Many online store owners and managers are probably wondering which site search display generates the highest click- through rates, grid or list view? Research done by Sli-Systems.com shows that a grid view gets the highest click-through rate. Grid View: The grid allows more products to be displayed above the fold and it’s easier to browse through a large number of results. As shown below, this is typically used in the apparel and electronics industry. List View: This format displays a single item per row. List view provides more space for additional information. Compared to grid view, list view displays less products per page and click through rates are almost non existent on products on the 2nd and 3rd page. This reminds me of Google search result because when your website is listed on the 2rd or 3rd page on Google or any other search engine, your listing gets almost no clicks. circuitcity.com Go […]

Just recently we provided our free website inspection service to an e-commerce store and one thing I noticed was that too many items were “out of stock” in their search result pages, which didn’t look good as you can see in the example below. The problem with having too many out of stock items is it could put your shoppers off causing them to look elsewhere, which means a loss in revenue. So how to deal with it? don’t display “out of stock items” – problem with this solution is that your products could rank well in search engines and by switching them off (not showing them) you could lose that valuable free organic traffic driving your sales and possibly decrease your revenue too. Plus those visitors who specifically came to your site to look for product which you had to switch off as it’s “out of stock”, could leave.  So this a no, […]

Do you show the same offer to all your shoppers? If so, you’re falling behind your competition and failing to recognize that not all customers are created alike. Today’s top online retailers understand that they can micro market to specific segments of their customer base with targeted content. These retailers are maximizing their marketing and merchandising efforts, delivering a more relevant experience to the customer, and improving their bottom line. In this one-hour webinar, Ecommerce Analyst Linda Bustos and Product Manager Peter Sheldon of Elastic Path Software will discuss how targeted selling presents an opportunity for you to improve conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty. Webinar takeaways: How can you leverage what you know about your customer to improve their shopping experience and increase store revenues? How are the top online retailers using targeted selling? How can you avoid the common mistakes? Understanding how to apply targeted selling for […]

If you currently don’t use product recommendations on your website but are thinking about doing so, or if you are looking for a better recommendation engine, then this webinar is a must to watch. In this webinar you will learn about: the power of recommendations what to look for when selecting a solution stubhub.com case study

What is the REAL purpose of follow-up? Not everybody is ready to purchase your products or services right now. But that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually. Follow-up keeps your name in front of your contacts until they are ready to buy. When should my first follow-up message go out? Immediately. If you obtained a lead from your website, make sure they instantly receive an email from you. If you purchase your leads, get in touch with them right away. If you spoke to a prospect in person or on the phone, send them a follow-up message. Don’t give them time to forget about you. Start building that relationship right now. How frequently should I follow up with my contacts? When first marketing to a lead or customer, it’s all right to send them several sequential emails. Remember, the average person needs to hear your message seven times before they buy. […]

In my previous post “Avoid These Website Redesign Pitfalls” I was talking about about the danger of losing organic traffic when redesigning your website and how to avoid it. In this post, we are going to talk about another website redesign pitfall, which is “loss in revenue or conversion rates” after website redesign. Did it happen? It did. In this post a website owner experienced a drop in conversion rates in his checkout. Let’s start with what the purpose of website redesign is. The main purpose is to increase conversion rates and make your site more usable for visitors . In addition, it can also be for making the site look more attractive / professional. Website redesign isn’t an easy job. Just imagine, your website is generating £7,000,000 in revenue annually. After the website redesign your revenue dropped by 17% annually. In this case it would mean £1,190,000 less money for […]

As mentioned in the post “What is The Overall Increase in Sales by Adding Reviews“, product reviews can in some cases increase your conversion rates by more than 20%. Firstly, have a look at how many people according to powerreviews.com read reviews before they purchase. As you can see below, almost every buyer has read a product review at least once before they made a purchase. So the question is, how do you get your customers to leave reviews of the products they have purchased? Make it easy and visible on your product pages. Below are a couple of great examples. rei.com wineenthusiast.com Don’t ask your visitors to register/login in order to leave a review as for example on bestbuy.com. Especially if you are a new or not yet a well known brand with a low traffic level, haven’t built your credibility yet or don’t have any or only a few […]

