An overarching site overhaul is often a marketer's go-to solution when online sales and conversion rates are sinking. After all, if bounce rates are high, average order values aren’t up to snuff, and one-time-buyers are the norm, it must be the website's fault … right?
Right, but … when solving issues that are isolated to specific points of interaction or achieving certain tangible outcomes, it's usually not the whole website that needs attention. More often than not, all that’s needed is some strategic testing and targeting, followed by a few powerful modifications based on the results.
If you’re seriously considering making global site changes in the name of improving sales and conversions — or already took the plunge and need to regain lost ground — consider the following minimal changes to make a big impact on key website pages:
1. Homepage: First Impressions Count
The homepage is usually the first page visitors see and the first one marketers want to modify. Before making big changes, consider the top objectives of an e-commerce homepage: to display products/services, to encourage navigation to other parts of the site, and to allow visitors to search directly and easily for what they’re looking for.
Testing results of hundreds of retail sites consistently reveal that keeping the visual display clean and compelling attracts more engagement. A cluttered, busy collage of products, on the other hand, is likely to overwhelm visitors and drive them away.
Is your navigation bar also clear and intuitive? Make sure that category and product navigation options are especially prominent, well positioned and easy to identify. Lowes.com does a good job of using icons with rollover text to engage visitors and direct them to the desired product or category.
Finally, if you’re trying to attract attention to a new product, consider using a contrasting color for the section of the navigation bar that links to that product, so that it stands out from the other categories.
2. Category Pages: Sorting Things Out
Because category pages revolve around visitors’ need to search for and sort through products or service types, any updates to this section should enhance the visitor’s ability to filter and find. It’s easy to fall into the trap of ignoring category pages or writing them off as a vehicle that simply exists to transport visitors to the pages that really count, but testing shows otherwise.
For instance, multivariate testing results for Harry and David revealed that simply increasing the number of products displayed from 3 to 4 in a row of category results, and adding an “Add to Cart” button underneath each of those products resulted in dramatic lifts in conversion and overall revenue generation.
Clear calls-to-action for featured or sales items also assist in transforming browsers into buyers. And quick view functionality allows for visual inspection and comparison with other products, without forcing a visitor to commit to a click-through before they’re ready. Finally, allowing customers to save searches for later provides visitors convenience and therefore creates loyalty.
Zappos.com’s “Save This Search” function allows visitors to save a particular category search with a relevant name, so they can return at a later time, choose their products and complete the purchase. After all, you can’t always control whether a customer leaves, but you can certainly make it easier for them to find their way back.
3. Product Pages: The Big Display
Since product pages are all about encouraging visitors to make the purchase, a retailer’s job here is to inform, make customers comfortable with the product and simplify buying.
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Source : cmswire[dot]com
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