Launched in 1999 as an online shoe store, Zappos rang up $1.6 Million in sales in 2000.  Eight years later, revenue passed $1 Billion, still largely on the sale of footwear.

That’s a 667% increase in eight years.

While there are many reasons for Zappos’ success, one of them is their attention to detail in their checkout optimization. They set examples from which we can all learn.

Take a look at the image below from the Zappos shopping cart summary page. It’s like a textbook on conversion rate optimization and here’s some of the lessons it provides:

1. Make Your Calls to Action Clear – The Zappos checkout CTA is the most noticeable element on the page. The wording clearly lets the customer know what will happen when the button is clicked. And take note of its placement – surrounded by a number of elements that all conspire to increase the likelihood that it will be clicked.

2. Create a Sense of Urgency – No one likes to miss out on a deal and creating a sense of urgency by outlining dwindling stock encourages shoppers to act sooner than later.

3. Offer Free Shipping – At 44%, shipping costs was the largest reason given by online shoppers for abandoning shopping carts, as outlined in Invesp’s Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics infographic.

4. Reduce Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts (FUDs) – Every shopper, from first-timers to seasoned veterans, has a certain level of FUDs about buying online. Zappos addresses the FUDs on a number of levels:

• Secure Checkout – Zappos customers are guaranteed that their credit card information is secure.
• Credibility Symbols – Displaying recognized symbols and logos from third-party authorities assures customers that they are buying from a reputable retailer.
• Privacy – Customers are hypersensitive to providing personal information. Zappos clearly outlines how that information is protected.

5. Outline Return Procedures – One of the greatest concerns that shoppers have is what happens if they need to return their online purchases and letting them know upfront helps alleviate the concern.

6. Have Multiple Payment Options – Shoppers appreciate having a choice of ways to pay for their order.

7. Give Good Customer Service – Even if they don’t use it, just having the option to contact the retailer with questions or concerns can be the difference between making a purchase or abandoning the shopping cart.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Infographic by- Invesp

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<a href="http://www.invesp.com/mobile-commerce.jpg"><img src="http://www.invesp.com/mobile-commerce.jpg" alt="US Mobile Commerce Sales- Statistics and Trends" width="580"></a> <p>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.invesp.com/">Invesp</a>

By 2015, US Mobile commerce retail sales are expected to account for 24% of the total e-commerce sales.

US M-commerce Retail Sales Statistics(In Billions)

US M-commerce Retail Sales by Device (In Billions)

Reasons For Consumer Preference Of Mobile Shopping

Consumer Time Spent On Shopping Sub-categories

Growth In Consumer Time Spend Across The Top 5 Shopping Sub-Categories In 2012

By 2015, 81% of all U.S. cell phone users will have smartphones.

62% of smartphone users said they’ve bought physical goods through their mobile devices in the last six months.

74% of online retailers have already developed, or are currently developing a mobile strategy.

48% of US retailers have a mobile-optimized website. Out of which, 35% have deployed an iPhone app, while 15% deployed an Android app and 15% deployed an iPad app.

Here’s a few reasons why:

1. Social Commerce Revenues $30 Billion. When compared to global retail sales of about $15 Trillion and the fact that ecommerce sales topped $1 Trillion for the first time in 2012, $30 Billion seems like a sneeze. But, consider that’s about $5 for every person on the planet, whether they are on social media or not, and suddenly the number has some appeal.

What’s more, the number is for social commerce – it does not include any ecommerce sales the were gained through social “word-of-mouth”, which is an amount that’s difficult to determine conclusively, but is likely larger than the social commerce number

2. 87% of Fortune 100 companies have a social media presence and more than 80% of SMBs plan to increase their use of social in 2013. Clearly social is a fact of business life.

Or is it…

3. On average, companies respond to only 30% of social media feedback. What? If almost 90% of businesses are on social, and they are not responding to social feedback, what are they doing? Hopefully they’re not simply adding to the clutter with promotional messages more suited to radio days.

4. Only 44% of questions submitted to companies in tweets are answered within 24 hours and 56% of customer tweets are ignored. This is it. A clear indication that we just don’t get it. Imagine if a business answered only 44% of questions from in store customers within 24 hours. Or that they ignore most of what their in-store customers said.

