Surround yourself with smart people, and you can’t help but get a little smarter yourself.  I participated in a conference call between a couple of Web marketing experts last week – Shell Harris and Alyssa Duvall (President and VP of Strategy for Virginia SEO firm, Big Oak) and Howard Kaplan, one of the big wigs at Future Now (the thought leaders in online conversion).

It was a simple revelation, but one well worth sharing here. The problem that most of refer to simply as Web conversion, “I want to increase my site’s conversion rate,” is actually a symptom of two separate and distinct issues. What are those issues you ask???

Usability and persuasion. As you’ll see, this is actually a worthwhile distinction.

In this post, I’ll deal primarily with usability.  Consider the elements of conversion that relate to enabling site visitors to overcome hurdles in the process of taking action… finding a product, putting it into a shopping cart, checking out….

An equally important but very different matter to be considered when optimizing a site’s ability to convert visitors into customers (or people who take action) is that of persuasion.  I may understand perfectly well how to use your site, but I’m simply not moved to action by what I see.  Let’s view “persuasion” for the purpose of this discussion as a matter of addressing gaps… in understanding, believability, and selling momentum. I have and will continue to address persuasion in other posts.

Shop.org research indicates that shopping cart abandonment rates are as high as 75%. I would argue that this phenomenon is more an issue of usability than persuasion.  The top issues that irritate online customers continue to be problems with the checkout process and difficulty finding products on the site.

The root of this problem is often our natural tendency to design our sites as though WE are the users. In fact, our customers generally behave (and interact with our sites) in ways that are entirely dissimilar to our own behavior. What is intuitive to you after hours of hard work in fashioning your site’s purchase process may very well be confusing to your visitors.

So what are we to do?

In a perfect world, we would all conduct usability tests and actually observe users as they interact with our sites.  Web analytics tools offer a little bit of help, but you just can’t beat the experience of actually watching your users. So, if your budget is tight, use friends and family members.  Feed them well one evening and watch as they complete certain tasks on your site.  Where do they get stumped? Make a list, and eliminate these hurdles.

Here are 15 helpful tips:

1. In the checkout process, offer a progress indicator to show where the user is in the process and how much further they have to go.
2. Show a final receipt BEFORE the order is placed and allow users to change their order quickly and easily from there.
3. Keep your shipping and return policies in plain view (or easily accessible) throughout the checkout process.
4. Label your action buttons clearly.  Don’t say “submit” if what you mean is “place my order.”
5. NEVER require customers to register in order to checkout. If you must, offer registration as an option AFTER the order is placed.
6. Use clear and simple language.  The price of confusion is lost sales.
7. Use familiar standards in designing your checkout process. This is no place to get creative.
8. Be sure people can get ALL of the information they need without placing an item in the shopping cart.  Can your users find shipping costs and return policies without embarking on the checkout process?  If not, expect astronomical cart abandon rates as you are using the checkout process to answer pre-purchase decision questions.
9. Break the purchase process into manageable pieces that are not individually overwhelming.
10. Clearly present sub totals and totals so that customers are not surprised in the end by hidden costs.
11. Guarantee your site’s security.  People still have security concerns, so address them. And if you ask for atypical information in order to checkout, explain why you need it. Displaying security related logos (i.e. Verisign and Hacker Safe) has been shown to yield 5-10% improvements in conversion rates.
12. The display of products in your shopping cart should leave NO DOUBT that the customer is ordering what she actually wants.
13. Count the clicks between product selection and final checkout. If the number of clicks is greater than three, take a close look to be sure your process is as efficient as it can be. 
14. Display your physical address and phone number – and even photos of your staff to remind your customers that they are dealing with real people who have a physical presence.
15. PROOF YOUR SITE for typos, broken links and other lazy errors.  These kill your credibility.

Put these tips into practice, and half of your conversion problems will be well on their way to resolution. Unfortunately, the other half of the problem is tougher to solve – persuading your visitors to take action in the first place.  More on this in future posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 3:27 am and is filed under Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.