday bonus tips:

• Provide a Gift Buying Guide
• Overcome “analysis paralysis” by limiting choice
• Allow customers to shop THEIR way…
  • By relationship
  • By “most popular“
  • By price
  • By characteristic (i.e., type of gift)
  • ASK your customers how they would like gifts sorted

There you have it! Sort. Categorize. Limit their choices to stuff that’s relevant, and let that momentum pull them toward the sale. And do yourself a favor: Don’t wait until Cyber Monday ‘08 to help gift shoppers spend their money on you. Engage them directly by using language and navigation that address their needs right away. And if you’re still leaving cash on the table, make a resolution to get help.

[Special thanks to Conversion Analyst Ron Patiro for his help finding these examples.]

Offline, returns and exchanges are less of a concern to shoppers. They can simply take their purchases back to the store they bought them from. Many retailers even offer gift receipts so recipients can take the merchandise back and exchange it.

Online, the gift exchange/return process looms more ominously in shoppers’ minds. What if shoppers want to return or exchange orders? What do gift receivers do? How about gift givers? Where do they go? How fast will they get a refund? Return-shipping costs, shipping hassles, price-matching concerns, and other questions hover like conversion-rate-chomping gremlins, threatening to devour your sales. Online retailers must resolve these questions, manage expectations, and inject confidence into their visitors, or their “buy now” buttons will look like black holes threatening to suck shoppers’ cash into the ether.

In this screencast, I’ll show you how big online retailers like LandsEnd.com, WalMart.com & BestBuy.com handle these concerns during the holiday crunch. You’ll see how adapting these techniques to your own checkout process can help close the sale and keep them coming back — not just to return things, but to buy from you year-round.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well, your website isn’t much different. Each day, visitors come to your site, hoping to find someone they can trust. The strange thing is that people tend to think that the words they use online are somehow different than the words they use face-to-face. They’re not. But online, you need to be even more careful about how you relate to would-be customers. They’ve got less to go on. Looking you in the eye isn’t an option, and talk remains cheap — even if it’s in the form of web copy. So, it’s your job to change that around; an especially difficult thing for smaller and/or local brands.

Today, I’m going to show you how one of my clients, Roof Life of Oregon (www.rooflife-oregon.com), used Persuasion Architecture™ to replace their own, virtual roof. I’ll show you how each page uses trust-building elements to create persuasive momentum with the customer to make them feel at home.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have you used any of these techniques before? Are there any websites you like to visit that inspire confidence? Ones that need fixing?

If you have questions about how to build trust online, please share them in the comments.

People View the World Through All Four Perspectives

At Future Now, we always caution people to be careful not to use this information to stereotype. While individuals operate from each of these perspectives, we do have preferences. It’s similar to right vs. left-handedness. For instance, people who would generally be considered Methodical can become Spontaneous at any moment. Just as it’s far easier to sign your name with your preferred hand, you can sign it with the other — even if the result is a bit awkward. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to design your website for only lefties or righties.

All Sales Are Complex

Since individuals each go through their own personal buying process, any sale has the potential of being a complex sale. As you’ll see in this screencast, the shift between a customer’s buying modalities, and the failure of a website to address them, can cause the buying process to break down. Companies must invest in understanding and planning for how these different modailities influence the buying process. This is why many companies have chosen to use customer Personas to help plan not just their websites, but entire multi-channel strategies.

When Personas Fail

Personas fail for a few sad-yet-predictable reasons. We’re often asked by potential customers to review and refine the Personas they’ve received from other firms in order to make them actionable, the way the Personas developed by Future Now are. It’s not always possible, but we try to salvage that investment. Oftentimes, the Personas they received elsewhere are nothing more than traditional market segments, lacking the types of nuanced personal insights it takes to really make them actionable. (Please contact us at Future Now if you want to learn more on about making your customer Personas actionable.)

In this screencast, I’ll show you a real life example of how — believe it or not — even my brother Jeffrey (also Future Now’s CEO) and I can shift from our own buying preferences to different modalities without realizing it at the time, or even consciously switch modes in order to complete a certain task. Everyone does this. It’s how Personas and buying modalities work together to create persuasive momentum.

Understanding Customer Buying Modes

. .

[Editor's Note: Want to know what motivates your customers to buy? We can help.]

My family’s been hobbling around on the original Xbox for a few years now, and I’ve decided a game console upgrade is long overdue. If I were more patient, I suppose I could wait until Christmas — but patience is overrated. I supposed the release of Halo 3 has me chomping at the bit. (At least I’m not the only one. Check out how Halo 3 is moving Xbox consoles.) So, I’m trying to decided whether I want to buy the Wii or the Xbox 360 now, and which one will have to wait until Christmas. The only thing up in the air is which console I’ll buy first.

