http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog The Source, featuring Daily Videos on SEO, PPC, Conversion and E-Mail Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:52:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-advance-bounce-rate-math.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-advance-bounce-rate-math.html#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:58:17 +0000 Nik http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4482
Alright, let’s start with the core numbers. Here, we’re analyzing a section of a mythical site – a section would be something like “all product pages” – or every page in a particular category of a site. The numbers we’re working with are: 90,000 visits, 60,000 that bounced, 15,000 total add to carts, 1,000 sale actions – and finally, a resulting $10,000,000 in revenue from this activity. We’re going to move quickly, so keep up!

Those numbers already start telling us a story. When we analyze the entire funnel – 67% of visitors are bouncing, which is higher than 50% - keep that in mind, because the fact that it’s over 50% is really important in terms of what that will tell us in the end for our investment analysis. The rest of the math is simple, 17% of visitors added to cart, and then they continue to reduce like a fine sauce into the 1% of visitors that made a purchase. That’s a lot of tail off and loss through the funnel!

So what I find interesting is when you analyze a funnel as if there were no bounces at all. So we saw in the last slide that 67% of visitors bounce – well here, we’re looking at the 33% that didn’t bounce. This tells you so much about how well you do when a visitor finds both the entry page, and the site-wide experience worthy of their time. Here, if a person liked what they saw on the entry page, and they were interested in what the rest of the site may offer, they were very highly inclined to make a purchase. 50% of people who engaged the site and did not bounce, ended up adding to cart! Furthermore, the conversion rate with these non-bouncers was 3%!

As a result, the average value per visit of a bouncer versus a non-bouncer is a 3-fold difference. A visitor, on average, contributed $111.11 per visit after all the fallout possibilities play out – the 67% that bounce, the 83% that don’t add to cart, the 99% that didn’t make a purchase. By contrast, when a visitor engaged the site and didn’t bounce, their value was over $300 at $333.33. That’s a huge difference! That’s something to write home about. It starts to make you think about how much more impactful your site would be if you reduced your bounce rate. Well… let’s make some calculations to answer that conundrum!

So this is what I find to be a magical finding. In the case that we’re looking at, the bounce rate was 67% - which is over 50%. As a result, when you compare the impact of 1 of 3 options: either increasing conversion rate by 15%, or increasing average order value by 15%, or decreasing bounce rate by 15% - which one do you think would make you more money? Bounce rate seems like it’s so early in the funnel, that it should be a no-brainer – decrease in bounce rate would have the lowest impact.

Wrong! The first time I got these results, I was a bit shocked as well. In this scenario of a 67% bounce rate, it is nearly twice as impactful to your revenue when you decrease bounce rate by 15% versus increasing conversion rates by 15%.

Here’s the math. For increasing conversion rates by 15%, you simply multiply the revenue currently earned by 15% - which is $10,000,000 times 15%, resulting in a sum of $1,500,000. Not bad! For decreasing bounce rates by 15%, you calculate how many new non-bouncers you would have – 15% of the 67% that originally would have bounced – so 15% of 60,000 visitors, which equals 9,000 new non-bouncers. Each non-bouncer adds $333.33 in revenue – so by multiplying 9,000 against $333.33, you net an additional $3,000,000! Pretty, pretty good.

When doing your math, you’ll almost always be shocked by how much money can be made by investing in conversion optimization. Just remember, that you’ll build a deeper understanding of impact as you test and learn over time.

Does this work the same all the time? Nope. Bounce rate was a more significant factor because the bounce rate was above 50% to start with. If you started with a bounce rate of 33% - so in the same scenario, there were 30,000 of the 90,000 visits resulting in bounces – then your math would change. In that case, the impact of decreasing bounce rates by 15% would only be $750,000, while an increase in conversion rates would continue to be $1,500,000. Then again, the non-bounce in this situation is only $166.67, compared to the $333.33 from our earlier example.

