Exclusive Concepts Blog » Caitlin

Less Is More – Conversion Wednesday

Caitlin — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:16:13 +0000

The phrase “less is more” is a casual way to describe the word “Minimalism”. Marriam-Webster defines minimalism to be: a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity. You are probably wondering how this correlates into a conversion topic, well in usability is often an act of minimalism that can keep the user focused on the more important elements of the page which can lead to an increase in conversion rates and reduce bounce rates.

In this example, this is an e-commerce store homepage with a lot of different colors and elements placed in a disorderly fashion. The overuse of red is causing the color to be less important, the ‘buy now’ button and the sale price are in the color red as well, which easily goes unnoticed and can make it hard for the user to proceed into the next level of the site. Using less white space is making the page seem cluttered, especially near the products where there are overlapping images on the products themselves. The content on the main banner is placed in a very tight space causing this to be illegible.

The only area that seems to be clean and legible is the left hand navigation, which utilizes a great amount of white space. This current scenario introduces many opportunities for testing; with a strong hypothesis that reducing clutter and noise will improve clarity into next steps, and therefore increase conversion rates.

In this example, the homepage is very clean and the main focus is on the banner promotion. The top navigation is very easy to find as well as the search bar. The main banner is more concise than the previous example content, allowing the words to be legible while giving the area more white space. The products below the banner are shown as they are, without any additional overlapping graphics. The use of white space creates a less overwhelming feel, allowing the user to not feel rushed. The way in which the top navigation has been aligned is clear, so the user can get to the appropriate category more easily.

The cart in the header stands out the most with a different use of color, instead of using the yellow or blue, they decided to use a green button, this allows the user to find the cart easily by standing out from the rest of the elements. The way in which the elements are cleanly laid out can positively effect the reduction of bounce rates.

In this scenario, since the starting point is quite the opposite of the last example, there is opportunity to test including a few more elements. The intension of course would not be to disturb the simplicity of this approach, but rather test the bounds of the simplicity to include more messaging, merchandising and motivational factors. Where you start in the scale of simplicity will help determine what direction you may wish to test in. The goal of your testing would be to reduce bounce rates, connect with your shoppers in a more clear fashion and ultimately improve conversion rates one successful test at a time.

Let’s look at the simplicity concept in the context of a product page.

This is the product page of the more cluttered website. The product page clearly has a lot going on, which makes it hard to find the product description and price. A visitor requires certain information to make a decision on whether to buy this specific product and if your store is the right venue to make that purchase. Your description gives you that opportunity as do other key elements on this page – but if they are lost in the mix, you may as well not have them since a viewer cannot clearly connect with that content. Using space to draw a visitor’s attention to the elements that will sell is the optimal use of your site’s strengths and working in the direction of improved conversion rates.

If you take a look at this product page, you can easily find the information you need to decide whether this is the right purchase for you. The product description is easily legible in a bulleted format, the ratings are easy to find as well as the price and the add to cart button. The 2 most noticeable elements is the Add to cart button and the price. This is very similar to the first uncluttered homepage example. Here the website may actually have the opportunity to improve conversion rates by testing the bounds of simplicity: changing which key elements exist on the page; tinkering with messaging opportunities such as a prominent “you save $x” amount. Regardless, there is always room for improvement, but to a user, this is more simple and clear of a shopping experience than the last slide.

As most internet users, you have probably appreciated simplicity of experience time and time again: but as a business owner, have you done enough to optimize in that direction? Well, it’s not simple and it requires the right approach. To effectively find out how you can increase conversion rates on your website, Exclusive Concepts deliver’s a scientific multivariate testing conversion booster program. As a first step, we can easily put this vision into the context of your store through a free audit. Feel free to call us at 800-504-4324 for more info.

Thank you - have a wonderful Conversion Wednesday and enjoy the rest of your week!

Effective E-Mail Marketing Call-To-Actions – E-Mail Thursday

Caitlin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:51:46 +0000

A call to action in an email marketing campaign can be defined by anything that allows the reader to perform an action. The action itself could be: redeeming a coupon code, clicking on a button or text link, or to call a phone number. It is very important call to action’s are clear and easy to find and that the call to action is relative to the motivation provided by the promotion or messaging in the email itself. For instance, if the purpose of the email is to promote a featured product of an e-commerce website, the call to action button should go to the actual product page of the website.