To help me make this decision, I’ll go online to visit each console’s main site. This screencast documents my journey and, ultimately, the winner:

(If you’re reading this via RSS, click here for video.)

I could’ve made dozens of suggestions for each site, but it was the category pages that made the biggest difference in helping me make my decision. The Xbox 360 game listing page looks good. While it did give me the ability to sort and search games, it was limited compared to the Wii. New games or not, sometimes these subtle differences are enough to send comparison shoppers like me to the competition.

Xbox 360 does a few things right:

• Great use of game thumbnails
• “Buy Now” call to action
• Top searches

Some suggestions for the Xbox folks:

• Add a “view all” function, so we can scroll the entire listing
• Allow sort by more criteria (e.g., # of players, release date)
• Printable & sharable listings

While the functionality of the Wii’s listing page was superior and helped me make my decision, that doesn’t mean this page is great. The Wii page is far too complicated and looks out of place in comparison to the rest of the site. So, raw functionality wins, but this doesn’t exactly feel as effortless as using one of those magic wand-like Wii controllers.

Here are a few suggestions for the people over at Wii:

• Add thumbnails to the listings
• Include a call to action
• Change dreary page color to match the rest of the Wii site
• Add “view all” function to scroll entire listing
• Printable & sharable listings

As we look at how Cabelas.com and BassProShops.com prepare to catch the Early Bird customer, consider the following:

• Relevance — If they’re not ready yet, don’t get carried away. (Is your website proposing marriage on the first date?)
• Screen Space — Early Birds need to know that they’re welcome, right from the homepage. Give them enough space, and combine relevance with scent to lead them in the right direction. (Use the battleship grid to protect the Early Bird from winding up in irrelevant worm holes.)
• Scent Trails — Not even the brightest of basset hounds can help you with this one, but creating the right scent for the customer to follow is key; particularly when they’re early in the buying process, and may not even have the vocabulary to know what they should be asking. If they come in with the wrong questions, and don’t buy, they should at least leave with the right ones. Help them find their way.
• AIDAS — Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. Satisfaction. If customers aren’t aware of you, there’s no place to move forward. If you haven’t grabbed their interest, forget it. If there’s no emotional desire to lure them in, they won’t bite. If it’s difficult for them to take action, they’ll run away. And if they’re not satisfied, they won’t return.
• Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome (the other “IBS”) — “When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.” This is the biggest challenge marketers face. They know too much about their own products, too much about their own companies. It’s the “Curse of Knowledge” and you must overcome it to persuade.

Once again, it’s time to go huntin’ for Early Birds…

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here for video.)

If you have a moment, share one of your early-stage buying experiences with us in the comments. Which sites have done a particularly good job of persuading you to buy, or turning you off, when you were only pecking around?

Take hunting, for instance. While an experienced hunter may know exactly what she’s looking for in terms finding the right gear, a novice hunter might be more worried about his friends laughing at him for not knowing the first thing about it.

As we look at how Cabelas.com and BassProShops.com prepare to catch the Early Bird customer, consider some of these finer points:

• Scent Trails — Not even the brightest of basset hounds can help you with this one, but creating scent for the customer to follow is key; particularly when they’re early in the buying process, and may not even have the vocabulary to know what they should be asking. If they come in with the wrong questions, and don’t buy, they should at least leave with the right ones. Help them find their way.
• AIDAS — Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. Satisfaction. If customers aren’t aware of you, there’s no place to move forward. If you haven’t grabbed their interest, forget it. If there’s no emotional desire to lure them in, they won’t bite. If it’s difficult for them to take action, they’ll run away. And if they’re not satisfied, they won’t return.
• Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome (the other “IBS”) — “When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.” This is the biggest challenge marketers face. They know too much about their own products, too much about their own companies. It’s the “Curse of Knowledge” and you must overcome it to persuade.

Once again, it’s time to go hunting for persuasion…

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here for video.)

Check out Part 3 to learn how to catch the Early Bird before the competition does.

In the meantime, share one of your early-stage buying experiences with us in the comments. Which sites have done a particularly good job of persuading you to buy, or turning you off, when you were just trying to educate yourself?

But that’s where the analogy ends. When marketers don’t give early-stage buyers the confidence they need to move forward, it’s they who look like deer in headlights (usually around the time they look at their cart abandonment rates).