Again, bounce rate is a compass, its value indicates a lot – it is not by any means the most valuable lever for revenue improvement every time around. If you need a quick rule of thumb though, follow this rule: “If your bounce rate is above 50%, a 5% decrease in bounce rate is more valuable that a 5% increase in conversion rates”. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-advance-bounce-rate-math.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-landing-page-optimization.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-landing-page-optimization.html#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:37:29 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4456
If you don’t know what landing pages are, basically they’re the first page a visitor sees when visiting your site.  More often than not, the home page is the usually a visitor’s landing page, but some websites are frequently adding special landing pages that allow visitors to skip information that doesn’t interest them and might focus on a certain product or certain promotion.

Landing pages can be used to direct customers to specific pages on your site that are of interest to them.  You should use landing pages when you know the visitor to your site is after something specific that normally would take several clicks to reach their desired destination.  Take a look at your traffic analytics to see how the majority of your visitors are entering your site. For example, a good portion of your traffic could be coming from on an ad for a product you sell.  They most likely don’t want to spend 10 minutes navigating through your site just to find the product in the ad they clicked on, so a landing page can help them find what they’re after faster.

How to Measure Landing Page Success:

Like other pages on your website, you should evaluate the success of your landing page. Ideally, you want visitors to your site to make a purchase.  A successful landing page should result in more purchases.

You can measure the success of your landing page by dividing the number of people who make a purchase into the number of visitors to your site.  The result is your conversion rate.  A good lead generation conversion rate falls around 3-5%, with a typical ecommerce rate being 1-2%.

What Makes an Effective Landing Page? –you might ask

The more in tune your landing page is with the source your visitor found your site from, the higher your conversion rate will be. You want your landing page to direct customers to a page with relevant information, making the process of finding what they want on your site as easy as possible.

If your ad that the visitor clicks on to get to your website features a particular product or brand, it’s a good idea to have the landing page also feature that particular product or brand.  If you fail to match the landing page with the intended destination of the visitor, you conversion rates could dramatically decline.There are four key points in making an effective landing page:

1.  Recognition - Your customer should immediately find what they were looking for and they should recognize that the page they were directed to matches the ad that they clicked on.
2. Credibility - Your page must look legitimate.  The visitor should feel secure making a purchase or submitting personal information after seeing your landing page.
3. Persuasiveness - Your landing page should seal the deal and convince the visitor that they need your product or that your service is of value to them.
4. Action - The landing page should highlight some action the visitor can take now that they’ve reached their destination, like making a purchase.

  So there you have it. Now you know a little more about landing pages and their optimization. Is there any assistance you might want for your website? Are you overwhelmed, and maybe want to delegate the analyzation and testing of your site to come up with some new strategies and changes for your site? If so, please consider utilizing our testing program. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-landing-page-optimization.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-optimize-your-site-right-now.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-optimize-your-site-right-now.html#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:20:07 +0000 Chris C. http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4438 Go through your top 25 most popular pages and identify what the purpose of the page is on your site.

The point of this is to identify which pages drive the most business for you. These are the pages that should get the majority of your attention for optimization since an improvement on these equals a good amount of return for your efforts.

Your top 25-50 pages probably include: your most popular landing pages, your homepage, a top-selling product pages, and (perhaps) your cart/checkout pages. Once you get an idea of the different types of pages, start to identify what it is you want visitors to do on these pages.

Some examples might be:

• Category pages: merchandise your products and help customers get to product pages
• Product pages: highlight important product information and get customers to add that to their cart
• Cart pages: review/finalize their order and then continue with checkout.

Load the page you want to optimize on your computer screen and step back 6 feet from your monitor.

Can you see (from 6 feet away) the parts of the page that fit the purpose you defined in Step 1? These important items that meet your defined purpose for these pages should be clear, easy to identify, and not have competition from other, less-important elements from 6 feet away.

For example: on a product page, you should be able to glance at the page from 6 feet away and clearly see the main product image, how much it is, where important product information is located (either in a description or bulleted list – you don’t need to be able to read it, just be able to see where that information is), and your Add to Cart button.

