E-Commerce for All

Ecommerce Deal Breakers

So what is a deal breaker? Simple, these are the things in your cart that shoppers fret about, thus causing them not to make a purchase. So while every shopping cart, product and website is different, there are some very common factors which cause your shoppers to leave. Let’s address them and some of the solutions you can use to set your shopper’s minds at ease.

We are going to address these issues in a common navigational flow, so that you get a feel for the entire process.

Step 1 Landing Page:

Certainly many people do land on your main page, but usually not as many as your other pages combined. So treating only your main page with some TLC will certainly do nothing for the majority of your customers.

Landing Page Factors:

• Trust: Is your phone number (preferably toll free) highly visible and easy to find?
• Navigation: Can your shoppers easily navigate your shop to other interests and products?
• Text: Does each page have enough text near the top of the page for shoppers to scan and determine that this is where they should be?
• Images: Are your images, descriptive, fresh and professional?
• Load: Do your shoppers have to wait and wait for your pages to load?
• Presentation: Does your site work and display properly in all browsers?

Step 1/2 Product Page Marketing:

Many brick and mortar stores spend high dollars to hire the best salesmen they can, they do this to improve sales and be successful. But what about your ecommerce website? You are not going to have the individualized opportunity to make the sale. So let’s eliminate some of the common stresses and frustrations your shoppers experience.

• Is your price clearly marked?
• Are options easy to use and find?
• Are your description and images detailed enough for shoppers to make a decision?
• Is your return policy and payment methods posted clearly and easy to understand?
• Can they contact you easily from the product page to ask a question?
• Do you have live help of some sort?
• Is your add to cart button clear and noticeable?
• Is your product information above the fold on your pages, or do your shoppers have to continuously scroll?
• Is your price fair and competitive?

Step 2 Shopping Cart Summary Page:

This is a very difficult page to measure the genuine abandonment because so many people will check shipping prices here or return many times with additional items. However, I suspect that this is likely the most crucial deal breaker of all.

• Can I clearly get the shipping cost without giving you my information or creating an account?
• Do you display a secured seal, phone number and other trust factors here?
• Do you have a “Checkout Now” button above the fold as well as below?
• Do you use pictures of the products within your cart summary?
• Can I change my quantities and remove products easily and logically?
• Is this page fast enough to deliver the data, such as a shipping quote, before I become impatient and leave?

Step 3 Checkout:

If you have been thinking about abandonment and conversions at all, this is likely where you spent most of your time. While I agree this is a very large factor, I would also say that most of you are probably losing them well before checkout.

• Is the text and information sorted properly and easy to read?
• Are your payment, shipping and other options clearly noted?
• Do you force shoppers to reconsider by making them create an account?
• Do you tell your shoppers how long the shipment will take in your checkout?
• If your checkout is several steps, do you control the flow and keep shoppers on track by removing distractions and highlighting the necessary action areas?
• Is your checkout secured with SSL? Do you have a broken lock?
• Do you bother your shoppers in checkout with pop up offers and other things to get them off track?

Step 4 Checkout Success:

• While this may seem obvious, you would really be surprised… But do you thank your shoppers after checking out?
• Do they get an order summary, shipping and customer service information on your checkout success page?
• Do they receive a TEXT email (for maximum deliver-ability) with their receipt and order information following checkout?
• Do you welcome your shoppers back with a coupon or loyalty program?

While this is certainly not meant to be a bible for your usability, it is rather intended to make you think and consider the fears, stresses and reasons shoppers leave your site. I find that many shop owners have never checked out on their own site…. and many more stumble to describe the navigation needed to direct me to a certain product. Certainly, you and your staff should know your website inside and out. Just think, if it’s hard for you can you imagine your shopper’s frustration?

Melanie Checkout Improvement, E-Commerce Design, E-Commerce Marketing

Google Anchor Links

If you have doubted the need for fresh, related content on your store pages…. You better rethink your position! Google has improved the search results snippets to include “jump to” links to the page’s specific area containing the related content.

We have seen Google recently making huge and innovative changes in sitelinks and snippets, but in fact this most recent innovation may be the most valuable yet. We have discussed here many times, Google’s “full text” indexing and ranking ability… Now Google has sought to put that very ability to work for searchers.

Imagine that a shopper is searching for the specs on a gadget they wish to buy, with this type of anchor linking you have a unique opportunity to grab and better convert these topical and information seeking searches. Let’s face it, even if you rank for these type of searches, your product pages are designed to sell… Thus very likely the information for this type of search is buried. So much so, that even if they land on the page, they leave never finding the information they are seeking. While this is for good reason, and I do not suggest clouding the ability to shop with this type of information… Now you can include it in a less obtrusive manner, link to it with anchors and discover a entirely fresh conversion opportunity in information gathering searches.

Let’s say for example you search Google for “good cholesterol level”. You are met with a very unique opportunity in the search results…..

Google Jump to Sitelink

This content or sitelink as we say, not only takes you to the most relevant page… But the most relevant location on that page too!

I know, how can I do that? Well, Google has posted the means to get your site coded and correct anchors set in place for these type of results in a recent post on Webmaster Central Blog. Essentially you will need to relearn a bit of html in order to help Google index you in this manner. Creating page anchors for static pages is really not difficult, but including them in your dynamic pages can be a far greater challenge. Here is a really easy tutorial from W3Schools to get you started.

Melanie E-Commerce Design, E-Commerce SEO, Zen Cart

Eye tracking? Heard of that? Know how it affects you and your store’s sales?

Eye Tracking

Eye tracking is defined as  research to track where a user’s eyes look while reading, then analyze the data to reveal behavioral patterns. In essence eye tracking is a core part of usability & accessibility.

