Years ago we bought Steve Krug’s great book on website usability and design, ‘Don’t Make Me Think’. It’s a great book and its central message applies to many aspects of Internet marketing. It certainly applies when it comes to trying to get prospects to take specific actions on your website, such as clicking on a link, filling in a form (including opting in to a list), commenting on an article or blog post, ordering a product or service, and so on.

Essentially, the less you make people think before they take the action you want them to take, the more likely they will take the action.

Website usability expert Luke Wroblewski has written a great article explaining how changing a single button – yes, a button – led one online store to increase its per annum sales by $300 million.

I encourage you to read Luke’s article (link below) for a number of reasons – to see just how critical certain webpage elements are to your conversions, sales and income, but also to reassure you that even the biggest, most experienced websites can get it wrong.

If you’re looking for one of the more sophisticated multivariate split-testing tools for optimizing your website conversions, take a look at Autonomy Optimost’s Multivariable Testing (MVT) solution.

According to its makers, Autonomy Optimost lets you create, test and optimize virtually limitless combinations of web copy, offers, and layouts.

Recently, MarketingSherpa published a case study about how Office Depot was able to boost conversions by 10 percent and reduce cart abandonment by 18 percent after overhauling its website.

One the Office Depot team’s most crucial changes was to redesign the look and feel of the Office Depot website, and their insights are instructive to all Internet marketers.

SeeWhy is a tool that targets web visitors who abandon shopping carts and other website ‘conversion devices’ in an effort to entice them back to return and complete the conversion.

Essentially, SeeWhy’s free Abandonment Tracker captures the unique IDs of abandoners and then emails those IDs to the website owner who can follow up such abandoners.

Research by comScore indicates that online videos can boost sales, reduce the level of shopping cart abandonment and lower return rates on e-commerce sites.

comScore found that 40 percent of Internet users watched videos on retailer websites last year. Further, comScore says retailers using online video reported more sales, a lower number of abandoned shopping carts and reduced return rates.

Adgregate Markets has released a service called ShopAds which allows companies to process secure credit card purchases within display ads.

Using the ShopAds technology, someone who views a ShopAds supported banner ad on a given publisher’s website can potentially order a product or service within that ad… without being redirected off the publisher’s website.

Like other widgets, ShopAds can be shared on social network profiles and other pages. However, what’s truly innovative is the ability for them to appear within any Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard display ad unit.

ShopAds are Flash-based and, unlike JavaScript based transactional ad units, don’t rely on a secure host site to ensure secure transactions. Rather, the secure, encrypted shopping carts inside ShopAds are portable into any HTML environment, including social network pages and blogs.

When a sale is complete, the ShopAds system confirms the transaction with a “thank you” and sends the buyer a tracking number via email. Buyers may continue shopping or return to the original widget screen, which can host large catalogs with potentially millions of products.

I think ShopAds has huge potential for advertisers/merchants and publishers/affiliates. Not to mention customers, since it overcomes the “inconvenience barrier” of having to click away from a website in order to inspect, or indeed buy, a product.

Source: Fred Aun “Allowing Web Users to Transact Through Ads”, The ClickZ Network, September 9, 2008

A case study published in MarketingSherpa recently illustrates how to convert a percentage of shoppers who abandon your shopping cart.

Diapers.com set up a system whereby an email was sent to any registered user who abandoned their cart. The email went out at least 24 hours AFTER abandonment and featured the items left in the cart.

Why the wait? Many of Diapers.com’s customers ordered online late at night. The company reasoned that it was better to give these customers some space before contacting them again.

The emails were:

personalized, using the customer’s first name;

included three text paragraphs in order to get the key message to readers who might have images turned off in their email program; and

included a “View Cart” hotlink to allow customers to click through and complete the purchase.

As a result of this approach…

Diapers.com’s conversion rate was 129 percent higher than that achieved by any previous marketing campaign; and

The emails sent after abandonment made up 10.4 percent of the total revenue from Diapers.com’s email marketing program despite constituting just 2.7 percent of the total volume sent.

We have long advised clients to specifically follow up on customers who abandon their shopping carts. We also do this for our own sites and have been exceptionally pleased with the business we’ve received from customers who, for a range of reasons, didn’t complete their original order. (Hint: it’s not necessarily because they’ve changed their mind about buying from you…)

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Focusing on Referrals, Abandons Helps Eretailer Grow List, Bolster Sales”, MarketingSherpa, September 10, 2008