Getting the most out of eCommerce

By Simon T Small at June 4, 2010 | 11:22 amPrint

Optimising your eCommerce is simple math; if you increase performance it directly improves the bottom line.

Online Shopping in Australia is at an all-time high, with 37.6% of us spending a total of $23B. Yet so many big brands are so late to the game. We’ve reviewed a range of studies that will help you either enter the eCommerce game or improve your current platform.

There are many important areas that impact sales, today we focus on some critical components that fall under User Experience & Shopping Experience. Applying just one of these learnings has proven to increase sales by 257%.

Forms  and load time are two very important pieces of User Experience that have major impacts on sales, while shipping & freight, returns policies, security, price comparisons & delivery time are equally important shopping experience elements.

With 50%-65% of customers abandoning the checkout process, let’s start here.

1. THE CHECKOUT PROCESS

Vancouver Winter Olympics Games had an online shop selling Olympic merchandise. They ran some interesting studies, one of which increased conversions by 257%. The 257% increase was through a trial comparing a single step checkout to a 4 step checkout. This trial was done through a method called A/B testing, where 50% of visitors see one checkout process and the other 50% see another, and the results are tracked and compared. (Source: Get Elastic)

The 4 step checkout worked as follows

The single step checkout presented the customer with the option to create an account after the sale was completed.

Oh, and another bonus outcome: they achieved an increase in the average order value of 8.54%.

What should you do?

Try a single page checkout process, and even better, run two different versions of it and increase sales even further.

2. CHECKOUT LOAD TIME

Forrester Research found 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% would abandon if it takes more than 3 seconds. This is true not only for home pages and product pages, but for each step of your checkout.

What should you do?

Make sure your checkout process loads super-fast. If it takes more than 2 seconds per page, you’re probably losing customers. Your developer should be able to run these tests, or you can use a site like http://tools.pingdom.com.

3. MAKE IT EASY TO FILL OUT FORMS

Forms are fiddly. There are mandatory fields & all kinds of validation that goes on to make sure you’ve entered the right details. A study in the UK achieved a 42% decrease in completion time & a 22% increase in success rate of completing forms.

They used a concept called Inline Validation, where the form tells you where you’ve gone wrong immediately, rather than waiting until you hit the submit button at the bottom of the form. This concept is used by all the big web players – try signing up to Twitter but enter incorrect info – it’s pretty helpful https://twitter.com/signup.

What should you do?

Make each form as easy to complete as possible. If there’s an error, tell the customer instantly.

Technology aside, people want deals, delivery & security.

1. SHIPPING & HANDLING COSTS

A Forrester study found that high Shipping & Handling costs was the Number 1 reason why people didn’t complete a purchase online. With 45% of people agreeing, it’s clearly something worth reviewing, and it makes sense – it’s one of the major differences between going in store and buying online and it impacts on the hip pocket.

These results were also validated by studies by Channel Advisor & Verdict Research.

What should you do?

Review the shipping & handling costs of your competitors. Beat them, or even better do shipping and handling for free – treat it as a media cost. Maybe just run a promotion with free shipping and see how it impacts sales. If you get 20% more sales at the cost of a bit of shipping, you might be better off.

2. PRICE & PRODUCT COMPARISONS

A GetPrice (admitted, a comparison site) study found that “the ability to do price comparisons online was sighted as the most valuable factor for 78% of online shoppers”.  This is in line with our own internal trials, experiencing up to 300% increase in online revenue or enquiries when doing on site comparisons of competition.

What should you do?

Figure out how to best position yourself against your competitors and compare away, or second to that let customers compare your own products – it’ll make them feel more empowered and in control. If you don’t do it on your site they just need to Google ‘Compare Product 1 and Product 2’ and they’ll get a range of sites that doing it already.

3. FREE & EASY RETURNS POLICY

From the above mentioned Verdict study, 39% of online shoppers said that a free returns policy is an important factor when shopping online. The logic is pretty simple – you can’t touch, smell, play with, try the product on through the internet, so there’s a small chance it might not be exactly what you’re looking for. A free returns policy means customers can be assured that if they make a mistake it’s not wasted money.

What should you do?

Make a clear and simple returns policy, communicate it effectively and clearly. Review your competitors return policies, and do it better than them.

4. CHOICE OF DELIVERY TIME

This is a personal favourite of mine. Often being in meetings and never at home in business hours, I’m always worried about where to send my purchase, and the Verdict Study found 35% of people see delivery time options as very important.

What should you do?

Offer set delivery times, or delivery options. Even if it costs them a little more, it might just give them the assurance they need.

5. RATINGS & REVIEWS

We’re all scared of them, but we all use them. Online reviews have gone nuts in the last few years, with reviews on practically everything. The Channel Advisor study (above) found reviews & ratings the second most influential factor (51% of respondents) when shopping online. Considering the ever-growing range of review websites, they’ll be able to read about your product or service already.

This study is backed up, with a spin, by a study done by TrueLocal, (they let anyone review any business on their directory). They found that businesses who had a negative review, but resolved the issue with the customer and got a positive followed up review, received more enquiries than a business with five 5 star reviews in the same category.

What should you do?

The simplest first step is to add simple thumbs up or like functionality (you could even use Facebook’s new ‘like’ widget). This means people can simply say which products are their favourite, resulting in no negative impact. However, the reality is people want to see actual reviews, so the ideal solution is to let people post and read reviews about products.

Negative reviews actually add credibility to your site, and if you respond publically on the site that will even further bolster trust between your brand and your customer.

If something gets so many negative reviews, maybe the product should be reviewed, or removed all together.

So in summary

Online Shopping in Australia is at an all-time high, with 37.6% of us spending a total of $23B. If you’re selling online, or about to, you should seriously think about the User Experience & shopping experience elements listed above, otherwise you’re missing out on revenue.

Strategy checkout, ecommerce, research, reviews