The most common mistakes in email marketing call to actions are broken links. It is imperative that all of the links are working properly or the click through rate of the email campaign will be substantially low. Whether the call to action is a graphic or a link, all call to actions have to be noticeable and relative to the messaging.

An example of image call to actions, would be Amazon. Amazon sends out promotional and image heavy email campaigns, they have several different call to actions, and mix graphic buttons with text links. With a banner graphic, the user does not have to necessarily click on the “learn more” button but can click on the whole graphic which will take them to the promotion of the website. The disadvantages to graphical buttons and graphic heavy emails are that certain spam software can block your images which will prevent the user from viewing the call to action button graphics. When using graphics, it is important to use either alt tags or title tags to give an alternate text description of an image if the viewer has not enabled the images themselves. This way, they can still get a clear picture of what they would be seeing and can click through into the shopping process.

An example of a text heavy email marketing campaign would be our very own Juicy links email. This email utilizes text links in which case the call to action text color is bright blue and underlined – this allows viewers to clearly identify links as links and not have to hover to make that discovery.

There are several different links for further information in which the user has the option to read more about. By having several call to actions there is a better chance in increasing the click through rate rather than just having one call to action that may not interest the user. This is a great way to achieve a high percentage of engagement with your e-mails. At the same time, if you are trying to encourage one specific actions, it may get lost amongst the crowd. It is important to recognize your goals early on to prioritize space and layout accordingly.

The text heavy email renders perfectly in the preview pane preventing the user from having to download any pictures or not viewing the call to action.

The goal of e-mail marketing is typically two-fold. One: just keep in touch with your user base and deliver a consistent message that builds brand loyalty. But the goals of individual campaigns are more specific and usually focus on direct actions or engagements with your website. The art of encouraging those actions boils down to your ability to use calls-to-action in a motivating fashion.

Whether they are in a text form or graphical; clear, noticeable and active call to actions within emails have a better chances of higher click through and conversion rates.

It’s amazing what the right calls-to-action can do for the performance of your e-mail marketing campaigns, but still, that is just a small part of the optimal e-mail approach. We deliver the optimal e-commerce approach to our clients through Optimized Lifecycle E-Mail Marketing. We can easily put this vision into the context of your store through a free audit. Feel free to call us at 800-504-4324 for more info.

Thank you - have a wonderful e-mail Thursday and enjoy the rest of your week!

Google Bounce Rate Defined – Conversion Wednesday

Caitlin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:00:09 +0000

Today’s Topic is Google Bounce Rate Defined and an analysis of how they effect your online store. I am your host, Caitlin. Let’s start off of with the most spot-on-definition on bounce rate provided by Google themselves: A Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

When determining your bounce rate, there are tools like Google Analytics, Yahoo!, Omniture..and more that help you find out these percentages.

Why should we care about bounce rates?

Well, it’s good to note that bounce rates can be calculated sitewide for specific pages or even for different sources of traffic.

Let’s start with page-specific bounce rates. In knowing the Google bounce rate of particular pages on your site, you can put the pieces together as to why your site’s conversions rates may be lower than you wish. If you have specific outlier pages on your site that are under-performing, they may be the first place you focus on to improve the overall site and capitalize on an opportunity for growth. Here’s how I read a bounce rate of 60% for a particular page: 6 of every 10 visitors felt that the page did not live up to whatever expectation was set before the person visited that page.

This is a good segue for those expectations that have been set. Since you can also use Google bounce rates to see how SEO and PPC are performing as sources of traffic, you can determine whether those expectations were set properly. As Google states in their definition, it is imperative that users are landing on the most relevant pages searched. It is never a good thing if a user searches for brown boots and lands on a page with zero brown boots in sight. That would result in a very high Google bounce rate. If you identify keywords in your SEO and PPC portfolio that have high bounce rates, you may want to revisit those pages as a visitor and see whether your expectations were met properly.