Once you’ve completed this exercise for your top, most-popular pages, you should have a list of pages that don’t clearly display the point of the page. It might be that you can see it, but that there are competing areas that draw your eye elsewhere. Take this list of pages that you will optimize to Step 3.

Make the elements that are the most important on your pages stand out clearly so they are

Some techniques to accomplish this are:

• Reduce impact of competing elements:
  Do you have a live chat image on the page that is taking a lot of focus? Does it have faces of customer service representatives? By removing large images that aren’t vital to the next step in their process, you allow the customer to focus on the product they are shopping for. Live chat is important, but not until they’ve decided whether or not to buy this product.
  
  Don’t be afraid to remove items from the page. Removing distractions and clutter can give big returns.
  
  I liken this to your friend that tells you all of the details in every story (everyone’s name, what they were wearing, what they do for a living, what kind of car they drive, what time it is, etc), when the story might be about how their car broke down on the way home. Too much information on a page starts to do the same thing to your visitors that your friend does when they tell a story: you (your visitors) lose the point of what it is they are supposed to be paying attention to. Simplifying your pages can help this issue.
• Change color of the element:
  Is your Add to Cart button on product pages the same color as your site design? Is it the same color as your left navigation or background colors? Is it light grey? Sometimes simply choosing a color that doesn’t fit with your site design colors will help this element stand out and be noticed. On category pages, it could be that you have a dark background color that reduces the contrast of your product images.
• Change the size of the element:
  Making the items you want customers to see bigger can help for some items that might be so small they are unnoticed. If you have vital information in your product description that they need to know (example: this product is custom made and will take 5-7 days to process before shipping), make sure the text is big enough to read easily. It’s amazing how many sites have 12pt (or smaller!) paragraphs of text.

That’s it. Once you’ve identified which elements are hard to see and which items need to be changed, you can mock these changes up and see if that helps make the page easier to read/use. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-optimize-your-site-right-now.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-decision-metrics.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-decision-metrics.html#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:15:33 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4415
Analytic metrics can be divided into two camps: there are “indicator metrics,” and “diagnostic metrics.” The difference between the two is important for decision making.

In today’s video, we’ll go through a sample list of metrics in these two camps and reveal how you may be able to use them to make significant improvements on your site.

Indicator metrics show the performance level for various areas of a site and are the metrics you should review closer than other metrics when making decisions on your site. They include:

A. Conversion Rate – This is the best example of an indicator metric and arguably your most important metric. Conversion rate indicates the overall effectiveness of your site, but does not explain how or why your conversion rate is what it is.

B. Number of Visitors – This metric indicates the popularity of a site and the growth or decline of your shopper base. But again this metric does not explain how or why your site got its popularity or lack thereof.

C. Time Spent on the Site – Is yet another “indicator metric” that indicates how compelling visitors find the site, and again, this metric alone doesn’t help us determine why visitors are behaving in a certain way.

Lets continue with Diagnostic Metrics on the next slide.

So Diagnostic metrics, on the other hand, allow the analytics person to understand why things are happening the way they are and help provide clues on how to change things in a positive way or improve results.

A. Bounce Rate – This metric tells us that visitors and content are somehow misaligned if it is high. That is: visitors for one reason or another didn’t see what they wanted to see, perhaps in content, imagery or professionalism and left the site because of what they saw. If you are tracking bounce rate on all of your pages you can usually narrow down the suspects.

B. Form Completion Rates – If a form has a low number of completions compared to viewership, this metric shows that the form and the offer are not in balance. Either the form asked for too much information (or the wrong sort of information), or the offer itself isn’t compelling enough to folks.

C. Add-to-Cart Click Rates – This metric tells us which of your products are the most popular, which are trending, and which products are losing demand or not in demand.

So as you can see, both metrics play a very important role. Indicator Metrics put up red flags that indicate a problem, and Diagnostic Metrics explain and help you find the reasons that explain the indicator metrics.

