* Internet Marketing blog archive for the ‘Conversion Optimization’ Category

Have You Seen this Ad?

Have you seen this ad running online?

Starbucks Personalized Ads

Starbucks Personalized Ads

I guess you didn’t, and that’s because this ad is actually is not running at. This is just an ad we would run if we were to have Starbucks (or another restaurant/coffee shop chain) as a client.

Scenario: visitors are reading an online newspaper around noon (11:34) which is close to their lunch time in New Westminster, BC Canada. While reading online, this ad will show up, inviting them to take their lunch at SB, somewhere close … Read more about Have You Seen this Ad?

Adwords Integration with Google Web Site Optimizer

Summary: testing ads it’s a time consuming tasks for any search marketer. The statistical significance of ad testing is missing but this can be changed. See below:

We, as search marketers, should spend most of the time creating, measuring and adapting the best performing keywords and ads, for our customers. In fact, one of the most time consuming activities in a PPC management company is the daunting task of ad testing. Nowadays, bid management can be automated, keywords research is not as hard as it used to be and reports customization it’s … Read more about Adwords Integration with Google Web Site Optimizer

Scent Trail of View Cart, Add to Cart and Proceed to Checkout Buttons

Have you ever wanted to be able to have a collection of “view cart” or “add to cart” buttons and compare them to other buttons, such as “proceed to checkout” buttons? When we design a new website or a new web page for a multivariate test, we like to do our homework before we proceed, and this is how we ended up having a nice collection of buttons, primarily used during the checkout process of e-commerce websites.

What is it intriguing to me is not the design of the buttons it self, but the relationship between the buttons on each … Read more about Scent Trail of View Cart, Add to Cart and Proceed to Checkout Buttons

Dynamic Text on Call to Action Buttons

In a previous post – Call to Action: Add to Cart or Buy Now? – I talked about what text you should use on the buttons which start your website’s checkout process. Briefly, you need to display either Buy Now either a Add to Cart, depending on your business objectives.

Lately, I came across one retailer that displays both call to actions, right next to each other. I have no idea how this is performing in terms of conversion, but for users like me, the tactic works just fine. If I want to buy just one product, I would click … Read more about Dynamic Text on Call to Action Buttons

Search Results Relevancy – case study futureshop.ca

It’s Christmas time! Tons of people will search online for gifts and online deals. They will come to your website and then… Well, then you need to help them find what they are looking for.

Mainly, there are two paths visitors take to find products on your site: using navigational links or using internal site search. The usage percentage for navigation and search is almost 50/50. So, 10 people may search for “xbox 360″ and 10 people may navigate through specific categories on your site, until they reach the xbox 360 product page.

I prefer the search method and I … Read more about Search Results Relevancy – case study futureshop.ca

LG.com internal search

When you are one of the biggest electronics manufacturer you need to make sure your website usability is extremely good.

What if someone wants to buy one of your products, comes to your website, searches for the product name and he doesn’t find the product page? How would that look like to your prospect? Like LG:

Searching for the model 42LGX returns “Sorry, no matches were found”.

42LGX - Search Result Page

42LGX - Search Result Page

So, are you manufacturing this product or not? The page exists on LG website, as … Read more about LG.com internal search

Call to Action: Add to Cart or Buy Now?

What should websites that sell online use as call to actions on the product pages in order to attract more clicks on “action” buttons? Add to cart OR Buy Now ? Which do you think it’s better?

If you look at what top etailers are using as text on the action buttons (thanks to ) you will find it obvious that the right call to action to be used on this type of buttons it should be Add to Cart.

Button Text

Button Graphics

Add to Cart
58.0%

None
48.2%

Add to Bag
9.8%

Arrows
17.9%

Add to Shopping Bag
9.8%

Cart
14.3%

Add to Basket
6.3%

Shopping Bag
7.1%

Add to Shopping Cart
4.5%

Plus Sign
5.4%

Buy
2.7%

Combo
4.5%

Buy Now
1.8%

Unique
1.8%

Add … Read more about Call to Action: Add to Cart or Buy Now?

Testing the Checkout Process – The progress bar design

If you do not know where to start improving the conversion rate of your website, here a catch: start by improving your checkout process. Very often, testing and improving this process is the fastest and cheapest approach to optimize your website.

There are various elements and methods to test in the checkout process, but on this post we will focus on a single element: the progess bar.

This is what we mean by the checkout progress bar:

checkout progress bar sample

Read more about Testing the Checkout Process – The progress bar design

CHECKOUT – Progress Bar Survey

The checkout process of an ecommerce site represents the number of steps taken by visitors in order to get products from virtual shopping carts/bags delivered to their doors. It is the path from a click on the checkout button to the “Receipt” page . Some visitors are required to go through more or less “steps”, depending on the site they will buy products from.

Very often, website owners are asking themselves (or others) what is the best number of checkout pages for their websites. To quote Dylan, “The answer, my friend, is” testing “in … Read more about CHECKOUT – Progress Bar Survey

The best CHECKOUT button

So, you are planning to design a nice checkout button.

Up to recently I thought that a web button is so simple to design that it will take minutes or so. However, after researching a lot on the look and feel of the checkout buttons of 111 most important e-tailers, I realized that what seemed to be simple, was actually not.

I have been able to identify eight design elements just for something as “simple” as a checkout button. There may be other elements I missed; please feel free to comment and add your thoughts.

Based on our previous research, we … Read more about The best CHECKOUT button