Kikabink News
=============
November 11, 2009
Hi welcome,
How changing a button catapulted one online store's sales...
====================== TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================
News and Comment:
"More Ecommerce Retailers Offering Free Shipping
To Attract Customers and Edge Out Competitors"
"Kiva.org Facilitates $100 Million in Microloans"
Feature Article:
"How Changing a Button Increased Sales By $300 Million"
Kikabink Lab:
"Google Offers Google Commerce Search Engine To Online Stores"
======================= NEWS AND COMMENT ======================
"More Ecommerce Retailers Offering Free Shipping
To Attract Customers and Edge Out Competitors"
------------------------------------------------
Based on research by comScore, Inc, the last few years have seen
free shipping emerge as a critical selling point for ecommerce
retailers.
The importance of offering free shipping has, moreover,
increased during the economic recession. comScore's data shows
that the percentage of online store sales including free
shipping has risen from 31 percent in the first quarter of 2008
to 42 percent in the third quarter of 2009.
As you might imagine, the percentage of transactions requiring
online shoppers to pay for shipping has decreased during the
same period. Here's comScore's breakdown of the proportion of
sales involving free shipping versus the proportion involving
paid shipping over the last seven quarters:
Q1 2008: Free: 31 percent; Paid: 69 percent
Q2 2008: Free: 34 percent; Paid: 66 percent
Q3 2008: Free: 35 percent; Paid: 65 percent
Q4 2008: Free: 38 percent; Paid: 62 percent
Q1 2009: Free: 37 percent; Paid: 63 percent
Q2 2009: Free: 43 percent; Paid: 57 percent
Q3 2009: Free: 42 percent; Paid: 58 percent
* * * * *
"Kiva.org Facilitates $100 Million in Microloans"
-------------------------------------------------
Four-year old microloan site, Kiva.org, can be proud. It has now
facilitated over $100 million in microloans between lenders and
(largely third world) entrepreneurs from around the world.
With around 573,000 lenders extending loans to some 239,000
entrepreneurs, Kiva.org is known for allowing 'regular' people
in developed countries to contribute $25 or more to small
business people in developing nations who are looking for
funding for their enterprises. Such funding may be used for
anything from, say, buying a milking cow, or obtaining supplies
for weaving business.
Well done Kiva!
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======================= FEATURE ARTICLE =======================
"How Changing a Button Increased Sales By $300 Million"
-------------------------------------------------------
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.
We ALL make mistakes. And if you think you are leaving - or have
left - money on the table because of a dumb mistake or two...
how about leaving $300 million on the table? All because of some
little button on a webpage?
Firstly, let's agree that some 'minor' items - such as buttons
on a webpage - are not minor at all. Indeed, out of all the
components of a sales page, the buttons you want visitors and
customers to click on are among the most important.
Simply put, buttons can have a huge impact on conversions and
sales. How they look, where they are located, when and how they
are presented during a transaction, etc will all affect the
extent to which they are clicked.
In Luke Wroblewski's case, he was working on the website of a
major online retailer when he discovered that the order form
used by customers - a form consisting of two fields, two buttons
and one link - was inhibiting people from buying. So much so
that it was costing the ecommerce store some $300 million in
sales each year.
To be clear, we're not talking about people who were browsing
the website - we're talking about customers who placing orders
for goods... and then abandoning their shopping carts because of
the order form.
So what was the problem?
The form itself consisted of two fields - 'Email Address' and
'Password' - two buttons - 'Login' and 'Register - and one link,
'Forgot Password'. The problem wasn't so much with the content
of the form as its location, or more correctly, it's appearance
in the shopping sequence. Customers would encounter the form
after they'd selected their products and clicked 'Checkout' but
before they could enter their payment information.
Apparently, the idea behind this sequencing was to enable
previous customers to login and complete their purchase more
quickly, whilst enticing new customers to register with the site
so they could complete purchases more quickly in the future.
However, Luke's usability tests revealed that the online
retailer had totally misunderstood the mentality of both its
first time and repeat shoppers.
First time shoppers just wanted to make a purchase; they did not
want to enter into relationship with the retailer, as the
requirement to register with the site suggested. Repeat
customers tended not to remember their login information, so
they were just frustrated by the form.
All in all, the form became a huge obstacle to people wanting to
complete their purchases. So much so, that nearly half of them –
along with their $300 million worth of items - simply abandoned
their orders and didn't buy at all.
When Luke and the team identified the problem and modified the
form so that people had the OPTION of either registering or
simply proceeding to the checkout, the number of customers who
completed purchases on the site rose by 45 percent and, in the
next 12 months, sales grew by $300 million.
Now, that's the power of testing, understanding your
customers... and a button!
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========================= KIKABINK LAB ========================
"Google Offers Google Commerce Search Engine To Online Stores"
--------------------------------------------------------------
In the lead up to the 2009 Christmas holiday shopping season
Google has introduced Google Commerce Search (GCS) as an
externally hosted, customizable search engine for online stores.
GCS is a cloud-based search engine that an online store can
integrate into their site in order to give customers search
results based on the store's database of products, offers, etc.
According to Google, GCS features: optimal ranking; parametric
search and sorting (to let customers refine or sort results by
category, price, brand, etc); the ability for retailers to boost
the relevance of certain items, highlight specific products
during a sale, and cross-sell related products; spell checking,
stemming and synonyms; and fast deployment and scale.
For more information visit http://www.google.com/commercesearch
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=================================================================
That's it for now. If you have any questions or feedback, feel
free to drop me a line at anna@kikabink.com.
To your profit,
Anna
Anna Johnson
Editor, Kikabink News
http://www.kikabink.com/news/
anna@kikabink.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/annajohnson
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