So there you have it. Now you know about decision metrics. The next time you’re looking at your web analytics or making decisions on your site, remember Diagnostic and Indicator Metrics. Now that you’re aware of this analyzation technique. Is there any assistance you might want for you website? Are you overwhelmed, and want to delegate the analyzation and testing of your site to come up with some major strategies and changes for your site? If so, please consider utilizing our testing program. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-decision-metrics.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-holiday-shopping-trends.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-holiday-shopping-trends.html#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:36:51 +0000 Chris C. http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4399
I get a lot of questions from clients about whether it’s worth testing during the holiday season. The answer is always “yes,” particularly if this is the time of year that you do the most of your business.

The two main shopping trends from this year were:

• Motivational messaging is king during the holiday shopping season.
• Timing is everything.

Customer’s motivation for completing purchases changes during the holiday season. They are more likely to put up with little odd usability quirks on your website since they are motivated by buying a gift in time for the holidays. They’ll use pages that aren’t user friendly because they are willing to click around more to find what they want. So, running a test on page layouts, design, or colors won’t move the needle that much. The trick is to focus on how to effectively message the holiday shopping deals that you are offering. You want to make sure these deals are seen by visitors. You also want to make sure that these offers put the most money in your pocket. Does $10 off work better than 10% off? If there is no difference between the two, which one gives you better margins? These are the important messaging tests that you can perform during the holiday season to make sure you are using your holiday deals in a way that is going to put the most money in your pocket.

This leads to the second point: timing is everything. WHEN you offer these deals is just as important as what the deal is. This year, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend was huge. The next period of increased sales was from the 14th through the 19th of December (since this is the last point when someone can buy online and guarantee that the gift will be there by Christmas). And, finally, a lot of store saw an small spike in sales immediately following Christmas (December 26th – 28th).

Finding the right combination of when to run which offer is the best way for you to make the most out of your busiest time of year. As you have questions about which offer works best on your website throughout the year, you can start to test these offers and how they perform at different times of your holiday shopping season next year. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-holiday-shopping-trends.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-sales-in-january.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-sales-in-january.html#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:16:10 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4383
Having clearly posted store policies is imperative, and during the holidays they are more important than ever. The prepared merchant will offer a flexible return and exchange policy that will benefit customers and gift recipients as well as the merchant. Giving customers time to return or exchange items can help to build customer confidence and appeal, and providing store credits can help keep money in your pocket.

By offering store credits on returns of holiday purchases, your telling the customer you’ve got their back. You can use coupons or gift certificates to provide the credits, however gift certificates might be more ideal because balances can normally be carried over if the full amount is not used. Make sure you check with your shopping cart provider to find out what options are available to you.

You should also focus on those who receive cash as a gift for the holidays. While the bulk of retail stores look to cut losses by putting holiday items on clearance, you can strive to get some of that holiday cash by putting highly sought items on sale after the holidays, or extend sales on key products throughout January.

To increase the chance that visitors will spend money at your store, keep running with a returns and exchange policy that is appealing. For items that likely will not sell after December, use strike-through pricing to give discounts– after all, it’s better to get a small return on an investment in inventory than no return at all and a bulk of inventory to deal with. Try to remember these key points:

• People Love to Accessorize
• Display is Key
• Avoid the “No-Nos”
• Find Your Strategy

In today’s video, we’ll go through this list and reveal how you may be able to resolve and prevent these cart abandonments from happening on your site.

So like I said before, People Love to Accessorize!
If you are contemplating what items to put on sale in January, think about accessories that are most likely to sell with this year’s top holiday gifts. For example, if you sell portable electronics, consider discounting cases for Kindles, iPads, iPods, and digital cameras. By offering great January pricing on such accessories, you can increase your chances of getting some post-holiday business.

Display is Key
Grabbing the attention of post-holiday shoppers is a not easy, but it can be done. You will want to use key words on your home page and products pages. Terms like “Save 50%”, “After Holiday Clearance”, and “Post Holiday Sale” can bring in those folks looking for January bargains. Displaying the regular price of an item with a line through it, in addition to the sale price, can also be enticing because everyone likes to know how much he or she is saving.

