 WebProWorld eCommerce Forum |
E-commerce Solutions - Suggestions?
We are currently looking at moving some of our sites to a new E-commerce solution.
We have quite a few requirements, but not a big budget. Some of the possibilities:
Volusion, NetSuite, and Actinic - does anyone have experience with any of these?
Need help finding ecommerce website!
Hello, I am in the process of starting a custom jewelry business. I would like
to be able to sell my jewelry on-line but I have not been able to find an ecommerce
site that meets my needs.
Total E-Book Talk
Many people are interested in creating, publishing, distributing and selling their
own e-books. Let's have an open discussion on the best, cost-effective ways to
go about this entire process.
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08.10.05
Landing Pages Make Or Break Sites
 By David Utter
Mike McDonald of WebProNews is at SES 2005 in San Jose, and took in an afternoon
session on landing pages.
Seen a site that does landing pages
well? Poorly? Was it your site? Talk
about how you've handled landing pages in the WebProWorld forums.
"If your traffic isn't converting well, all the optimization in the world won't
help you," Mike quotes Alan Dick as stating.
The session on Landing Pages featured something straight out of Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire?: attendee feedback. Attendees were issued a card-sized remote,
and could respond to multiple-choice questions posed by the speakers. Mike acknowledges
missing one question, but claims it was a trick question. "It was actually pretty
cool," Mike said.
Mike summarized his thoughts on the Landing Page session:
The afternoon session about building better landing pages was particularly
interesting to me. I have seen LOTS of horrible, horrible landing pages from large
and small companies alike.
It has always seemed just such a waste to me that some companies invest so much
time, effort, and creativity in the creation of a great ad campaign that fails
due to the fact that their landing page was just pathetic.
Getting your customers to your site isn't always easy. You really want to make
sure you maximize the effectiveness of the pages your customers get when you are
found.
Tim Ash, president of Epic Sky and its SiteTuners division, started his talk by
referencing Cost Per Action (CPA). That equals CPC and conversion rate. While
CPC is out of the advertiser's control, conversion rate is not.
The first step in site tuning involves price tuning. That requires finding a pricing
"sweet spot" by tracking conversion rates and related product or service prices.
Once the site has an optimal price to conversion ratio, you have successfully
tuned your price.
Site owners may have to sample several layouts and designs to find the right combination
of elements. Ash cites a/b split testing, which is easy to implement and tests
one variable at a time. A second approach, multivariate analysis or the "Taguchi
Method," tests several variables at once. And the third approach calls for engaging
a specialist in site tuning, to handle those issues for sites.
Site owners should avoid making five mistakes while testing out landing pages:
1. Ignoring your baseline. You can't ignore your baseline traffic. Baseline traffic
has to be accounted for when evaluating the conversion rate of your new landing
page.
2. Be sure you have sufficient data. Remember the margin for error and random
chance.
3. Compare aged data to aged data. Be sure you take into account the time period
for the tests.
4. Assuming testing has no cost. Testing will result in some 'failed' experiments.
Don't freak out if you have worse performance in early tests.
5. Ignoring complex Interactions To illustrate this point, Tim asked the attendees
to picture an image of a Ferrari speeding down the highway with the marketing
message "Ferraris are fast." Now picture an image of a car crashed into a tree
with the same message. The impact that has on the reader is dramatically different.
Ash commented on how the CNN web site displayed ads for making reservations with
Air France appearing on a page discussing that airline's recent accident in Canada.
Strange things happen; site owners need to expect and account for them before
making evaluative judgments on test subjects.
"There is always a better way. No matter how many times you've done it in the
past, you can always make a change for the better. The problem is finding it,"
Jimmy Rosche of Offermatica said during his turn speaking.
Rosche restated the importance of multivariate testing. By testing lots of variables
simultaneously, site owners can find out quickly which methods work and which
do not. He cautioned that the site's default page should be served to a significant
percentage of site visitors during testing.
Too many landing pages may be seen by the search engines as examples of cloaking,
which will get a site tossed out of indexes. Testing should be an ongoing process
in site design. Those dollars spent on CPC will be wasted if a site doesn't have
a landing page effective at converting visitors into customers.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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