Improving conversions & reducing bounce rates
Helpful summary by analytics guru Avinash Kaushik about aligning landing pages' purpose to the visitor's intent, summarised in six tips. The moral:if you want to have high performing web pages make sure that you:
"1. Have a clear understanding of what the purpose of that page is and
2a. a clearer understanding of what drove customers to the page and
2b. what they want to accomplish to ensure that
3. #1 and #2 are in alignment.
Glory will be yours!"
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on August 26, 2009 in Best practice
E-commerce client management
Amused by this insightful & amusing video about how some clients deal with their suppliers/agencies. Of oourse, none of Screen Pages' clients exhibit these characteristics.
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on June 10, 2009 in Best practice
Mega drop down menus navigate well
Design usability Jakob Nielsen has spoken about drop down menus and concludes: "Big, two-dimensional drop-down panels group navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain the user's choices."
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on March 24, 2009 in Best practice
Monopoly rules for the current climate
Does Monopoly still work? We are indebted to Stephen Sacks of Wallace Sacks for his amusing & highly contemporary update on the rules of the classic game of Monopoly....
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on January 22, 2009 in Best practice
404 pages
We have commented on 404 pages before - those little unhelpful pages that appear on an e-tailer's site especially when those products aren't in stock or available anymore. For websites with a higher product churn, this can be a frequent event. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on November 03, 2008 in Best practice
Landing page engagement
The words and pictures on your site are your main chance to actively sell something to your potential customers -- and you only have a couple of seconds to do it.
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on October 24, 2008 in Best practice
Basket abandonment
A MUST read articleabout minimizing checkout dropout and basket abandonment. According to recent studies by DoubleClick, currently around 57% of all shopping cart sessions are abandoned. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on October 16, 2008 in Best practice
E-commerce basics for online retailing in 2007
Online selling is one of the few bright sectors in the retail firmament. You will be aware of the overall growth rates: 50% is not uncommon. For mail order companies, online sales routinely count for over 30% of total sales. The pace of change is phenomenal: marketing concepts and tools are fast developing and the body of insight into what works and what doesn’t is expanding exponentially. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on January 26, 2007 in Best practice
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Online retailing strategies by Mckinsey Mckinsey - the renowned strategy consultants - have analysed the four different online retailing models and offer some valuable insights. Direct retailers with physical stores captured 52% of Internet sales in 2003, while those without stores garnered just 31%.
Retailers without stores do well as either "efficiency machines" - e.g. Amazon - (25% of total online sales) or "niche leaders" - e.g. LL Bean - (6% of total online sales). Store-based retailers do well as either "traffic drivers" - e.g. Walmart - (35% of total online revenues) or "triple plays" - e.g. Williams-Sonoma(17% of total online sales) depending on their scale and profit margins. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on November 02, 2005 in Best practice
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Website design critical for e-commerce site credibility
Nearly half of all consumers (or 46.1%) in a Web Watch study assessed the credibility of sites based in part on the appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size and color schemes.
Screen Pages maintains an award-winning dedicated graphic design team focussed on the needs of online retailers.
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on June 22, 2005 in Best practice
E-commerce navigation has massive impact on site abandonment
US industry average for home page drop-offs is 20%, it appears. The use of product photography, drop-downs, drill-downs, fly-outs, filtering, search is rewardingly explored. At Screen Pages, project teams spend many days analysing and planning product navigation. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on April 13, 2005 in Best practice
Best-of-breed e-commerce separates the online haves and have-nots
A well constructed article by Lauren Freedman in Internet Week highlights the four practices that separate the winners from the losers in online retailing: category-centric merchandising; customer service execution; cross-channel execution and finally, consistency.
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on February 15, 2005 in Best practice
E-commerce websites drive customers into store
Gartner analyst Adam Sarner told the E-Commerce Times that multichannel retailers learned that e-commerce doesn't necessarily mean a transaction in an online shopping cart. "J. Crew knows that someone going to jcrew.com is 27% more likely to visit a J. Crew store soon afterwards," Sarner said. "The Web is a powerful influence." Posted by 'Screen Pages' on January 25, 2005 in Best practice
Top Ten e-commerce "must haves"
According to the E-Tailing Group, a US online retailing consultant:
1. 800 or toll-free telephone number
2. Keyword Search
3. Answer e-mail question within 25 hours, correctly with a specific answer
4. Four or fewer days to receive package
5. Six or fewer clicks to checkout
6. Real time inventory in shopping cart or product page
7. Online shipping status
8. Order confirmation in shopping cart
9. E-mail order confirmation sent w/order number included
10. Recommended products/features in shopping process
11. Display customer service hours
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on January 20, 2005 in Best practice
Online retailing: how to make the most of your website This article appeared in Draper's Record Jan 2005
Some retailers treat their websites as bolt-ons to their existing businesses and see them as little more than an electronic order form. What they are missing is the opportunity for a website to be a fully-fledged, cost-effective, integrated sales and marketing channel.
A website should be capable of handling at least the same level of sales as a couple of stores. Retailers have a choice: websites can be advertising billboards, promoting a brand and steering the consumer towards a store, or they can attract customers, make sales and drive new opportunities.
According to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), online sales of clothing, footwear and accessories have soared by almost 500% during the past three years. In November and December, IMRG estimates that British consumers spent £3 billion online, compared with £2.5bn spent in the two months leading up to Christmas 2003. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on January 19, 2005 in Best practice
Online retailers focus on conversion
A recent survey from Javelin Group, the retail consultancy, reveals that online retailers' top priority for 2005 is to improve conversion ratios. 90% of online shops will focus on better conversion from improved search, navigation and merchandising. 70% of online retailers questioned said that this was a strategic shift from new customer acquisition.
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on January 13, 2005 in Best practice
Top 15 pages on your website
New research from Jupiter (commissioned by Ominture and covered by Internet Retailer shows that the average number of pages viewed on a site per visitor per month was fewer than 20.
It obviously pays to understand which pages peform well & make them work harder for you. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on October 20, 2004 in Best practice
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Customer acquisition and conversion are critical
Over 90% of merchants surveyed rank customer acquisition, converting browsers to buyers and customer retention, says a new report from Exmplar and the Etailing Group in the USA, reports Yahoo!
Posted by 'Screen Pages' on October 18, 2004 in Best practice
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Twenty ways to minimise cart abandonment
Industry research shows up to 75 percent of shoppers abandon their online shopping carts before completing the checkout process. Two articles by US online shopping guru explain how to reduce this key ratio. Posted by 'Screen Pages' on September 13, 2004 in Best practice
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