There’s lots of other great data on the infographic, but these numbers are most crucial because of the opportunity they present to you.

Social media is not primarily a job description, overhead item or marketing channel. Social is more akin to your telephone. It is another medium through which you connect to your customer. Social isn’t the be all and end all, but it is significant and becoming more so. The term social commerce would have been a strange one not too long ago.

We should all be happy that the numbers above are so high and low in all the wrong places. It gives us the opportunity to stand out on social media.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

First, the site features excerpts from customer testimonials throughout. The excerpts are also compiled in a series of testimonials pages, four in all, with entries from a cross-section of Simply BBQ’s customers, including large multinational corporations, local businesses, municipalities and private individuals.

Simply BBQ then shows some innovation in a feature that allows their customers to “Like This Menu” with a total of “likes” listed beside each menu item.

Finally, Simply BBQ offers the Grill Talk forum section, which lets anyone: customers, employees, or whoever registers; have their say about anything BBQ.

So what does Simply BBQ get for their efforts? Let’s look at three big benefits that any ecommerce or lead generation site can enjoy from customer reviews.

1. Content – On an internet driven by content, there’s nothing better, and more cost effective, than having someone else create content for you. The added content helps boost the site’s search engine rankings. And did we say for free?
2. User Experience – New visitors arrive at your site looking for answers, but not always to the questions you think they have. Many are looking for reassurance that they are in the right place, that your business offers the products and services they need and that those products are acceptable to their standards.

   When that information is not easily available, it increases visitors’ fears, uncertainties and doubts (FUDs) about making a purchase or other conversion on the site. It creates “friction” and generally makes the visitors’ experience on the  site less enjoyable and rewarding.

   Simply BBQ’s “Like This Menu” function quickly eliminates one big FUD a site visitor is likely to have: “which menu item do I choose”. By pointing out which menu was “voted most popular”, the visitor immediately has at least one relatively reliable criterion on which to make a choice. That makes it easier for them to choose and makes their experience of the site better. It’s a giant FUDs buster.

3. Brand reputation – This is simple. If you arrived on a site with the following:

   - four pages of testimonials from real people and business
   - two pages of letters of reference from major charity/not-for-profit organizations and events
   - numerous unedited results from customer surveys
   - menu likes and forum discussions

   Do you think all of that information would help you have a clearer more favorable impression of the business, at least compared to a similar business that didn’t have any of that information?

Take advantage of customer reviews. All the advantages.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

• How businesses use popular social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and so on)
• How much time they spend on these platforms
• How they connect with their customers and much more.

Infographic by- Invesp

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<a href="http://www.invesp.com/social-media.jpg"><img src="http://www.invesp.com/social-media.jpg" alt="Activity Levels of Businesses on Social Media" width="580"></a> <p>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.invesp.com/">Invesp</a>

Some Interesting Facts

Internet users spend 22.5% of their time social networking while online.

By 2015, global social commerce revenues are estimated to reach $30 billion,

Global Social Commerce Revenues for 2012-2015

87% of Fortune 100 companies have a presence on at least one social media website, with Twitter being the most popular.

Worldwide, 86% of companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, while just over half use YouTube and LinkedIn.

Only slightly more than a third of worldwide companies have a presence on Pinterest and/or Google+.

25% of Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) has no social strategy.

Only 28% of SMBs measure their social media campaign ROI.

83% (88% in 2014) of companies prefer Facebook as their preferred social tool for brand marketing, while 53% (64% in 2014) prefer Twitter.

62% of marketers say social media has become more vital to their marketing campaigns within the last six months.

Only 26% of businesses regularly include a Call To Action (CTA) in their tweets.

On average, companies respond to only 30% of feedback received from social media websites.

56% of customer tweets to companies are ignored; only 44% of customer question tweets are answered within 24 hours.

39% of companies do not track their social media responses at all, and 55% ignore all customer feedback on Twitter and Facebook, largely because they have no process in place to respond.

46% of online users use social media sites to review their purchase decisions.

Only 30 of the top 500 online retailers allow users to use their Facebook log-in to create user accounts.

Less than 20% of U.S. companies have integrated social media with their customer service, sales, or product development processes.

