Recommendations and examples of using style guides to support a CRO programme
When we kick-off a Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) programme with a new client we always try and find out what existing guides or tools they have that we can use during our programme. These may be branding guidelines, style guidelines, UI Pattern libraries, etc.
For example, here is a really good description of how Envato, who run the Tuts+ sites, carry out Style guide Driven Development.
However, the responses we get from clients are wide-ranging. As Mark Boulton (@MarkBoulton) pointed out recently:
We're not going to dive into that debate around whether style guidelines are a help or hindrance here, instead I wanted to give recommendations from a CRO angle and investigate how we can…
A review comparing different technical solutions for Ecommerce integration with behavioural email marketing
Triggered messaging is a rapidly growing part of marketing with extremely good ROI. It's about delivering business messages that are personalized and near-real time, resulting in very good engagement. All email marketers should be doing this if they're not already!
My previous post in this series explained when triggered messages were effective, for example for cart abandonment and onboarding sequences. This follow-up is a brief summary of the three main implementation strategies for triggered emails, using:
1. Just your E-commerce system.
2. Just your ESP.
3. A real-time marketing system (RTMS).
Using just your Ecommerce system
Many Ecommerce systems can send a few types of triggered messages, for example 'purchase complete' and 'cart abandonment, either natively or using third-party plug-ins. (There are lots of these, for example Abandon Carts Alert Pro for Magento and EDD Abandon…
What Makes Great Ecommerce Website Design? Part 2: The Category Page
In Part Two of my series of blog posts looking at the factors that help make different parts of an ecommerce websites more effective in experience, merchandising and SEO, I review examples of category pages. In Part 1 I looked at 5 Ecommerce home page best design practices.
You can think of Category pages serving as the 'Departments' within your website like they do in a department store - the ladieswear department, childrens wear department and so on.
These areas in a department store are typically demarcated by very visual merchandising, such as mannequins dressed in the types of clothes that you'd find in that department, visual posters/ signage showing branding or imagery depicting the section you are in - smiling children on posters indicating that you are in the childrens' section.
These subtle visual prompts are often un-noticed yet serve to ensure that…
Best practices from the 2014 Form Conversion Report
It all started with a common question from our customers. 'How do I increase my conversion rate?' Marketers know that increasing your conversion rate is one of the simplest ways to impact your bottom line. Conversion rates are a key indicator of how well your website is capturing leads and performing in your industry. Online forms, one of the biggest components of the conversion, are an often overlooked part of helping improve rates.
With help from our customers, Formstack noticed a gap of online information around form conversion rates. So, we decided to tap into our own data goldmine and put together a report of our findings. We’ve uncovered some tips that’ll help every industry with conversion rates and optimization practices.
Tips on optimizing your on-line forms
Conversion Rates by Industry
One of the first things we looked at in our data was the average conversion rate of each…
Desktop continues to trump mobile in directing online traffic from print according to new DMA research
DMA's report on 'Mobilising Print Media' polled over 1,000 UK adult consumers, to find out how consumers are 'driven online by brand and charity print marketing'. Nick Barnard, Chair of the DMA Inserts Council and head of Telegraph Reach at Telegraph Media Group, said: '
Today, the path to purchase is more complex than often thought, particularly on how certain media channels are perceived. What media owners, agencies and clients need to remember is that in the end the consumer is always the most integrated and important person in the marketing mix.'
Results were interesting as collated in the Infographic, which highlights:
54% of respondents were more likely to visit a brand/charity's website after receiving a direct mail piece; 25% visited the website from a smartphone or tablet.
Main barrier to mobile phone usage for direct response is the functionality; 1…
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06 Aug 2014
Techniques and tools to improve video effectiveness
Embedding video into your website is an effective way of engaging visitors and making your brand stand out in a text-heavy internet world.
In fact, the popularity of internet videos is increasing so much that by 2015, it’s estimated that videos will make up 55% of all internet traffic.
However, simply including a video in your website and hoping for the best is not enough. You need to test how well your visitors are engaging with your videos and make changes if necessary.
There are several online services that offer web performance tracking. Most offer a free trial period, with the option of upgrading at a later date.
Using Quantitative Tools to Test Performance: Google Analytics and Crazy Egg
Google Analytics profiles your users’ onsite engagement metrics. These include: average time spent on a page, average visit duration and average pages per visit.
Every time a user visits a page,…
How to simplify your website localisation project
A decade or two ago the extent of most business's online strategies would have been whether or not to bother having a website. Now there are all sorts of things to consider, from social media marketing to optimising for mobile and, if you are looking to reach an international audience, localising your website.
Localisation can be a huge project but there are ways to simplify the process. It can also be hugely important when it comes to reaching new markets. The World Wide Web theoretically puts the whole world at your fingertips but in practice there are cultural and linguistic barriers to overcome.
There's a temptation to think that a single English language website will suffice but numerous studies have shown this is not the case. A survey by Eurobarometer found that only 18% of EU…
A review of the in-page Chrome extension for Google Analytics
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google Analytics InPage Extension for Chrome
This tool came out at the end of June, so it’s not brand new, but we think it’s still worth an alert since although it has been released for a month, it’s had fewer than 60,000 downloads - not many considering the number of people that use Google Analytics… Maybe this is because it doesn’t add much to the existing Google Analytics In-Page Analytics feature which you access from the bottom of the “Behaviour” menu in Google Analytics.
How to setup the Page Analytics Chrome extension
To setup the tool simply:
Download the Chrome extension and enable the extension by clicking on the button in your toolbar.
Make sure you are signed-in with the relevant Google Analytics account with a profile for the site you want to review.
Load up the page you want…
5 examples of retail home page good practice
Great ecommerce websites are likely to be based on personal preference. But many would agree there are common practices for persuasive design that should be tested, if you're not using them already.
In this post, I take a look at a range of less well-known small to medium business ecommerce websites where I have deconstructed the practices to suggest a shortlist of 'must have features' for the homepage. It's part one of a series of posts, next I'll be looking at category pages. Of course, in a blog article there is a limit on what can be sensibly covered. See the relevant Smart Insights guide for more details.
Recommended Guide: Ecommerce Design Patterns
Use our wireframes and examples to test and create more persuasive Ecommerce designs to boost retail sales.
Download our Ecommerce Design Bible.
Home page feature…
Examples from big brand Ecommerce sites which smaller businesses can test
The web has transformed the way people compare and buy everything from fruit to flat-screen TVs. The demand to be able to shop online has fuelled a race to join the likes of Amazon, with small independent e-commerce retailers springing up on a daily basis. But it’s important to remember that increasing sales doesn’t necessarily have to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds; small improvements can make a big difference, and even the biggest organisations may be losing revenue unnecessarily.
This post features eight of my top tips for maximising e-commerce sales and includes good practice examples from some of the most successful e-commerce sites.
Tip 1: Remove dead ends
Your site should have no dead ends. Full stop. This should be the first rule of thumb. Every page should be designed to channel visitors to the right product, service or sales representative, even…
