Recommended design patterns and best practices for retail Search Results Page

This is the 5th in the series looking at key Ecommerce pages, we hope it gives you some ideas for testing and improving your on-site search page. It's a key page on retail sites, since a high proportion of sessions can involve a search and typically average order is higher when a search takes place. In the context of different types of user journeys, this page can sit in different places in the conversion path. It may support early stage research to help visitors learn more about your different product categories or services or it can be an end-stage conversion driver to match people to specific products as they search for specific product names, types and product labels/SKUs.

Key Ecommerce Search Results Page Wireframe requirements

This template provides an outline of the core elements, with colour coding definitions referenced in the Guide. UX and UI designs can vary across…

Recommended best practices for Product Listing Pages

This is the third in my series of posts to share best practices on design and user experience for retail sites. My post aims to give you some tips to consider for testing improvements and designing your Product Listing Page (PLP).  For each site page template type I have created a wireframe summary of a typical responsive site layout for desktop or tablet rendering showing key design elements, to give you a toolkit to review and optimize your pages. If you work in design or merchandising for a retailer, or are involved in design at an agency for retail client’s accounts, then I hope these templates and tips will help you along the design/re-evaluation process to maximise results from your pages. For retail sites, PLP pages sit within the category hierarchy and provide a list of all products available within a chosen category. For large catalogue retailers, these are usually…

Recommended design patterns and best practices for retail Home Pages

This is the first in a series of posts from me in which I hope to give you ideas to consider for testing improvements to page elements on Ecommerce sites following emerging best practices. In each post I will provide a wireframe summary of a typical layout showing key design elements, to give you a toolkit to review and optimize your pages. In this first guide, we have focused on Desktop and tablet design and merchandising elements since in today's era of mobile responsive and adaptive web designs, the smartphone experience is usually simplified in style and content - so it needs separate treatment which we cover in our mobile marketing guide. If you work in an ecommerce team at a retailer, or are involved in design for your client's accounts, then I hope these templates and tips will guide you along the design/re-evaluation process to…

Dynamic ads can now feature new services and are available on Instagram plus new Custom Audience targeting options

Importance: [rating=4] For Retailers and Travel marketers who can feature products and [rating=5] for all who use Custom Audiences which are also updated Recommended Source: Facebook blog launch commentary We first featured Facebook's launch of Dynamic Product ads in February 2015. They have proved popular with retailers with Facebook reporting that, to date, more than 2.5 billion unique products have been uploaded to Facebook. Now Facebook has changed what it used to call 'Dynamic Product Adverts' to just 'Dynamic adverts' as they are altering them so they can feature more than just your traditional 'products' like shoes, computers or books. Dynamic ads feature things that users are likely interested in after viewing them on a website or adding them to their basket, so they are essentially a form of remarketing or retargeting, where the products people were…

How optimised sales messages on category pages can give your revenue a huge boost

On many ecommerce websites one of the first things that is discussed is the design and 'feel' of the site. Phrases such as 'I want the site to look clean' and 'slick' are a frequent occurrence. Yet it is important to note that a balance has to be struck between being representative of the brand, heritage, look / feel,  and actually selling stuff (luxury brands tend to be the exception to this rule). Offline stores maintain the design and look that you want, with your sales assistants being the ones that can step outside of the 'design', be human and actually do the selling. Online your website has to achieve this to ensure that you end up with a website that converts as well as looking pretty. To test the impact that sales messaging alone can have, we looked at a client's website whose site…

The self-proclaimed "world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies", CES 2016 has been as popular as ever. Here's our roundup of the most important new tech innovations relevant to marketers.

More marketers than ever from across industries are now attending the huge Consumer-Electronics show, CES which takes place every January in Las Vegas. Marketers now account for more than 15% of the attendees (26,587 to be precise, according to the CES), so we thought we'd take a look at the latest innovations which we could be using in the year(s) ahead. An increase of 9% attendance from between 2013 and 2015, points towards a trend and highlights the rising importance of digital platforms for engaging consumers. So much so that it lead AdAge to suggest that the “Future of CES Belongs to Marketers”.

"Digital isn't a destination. It's a foundation. What…

Having started my career as a web analyst and working with data on a day-to-day basis, I see massive opportunity in what we can learn and how we can improve online performance by using data effectively. However, “how” we use data to make decisions is a wide-ranging scale and it can be all too easy to go from traffic, to visitors, to clicks and transactions in your analytics platform and not pay the appropriate attention to what is actually happening in between. Not micro-conversions in this instance, but the psychological filters consumers employ as they interact with and process your website. Both consciously and (more interestingly perhaps) sub-consciously. Perception, emotion, anxiety and more. The common saying goes that analytics can tell you ‘what’ is happening, but cannot tell you ‘why’. User Research can give you fantastic insights into what motivates or influences decision-making,…

10 practical recommendations for choosing the right retail personalisation service for your online store

Although ecommerce is now a relatively mature industry, the software solutions that underpin the industry are still very much evolving. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the personalisation field. Recommendation engines were perhaps the first tools to promote personalisation, but it is now a common feature espoused by many ecommerce tools, in systems designed for both marketers and online merchandisers, with each often having a very different take on what it means and the benefits it brings. If you’re in the process of selecting personalisation software where should you begin, what questions should you ask?

#1 KNOW YOUR GOALS

It may seem obvious, but knowing what you hope to achieve by selecting a personalisation solution is critical to selecting the right product. Although a ‘no brainer’, don’t fall into the trap…

Using the right technology is key to optimising multi-channel retail strategy

Understanding the full impact online activity is having on offline sales has become something of a holy grail amongst marketers. Online advertising platforms, whilst bringing far greater measurability for those customers who click and convert online, cannot yet integrate all offline sales that have been influenced by web activity. It’s certainty a pressing issue. According to a Forrester study, more than 50 percent of U.S. offline retail sales will be influenced by the Internet by 2017; a practice known as webrooming. Those web-influenced sales will also rise to $1.8 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion in 2012 – to put that into perspective, total ecommerce sales alone are set to reach $370 billion by 2017. Another study also charts the rise of the showroomer: those who browse in-store before making a purchase online. There are multiple reasons why consumers might engage in…

Personalisation is no longer a luxury reserved for the big players in e-commerce

While Amazon continues to lead the way, a personalised shopping experience has now become an expectation for the savvy customer. And, with a plethora of automated personalisation tools available, it has never been easier for retailers to employ big data in their quest to deliver personalised content.

There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that personalisation is now a crucial component of an effective digital marketing strategy. Websites employing personalisation are likely to see higher numbers of conversions, AOVs, and improved customer loyalty. And yet, there is still a large number of retailers who are stuck in the personalisation slow lane, who are yet to fully explore the opportunities offered by targeted segmentation.

In particular, there is one often overlooked area in which personalisation can be incredibly effective - customer retention. …