Avoiding the “No, Nos”
Garnering post-holiday sales can fail miserably if you lose sight of what online shoppers will tolerate. Remember to avoid continuous pop-up ads (if you must use them, use only one on the home page), and be careful about the way you force minimum purchases. Also, don’t use less-than-honest advertising. Remember that Honesty Is The Best Policy! It’s irritating to open an email boasting an over-the-top sale, only to find out that nothing is in stock and that the remaining items aren’t really on sale at all. Shoppers Hate that! If your sale is time sensitive then make sure to clearly say that to your potential customers.

January is also a good time to update your store policies as well. If you don’t offer rain checks, which grant customers a means to purchase items that go out of stock during a sale at the sale price when the stock is replenished, you should say so. Also note any special conditions for sale items. If an item has been discontinued and you won’t be able to offer a same-item exchange, be clear about that. Keep in mind that the majority of the bad reputation that online stores receive are based on post-order problems, and commonly refer to a lack of customer service or refusal to make good on a promise stated in store policies.

Find YOUR Strategy
Your goal is to get online shoppers to spend more money with you after the holidays. Give them a reason to do just that. Most online stores worry about what their competitors are doing rather than what they are not doing. Copying promotional ideas will only get you so far. You need to find YOUR strategy that, when presented with options from two stores at once, window shoppers will find themselves in your store. Find the strategy that works for you.

So there you have it. Those are some great tips for Driving Sales in January. To help you with your January Sales Strategy. Now that you are aware of these tips. Is there any assistance you might be itching for? Are you overwhelmed, and want to delegate the testing of these strategies so you don’t have to worry about it? If so, please consider utilizing our testing program. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-sales-in-january.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-shopping-cart-abandonment.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-shopping-cart-abandonment.html#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:33:43 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4364

Comparison Shopping

Options

Confusion

Impatience

Fear

In today’s video, we’ll go through this list and reveal how you may be able to resolve and prevent these cart abandonments from happening on your site.

The eCommerce world is like a local farmer’s market. People like to have a variety of options when they’re strolling the parking lot. However, the less options there are, the less likely they are to stick around. Because if there’s only one guy selling apples. Number one, there’s no comparison shopping to be done and Number two, what’s the likelihood of you getting a good deal on apples? (Let me give you a hint: Its not so good.) Thus, more people are apt to leave or “abandon their cart”.

Switching to the eCommerce world now, it's not unusual for consumers to go right through the buying process all the way to the checkout stage for the sole purpose of getting a true indication of what their FINAL PURCHASE PRICE will be including tax and shipping. Comparison shoppers will repeat this process on many sites before making a purchase.

So what can you do to keep “comparison shoppers” from abandoning your site? You not only need to strive to have the best prices, but you also need to strive to have the best and biggest variety of options. That means color options, size options, and payment options! Offering as many payment options as possible allows your customers to pay more likely than not with their favorite payment method. And letting your clients know which payment options are available up-front improves conversion rates and reduces shopping cart abandonment.

Okay, So now let’s say a shopper visits your site and gets confused from mixed messages or just the checkout process in general. Of course they’re going to abandon their cart in hopes of finding a less-confusing experience. This is a major issue because consumers may get confused about how the process works, about added costs such as shipping, or distracted by other elements on the pages. Confusing shipping rate messaging or Charging excessive shipping rates can cause many e-shoppers to leave without completing the purchase process altogether. One way to reduce confusion abandonment is to be up-front and consistent on shipping costs and all of your messaging. In the cart, you can also try to utilize Live shipping rates from a shipping provider to stay on top of fluctuating shipping rates.

Another cause of cart abandonment is “Impatience”. If a shopper finds that there are too many checkout pages, shopping cart pages that load slowly, or sites that require registration before purchase, or even requests for too much non-purchase related information, any and all of those factors can send other-wise potential shoppers fleeing from your site. To counter this, get yourself and others to “test” your cart by looking specifically for ways to streamline the checkout process and shoppers to the order-confirmation pages as quick as possible by reducing the number of required fields and page-loads to get to that point.

