What should be above the fold on an e-commerce site? | Blog | Ec As a number of usability studies have shown recently, the fold on a webpage doesn't have to be a barrier to users, and people are willing to scroll down to see more. However, the area above the fold is the first thing visitors to your website will see, so what should be above the fold? Here are a few suggestions, with e-commerce sites in mind... According to this insightful article from cxpartners, having watched more than 800 user testing sessions, the fold was only seen to be a barrier in three of them, which is a pretty convincing statistic. Of the three cases where the fold was seen to be a barrier, a strong horizontal lines across the page, roughly around the fold area, was the culprit. It's clear that the majority of web users are used to scrolling to see more content. Why is the area above the fold still important? This is what new visitors will see the first time they arrive at your website, and will have an influence on whether they decide to explore further or not. Homepages
Increasing Online Sales: Simple Usability Problems To Avoid « Sm Advertisement When designing an online store, you have to consider many different types of customers: repeat customers, first-timers, people in a rush, etc. One thing that would help all of them is optimum usability. You can achieve this in a variety of ways, starting with eliminating the most common usability problems from your website. 1. A solid information architecture can do wonders for people who enjoy browsing, but some customers just want to find what they’re looking for, buy it and get out. A great example of a prominent search box is the one on Overstock.com. Imagine stopping at a grocery store on your way home from work to pick up some pine nuts for your world-famous pesto sauce. Get Satisfaction has a prominent search box with a hardly usable drop-down menu. Also, make sure that the user can actually use the search functionality and will not be confused or irritated by design elements surrounding the search box. How to Fix It 2. This dovetails with the last point. 3. 4. 5. or
The 37 things I want to see on a product page | Blog | Econsulta I’ve been working on a new community-orientated startup lately, which also has an e-commerce / marketplace element to it. As such it needs some beautiful product pages. Product pages are absolutely crucial to the success of your website. They often double up as a landing page, and they must tick all of the right boxes to boost conversions (and reduce bounce rates). However, product pages on a community-powered websites need to go the extra mile. They must help convert visitors into customers, but they must also engage and drive interaction. For my new site the thinking is very much along the lines of 80% community / 20% marketplace, and I believe that viral functionality (and related information) on product pages is essential. Perhaps we should start by figuring out what the essentials are. Product pages must include shipping details, yet many online retailers hide this information in the checkout. So what needs to be on the product page? Who loves ya baby?
Keys to E-Commerce Success Visitors to retail e-commerce sites are most likely to be heading to online stores in order to learn, rather than to shop or buy. iPerceptions’ “Retail/E-Commerce Industry Report Q2 2009” found that 38.6% of e-commerce visitors were at the initial information-gathering phase at the top of the purchase funnel. According to the report, visitors in the learning phase have a high level of satisfaction with the retail sites studied and more than 85% are able to complete their task. Lower down the funnel, however, sites are less likely to meet the needs of visitors. Task completion rates dropped to 76.9% among respondents who were aiming to shop, and declined further to just 61.5% among those looking to make a purchase at the retail e-commerce sites studied. The most common reason shoppers did not buy was the failure to find what they needed, cited by 34%. Pricing and problems with navigation or usability tied for second place, with 13% of respondents. Keep up on the latest digital trends.
Search Til You Drop: Google Launches Hosted Commerce Search For Searching retail sites can be frustrating at times. While many retailers try to present product search in a visually appealing way, search can often be slow or difficult to refine. Tonight, Google is making a huge play in retail space with the launch of Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise search product to power online retail stores and e-commerce websites. Google offers a general hosted search product that is used by organizations that want to add customized Google search functionality to their websites. Google is now entering the vertical space, by the first tailor-made enterprise product, with retail optimized space. Speed: Google promises “ultra-fast speed and accuracy” by leveraging Google’s search technology to provide sub-second response time to customer searches on retail sites. One of my bones to pick with Google Commerce was that it’s interface may be to simple for retail sites like Saks, Bloomingdales or others who tend to display products in a more visually appealing way.
M-Commerce Is Still in Its Infancy More than 70 million US mobile phone users will access the Internet from their device in 2009, eMarketer forecasts. And a number of recognized retail brands have launched mobile commerce programs so they can be where their customers go. Nevertheless, mobile commerce is still immature. “A number of retailers and third-party developers have introduced mobile apps that give consumers powerful new shopping tools and added convenience,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Mobile Commerce: Ahead of Its Time.” Retailers cite capital constraints and issues with consumer privacy and security as the biggest obstacles standing in the way of further m-commerce efforts, according to an April 2009 survey by RIS News. “A major obstacle not addressed directly by the RIS survey is the lack of standardization among smartphone browsers and operating systems,” noted Mr. Savvy retailers should not neglect this channel, because mobile shoppers are valuable customers.
