Tactics > ECMOD in focus
Ten must-haves for every website
By Amy Africa
Working on your web plans for 2012? Here are 10 must- haves for every website, no matter how big or small.
values. If you can’t wait that long, here are 10 must-haves for every website to get you started.
A 1
Navigation and
internal navigation Internal search is one of the most
difficult things to master. Even with a fancy package, you can’t change the fact that users are often abysmal at finding what they want. However, you can look at the top 100 searches you’ve had on your site this year and make sure those words—the words and phrases the users searched for—are better represented in your navigation. It’s important to remember that the order in
which you present the results is critical to your success in search. Take the 100 top searches and conduct them yourself, one by one. Review each result. It’s important that the item you most want to sell is first and the rest are in descending priority. Be sure to review your refinements as well.
18
Due to the onslaught of guided navigation, many companies have gotten really sloppy with their refinements. When someone chooses “sort by bestsellers” from your dropdown, he should get your top selling products and not a hodge podge of garbage. Same with “new”; if someone is sorting by new and he gets all your items from Autumn/Winter 2008, it diminishes your search credibility and makes your search look broken—one of the top two reasons why users abandon searches. Again, if you take your top 50 to 100 searches, you’ll get a good indication of how you’re measuring up in this area of your ecommerce business.
Direct Commerce Catalogue e-business
www.catalog-biz.com
t ECMOD, I will be presenting a session called “40 website must-dos”, an ultra-quick-fire presentation of some obvious and not-so-obvious tips that seriously lift sales and average order
Take a quick look at your top navigational
bar to make sure that the right items are emphasised. If you are getting a lot of traffic in a particular area, clearance, sale, or overstock for example, consider making it stand out more—either as a bigger or different coloured tab.
Navigation is one of the biggest determinants of your online success so you may also want to do a quick elimination of all the unnecessary or irrelevant items that have been added— especially to your top and left-hand navigational bars—along the way. We tend to muck up our top header with all sorts of customer service elements when we really want orders. We tend to list everything and the kitchen sink in the left when only half of those links ever get clicked on. Do a quick clean-up.
2
Instigated chat Now is a great time to test the waters
of instigated chat if you haven’t done
so already. Start with your shopping cart and lead forms and then move on to search results and top exit pages. It may take a while for you to get live chat right, so keep playing with it until you get it to work. It will work, but it often takes time to perfect your secret formula. Bonus tip: your best customer service reps will often make the worst chatters. Try someone who’s great at text messaging, IM (instant messaging) or tweeting, instead.
3
Reviews If you don’t have a review
programme, now is the perfect time
to get one. There are a lot of companies that handle reviews well. Remember, if you are going to commit to a review programme, you need to work at it. Develop solicitation emails and tools on your site. Interruptive devices such as midis and catfishes (where a message pops up along the bottom of the page) on return after a purchase, work really well to get your users to rate and review their purchases. Want to get the biggest bang from your buck out of your user reviews? Organise them by importance. A lot of companies organise their reviews by date. It’s unfortunate. Reviews typically work a lot better when they’re prioritised by significance. What’s a good formula? One fantastic, five-star review and one not-so-great, one-star review, at the top. On another note, don’t delete or hide negative reviews but do respond to them. This
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52