So, with hunting season upon us, we figured it was time to give Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops a try. Offline, Cabelas in particular is known as a destination spot, a must-see experience for hunters. Can they live up to that experience online? You’ll see what exactly what happens in Part 2. But first, let’s go over a few key points about persuading early-stage buyers to take action by starting out with a question: “How early is early?”

• AIDAS — Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. Satisfaction. If customers aren’t aware of you, there’s no place to move forward. If you haven’t grabbed their interest, forget it. If there’s no emotional desire to lure them in, they won’t bite. If it’s difficult for them to take action, they’ll run away. And if they’re not satisfied, they won’t return.
• Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome (the other “IBS”) — “When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.” This is the biggest challenge marketers face. They know too much about their own products, too much about their own companies. It’s the “Curse of Knowledge” and you must overcome it to persuade.

So, without further ado, let’s go huntin’ (for persuasion)…

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here for video.)

We’ll update you once Part 2 is up. In the meantime, if you haven’t seen it, watch as Anthony Garcia shares his early-stage buying process as he looks for car insurance for his teenage daughter. It’s an eye-opener.

Also, don’t hesitate to share your early-stage buying experiences with us in the comments. Any hunters out there who plan to buy gear online this season?

In just 15 minutes, I’ll guide you through more than a dozen websites to show you the best ways to capitalize on featuring reviews on your website in order to maximize your conversion rate. Watch it now! (See the video player below to view.)

Featured sites include: Amazon, Best Buy, CircuitCity, Trip Advisor, eBags, Burpee, BackCountry, Dell, Wal-Mart, Petco, Radio Shack, SupermediaStore, emitations, GolfSmith, OverStock, and CoffeeForLess.

If you recently purchased something online, has a review influenced your purchase decision?

Reviews on e-commerce sites are becoming a critical feature over the past couple of years. Roy Williams wrote about why this word-of-mouth feature has become so influential (PDF) when it wasn’t as critical 3 or 4 years ago. New research further illustrates its value:

• 77% of online shoppers use reviews and ratings when purchasing (Jupiter Research, August 2006)
• Reviews drive 21% higher purchase satisfaction and 18% higher loyalty (Foresee Results Study, January 2007)
• In a study of 2,000 shoppers – 92% deemed customer reviews as “extremely” or “very” helpful. (eTailing Group)
• 59% of their users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews. (Bizrate)
• 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews. (CompUSA & iPerceptions study)
• 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (MarketSherpa)
• According to the survey, 92.5% of adults said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying them in a store. (BIGresearch)
• 63% of all word of mouth is positive. Across all of Bazaarvoice clients, 80% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5. (Keller Fay)

Whether you enable review functionality from your ecommerce platform, or from a 3rd party hosted solution like Power Reviews and Bazaarvoice, it’s important that you test and optimize for conversion and persuasion by focusing on the following areas:

• Placement for Visibility
  • Above the fold
  • Size
  • Stars or other graphic
  • Near point of attention or action

• Review Interaction
  • Ease of reading
  • Sorting
  • Rating Distribution
  • Use across the site

• Single Dimension versus Multi Dimension Reviews
  • What are the key attributes across different categories
  • Can review content influence purchase decision

• Credibility Factors
  • Negative and Positive reviews
  • Review Approval policy
  • Reviewer Characteristics

• What does a review mean
  • Number of Reviews
  • What questions are you asking
  • Qualitative versus quantitative

(If video doesn’t load, click here.)

P.S. Congratulations to Bazaarvoice on closing $8.8 Million in their Series B. Brett Hurt and his team continue to deliver wonderful results and service, and deserve the continued success. (Disclosure: I’m on Bazaarvoice’s advisory board.)

All too often, companies get so hung up on optimizing their sites to convert late-stage, ready-to-buy customers that they don’t realize that creating the most relevant experience is really what helps them in the long term. For instance, I may end up buying the cheapest car insurance I can find, but I’d prefer to do business with a company that’s transparent about teen driving coverage and expenses. I’m not ready to buy today, but that’s fine. Soon enough, I will.

So, for the next few minutes, see what happens as I browse Geico.com, StateFarm.com, and Progressive.com in this early-stage buying scenario:

(For those reading this in RSS, click here for the video.)

As always, we hope to hear more suggestions on websites to cover. We’ll do our best to insure it’s something each of us can walk away with.

We’d love to hear some comments from parents or anyone who’s bought car insurance online. Oh, and don’t be afraid to steal this video. Just stay away from my daughter’s car.

