If you’re selling online, and you’re interested in Optimization, it simply makes sense to spend some time focusing on your shopping cart. It’s a key area of focus for a few reasons:

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. 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…

...continue to read "Shopping Cart Optimization: Canned vs. Custom"

OK, Grok faithful, we all know that the Holiday Season is coming fast. Last year was “make or break” for a lot of eTailers, and this season will be critical for many more.

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…

...continue to read "Keep Them In the Cart this Christmas"

I’m not gonna lie…what you’re about to read was inspired by a real-life online shopping experience.  I won’t mention the guilty site, but I’ll say they sell clothing and jewelry to young urbanites.

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…

...continue to read "3 Ways to Lose an Online Sale"

Last week, Brendan tackled how to answer the 5 unanswered questions customers face in the shopping cart (other than shipping costs). According to a recent study by PayPal and comScore, 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times in just three weeks.

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…

...continue to read "Shopping Cart Abandonment Woes"

The ecommerce shopping cart is a great place to run tests, as simple changes (layout, copy, color, etc.) often yield fantastic results.  There are unanswered questions in the minds of our customers that we think are obviously answered on the page, but they’re not.  If you’re not sure about what those unanswered questions are, you can back up a few steps and use personas or user testing to uncover them.

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

...continue to read "The Shopping Cart: How to Answer the 5 Unanswered Customer Questions"

Clients often come to us to fix their shopping cart abandonment issue. We’ve written before about how to decrease shopping cart abandonment before, but I wanted to share another simple and cost effective way to deal with customers who refuse to give their credit card information online.

One suggestion is to make sure your toll-free or 800 number is clearly visible at the top of all pages and even more visible during the checkout process. However, many businesses balk at this because…

...continue to read "Sorry, I Don’t Give My Credit Card Online"

This post is for anyone who’s using some sort of “Wish List” feature to encourage visitors to save something for (hopefully) later purchase.

This feature has become ubiquitous, probably due in part to the “Let’s Copy Amazon.com Syndrome.” I encounter it on nearly every “first date” I go on with a website.

I agree with the concept of saving items pre-purchase.  It’s a great micro-conversion to start measuring and optimizing.  It’s a natural step for Early Stage or Middle Stage…

...continue to read "An Analyst’s Wishes for Wish Lists (Say 3 Times Fast)"

Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt – providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy, but many of the post’s links pointed to further “must reads.”

Do yourself a favor and go read it now.

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...continue to read "Instant Clarity on Common Website Problems"

The experience gifting website, Cloud9Living.com, started their pre-Holiday optimization with a very simple A/B test on the Billing page of their shopping cart.  Changing a single layout element on the page was responsible for a 20.48% increase in their Funnel Conversion Rate (ratio of those who started at View Cart and made it through checkout).

While this type of increase is common with our clients, the interesting part of the story comes from a different metric.  During the duration of…

...continue to read "Mini Case Study: How Testing Trumped the Holiday Slowdown"