Holiday Web Shoppers Hit Social Networks US Internet users will be doing plenty of online research about holiday gift giving this year. Shoppers already conditioned to comparison shop, check coupon sites and look for discounts will also be heading to social networks for information—and good deals. According to research conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation and Yesmail, 27% of online shoppers who plan to both research and buy holiday gifts online this year will look for ideas about what friends and family want on sites such as Facebook. And nearly one-half (45%) will use social networks to research items, compare prices and look for offers. About one-fifth of online holiday buyers are specifically looking to social networks for exclusive deals or free shipping. Deloitte found that, overall, 17% of consumers would use social media during their holiday shopping. Deloitte found even more consumers—19%—planning on using the mobile channel for their holiday shopping. Keep up on the latest digital trends.
23 Excellent Examples of How to Design Online Stores - Inspect E 3rd August, 2009 Tom Kenny Articles Online stores can often be confusing and hard to use which can turn potential customers away. There are some very simple things you can do to keep your users focused on your site. CafePress Good use of top navigation, highlighting the relevant section that the user is currently viewing. The Mozilla Store The Mozilla Store creates a fun, creative feel to their online store with related sketches in the header and clear navigation on the left makes it easy to find products. HMV’s store almost jumps out at you due to the shadows either side of the content. Nerve Music Store Nerve uses an unconventional method of dragging items to the shopping cart on the right but a big ‘Drag Stuff Here’ button above the cart instructs users what to do. Taste Book Taste Book gets across the message of what it is very clearly on the homepage followed by a big distinctive button indicating that it’s free to join. Blooming Gorgeous Flowers General Robots Bambino Direct Blooming Direct
Could Your Multichannel Marketing Do More? Today, while many retailers conduct business in multiple channels—brick-and-mortar stores, Websites, catalogs and call centers—few are adept at coordinating the various channels. That is their loss—literally. In the early days of online shopping, the big retail chains were slow to invest in an e-commerce channel because they thought it would cannibalize their store sales. Multichannel retailers (with retail chains or catalog/call centers) accounted for 56% of the Web sales generated by the Internet Retailer Top 500 Websites, and the magazine estimated that the sales of the 500 largest Websites represented 74% of total sales by online retailers in 2008. Shop.org and Forrester Research also reported that multichannel retailers outperformed Web-only merchants in growing online sales, with 68% of multichannel retailers showing Web sales growth in Q1 2009 over the year before, versus only 39% of Web-only retailers. “Of all the different types of cross-channel shopping behaviors,” says Mr.
CHART OF THE DAY: Amazon Runs Away With Retailing Japan’s Rakuten: Can The Biggest E-Commerce Site You Never Heard The term “e-commerce” still lacks a universally valid definition, but even if you just bundle B2B and B2C transactions under it, it’s a multi-trillion dollar business globally. Last year, Nielsen found [PDF] 86% of the global web population made an online purchase already (North America: 92%). For the US alone, B2C sales are expected to grow from $130 billion this year to over $200 billion by 2013 (excluding travel). In North America, Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla in the B2C arena – by very, very far. Amazon is active in Japan for a good reason: In its last report [JP, PDF], the Japanese government said the country’s online B2C sector grew by 21.7% to over $55 billion in 2007 on a year-on-year basis. Now it seems Rakuten wants to take its global plans (laid out numerous times in the past) to the next level, with CEO Hiroshi Mikitani saying just this weekend he wants to see his company generating $1 million in daily sales outside Japan by the end of this year. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Monetization for the Masses from PutACart, a Shopping Cart for t Sometimes, all you need is a MySpace profile and a dream. And a shopping cart. For casual Internet users who are all over the social web but don't have the knowledge, resources, or desire to set up and market full online storefronts, there's PutACart, which democratizes the long tail of e-commerce, allowing users to peddle their wares from a plethora of the most popular social destinations online. The PutACart setup is simple. Here's what the carts look like on Facebook, MySpace, and WordPress, respectively: Since this is for casual social-web users, Paypal is the only payment method for both buyers and sellers. Mostly, though, it's a great idea with a kind of bad interface. Also, the message sent out after a Paypal purchase is confirmed should without question be customizable. Also, this is a test store, so please don't try to buy anything I've posted!