Extreme makeovers of e-commerce sites can confuse customers, and may not be realistic in this economy anyway. The Internet Retailer Web Design ’09 conference provided plenty of tips for how to make small changes that can have a big impact on sales.
By Don Davis
A well-designed web site is more important than ever now that retail sales are slow, but few e-commerce managers are likely to get budget approval these days for a top-to-bottom site overhaul. The good news that came out of the Internet Retailer Web Design ’09 conference is that small tweaks can add up to big results—and have the advantage of not confusing customers.
Speakers presented a wide variety of tips for fine-tuning retail at the conference held Jan. 19 to 22 in Miami Beach. Those tips ranged from strategies for moving up in search results to the most efficient way to organize a photo shoot.
Full audio and visual presentations by the 45 expert speakers at
Web Design '09 are now available on multi-media CD-ROM. Click Here for more details. |
And for those retailers ready for a redesign, there were suggestions on how to pick a design agency and reports from online retailers on what they learned from full-scale redesigns.
But the specter of the economic downturn loomed over the 625 attendees, and much discussion centered on low-cost site enhancements, as a strategy of small changes is a necessity for many e-retailers today but the virtue in such a strategy is that it’s less likely to confuse the customer, said keynote speaker Lindy Rawlinson in opening the conference Jan. 20.
“Constantly evolve through incremental changes, without changing too much at once to risk customer frustration or confusion,” said Rawlinson, vice president of web operations and new business at Neiman Marcus Direct, the direct-to-consumer arm of the department store chain. “Let the customer get used to changes to the site one at a time.”
Wider pages
As an example, she cited the new BergdorfGoodman.com site that Neiman Marcus had launched that morning. As it had last fall with NeimanMarcus.com, the retailer widened the Bergdorf Goodman site so that it was optimized for the wider monitors many consumers now own, and used the extra space on the web page to present larger images. Other changes were minor, so the loyal BergdorfGoodman.com shopper should not be perplexed, Rawlinson said.
“Hopefully, she’ll explore the site and appreciate the larger images, but she won’t be confused because none of the navigation and how she shops the site or how the products are categorized have changed at all,” Rawlinson added.
Rawlinson also emphasized testing constantly to make sure new features are pleasing customers, and listening carefully to what they tell you. “At Neiman Marcus Direct, everyone receives weekly surveys of every customer comment,” Rawlinson said. “That’s the most valuable information we can get.”
Rawlinson was followed by Ivy Chin, vice president of architecture, design and video at QVC Inc. who described how the TV and web retailer redesigned its site in stages, releasing new features over several months so that customers could adapt. QVC also added video tutorials explaining the new features, updated its Frequently Asked Questions page, added help links on every page and made sure its call center team was prepared to answer questions.
Voice of the customer
Testing all changes was emphasized by several speakers. Jeff Prus, senior director of user experience at online print products retailer VistaPrint Ltd., explained that VistaPrint now views testing as a revenue generator, not a cost center, having shown it can improve sales by millions of dollars a year. He said VistaPrint conducts dozens of A/B tests of one format versus the other, or multiple variants of pages, every three weeks.
It’s not just how you test, but how the decision makers get the information, pointed out Archie Miller, senior manager of web design and development at catalog and web electronics retailer Crutchfield Corp. Crutchfield executives gather on the second Friday of each month to collectively watch live usability tests with consumers. “It’s like watching a scary movie with a group,” Miller says. “It’s more fun if everyone screams at the same time.”
Miller presented a video of a test in which a consumer tried several times to find a compatible audio component for his truck, only to be informed at the end of each try that the selected component would not in fact work in his vehicle. After executives watch a test like that, Miller says, it doesn’t take much to convince them a fix is required.
Sometimes it’s the timing of a change that’s crucial. For instance, when news reports during the 2007 holiday season spread fears that toys made in China could be dangerous, FatBrain Toys took advantage of the flexibility a web retailer has to quickly add to the product information it provides and began identifying the country of origin of each item, easing customers’ concerns, reported Mark Carson, CEO of the web toy retailer.
It’s also important to remember that not all customers are alike, pointed out Mike Ritter, vice president of The HP Home and Office Store e-commerce site of computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. While HP’s site sells some products, like PCs, that require a step-by-step configuration process, HP created the HP Express Store section of its site where customers can quickly buy off-the-shelf products like printer cartridges.