Last but not least, we have those shoppers that get scared before clicking that final “checkout” button. Keep in mind that the consumer is about to hand over their credit card details to a complete stranger, and if they have any degree of common sense, they'll be wary and rightly so. Anything that seems a little out of the ordinary on order forms that ask for too much personal or unnecessary information may scare them away. To thwart this issue, again make sure you streamline your process, reduce site errors in all browsers, and place “trustworthy” logos like “Verisign”, “PayPal” and “Better Business Bureau” logos in a prime location on your checkout pages to reassure your shoppers.

So there you have it. Those are the 5 most common reasons for cart abandonment. Now that you are aware of these errors and how to deal with them. Is there any assistance you might be yearning for in finding and repairing these abandonment reasons on your site? If so, please consider utilizing our testing program.

Do you want to fight cart abandonment? Add The Cart Closer, featuring an intelligent tiered offering system. Learn More ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-shopping-cart-abandonment.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-what-errors-mean-2.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-what-errors-mean-2.html#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:19:18 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4328
In today’s video, we’ll go through a list of the most common website errors and how you may be able to resolve and prevent them on your site.

Okay, Let’s say you open a browser, and start surfing your site. Oh dear, you’ve encountered an error message.

If it’s:

400 Bad File Request: This means the Web server (running the Web site) thinks that the data stream sent by the client (e.g. your Web browser) was 'malformed' i.e. did not respect the HTTP protocol completely. So the Web server was unable to understand the request and process it. Sometimes this can be resolved by clearing your cache or Retyping the URL, paying close attention to letter case and special characters. But typically, this means there is a low-level problem in the client or the Web server or both. 95% of the time this is because of a problem on the client system. For example, there might be something unstable on your PC running the Web browser. Make sure you scan your system for spyware and viruses as well.

401 Unauthorized: This error means that the request from the browser to the server requires authentication. More than likely, this indicates that a username and password was required to access the page, and you didn’t enter the correct pair or that one or both of your user ID and password were invalid for whatever reason.

403 Forbidden: The request from the browser to the server was understood, but the server has been instructed not to respond with a Web page. So the 403 error is equivalent to a blanket 'NO' by the Web server - with no further discussion allowed. More than likely, there is a server permission issue – and that can be a conundrum for the ecommerce business owner, particularly if he or she is also a novice Web server administrator. The resolution to this problem is to go to the server, select the file in question and give global users read and execute permissions. For those of you with UNIX knowledge, you’ll want to chmod your file to 755.

404 File Not Found: This is probably the most common error you’ll see in your lifetime. This error means that the server understands what you’re requesting, but it can’t find it. This could mean that you’ve mistyped the URL or it could also be that you put the file in another folder on the server from the one you are requesting.

408 Request Timeout: This error means that the server got your request, but what you’ve requested is just too darned big to deliver in a timely fashion. Sometimes, this error message displays when the server itself is too busy, and unable to respond with Web pages in a timely fashion. To fix this, check the file size of your images or other files you are serving up and see about trying to minimize their file size by saving them in a different format or picking certain ones to remove altogether.. You can also check with your hosting provider to see how many sites are being served-up along with yours on a particular server. If the problem continues, you might want to consider a dedicated server.

Okay, So now let’s say you open a browser, and start surfing your site and you encounter another error message …

If it’s:

A 500 Internal Server Error: This is the mother of all error messages. It requires a server administrator because it signifies a configuration issue between the site and server. Unfortunately, the error could signify just about anything, but if you happen to be a DIY (do-it-yourselfer) sort of entrepreneur, there is a way to get more details: If you’re using Internet Explorer, open Tools ? Internet Options ? Advanced Options and Uncheck the “show friendly HTTP errors” setting. One thing is for sure: This error doesn’t display because of some HTML error. This is a server problem caused by configuration and triggered by any number of things including a script, application, scheduled job, process, etc.