In figuring out how to decrease your bounce rate and increase your conversion rates, you are on the path to generating more sales and get return customers.

So how do you fix low bounce rates throughout your site to get your conversion rates higher or increase revenue?

It is important to know when trying to fix the problem you need to look at the individual pages not the overall website bounce rate. If you find through your analytics that you have a low bounce rate on your homepage but a very high bounce rate on your category pages, start fixing the issue at the category page level.

How do you know if you have a low bounce rate? Start by comparing bounce rates of individual pages against the site average. Then analyze from a users perspective why the page is being rejected by visitors. There are simple analyses you can do, or you can work with a team like Exclusive Concepts to approach it in a systematic, professional way.

Your analysis will lead to a set of hypotheses that you’ll want to test in order to see if you can in fact reduce bounce rates and improve your conversation rates. When it comes to improving this goal, an incremental, testing approach is the best way to achieve the most significant improvement without ever committing to the wrong idea.

I hope today’s conversion Wednesday was helpful. Exclusive Concepts offers Conversion Booster as a service to help our clients identify the best ideas to improve factors like bounce rate and especially conversion rates and then test them to find winners that improve revenue one goal at a time.

We would be happy to audit the opportunity that we believe exists for your site in terms of conversion and bounce rate improvements. Give us a call at 1-800-504-4324 to reserve a free audit today.

E-Mail Navigation, The Most Effective Way To Use It – E-Mail Thursday

Caitlin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:38 +0000

Today’s Topic is The most effective way to use E-mail Navigation. I am your host, Caitlin. An Email navigation can easily be done incorrectly and there are some key rule of thumb “do not’s” that are worth understanding.

One very common mistake is making the e-mail navigation too similar to the website navigational structure. The user only has a few seconds of attention span when reading Emails, so you really only have a few seconds to get the important elements noticed. An email is also smaller in width than a website causing limited horizontal real estate. The last thing anyone wants to do is cram a bunch of links and content into a tight space.

Another frequent mistake is using a vertical navigation rather than a horizontal one. Smith-Harmon Studies show that 88% of the top online retailers use a horizontal navigation . A horizontal navigation will be one of the first important elements to appear in the Email preview pane. If the navigation was vertical, it would render 3rd or 4th in the preview pane and could easily go unnoticed. Testing a horizontal versus vertical navigation and tracking the impact to click-thru and conversion rates, is the ideal way to determine whether or not you should follow this rule-of-thumb.

A navigation should also not have a lot of links. The Email should keep your readers focused on the main message or promotion. You can expand the links accordingly; for example, if an Email campaign is promoting Men’s Jeans, you want to make sure the top navigation is at least segmented to the Men’s departments. In addition, of the few top navigational links, the “mens” should pop the most.

Gap does a great job pointing out that this campaign is for their Athleta company but also displays the association between the other brands that fall under the “Gap” umbrella. The Email campaign is for swim suits and the first navigation link is for the “swim” department. This is also the first link I see when I open my preview pane, which has a clear and distinct connection to the Email campaign. Athleta also has 5 or 6 top navigation links that will more than likely interest the recipient of the Email.

If you are wondering what links are important to place on your email navigation, a “sale” could be one of them. Smith – Harmon Studies show that 52% of major retailers include a “sale” link. This major retail company highlights the “sale” navigation link with the same color of the sale banner. This shows the relativity between the navigation and the Email campaign.

So Let’s summarize our findings.

To be effective in your e-mail marketing approach, you want to find a balance between the following:

Limit your core e-mail navigation to the mix that is necessary for each e-mail
Test the placement of navigation between the top and the left. If you cannot test, then find comfort in the fact that 88% of top online retailers use the horizontal approach.
To keep the email motivation consistent, highlight a sale section of your navigation and re-emphasize it somewhere in the body of the e-mail, if possible.
For each specific e-mail, feel free to introduce or emphasize links that are directly related to that promotion itself

I hope today’s e-mail Thursday was helpful. Exclusive Concepts offers Precision email marketing to help you deliver relevant emails – that is the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

We would be happy to audit your current e-mail approach or even the opportunity that we believe exists for you.

Give us a call at 1-800-504-4324 to reserve a free audit today.