Judy Newman, president of Scholastic Book Clubs, described a recent redesign of Scholastic.com that made it easier for teachers to place orders and for parents to decide what to buy. A teacher now can create a personal home page that displays books appropriate for the grade she’s teaching. There is also a “peek inside” feature that displays the book’s inside pages, including the actual type size, an important feature in children’s books.
Two-way street
In addition to speaker presentations, the Web Design ’09 conference included many interactive features, such as free one-on-one consultations that allowed retailer attendees to discuss their sites with design experts. During the conference, 312 attendees participated in 525 such meetings with 34 experts. But that didn’t satisfy attendees’ hunger for feedback, and there were several lively sessions in which retailers volunteered their sites for critiques before the entire conference.
During one such session, Jennifer Bailey, usability services manager for ForeSee Results, which measures consumer satisfaction with web sites, emphasized that a retailer’s home page is prime real estate that should feature the most compelling content. Commenting on a site that has an About Us tab in the top navigation bar, Bailey said that’s not content that will drive sales, and should go elsewhere.
Similarly, security certification logos may not be the best use of home page space, and may raise safety concerns in the consumer’s mind, Bailey and co-presenter Scott Kincaid, vice president of Usability Sciences Corp., agreed. Those logos are more important on the checkout page, observed design expert Ethan Giffin of Groove Commerce in a later site-review session.
Attendees also volunteered their sites for review by two experts in search engine optimization—Marion Sharkey, vice president of business development at PM Digital, and Stephan Spencer, president of Netconcepts—who offered tips on how to move up in search engine rankings.
They explained the importance of every page having a title, which appears in the user’s browser frame and is used by search engines to determine the focus of a page. The title should contain keywords that can help a page move up in search engine rankings for those terms, Sharkey said. They also advised against putting a long block of text at the bottom of the page with many keywords in an effort to raise search engine rankings; the search engines view that as “keyword stuffing” and may penalize a site for the practice, they said.
Plan ahead
Several conference sessions dealt with when and how to spiff up e-commerce sites with images and interactive features.
Compelling photography is increasingly important, but photographing more than 2,500 products each year, as children’s apparel retailer CWD Kids does, can be costly if not properly organized. To minimize costs, the retailer creates a tracking sheet that shows how many views it will need for every product, and, for photos involving models, the size of the clothing, required props and setting. The improved planning allows CWD Kids to shoot 65 to 80 products per day, up from 40 to 45 in the past, creative director Kelly Sullivan said in her presentation.
While there were many ideas for small changes, sometimes a retailer has to completely redesign a site, or create a new one, as Borders Books and Music had to do last year after it decided to discontinue selling through Amazon.com.
Kevin Ertell, who was the vice president of e-business at Borders while it created the new Borders.com, showed off some of the features of the new web site. That included the Magic Shelf on the home page that Borders fills with personalized recommendations, and which a visitor can move horizontally or vertically, mimicking the experience of browsing in a Borders bookstore.
But he also emphasized how the new web site ties into Borders stores in a way that improves the customer’s overall experience. “We think of it as one plus one equals three,” he said.
Because Borders’ overall inventory is 10 times that of its biggest store, it now has kiosks in stores that allow customers to order online for delivery to their homes, offices or, for free, to a nearby store. Ertell says more than 25,000 customers use that ship-to-store feature each week, and 35% buy additional items when they come to pick up the original item.
Borders is also working to engage store personnel in the web site. A manager can add a personal message to her store’s page in the store locator section of the site, and the site now includes reviews from store employees, as well as from customers. “We have 30,000 booksellers and we’re harnessing their expertise on the site,” Ertell said. (Ertell left Borders last month in a management shakeup.)
Retailers contemplating a redesign often turn to agencies that specialize in web design. Forrester analyst Bruce Temkin advised attendees to insist on working with an agency’s top personnel and to design the contract so that the agency’s compensation depends on the retailer achieving its goals.
But more important than picking a good agency is the retailer being clear on what it wants to achieve and assigning a strong manager to lead the effort. “There’s almost nothing more valuable than a really strong project manager on your side interfacing with the agency,” Temkin said.
He also noted that only about 3% of sites presented by design agencies for Forrester’s evaluation get a passing grade. “That means there’s a lot of opportunity to get better,” he said. “Those of you who can do something extraordinary can actually outpace your peers quite substantially.”
Extraordinary redesigns may not be the order of the day until the economy improves. But the Internet Retailer Web Design ’09 conference showed there are plenty of inexpensive steps retailers can take that can make a difference.
don@verticalwebmedia.com
Full audio and visual presentations by the 45 expert speakers at Web Design '09 are now available on multi-media CD-ROM. Click Here for more details.