501 Not Implemented: This signifies that a Web server doesn’t support a feature you’re trying to access or execute. Examine the page in question, and contact your Web host. Let them know what’s on the page, in terms of functionality and code, and they’ll likely be able to tell you quickly whether or not what’s on that page is supported.

502 Service Temporarily Overloaded: This error message is the equivalent to big-city traffic. The server is being hit and hit hard. It would serve the customer best to come back at a different time. If your site is not on a dedicated server, check with your host provider to determine which site on the server is getting trafficked heavily. If this happens more frequently you may want to consider a dedicated server.

503 Service Unavailable: This Could be a number of things, including a busy server. More than likely, it indicates that the user has lost his or her Web connection. Try surfing to another site to make sure you still have Web access. Visit a site you haven’t been to in some time to make sure that it’s not merely being loaded into your browser via cached memory. Those are the most common numbered errors. Other common Internet errors include:

File Contains No Data: This is a common error, and it probably reflects something awry in your HTML. First thing to check is your table code. Have you closed all of your tags? Does every TR have a /TR? If you’re sure that’s not it, then look at your header code to see if anything out of the ordinary exists there.

Connection Refused By Host: This means you don’t have permission to access the site. Contact a server administrator.

Network Connection Refused By The Server: This is similar to the 502 Error. This means the server is busy. Not much you can do in the short-term except to consider more bandwidth and/or a dedicated server if you’re not hosting your business on one at this point.

So there you have it. Those are the most common Website Errors you can encounter on the web. Now that you are aware of these errors and how to deal with them. Is there any assistance you might want in finding them on your site, or redirecting the ones you have so that your customers don’t see them? If so, consider utilizing our testing program. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-what-errors-mean-2.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-holiday-widgets.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-holiday-widgets.html#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:35:18 +0000 Chris C. http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4303
A holiday widget that outlines different gift suggestion categories can be can effective way to highlight holiday shopping ideas. This also merchandises those areas to all customers rather than just your email or PPC campaigns by making these options seen to all of your customers on all pages.

Categories to show might be as simple as “Gifts for Him” or “Gifts for Her,” to pricing (“Under $50”), or targeted at site personas (such as a spontaneous “Grab bag discounts!”).

So, here are a few things to keep in mind with your widgets:

• Make sure they stay out the way of regular shoppers. It’s okay if they intrude a little, but make sure there’s a clear, easy way for the visitor to get them out of the way.
• Try to make the widget matches the design of your site. If the widgets don’t look like part of your site, this can cause anxiety with customers. They might view this as a third party ad rather than a tool for their help.
• Stay closed. When a visitor clicks on the close button, make sure the widget stays closed as they continue to shop on the site. It will become frustrating if they have to consistently close the widget on every page load. Not everyone on your site wants to use this, so make sure they can get rid of it easily without bothering them.
• Tracking the use of the links in the widget helps you understand what customers found the most helpful during the holiday season. This can help you glean more information for next years promotions.

Remember, these widgets shouldn’t be the sole focus of your holiday efforts on the site. However, holiday widgets are a great merchandising option to connect your visitors to holiday-based sections of your site. They do a good job at connecting scent trails for holiday, gift-buying driven customers. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-holiday-widgets.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-what-colors-mean.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-what-colors-mean.html#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:07:43 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4275
Red: Red is the color of blood and fire. Thus it has been associated with urgency, energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. Red is a very emotionally intense color. Red has a very high visibility, which is why stop signs, stoplights, and fire equipment are usually painted red. Red also tends to bring text and images to the foreground. Making it the perfect color for 'Buy Now' or ‘Add-To-Cart' buttons.

Yellow: Yellow is the color of sunshine. Thus it has been associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Yellow tends to arouse cheerfulness, stimulate mental activity, and produce a warming effect. Yellow is seen before other colors when placed against black; that’s why this combination is often used to issue a warning. Yellow is very effective for attracting attention, so use it to highlight the most important elements of your design.

