Increase Conversion Rate by Showing Personality and Building Trust

Want to increase your conversion rate* just by changing one page? Of course you do. Silly question on my part. I recently read a case study featured on Marketing Sherpa about a ski & snowboard sporting goods store that saw a 30% lift in conversion rate for shoppers that visited a particular page (compared to users that did not visit the page) you most likely already have on your site right now. Can you guess which page they changed?

Evogear, the site for the case study, redesigned their “About Us” page with a few key elements beyond the basics:

• Photos of the staff
• Employee profiles that include product recommendations
• Links to employee and company photos

The article has a full description as well as links to the site so you can see for yourself.

Why I Think It Works

Such a dramatic lift in conversion rate compared to those that did not view the page would seem to indicate Evogear is on to something with this. Here are a few theories on my part:

• Anti-big box store sentiment: There are plenty of consumers that want to buy from smaller business rather than give their money to a faceless mega-box store. Take advantage of this sentiment by showing your face and your personality.
• Product expert: By having employees express opinions of products they like and use, these employees take on the role of product expert. When a buyer comes to your site and all products seem equal, how will they know which one to buy. Add content to your product pages with your own product recommendations. Search engines just love original content and buyers that may be undecided may find the push they need to purchase.
• Community: Related to both of the above points, is buyers are more likely to be repeat visitors (and customers) if you can demonstrate you are not just a retailer that has some products they may want, but rather are part of a community. If you are a dog product store, show photos of your pets, or your informal dog play group.

Take all of the three together, and your store will start to project a brand identity that will allow you to build a loyal group of repeat customers who may likely be your best source of new customers.

One Yahoo! store that does this well is Base Gear. You can read not only about their policies, but why you should buy from them, and also about their values. So if you have redesigned your About Us page so it oozes with personality and a community feel, add a comment below to tell other merchants what you included.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

* Conversion rate: The number of visitors to your site that completed a purchase as a percentage of all visitors to your site. For example, if your site received one hundred visitors, and five completed a purchase, your conversion rate would be 5%.

Firefox Extensions—Tools to Help Small Business Merchants Work Smarter

I was chatting with an acquaintance the other day and mentioned some Firefox extensions I use on a regular basis. The person just stared at me blankly as if I was speaking a different language—maybe I was speaking “tech-geek” and didn’t know it. So I figured if in a “techie” place like Silicon Valley someone (granted not an engineer or web developer) was only vaguely familiar with Firefox (or more importantly why it is useful) and had no clue about extensions, there may be a number of new merchants that could benefit from this information.

Developers and tech-enthusiasts: You, of course were the early adopters of Firefox and helped push the market share for this browser. You don’t need convincing of the usefulness of Firefox extensions. Just scan my list of useful extensions for merchants and add your own to the comments if I missed any good ones (feel free to take exception with my picks too).

So this post is really targeted for those fence-sitters that may be considering downloading and using Firefox but who really aren’t sure of the benefits to them in their daily tasks of running an ecommerce site, or maybe you have it downloaded but aren’t sure what the hype is about. Apart from being widely touted in the press as faster and more secure (use the links below to follow up on those claims), Firefox allows users to install “extensions”—small utilities that are available for free which users can just download, install, and use. These extensions can help you perform common tasks from within your browser that would normally require launching other programs or additional browser windows.

And without further ado, here are my picks for top extensions merchants may find useful:

Web Developer Extension

This extension is invaluable for web developers, especially so for developers using CSS to customize Checkout Manager pages. A few of the key features include:elope

• Live editing of HTML and CSS
• Outlining block level elements (useful for seeing how pages are constructed)
• Resizing the browser window to test your designs at common screen resolutions
• Measuring and layout tools (ruler and grid lines)

CSS Viewer

Ever want to know the CSS attributes of a page without having to view the page source or CSS file to get this info? This extension gives you the ability to hover over page elements and see the CSS attributes assigned to any element.

Colorzilla

Along the lines of the CSS Viewer, if you have ever seen a color or color combination on a site that you wanted to try on your site, this handy little extension can grab any color and convert to RGB or hexadecimal value for pasting into the Store Editor, a graphics editing program, or another design tool.

IE Tab

Opens a link in a tab in Firefox using the IE rendering engine allowing you to view how a page will look in IE. Anyone using custom CSS will appreciate being able to stay in one browser but test against both.

Session Saver

Ever close your browser by accident and wish you could get right back to the same page? This handy little widget allows you to do just that. Firefox allows for multiple tab browsing which is really cool, but if you are conditioned to click the close button for the window you may find yourself very thankful for this little widget. This may not work for all areas within the Store Manager that require you to sign in, but a quick check did show it worked for some.

And two SEO tool extensions for good measure:

• SEO for Firefox
• RankQuest Toolbar

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

More Firefox resources

• Wikipedia article on Mozilla Firefox
  
• Download Firefox
• PCWorld article on Firefox
  

Quick Pick: Useful Article on Increasing Conversion at Each Step of the Buying Process

Just a quick note to point merchants to an article I read over at MarketingProfs.com about online conversion. The author outlines how your site can best be positioned to attract and then convert browsers into shoppers, and shoppers into buyers. The article answers the following questions:

1. Purchase intent: Potential browsers may have a general sense of a product need, but how do they decide on pursuing a single (or perhaps limited set) product? (For example, ”I want a new television, but not sure which brand to choose.”)
2. Purchase fullfillment filtering: Browsers may know what product they are looking for, but how do they know which merchant from which to buy the product? (For example, “I want an Acme brand plasma television. Which sites sell this model that look legitimate?”)
3. Purchase fullfillment selection: Shoppers may know your site looks trustworthy, but how do they answer any remaining question they may have about the product or your ability to fill the order? ( For example, “If I buy from this site, when will I receive my order? What is the return policy?” )
4. Purchase completion: Shoppers may want a product and wish to purchase it from your site, but how do they check out to buy the product? (For example, “Where do I click to begin check out? Can I select a different shipping and billing address? Where can I review my final order total?”)

Using some of the overall tactics discussed in the article can answer these questions and turn browsers into buyers.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business