Conversion Wednesday – User Segmentation: The Ultimate User Experience

Caitlin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:00:15 +0000

So what is User segmentation? Well, user segmentation is used to funnel different user types to the appropriate categories and products on your store.

This simple technique can very effectively reduce bounce rates and increase return customers by creating an easy and memorable shopping experience. You can use segmentation to your merchandising advantage by funneling the users to the categories or products of your choice.

There is an easy way to segment users and an advanced way. The easy way is to prominently place buttons or text links on your homepage that will take the user to the pages that best suit their shopping needs. So basically: creating an option to start the shopping experience at the highest level category possible.

Here, an apparel company displays simple buttons prominently on the homepage directing the user to start the shopping experience by segmenting gender types.

This store uses the same segmentation in their brick and mortar locations as well.

You can also segment by Product type in addition to User type:

In this example, a large department store also uses this simple form of segmentation, by displaying major department store category links. The correlation between the brick-and-mortar and online shopping experiences is very strong here. In the department store itself, a shopper would also find their department by following signs with the same category names.

It’s important to learn from the brick and mortar world in defining categories, as shoppers worldwide have become comfortable shopping in a particular way; and retail stores have long used user and product segmentation as an art form to define departments within one location.

You’ll notice that this store in particular also wants to direct their users to the sale and clearance section of the store, allowing them to get rid of select inventory.

An advanced way to segment your users would be by remembering what they searched for during a previous visit. For instance, without logging into an account, I viewed a pair of shoes from Amazon.com and left the site.

When I returned a different time, the site suggested several different shoes and related items I would like based on my past surfing experience. This segmentation experience funneled me in the direction of my category interests and led to a purchase.

This form of a more personalized segmentation approach is the natural extension of simple segmentation, but is a unique science on its own. Regardless, the two applications share the same goal of connecting with a user to encourage a higher conversion rate and a better shopping experience.

Finding the most appropriate segmentation approach takes a methodical approach. First, you must conceive the best approach and test it. If it is increasing conversion rates, you then need to build upon it and work it into your holistic marketing approach through content, pay-per-click and e-mail marketing.

If you are interested in starting this process, from the first test itself – we can help. Our Conversion Booster program is a managed conversion testing service that allows us to define the appropriate changes for a site to increase conversion rates and drive revenue. We offer free conversion opportunity audits to qualified websites – feel free to call us at 800-504-4324 for more information.

Thank you and have a wonderful conversion Wednesday!

Conversion Wednesday – How Color Impacts Conversions on Your Website

Caitlin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:40:50 +0000

There are several different ways a website can be affected by color, today I will be explaining 3 very important elements.

The overall website color scheme
How to make important messages and call to actions appear noticeable on your website.

The overall website color scheme is important because it has to be memorable. Everyone can remember the best buy blue or the target red, but if you are a direct competitor these companies you want to stay away from their color scheme. People search thousands of websites every day, if a website is forgettable there will be no chance in getting a return visitor.

We can look at some big brands for inspiration. Best Buy clearly removed itself from being seen at a me-too by not copying the colors of their top competitors. Whereas Radioshack and Circuit city had the same color scheme. I don’t want to say that it led to the downfall of Circuit City, but it surely is an amazing coincidence!

Walmart is clearly separate from it’s competitors Target and Kmart, and you too, can identify the best way to differentiate your site from competitors. Just take a look at them. If your competitors commit to red, white and black, then any other colors, like blue and orange, would make you stand out from the crowd. That way visitors who think they are returning to your site, are certain that they are at the right place.

It would be a shame to have another similar looking site, take a sale that you did all the work for. So where do I think you should start?

Well, you can start by testing the smaller elements on your site, making important messages and call-to-actions stand out from everything else. The most important information should be the most recognizable on a website and this can be done using color.

I’m constantly launching new conversion projects for Exclusive Concepts clients, and we have been able to test button and messaging colors to find out how it impacts conversion rates. The video includes some screenshots to show you some examples of our work.

Based on this particular client’s analytics and conversion audit, we were able to make the decision of testing the button colors. We tested the price color, font size, as well as the “add to cart” button colors. We found that the orange button color was the winner vs. green, red, and the original blue. The orange button increased the product page conversion rate to 44!.