More than 80% of Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) plans to increase their use of social media in 2013.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Good advice is always beneficial, but it will also always be just that, good advice. But showing that good advice in action can make it easier to understand and apply it to your situation.

www.simply-bbq.com is a lead generation site for a barbecue catering and event company in Toronto, Canada.

The website uses a number of conversion optimization tactics and the following are some of those we recently mentioned:

1. Video – In 3 Ways to Boost Ecommerce sales with YouTube we wrote about the remarkable lack of use of video as a promotional tool, despite lots of evidence that it is an effective way to drive traffic and sales.

   Starting on the homepage banner, Simply BBQ puts videos to work throughout the website. Take note of the fact that the videos are not professionally produced and show only real-life situations. This gives the customer a very clear and true understanding of what to expect from Simply BBQ, which reduces customers’ fears, uncertainties and doubts about what’s being offered and increases the chance that they will convert.

2. Calls to Action –  Among others, Simply BBQ follows all the CTA tips outlined in Invesp’s post Ask for the Sale: 3 Tips for Better results form Your Calls-to-Action.

   The site has clear calls-to-action throughout, including a clear navbar, newsletter sign-ups and social media links.

   Different CTAs are used for the same content, including BBQ catering, menus and event rentals. This appeals to different customer personas and addresses different points in the buying cycle.

   The Simply BBQ CTAs are distinctive in their design and distinct from each other, going from the text-based navbar menu to large orange buttons and graphic, image-filled selections.

3. Customer Reviews – In his post 5 More UX & Conversion Tips on Product Pages, Masroor’s first tip is “customer reviews give other customers an unbiased perspective on a product”.

   Simply BBQ offers a number of innovative customer review options.Many menu items offer visitors the option to “Like this Menu” accompanied by a tally of Likes. This automatically highlights the most popular menu items.

   Results from surveys of corporate customers are posted in detail.

   Visitors can contribute to Grill Talk and open forum for any topic, from suggestions for better products and services, to favorite recipes and grilling techniques

The Simply BBQ site is very new and the analytics are not yet conclusive, but the attention to the customer, her user experience on the site and her needs is sure to pay off in improved lead generation, branding and sales for the company.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

But do you use it to sell your products?

Didn’t think so. And you’re not alone. Despite the powerful evidence and arguments for using YouTube to drive sales, relatively few ecommerce retailers do so and, if they do, they usually don’t take full advantage.

With a wealth of sales to be had, if you launched a YouTube sales campaign today, it wouldn’t be soon enough. Here’s three ways to start:

1. Create Shoppable Videos – Ever watched a video and wondered where you could get an outfit that one of the characters was wearing? Imagine seeing something you like in a video, clicking on it and being taken immediately to the ecommerce site where you can buy it. That’s a shoppable video.Juicy Couture set the standard for shoppable videos with an entertaining clip that lets you click on a variety of outfits and accessories, even one sported by the pet cat, shown in the video. That click takes you immediately to the Juicy Couture page where you can see and buy the item that caught your eye. Check the video below and imagine the effect it would have on your conversions.
2. Demonstrate Products – One of the biggest drawbacks of shopping online is the inability to touch and feel a product and, most importantly, see how it works. Developing a series of videos that demonstrate how to use your products, showing them in action and in different situations will give your prospective buyers the practical information they’re looking for to make a purchase decision.
3. Add Optimized Copy – They might deny it, but Google really likes YouTube content. And not just the videos. Many ecommerce retailers don’t realize, even Juicy Couture, that YouTube offers an incredible opportunity to get higher search engine rankings by adding written content to video posts.The video title, description and tags all can be optimized to make it easier for shoppers to find your content, and buy from you.

Get your cameras out and start selling.

Juicy Couture - California Dreaming

© 2006-20010 Invesp

81% of the internet users use Google for search, and have that kind of search user experience in their mind while visiting ecommerce sites. Up to 30% of visitors will use the site search box, and they all are looking for specific products that they don’t see upfront when they land on the website. In today’s article, we will discuss how to design and implement new search trends to e-commerce websites.

You would amazed that website like H&M do not have search and there are many more. It could be a business decision but H&M is like JCP, Burlington Coat Factory, and other similar kind of site. They all have search functionality on their websites and setting user experience to expect it on similar sites. But that’s likely a business decision.