Orange: Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. To the human eye, orange is a very hot color, so it gives the sensation of heat. Nevertheless, orange is not as aggressive as red. Orange has very high visibility, so you can use it to catch attention and highlight the most important elements of your design.

Blue: Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. You can use blue to promote products and services related to cleanliness. As opposed to emotionally warm colors like red, orange, and yellow; blue is linked to consciousness and intellect. Blue is also a masculine color that is highly accepted among males. Dark blue is associated with depth, expertise, and stability; it is a preferred color for corporate America.

Green: Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Dark green is also commonly associated with money. Green has great healing power. It is the most restful color for the human eye; it can improve vision. Green is also directly related to nature, so you can use it to promote 'green' products. Dull, darker green is commonly associated with money, the financial world, banking, and Wall Street.

Purple: Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Purple is commonly associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance. Purple is associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic. Purple is a very rare color in nature; some people consider it to be artificial. Light purple is a good choice for a feminine design. You can use bright purple when promoting children's products.

Pink: Pink traditionally is associated with femininity and is seldom used in design to target men. Because of its calming effect, the color pink has been used to paint the locker rooms of opposing sports teams. Pink is a good example of how the meanings behind colors can shift. Today, many would associate pink with breast cancer awareness.

White: White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection. White means safety, purity, and cleanliness. As opposed to black, white usually has a positive connotation. In advertising, white is associated with coolness and cleanliness because it's the color of snow. White is also associated with hospitals, doctors, and sterility, so you can use white to suggest safety when promoting medical products.

Black: Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery. Black is a mysterious color associated with fear and the unknown (black holes). It usually has a negative connotation (blacklist, black humor, 'black death'). Black denotes strength and authority; it is considered to be a very formal, elegant, and prestigious color. Black contrasts well with bright colors. Combined with red or orange – other very powerful colors – black gives a very aggressive color scheme.

Gold: Gold is associated with prestige, illumination, wealth, and expensive things. Gold is frequently used as a secondary color. When used as a primary color in design, gold often takes on the properties of yellow.

Silver: Silver is associated with prestige, cold, scientific. Silver is very similar to gold but it evokes a colder emotion rather than the happier, brighter feeling associated with gold.

We’ll go into more information on color combinations and color/brand identity in the next 2 slides.

Using combinations of the colors mentioned in the last slide can help push an emotional connection with your shoppers. For example, as previously mentioned, light blues tend to be friendlier while dark blues tend to be more reliable and invoke a feeling of trust. Lighter greens seem calmer while brighter greens seem more energetic. This is where color-theory terms like hue, value, and saturation become important and should be considered with context when creating an atmosphere from color.

Similar to the emotional shifts caused by lightening or darkening a color, different color combinations evoke different emotional responses. Black and red send a different emotional message than white and red. For a simpler example, we can think about color combinations associated with holidays. Red, white, and green in combination can be reminiscent of Christmas. Black and orange are associated with Halloween. Red, orange, and brown have ties with autumn and Thanksgiving. You can begin to see how using different colors in different combinations can create new feelings or atmospheres for your shoppers.

Let’s continue on the next slide.

In addition to emotional associations, colors can create new links to brand recognition. When thinking about colors in the context of brands, you’re likely to get entirely new associations. For example, thinking of orange might remind you of The Home Depot or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Magenta might remind you of T-Mobile. Silver might leave you thinking of Apple. The color Blue might bring to mind Facebook or Walmart. Notice, with this last example that saturation plays an important role in the message the color blue sends. The blue color used by Facebook and Walmart is unique and easy to spot.

It has also been proven that color improves memory. In the case of brands, color has been shown to improve brand recognition by as much as 85 percent. This is a statistic that shouldn’t be ignored. So whether you are developing a website or building a brand, now that you know some of their meanings, consider which colors will deliver the appropriate theme for your site.

Source - http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3166-Color-Psychology-and-Online-Marketing

So now that you know all of this about colors, are you reconsidering any of the color-schemes on your site? If so, don’t go make these changes without knowing the consequences. Consider utilizing our testing program. ]]>

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