E-Commerce Link: Keepin’ It Optimized
Three factors determine your online success
June 2007 By Jeffrey Eisenberg
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Value. Does the Web site not only communicate the value of your products and services, but also of doing business with you?
Service after the sale. How do you support customers after the transaction? Can customers easily find their shipping and product questions on the site?
Environmental and Conditional Factors
These factors exist largely outside of a company’s immediate control:
Product relevance. Do your products deliver on the promise made to the customer? How relevant is your offering?
Conversion type. Is your site’s objective to sell products or services, sell content, or generate leads? A significant percentage of all traffic won’t convert, regardless of how well a marketer optimizes its site.
Product buy-in and buying cycle. How complex is the sales process? Does your product require endorsement from another person before a purchase decision is made? How much time is a visitor willing to devote to the conversion process?
Market potential. This is the total dollars available in a product or service category. Keyword research can help determine this figure.
Competitive environment. What are your competitors doing, and how does it affect your sales?
Each of these factors can be taken into account, and each factor also can affect the others. For example, all factors being equal, a Web site with strong brand confidence might expect the same online performance as a lesser-known site with a stronger PEF score.
Using These Factors to Build Tests
These factors can be used to help narrow your testing choices and focus on known trouble spots.
You also can use these factors to maintain the integrity of your test and to prevent overlap. For example, if you are testing the momentum of a series of pages, it would be unwise to tinker with overall site structure as it would produce test results that are not comparable to the metrics obtained from prior tests against the control structure.
Case Study
I’ll give you an example of a test recently conducted for a client that improved conversion by 20 percent with one simple change.
Livesouth.com is a lead-generation site for retirement communities that just began using Google Website Optimizer. Together, we set up a couple of different tests, and this is the first one that was implemented:
Problem: Livesouth.com has tons of high-quality pictures of retirement community properties on its site, but they aren’t being viewed. If the pictures on property pages are clicked, a slideshow pops up, displaying multiple pictures. Visitors lose persuasive momentum by not seeing the additional images, but they don’t always realize they can click on the property pictures.
Test: We decided to add text that reads, “Click Image to View Larger Images” under the property pictures.
Results: The conversion rate for the site improved by more than 20 percent, just by showing visitors an easy way to find and see multiple images.
While this is a simple example, testing quickly can become a complicated venture. There are many options, but don’t be intimidated. Just get started.
Jeffrey Eisenberg is co-founder and CEO of Future Now Inc., a New York-based consultancy that specializes in online conversion strategies. He can be reached at jeff@futurenowinc.com.
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