The Science of Converting Online Browsers into Buyers
Optimost shares 5 easy-to-implement site design tricks that will drive more conversions this holiday season.
New York, NY (PRWEB) October 12, 2005 -- It’s no accident that they’re always cooking with vanilla at Williams-Sonoma or that Victoria’s Secret smells like a field of lilacs in full bloom. Bricks-and-mortar retailers have honed the craft of putting window shoppers into a buying mood. Now, that same mix of art, science and psychology is at work on the Web, with online retailers turning to optimization firms to nip, tuck and tweak their Web sites to convert more browsers into buyers.
No one knows more about what pushes online shoppers’ buy buttons than Mark Wachen. His company, Optimost, has helped sites like LillianVernon.com, Real Networks and eDiets increase their conversion rates by anywhere from 20-45%. In many cases, the most dramatic impacts are made with the simplest design tweaks. Following are Wachen’s last-minute, simple suggestions for online retailers looking to seduce the most possible customers this holiday season:
1. Don’t be Cute with Your Navigation Tools: This sounds simple, but if you want shoppers to “click here,” tell them to “click here.” Web retailers make two common mistakes with their navigation buttons: 1) They try to get cute with buttons that read, “your path to savings” or “follow me” because they want to try to be unique, or 2) they make the buttons too small, too hard-to-find, or too unusually designed so that it’s not clear they are supposed to be clicked on in the first place. One online retailer was able to increase sales by 10.5% simply by following Optimost’s advice to edit its navigation buttons from “Get X Now” to “Click Here to Try X.”
2. Boldface Key Phrases: Remember that 9th grade history book where all of the material that would be on the test was written in boldface type? We are conditioned at an early age to seek out the key information in any media. Web retailers can make an enormous impact on sales by leveraging that human tendency to distill enormous amounts of information down to a few key phrases. Is something on the site free? Can shoppers win a contest? Are premium items on sale? Judicious use of boldface type can be one of the most powerful tools in online retail sales, and it can take literally seconds to implement on a Web site.
3. Don’t Over-Hype The Bells and Whistles: Virtual tours and site demos are among the most expensive Web design flourishes any site can create. While they may provide some value to the most Web-savvy visitors, they also can pack the most potential for lost business. Even in the age of cable modems, high bandwidth tours and online tutorials can wreak havoc on a customer experience. Sure, it may give you a high-end appearance, but what if the download freezes your customer’s computer? What if a separate pop-up box causes the customer to lose track of your homepage? Many of the more elaborate Web design elements can do more harm than good when it comes to converting online sales.
4. Less is More: Cut Your Instructional Copy in Half: Having too many words on a Web page is retail suicide. It’s 2005; people don’t need a dissertation explaining the intricacies of your registration process. Providing instructions on how to operate basic navigation tools or redundant copy describing your rationale for organizing category listings in a particular manner diverts the attention of consumers who are shopping online because they are busy and seeking quick gratification.
5. Offer a Light at the End of Every Tunnel: If you’re doing business on the Internet you will need a certain amount of information about your customers. But don’t push it. For example, you never want to ask for a customer’s fax number in a registration form unless you absolutely need it; it is an unnecessary distraction. You do want to make the goal clear when asking customers to register. Provide a clear demarcation of the steps involved (step 1 of 3, for example), and acknowledge that you are asking people to work by offering encouragement, such as “Step 2 of 3. Almost Done!” These simple steps humanize the company and show a level of respect for the customer. An online subscription service working with Optimost was able to net a 5.8% increase in subscriptions simply by strategically inserting the words “almost there” into their registration pages.
About Optimost:
New York-based Optimost is a technology and services company specializing in online multi variable testing. The firm’s unique content generation engine allows companies to create and test virtually limitless permutations of copy, offers and layouts in the time it takes to conduct a single standard A/B page comparison test. By combining real-time response data with information about which variables were displayed in the test, Optimost clients are able to determine how much each individual Web site element contributes to the overall response rate. Client Web pages can then be optimized further based on the combinations of the most positive individual site elements. Optimost clients include: Interactive Corp., Lillian Vernon, eDiets, Overstock, Time Warner, Earthlink, MotleyFool, NextStudent, Palo Alto Software, RealNetworks, and HouseValues. For more information, please visit www.optimost.com.
Press Contact
For more information on Optimost, please contact John Roderick at 631-689-3038.
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