Any one of the colors had the potential of converting more visitors. Nonetheless, the orange resonated better with the users and the test was deemed statistically significant, or 100% confident, based on a very large volume of traffic.

So In closing, did you happen to know that Exclusive Concepts offers one of the most robust conversion improvement programs in the world? We call it Conversion Booster and it includes everything from the qualitative and quantitative analyses of your site; to creating breakthrough hypotheses; and then finally testing those hypotheses for statistical significance.

In short, we help our clients make more money from their current visitor base. If you’re interested in learning more, contact us at exclusiveconcepts.com. I hope you enjoyed this presentation and that you have a wonderful Conversion Wednesday!

The Conversion Approach to End All Guesswork

Caitlin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:47:54 +0000

As a conversion specialist I am constantly coming up with new ways to increase conversion rates and reduce bounce rates for online stores.

A typical issue that I find is when an online store that generates a great deal of traffic, has competitive prices, is still not converting despite all those strengths.

So what makes a store like that underperform in terms of conversions? We can’t always give an immediate answer – at least not with confidence (especially in statistical terms). The only way to do so is to test and get the factual data!

From my perspective, the Conversion Testing Process incorporates 3 major steps:

Analyze- Look at the data and research the different user types to find opportunities to increase conversion rates and reduce bounce rates. The data you have acquired through analytics programs can help create a much better sense of the strengths and weaknesses of your store and identify both opportunities and threats to act upon.
Take Action- Create and run tests to find out what may or may not motivate the user to make a purchase. What I mean by this is use actual, statistically-validating software to test a strong hypothesis against the control, or your current site. If your test proves to increase conversion rates, then it’s like Chemistry 101 all over again… remember the scientific method? If you prove a hypothesis, it is considered fact. Until it is proven, it’s just a good idea.
Wait- Be patient and let the tests run. The longer a test runs, the more factual data you’ll receive. This gets back to the “statistical” sense of the word confidence. Confidence in statistical terms is achieved in intervals – when you reach complete significance (because of volume of test runs), you are actually proving beyond a reasonable doubt, that the assumption is actually correct. So your idea about changing the navigation, if it improves conversion rates significantly by 10% or so, was not just a good idea, but a sure thing once tested.

Note: Testing takes a great deal of patience, but the knowledge received will take any store owner a long way. If tested to statistical validity, you are guaranteed that the distance gone is in the right direction.

Conclusion: Stop wondering and start testing!

Online Usability: Tips from an avid user

Caitlin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:07:36 +0000

The great thing about my job is, not only do I get to do what I love (optimize sites for conversion), but I am also the audience! I do about 80% of my shopping and research online, and I love to write product reviews to help my fellow online users.

Here are a few points I like to see when I am searching articles or shopping online:

1. I am a big softie for product reviews and customer testimonials. There is nothing like a second or third opinion to add your product to my cart. If I am not shopping online I like to use http://www.yelp.com to help me decide on restaurants and much more.

2. How can I find what I want fast and easy? A navigation that feels like it was designed just for me with the option to sort by my price range, the brand of choice, and the ratings creates a personal feel and helps me find what I’m looking for. I think Amazon does a great job of this. http://www.amazon.com/

3. If you have a brick and mortar store, make sure the locations are easy to find. This ensures to me that I can physically return the item, and I don’t have to worry about shipping it back.

For instance, I just recently bought an elliptical from Dick’s Sporting Goods, their prices were competitive but knowing I could return it in the actual store was the comforting, especially with something as large as an elliptical.

4. Shipping Deals and Promo Codes! If you can’t give me a discount, it’s a deal breaker for me because I will find someone who will! I love this site: http://www.retailmenot.com/. They place success rates, so you know your code will work.

5. Making your search box easy to find. The food network makes it extremely easy in terms of searching for the perfect recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/

As an avid online user, usability is extremely important for me in terms of shopping and online research. My favorite websites get to the point fast and do not make me guess what their online purpose is. I have been shopping at the same online stores for a few years and I can honestly say they do a great job in making me a repeat customer!