Posted Monday, 22 March 2010 by Ryan Foster
Improving the conversion rate on an eCommerce store is a key requirement of many design projects. This post explains some of the things that you can consider when planning and implementing the project.
General
Does your site look professional and build trust/credibility?
Is your product copy up to scratch (headlines, product description)?
Do you have clear and easy to understand site navigation/product categorisation?
Are your best sellers clearly visible?
Do you have clear links to special offers?
How prominent are your add to cart button(s)?
Is the product price clearly displayed?
Homepage
Can your customers quickly see/understand your product benefits?
Product Page
Is the add to cart call to action clearly visible? (consider colour, size, position)
Cart
Your cart design should be focussed on ways to reduce abandonment. Possible changes you could consider include:
Make sure your cart looks like the rest of your store
Reduce steps in the payment flow
Reduce redundancy (ensure the same information doesn’t ever need to be entered twice)
Ensure that customer knows when the product will be shipped
If you are offering money back guarantees ensure that these are clearly visible
Ensure payment options are available (you should offer the customer more than one way to pay)
Ensure customers know this is a secure form (add a padlock graphic and security message)
The amount of design changes you can make to your Cart will depend on the platform you are using. For example, with Shopify you are limited to presentation changes via CSS. However, the payment flow is quite nicely optimised (1. enter details – 2. enter payment – 3. thank you) so a few small CSS changes to align the Cart design to the rest of your store can quickly improve things.
Tools
You can use these tools to help refine your designs:
Navflow.com
Use Navflow to optimise your pages and user flows. View results as funnel visualisations, heatmaps and graphs.
Google Web Optimizer
Website Optimiser is an easy-to-use tool for A/B testing site content that delivers actionable results.
Google Anlaytics
Google Analytics gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
Iterate
Introduce your changes gradually and in phases so you can track and review the impact your changes make and then use this data to further refine and improve the design.
Not Just eCommerce
These principles apply to all design projects. Every site should have clearly identifiable call to actions with measurable outputs… whether thats completing a registration form or downloading a PDF.
RyanFosterDesign create web sites + web applications for companies big and small in the UK, USA and Australia. Email us, post a comment using the form below or view some examples of our work.
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