I’ll discuss the importance of:

• Formatting — Are the copy and links readable and easy-to-follow?
• Image Views — Do I get multiple, detailed views of the product?
• Calls to Action — Are these sites doing enough to push customers’ buttons?

(For those reading this in RSS, click here for the video.)

As always, we hope to hear more suggestions of websites to review. We hope to hear some good ones, and we’ll try to make sure there’s something everyone can learn.

(For those reading this in RSS, click here for the video.)

Does your website stink? If so, you may want to read this. In the meantime, we hope to hear more suggestions from Grok readers for websites to review. We hope to hear some creative suggestions, and we’ll try to make sure there’s something everyone can learn.

As a father of two, luggage is something very dear to my heart. Wherever we go, my wife and I must be prepared for the unexpected. Functionality and versatility are essential, and the last thing we need is another bag that’s only good for one or two types of situations. I’m not quite sure how to describe the type of backpack I’d like to buy for my wife, but I’m sure I’ll know what I want once I see it. If LuggagePros.com can help me sift through the clutter and find the right bag, I’ll buy it today.

LuggagePros.com faces some common but no less difficult challenges. Among them:

• Introducing several brands at once without overwhelming early-stage buyers (read: not ready to “buy now”).
• Guiding the visitor who may not know what s/he wants toward the right product.
• Blending navigation and copy to produce a frictionless shopping experience.
• Persuading first-time customers that they’re better off buying from them than big retail competition (like Target).

Good news, though. All of that’s possible with some thoughtful fixes to their category pages. These essential funnel points are your site’s virtual help desk. Think of them as your sales staff and you’ll be sure to train them well.

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here to view.

As always, we hope to hear more suggestions from Grok readers for websites to review. We hope to hear some creative suggestions, and we’ll try to make sure there’s something everyone can learn.

We’ve experienced a platform conversion in the last year and have seen sales drop off significantly. We think it’s the shopping cart. Also, our conversion never gets higher than 2% and we’ve got an 80% shopping cart abandonment rate.

Thanks for writing in, Tanya! You can see some of the 20 tips to reduce shopping cart abandonment I wrote about back in 2003 come into play.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how LaneBryant.com might reduce cart abandonment and “get the cash!”

We hope to hear more suggestions from Grok readers for websites you’d like to see reviewed. Although we can’t do every single one, we’ll try to make sure there’s something everyone can learn from these screencasts.

For Part 1 (of 3), Lars had us take a look at Orrefors.com, a high-end glassware site with some conversion and persuasion-related stumbling blocks that prevent customers from quickly getting the information they need. Orrefors is a great example of beautiful design getting in the way of the basics. There’s a lot they do right, and hopefully someone from Orrefors is reading so they can do even better.

So, without further ado… The Orrefors.com screencast:

The framework we use for analyzing conversion barriers may seem mysterious, but it’s actually based on answering three simple questions at each step of the customer’s buying process:

1. Who is your audience?
2. What action to you want them to take next?
3. What information do they need to feel confident taking action?

Let’s take a look at the three questions in action… (RSS readers, click here for video.)

In just a few minutes, without any access to Target.com’s analytics, I was able to identify several stumbling blocks in the customer experience. It’s difficult to say how much lost revenue Target would recoup from plugging these leaks in their sales funnel, but we’d love it if they’d at least test them and let us know how much conversion improved.

Who should be our next target? Let us know in the comments if you’d like us to review a particular site. Of course, we can’t do it for everyone; but if we hear some good suggestions, we’ll do one of these each Friday.

Is your site leaking money? If you liked these quick tips I’ve drawn from Target.com, let me show you how to improve your website’s conversion rate at the Call to Action seminar on August 10th in NYC.

(Big thanks to Stephen Spencer of Netconcepts for choosing Target.com for this one.)

Most of this year’s Super Bowl ads were entertaining, funny, and compelling. But did they get the job done? Will they return the advertisers gargantuan investment. Will their websites give us any indication of the campaign (read: not JUST the ad’s) success?

So, today I took some time today to give the official Future Now slant on how well companies are using their Super Bowl ad exposure to convert prospects.

Whether they are planned or not, when a company advertises they create a scenario that potential customers must traverse to reach a conversion. Some persuasive scenarios are planned and help customers convert, others not so much

Our first analysis is of the GoDaddy.com campaign.

Watch the GoDaddy.com analysis (8mb Shockwave Flash video 8:00 minutes. If you’re familiar with multi-channel marketing, please skip to the 2:20 mark)

Note: This is not a streaming video and may take a few moments to download and play in your browser.

Want to know how to do it right? See how Blockbuster.com builds cross-channel momentum in our next post.