Filed under: marketing
You know you’ve seen it. Time and time again, a great ranking in the search engines but when you click onto the site, the site just wreaks of usability issues and bad design. Everyone appears to know, understand and acknowledge the basics of search engine optimization: Add keyword within Title tags, add descriptions to your meta’s, acquire on-topic powerful links, but how many Ecommerce Mom and Pops focus on their design, usability and conversion percentages?
Let’s take a look at this statistic:
Wow, that’s pretty interesting. 81% of online retailers are converting under 8%. Just think if you could raise 1% on your conversions - how much revenue would that be monthly/annually?
If you’re having a tough time obtaining ideas to make your site convert higher, I’d propose looking through this chart:
Wouldn’t it be nice to convert your visitors at 25%? Lets put our head around that figure a little differently: 1 in 4 people visiting your site purchase a product. Maybe its time to put down the SEO Book and start focusing on why people aren’t buying stuff on your website. You’ve got a nice traffic flow from the “Big 3″ (Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia…ooops, I mean MSN LIVE), but now its time to roll up our sleeves, get a little dirty, and bust out with our A/B split testing tools.
If you’re having difficulty channeling new ideas to make your visitors convert, go through the list above and visit each site. Here’s a guideline while popping each site into your browser:
1. What do you like about the site?
2. What don’t you like about the site?
3. What call-to-action methods do they have in place?
4. Are they offering any types of discounts, free stuff or special offers?
5. Does their web design flow nicely?
6. Can you purchase from a product page effortlessly?
7. Is the checkout process seamlessly integrated that a baby could purchase products?
That’s a good start. I’m sure you’ll find other areas on your site that are lacking in which these websites are very strong at.
If usability and navigation through your website seems to be a troubling factor, I’d like to draw your attention to the Father of Usability: Jakob Nielson. His website might not be flashy, but he has been playing around with usability integrated with web design for 10 years and definitely knows what visitors like and don’t.
Another good site to get in touch with for usability and building higher conversions is Future Now Inc. Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg published an amazing book a couple of years ago about converting for several large online brands and have an excellent track record of boosting conversion rates up tremendously.
If you’re not converting visitors-to-buyers by 8%, don’t settle for sub-par conversions. Ask yourself what you can do to make your website stand out from the other sites within the search engine result pages and convert higher. Because 1% boost in conversions means daddy’s getting a new car after the Christmas rush. 
5 Comments so far
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haha, thanks Chris. Sometimes my grammer isn’t all there (their).
Well because their site is great!
And it doesn’t hurt that the flowers they send are always fresh!
Interesting read. It grabs attention and gets to the point. Thank you!!
Comment by tim 10.09.07 @ 10:37 amLeave a comment
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#8: Do they know the difference between “there” and “their” and when to use which? (Or is it “witch”)… ?
Comment by Chris Herzog 10.04.07 @ 3:58 pm