iknowthe.net | Internet and Ecommerce Consultant

Following on from my last post – here’s my tips on good online checkout design:

• Give the customer clear information about the product and provide (at the least) good sized pictures.
• Allow your customers to contact you at every stage or the checkout process – make sure you show your phone number on the page.
• Make the path to purchase as short as possible. The quicker the customer can buy, the more will do so.
• Don’t make the order process too lengthy — collect only the information you need.
• Show a progress bar through the checkout, or add encouraging phrases such as “almost there, we’ll just need your card details on the next page”, so the customer can see they don’t have much more work to do.
• Don’t distract your customers. Trying to cross-sell unrelated products or collect marketing information will hurt conversion.

Most of the problems I see are caused by a site that ignores one of more of these rules. And you might have a great site, supported by great marketing and SEO, but if your site is let down by your checkout process – your bottom line will be seriously hurt.

I’ve been doing lots of analysis on a clients site and their checkout process in particular and in order to give them some comparables for their site conversion results, I found the this information on Ecommerce site conversion rates. It’s a bit buried in the web so I’ve put it here:

Its interesting overall conversion rates are so low but I have to say this is often the case in my experience – but for comparison here are the top performing sites for ecommerce conversion rates.

Way to go QVC – know thy audience. Although this high rate is probably because their site visitors have already been pre-sold the item by watching TV and are coming deliberately to buy, rather than to browse. In which case its maybe not such a good stat – I’ll have to take a look at their site….
Interesting, and depressingly, overall conversion rates are going down.

Are consumers browsing more, or are bad ecommerce site proliferating? I think its the latter and I’ve got my work cut out actually

I was talking earlier today with a client who felt his products sold better when he demonstrated them at industry shows, which was the reason he felt his ecommerce site wasn’t converting. We talked about digitising his demonstration videos and putting them online – easily done, and could work really well for him. Then I read this story online, which ties in very nicely with what I was thinking about…

Nearly half of online shoppers are disappointed with purchases, a study reveals.
Vzaar.com, the free site which allows eBay sellers to add video to their listings, has been researching Internet shopping, and found that nearly half (46%) of all online shoppers have bought something only to find that it wasn’t what they thought.
Not surprisingly, they’re extolling the use of video, with key findings of the research being that 58% of respondents thought that sites using video were more professional, 52% saying that seeing a video made them more likely to buy, and 42% having more trust in a site using video.
Not only that, but one in five would be willing to pay 10% more for goods at a site which offered more interactivity. Vzaar also believes online retailers could make an extra £300 million of the Christmas period by using video in adverts and listings.

You don’t need Vzaar to do this though. This guy really makes the concept work for his site selling torches online using youtube.

I’ve not really got into the whole social web thing. When I first looked at myspace it seemed ugly, boring and spammy. I quite like Jaiku, but I can’t be bothered to twitter. As part of updating this blog to be a bit more web 2.0 – getting my wordpress install talking to Jaiku, for example, I joined Facebook. I’ve looked at it before, not been thrilled and so not done anything with it, but last week I contacted an old work colleague who had sent me a friend request, and then let facebook trawl my gmail account for contacts, and found an old mate was on facebook so I emailed them. Then I installed the blogfriends app, and quit.


A couple of days later, I get an email from facebook, and when I login, there’s little threatening warning bubbles all over my homepage.

Here’s the email

Hi,

Our systems indicate that you’ve been misusing certain features on the site.  This email serves as a warning.  Misuse of Facebook’s features or violating Facebook’s terms of use may result in your account being disabled .  

Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions, please contact warning@facebook.com from your login email address.

The Facebook Team

So I email them:
OK, so what exactly am I supposed to have done wrong?
Emma Kane

Hi Emma,

Facebook has limits in place to prevent behavior that others may find annoying or abusive.  These limits restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site, including sending friend requests, pokes and messages and using our Search feature.  If you have received a warning or been blocked from using one of these features, Facebook has determined that you were going too fast.

These blocks can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days.  Unfortunately, we cannot lift the block for you.   When you are allowed to resume using this feature, please proceed with caution to avoid reaching the limit again.  Please be aware that the threshold at which you are warned is not a specific number, but rather determined by different factors (such as speed, time, and quantity).  For security reasons, we are unable to provide additional information about this system.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks for your understanding,

anonymous facebook person
User Operations Analyst
Facebook

My bemused reply:

But I haven’t done anything yet. I’ve only just got an account. This is a terrible user experience, especially as you can’t even tell me what I’m supposed to have done.

Hi Emma,

Sorry for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused you.  You have received a warning for collecting data from the website.  Please explain your recent activity on the site and we can look into the problem further.  Please note that it is a violation of our Terms of Use to collect data on the site and if you continue doing this, Facebook can take legal action.  If you would like to continue using the site, please stop collecting information from the site.

Thanks,

anonymous facebook person
User Operations Analyst
Facebook

Hi anonymous facebook person,

I haven’t, to my knowledge, been collecting data from the site. I installed the blogfriends app, then uninstalled it and emailed a couple of people. Thats it. 

I’m really, really confused as to what you think I have been doing, or what I have been doing wrong. I’m a new user and am just amazed, basically, by the warnings and now a threat of legal action.

Can you please look into this further.

Whoa. I seriously have not done anything. My history shows about 10 facebook pageviews since I signed up.
Now they are threatening me with legal action, and can’t tell me exactly what I’ve done?? Insane.
I am SO unimpressed. And, basically amazed – way to grow market share…

UPDATE 27th November
I just got this email..

Hi Emma,

After looking into the issue, we have determined that you received this warning by mistake. Sorry for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused you. Please let me know if you have any further questions and enjoy the site!
anonymous facebook person

That’s all right then. I trust facebook how much now? And yes, please, have my data – I don’t think….
OK , so there was a glitch in the system. But it took me five emails to find out what was going on, and clear my profile page of spurious accusations. And the assumption was that I was doing something bad, and threats of legal action were used even before they had fully investigated what was going on. A very, very bad user experience, I think you’ll agree.

Because I’m cross, here’s a video about facebook that you may well have already seen…if not, maybe you should watch.

Borders to split from Amazon
The first company to partner with Amazon on their online platform is to go elsewhere.