Finding the cartoon below in my reader this morning, along with the insightful comment by Ben at Church of The Customer, and I immediately thought of a host of recent conversations regarding conversion rate improvement.

Neither clear proof (low revenues) nor documented causation (fall-out reports) seems able to push the site managers (or their CEO’s) to make a priority of the kind of action required to fix the problem.

There is one important difference: it’s not denial, competitive interests, or selfishness that is stopping them. It’s some combination of not wanting to touch the website because modifications often have such technical complexity, not having any staff or budget allocated to modifying the site (because you only do that during redevelopment projects, right?), and the complete lack of a ‘measure-test-improve’ attitude towards the site and its architecture or content.

Interestingly some of these same organizations do have that attitude towards their traffic acquisition activities. But even in the face of huge potential revenue improvements, the idea of testing changes to the site (and certainly the shopping cart) is met with reluctance and resistance if not outright dismissal.

Conversion rate improvements are the next great land rush for online marketers. They should start setting expectations within their organizations that web development isn’t an occasional project it’s an ongoing process. This means that ecommerce platform vendors and IT depts. need to figure out how to assist rather than prevent. And budgets and headcount expectations need to reflect the required planning, implementation, measurement, and analysis.

It’s not going to be economically feasible to do business online with bounce rates in the 50%-60% range, and shopping cart abandonment rates above 25% for very much longer because those with higher conversion rates will continue to drive up the price of paid search terms and other traffic sources. Pretending the change isn’t coming is not a recommended strategy.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The home page of an online retail should have two goals; confirm to the visitor that they’ve arrived at the right place (you sell what they want) and enable them to quickly move toward the specific item they came to find.

Why is it then, that so many retail home pages are filled with huge vanity graphics which represent only a tiny fraction of the available inventory, and the navigation options are stuffed against the top or left margin in a font size and color that makes you wonder if they’re legal disclaimers?

The answer of course, is branding. Someone thinks that the home page should define the image and position of the brand. It should make an emotional connection with the visitor, presenting an indentity or appeal they favor or aspire too.

But a home page isn’t a store window, or a magazine ad, or even the cover of a print catalog. Each of those address the shopper before they’ve made the decision to actively pursue a purchase. The home page hits them after they’ve decided to take action, and stopping their momentum (the large graphics) and then making it difficult for them to restart it (hiding the navigation in mall dark type on the margins) is really counter-productive.

Think of your home page like the inside of your store or catalog – where you want people to clearly see the breadth of your offerings and (hopefully) rush towards them with excitement and anticipation of finding exactly what they want.

Zappos.com does it right. Their home page makes it clear in a fraction of a second that they sell all kinds of shoes (and other goods) and gives you literally dozens of ways to easily find the path to the specific type of shoe you want to buy. They also manage to clearly communicate several of their core brand values – service, huge selection, free shipping, and easy returns – without stopping or slowing down those who just want to buy something.

Branding and image are important, and I’m sure that if more designers were given the challenge of both presenting a high quality aesthetic and accepting that traditional navigation systems really shouldn’t be relied upon, we’d see a whole new generation of functional yet attractive home pages. This won’t happen until more of the marketers who usually give the designers their marching orders (or at least approve the final designs) change their ideas and expectations of the home page.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What should your conversion rate measure? Is the typical idea of how many of your visitors buy too broad? Aren’t some of those folks hopelessly improbable prospects? Aren’t there other successful outcomes besides a purchase?

These are the question being discussed in a recent blog post from our friend Avinash and many other respected analysts who have left thoughts in his comments.

Avinash suggests that visitors who bounce (stay less than 10 seconds or 1 page), bots (visitors that aren’t people), and those who display some intent other than purchase, be removed from the equation – with the result of a higher conversion rate to more accurately reflect how many ‘viable’ visitors were converted.

Like others who have commented, I think that the gross calculation (outcomes/uniques) has merit both as a baseline view of the site’s performance and as a reference for comparisons between sites within or across industries. As has been suggested (including by Avinash himself) just about all of our analytical results are directional or relative and not perfectly accurate anyway – so getting hung up on the relatively low absolute value of the numbers is in many ways not worth much effort – but it does give us a reference for change and comparison.

Continue reading "Which Conversion Rate?" »

Posted by Craig Danuloff at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The back cover of the new Dell Business Catalog has one of those amazingly cheap desktop systems - $399 complete with 19" LCD monitor. I need a very basic PC to run the Omniture Desktop Player 24-hours a day - this could be the answer.

Should be easy to buy, right?

1. Go to Dell.com
2. Type the E-Value Code listed in the ad into the search box. Not Found.

3. Maybe I shouldn't actually type 'E-value'. Doesn't Help.

4. Enter to custom URL listed on the same page: Doesn't Exist.
http://www.dell.com/shopdellbiz/November

5. Choose Desktops / Small Business / Dimension / 5150 / Customize (5 clicks)
6. Find no sign of bundle from the ad.
7. Notice 'Purchase Help' tab on top of page (wasn't on home page)
8. Buried in left nav bar, click 'Shop Promotions'
9. Finally, EValues code icon. Can't enter it yet. So I 'click here'.

10. Enter the code and find the system as advertised.

At this point I was able to politely refuse 475 offers to modify the system and put it in my cart at the advertised price.

Think the telephone number on the back of the catalog was any better? I tried it. 5 levels into the phone system I was told that I reached them after hours (10pm Friday night).

Posted by Craig Danuloff at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the latest post in his Excellent Analytics series, Avinash Kaushik demonstrates how one slight change in the labeling of the data series in a report can transform it from being cold and impersonal into something meaningful with which business managers can 'connect'.

His example is changing the row label for 'Visitors of 3 pages or less' to the more descriptive 'Flirters' which helped the people working on his web site (he works for Intuit) to better envision the situation and more actively focus on potential improvements. (Read the whole post for more details and a better description of the results.)

Two of the dirty-little-secrets of the analytics world are that the distance between interesting and actionable is often great, and that half-a-dozen charts and tables can make anyone's eyes glaze over and yet most report-sets deliver dozens. Avinash wisely sets it as the analysts job to make the data relevant and his choice of the word 'connect' as the goal is perfect.

Bonus Link: Avinash recently interviewed Matt Belkin, VP of Best Practices, at Omniture.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)