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What do online shoppers think about?

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Banner Ads of eCommerce Site 2 on eCommerce Site 1

There is something that’s bothered me for years. Some ecommerce sites (example www.fast-growing-trees.com) have banner ads promoting other businesses. This is the banner ad that’s currently on display at the footer of www.fast-growing-trees.com — Mind you, www.fast-growing-trees.com isn’t a low traffic site, their traffic is impressive— I can see why a tiny ecommerce site would have link-sharing with other sites, …

Reducing Checkout Friction

An incredibly large number of shoppers abandon during checkout. On the first half of their visit (homepage, category page, product page and add to cart click) shoppers are building a mental case for buying an item.  During second half of visit (cart page, shipping and billing page) they’re building a case to not buy.  During this phase even the slightest inconvenience …

No Michigan Sales Tax

Personalization works— When I see a message like screenshot above (pointed by blue arrow) the thought that crosses my mind is, “Michigan residents don’t have to pay sales tax.  I’m a Michigan resident.  Awesome.” Turns out, this kind of location-based targeting is pretty simple.  Just add a piece of free javascript code (https://freegeoip.net/) to your site and then the code will …

All Conversion’s Aren’t Created Equal

I’ve had a thought float in my mind a long time, but never managed to figure out a way to express it.  Now thanks to Smriti Chawla from VWO (who pointed me in the right direction) and Rand Fishkin (who beautifully described it) I can just link to my thought— https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/xq1iovyyaa

Paid Service

Allrecipes.com is a great site where members submit and rate recipes.  They have a paid plan.  If you want your customers to signup for a paid plan don’t talk about features that are down the road, no one cares about that—

Remembering Learnings

This is a slightly longer post. I’m sure you learn a new thing about your online business 2 or 3 times a week (if not more).  When that lesson happens what do you do?  Do you just internalize it or note it down?  If you note it down are you noting it in a format that an intern could easily …

Cleverest Email Signup

I felt I had seen every tactic possible to goose email signups (example, example, and example).  Then I saw this clever tactic on basspro.com.  Below their main advertisement banner they have a giant SOLD OUT! sign for a $10 catch of the week item— A naive person would think it’s silly to waste so much homepage real-estate promoting an item shoppers can’t …

Price Valid From [08/21/2014] to [09/10/2014]

To minimize cart abandon rates homedepot.com shows shoppers how much they’re saving (in this case 33%) and also reminds them that the saving they’re about to enjoy is only valid few more days— Great way to incentivize on-the-fence shoppers to take action today.  Homedepot.com knows shoppers who leave thinking ‘they’ll be back real soon’ tend not to return.

Quick View Solution

In a previous post I debated if Quick View interface was really needed.  Basically, Quick View is a mechanism online retailers use to allow shoppers to buy directly from subcategory pages (bypassing the product page).  Example— When Quick View is clicked a lightbox like this appears— Why I hate Quick View— product images on category pages are shrunk down, and Quick …

Commercials Don’t Have to Be Expensive

Debspecs.com is an online retailer of reading glasses. They wanted to make a web commercial for new site visitors. This is what they created— Sure it isn’t anywhere close to the polished product they would have got working with an advertising agency, but it also probably took 1/15th the time to complete and cost 99% less. And it still fulfills the …

Put Your Face on It

On swansonvitamins.com not only do they show Risk-Free Purchase Guarantee on product pages they show Lee Swanson’s picture next to the guarantee message for added effect. And I can tell you, these tactics work—

Powerful About Us Page

About Us pages on most sites read like a forced assignment, there is no soul in them.  And then I stumbled on this About Us page on bigbellybanks.com— Thank you for checking out my Big Belly Banks.  I get up every morning and thank God for the small business that I have.  I’m proud to design and make a unique, …

Gimmicks Can Work

Backcarebasics.com shows this popup when a new visitor lands on site— I entered my email just to see what was behind Discount Code Will Appear Here.

Faceless Customer Service

In my opinion showing a faceless man is the creepiest way to draw attention to your customer service number—

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