Position of Search Box

The search box should be placed in a prominent position on the page where user can easily find it.

“There is a standard for search boxes to be placed in the top right of websites. Creating familiarity here speeds up the shop and reduces customer thinking time. Keep it simple and easy to find.”

- Depesh Mandalia, Head of Conversion & Product at ticket.com

3M has search box at right top which is the most commonly place to have the search box.

Best buy have search box at top left after the logo but still very prominent.

Walmart search box is not at the top left/right but still very prominent to find.

In gap website it is not very prominent and mixing with the background text they have used

Auto Complete / Search Suggestions

Google has made enhanced the user experience of search through auto completion or search suggestion when user has entered few characters in the search fields. This speeds up the search, and helps users avoid misspelling etc.

In my experience, autosuggest provides a real boost to search conversion rates. In a usability test I ran, we found that users actually relied upon site search autosuggest and autocorrect to know the correct spelling of words for them. Make sure that your site search solution is up to scratch, and that you still provide search results for common misspellings, just in case.
Matthew Curry, E-commerce manager at Lovehoney

Text based auto suggestion that can help user find products quickly they are looking for.

Use image in auto suggest if possible

In this example Apple.com use both text base and with image search suggestion. Having images in auto suggest can help them to quickly see the product they are trying to search.

Faced search

Faced search has become the de facto standard for e-commerce businesses, especially with clothing retailers. User perform simple search, redirected to the search page where they can narrow the search by clicking on links or check boxes. This most commonly used technique and easier than advance search where you have limitation to display the fields on the page.

Some tips on faced search:

• DO order facts & values based on importance
• DO leverage the tool to show & hide facets and values

Search is one of the basic functionality of the website and it can be more effective tool for uplifting the conversions and helping user to reach beyond what they are seeing on the website. Sometime you can’t categorize all the products and can’t fit everything in left navigation widgets. Search is the useful tool when you have wide range of the products.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

The Repeat Customer Story Gets Better

Not only is it easier to convert repeat customers, they spend more too.  An Adobe Digital Index analysis of ecommerce sites found that, while only 8% of visitors to U.S. online retailers are repeat customers, those 8% accounted for 41% of sales.

But the Ending is Really Sad

Despite the widely accepted wisdom of keeping existing customers, the ever-increasing data that prove it and the huge payoff it offers, the curious truth is that digital marketers do  surprisingly little to take advantage.

The Adobe analysis found that almost 80% of digital marketing spend is aimed at attracting new customers, while less than 20% is aimed at repeat customers.

3 Ways to Stop the Madness

Actually, it’s one big simple way: market more to your repeat customers. And here’s a quick outline (these are all sciences in themselves) of three ways to start:

1. Engage First-time Buyers: It starts with a “thank you”. From there the tools of engagement are many and varied, including everything from couponing to surveys. Regardless of how you do it, the most important step in engagement is to focus on the goal – convert the first-time buyer into a repeat customer.
2. Track and Mine Repeat Purchase Data: If they are not already, start making terms like “frequency of purchase”, “average spend” and “product preference”, very common in your marketing vocabulary.
3. Focus Promotions on Customer Buying Habits: The more you learn about repeat customers, the better you will know them and their buying habits, which will help you serve them better – and increase sales.For example: do you have a customer who buys once a month? Now you know how frequently you should send her an email. Is her average spend $200? Now you know the value of the offers you present to her (but don’t forget up-sell opportunities!).

The numbers prove it, there’s a goldmine of sales waiting for you in repeat customers.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Note: If you attend our webinars, you know that seating runs out very quick. We will limit registration to the first 100 participants.

Date: Thu, April 04, 2013 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST. You can only have a successful, profitable business with the right leads. But why are the visitors coming to your site but not contacting you? How can you draw them in more successfully? And what can you do so they are informed customers – i.e. When they contact you they have understood the offering fully; which leads to better customer conversion? During this webinar, we will discuss ways to optimize your site in order for you generate more educated leads and make your business more profitable. Join us next webinar to learn more!

Limited Seating. We can only accept the first 100 registrations to the webinar!

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

© 2006-20010 Invesp