So we know that you can drive thousands of visitors to your website a day and not make a dime…. These issues related to the usability of your store are the most common reasons for poor conversions and sales.

We are going to specifically go over some big issues for shop owners in the realm of eye tracking today. I promise to revisit the full usability side when I finish Steve Krug’s, “Don’t Make Me Think” 2cnd Edition.

Recent behavioral eye tracking studies have identified some very useful metrics regarding eye tracking and how user’s navigate your online store. We learn more and more everyday about the user interaction and emotional responses to our content and pages. What I’m covering here are just some basic, fairly unconsidered facts, to help you gain some insight in to your shoppers habits and needs.

Eye Tracking Tips for Ecommerce

• Heading Tags – I have said this before and I’ll say it again… Visitors read text first upon hitting your page about 1 second is spent scanning for text to identify the page as relevant or irrelevant to the visitor’s query or need. Yes, that’s right you have about 1 second to get them interested! Heading tags are a perfect way to grab the attention of these text scanning machines we call visitors. Keep your heading tags, short, logical and highly relevant to engage shoppers more quickly.
• Eye Movement Patterns – Your visitors will averagely read/scan your pages in a particular order (shown below from Eyetrack III). Notice where the user starts his quest to determine if your page is useful… Top Left. Ask any search marketing professional and they will tell you this is one of the most highly effective advertisement areas of a page. While I certainly don’t want to see you with PPC ads in your store, utilizing this space properly is key to visitor engagement.

Basic Eye Tracking Path of Average Visitors

• People scan the first few words of a paragraph and then quickly make a decision to read it or move one. Back to high school with this one. Remember that English teacher teaching you to use a power sentence to start your paragraphs. Creative and visual writing skills have never been more important…. The first sentence is the hook.
• Keep it short! We know from that same high school English teacher that a paragraph is a container for a single thought. In keeping with that shorter paragraphs actually are less daunting and encourage better reading.
• People naturally seem to migrate top and left when seeking navigation. Right hand navigation has its place indeed, many blog surfers have come to expect right hand navigation from the reading they do… This has not yet, however, transferred in to the general reading and shopping ranks. Topside navigation while interestingly more effective according to the study can be a real nightmare for shoppers to navigate in ecommerce applications. In essence the top navigation is only going to work for your simpler menu options… Not 50 categories and children fly outs. So, standard left hand navigation is still going to be more effective and engaging in your online store.
• Categories are the key to every store’s navigation, but also the biggest area of confusion and bottlenecks for shoppers as well. On one hand we know that the fewest number of clicks to get to paying you is most effective, we also know that logical and clearly categorized navigation will yield a better average order value. The biggest issue is when  a shopper is forced to browse through page after page of product index. Most times these products, say numbering 80 can be just 4 pages. However, we also know that the click through drops about 50% from page 1 to page 2 and by the time we get to page 4 only about 3% of the shoppers remain… The rest bailed. So shorter product indexes, ideally one page with your most popular products first will keep the shopper more engaged and on track.
• This I found most interesting, smaller fonts seem to engage readers. So those of you running those 14px fonts are actually encouraging scanning as opposed to reading! The standard is a 10px font, and I would recommend never larger than a 12px. If your visitor profile demands it, then get a text sizer tool for your pages.
• Textual ads within your store will be far more effective than graphics. Aside from the entire banner blindness issue, people are just more willing to click text ads. So just having a neat and crisp “Free Shipping” heading tag will do the trick nicely.
• I have been telling shop owners about the power of color psychology for a while now….. But here you go. In this study a HUGE contrasting red font containing information was completely missed 86% of the users tracked! BAM@!
• How about product pricing? This can really be a heated topic…. But here we see the nuts and bolts of how those numbers came to be .99 and what they should more effectively be .47 or .49 to catch price scanning eyes.

The basic point of this is to establish one thing in your mind… You have no idea what your shoppers need until you ask them. Doing a simple usability study with friends will reveal problems you would have easily missed.

Never stop improving your store, solicit the feedback of your shoppers. Most importantly whether you pay for a usability study, conduct a small usability study on your own or ask for feedback… YOU MUST LISTEN!

Remember, it’s not about what you think… It’s about making a living.

Melanie E-Commerce Design, E-Commerce Marketing

Google Gadgets

More Google tools and Gadgets…. We know you love them! Our main focus here at PRO-Webs is of course ecommerce. Product reviews have always been such a challenge… But no more as Google Friend Connect has a gadget for that! You can see the new gadget installed directly to your right… Pretty cool, flexible and definitely beginner level installation and configuration.

Let me just walk you through adding Google Connect Reviews to your Zen Cart

1. Go to Google Friend Connect and login with your Google user account
2. Top left click the blue link “Set up a new site“
3. Now choose “Friend Connect for standard web sites” link from the main content section.
4. Select “Continue“
5. Enter the name of your site and its url (EG PRO-Webs Store & http://pro-webs.net/store/)
6. Download 2 files and upload them to the root of the directory in your url (EG /store/)
7. Click “Continue“
8. Click the “Test to finalize setup” button
9. Left had side menu choose “Social gadgets“
10. Scroll down the list for “Ratings and reviews” & Click “Get this gadget“
11. In the drop down labeled “Scope” choose page
12. Customize text in the “start with this text” review area field if you like
13. Customize Ratings header if you like
14. You have the ability to allow anonymous posts, your choice…. But I recommend you do not.
15. Customize gadget size options including number of ratings and width
16. Customize color scheme as you like
17. #4 Generate code & select and copy it all from the box
18. Put it in a dynamic element in your Zen Cart. Mine is in the “Editable Sidebox” a simple to use module from the Zen Cart addon repository.

Nice and easy… Just like we like it! Check out or review gadget!

Melanie E-Commerce Design, E-Commerce Marketing