According to a PowerReviews.com study (which you can download below),  11% of online merchants said that they saw an increase in conversion of over 20% by adding customer reviews to their site. Q: What is the overall increase in conversion rate that you have seen as a result of adding customer reviews to your site? A very interesting insight you may also pick up from the above chart is that more than 63% didn’t know if having reviews increased their conversion rates. This got me thinking about why that could be as we know that Amazon.com built much of their success on having customer reviews. Possible Reasons: they have had reviews on their website since their launch, making it difficult to determine if this has increased conversion rates unless they use a 3rd party solution with management and reporting capabilities don’t have enough reviews on their website and generally having difficulties […]

Website redesign is a big project and it’s not an easy thing to do. The biggest problem with website redesign is that you can see a traffic drop if you don’t protect your website’s most valuable assets, which are pages with high conversion rates, pages receiving a lot of organic traffic for your optimized keywords and those with a large number of inbound links. Destroy your assets and you will get a drop in traffic and leads. What you also want to understand is what traffic brings you the conversion. Again you don’t want to loose that. It’s vital that you protect those pages. Proimpact7.com recommends using internet marketing software from HubSpot.com before you decide to go ahead with your website redesign. By using HubSpot software we are able to see which pages are the most valuable and then redirect them during the website redesign process, thus protecting your SEO […]

SYNOPSIS: Organic search results not only attract far more clicks than PPC ads, they are also seen as more credible. Locking in a top-five spot in Google is where you want your site to be – front and center with targeted prospects. Of course, every other marketer is gunning for the same result. Good news: Your pages may be closer to those high-ranking spots than you think. For our June 24 web clinic, we invited special guest Paul Taylor to discuss five key SEO factors and show how applying them to real sites from our audience can increase targeted traffic and, ultimately, lift your conversions. NOTE: check our SEO pay per result service. Our prices starts from £70 per keyword.

Learn how hubspot.com received more than 2,500 webinar viewers today. I received an e-mail invitation to the HubSpot.com webinar about the use of social media and how to harness the power of social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other networking sites. What was very interesting about the e-mail invitation, webinar sign up and confirmation page was, how amazingly well HubSpot.com incorporated the social media in there and literally shouted about “share this with your friends” via social networks. In the screen shots below you can see what HubSpot.com did right and why there is a lesson to be learned from them. newsletter webinar invitation landing/sign up page confirmation page And the final result of this approach? More than 2,500 people visited this webinar as seen in the picture below. As the webinar started I could see how the number was rising from 5 up to more than 2,500 very fast. So […]

One of the most important processes when designing for the web is testing. We’re all aware that one of the challenges of web design is ensuring the site looks good in multiple browsers. As the mobile web becomes more and more important, you’ll also want to know how your existing site or widget looks on a mobile device, but there are so many devices, how do we test them all? As the number of people using mobile devices increases, so too does the pressure to ensure that our websites look good and are legible on a mobile device. The ideal, and unrealistic situation, would be to test on real handsets, but obviously this would be impossible for most designers. Fortunately, there are number of tools available online, allowing you to put your site through its mobile paces. Read the full article….

Internet-enabled mobile handsets, mobile Internet devices, and new wireless broadband standards are all making it easier for consumers to shop online while on the move. So, is your store ready to serve these mobile customers? In the evolution of modern shopping, consumers have very recently progressed from visiting a physical store every time they wanted to buy something to shopping online via a desktop or laptop computer, at least some of the time. The next evolutionary step will presumably have shoppers making more purchases online from mobile devices. These mobile shoppers will soon be buying flowers via an iPhone during a train commute, ordering a gift for a new client on a mobile Internet device (MID) in the back of an airport-bound taxi, or shopping for movie memorabilia on a BlackBerry while walking out of the theater. Mobile Internet access and mobile commerce are inevitable, in my view. In fact, […]