It’s August, the sounds of sleigh bells are in the air, and the menorah lights are twinkling. Well, in the minds of consumer marketers at least. This is the time to nail down your holiday marketing plans. So to get your marketing juices flowing, I’m sharing an e-commerce optimization test we ran last holiday season.

Which order process leads to more conversions? A simple, fundamental question every e-commerce site (and, frankly, every lead generation site) needs to answer.

And the primary research question of the test we’re sharing in today’s blog post…

CONTROL

This Research Partner is an “of the month” club that offers an ongoing subscription to products like wine and cheese. In this case, the product was the “The Microbrewed Beer of the Month” club. Here is the original landing page…

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That led to this shopping cart…

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And then this step in the shopping cart…

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And then to the billing information step in the shopping cart…

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And then to the payment information step in the shopping cart (see a pattern forming here?)…

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And then, finally, to the order confirmation screen. And exhale. Whew!

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TREATMENT

Tony Doty, Senior Research Manager, MarketingExperiments, created three treatments to tests against the control. In each of these optimized paths, he redesigned the order page and shortened the shopping cart from multistep to a single-step process.

But to keep this blog post as simple as possible (if simplicity is possible at this point at all after showing the control order path), I’ll just show you the highest-performing treatment path. Here is the landing page…

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And the (single-step) shopping cart…

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RESULTS

The optimized landing page and cart path resulted in a 5.1% lift in clickthrough rate and a 13.9% lift in conversion (at a 97% level of confidence). Not surprisingly, the Research Partner left the winning treatment up as the active page.

As impressive as these results were (remember, any lift in the shopping cart is hugely valuable since it’s at the bottom of the funnel), keep in mind that this test was conducted during the holiday shopping season. When you break out post-holiday traffic, the lift looks even better – a 23.7% relative increase in conversion rate.

That’s an important factor to note, because the testing timeframe posed a validity threat (history effect, to be specific). After all, holiday traffic is highly motivated and would basically make it through even the most broken process.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LANDING PAGES AND SHOPPING CART

But, as with any test, the bigger question is always, “Why?” Why did B perform better than A? And most importantly, what can you learn from this test?

Here is some expert speculation on the possible causes of the test outcome that you can use to optimize your own landing pages and cart processes:

• The treatment reduced Friction in the steps and the process. The landing page was laid out in a simpler, more straightforward fashion making it easier for the visitors to understand what to do. And many steps were removed from the cart process.
• Many of these “…of the month” sites lack credibility. They don’t answer the “Why should I trust you?” question. Incorporating the image of the owner/person in charge of the product, as well as an actual piece of copy written by this owner, helps establish that credibility.
• Using the owner also helped connect a passionate audience with the passionate people behind the company, essentially saying, “You’re here because you love beer. Guess what, I love beer, too, so you can trust my selections.”
• And, in the end, people buy from people, not from websites.

SUGGESTED FOLLOW-UP TESTS

Of course, this was just one test in an overall testing-optimization cycle. Here’s a look at some future tests our research team is considering (hopefully it will give you some test ideas as you optimize your own pages and processes):

• Move top portion of the page, and use as actual product page (the step prior to what we were testing).  Consider using only process on this step (bottom portion).
• Reduce number of questions per step, match control in path length but add value messaging and imaging on each step.
• Simple accordion process, without leaving page, shows how many steps there are, what these steps are, and possibly how long it’s expected to take to finish.

RELATED RESOURCES

Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce website

E-commerce: When should you reveal the price in your shopping carts?

E-commerce: How long should a shopping cart be?

Shopping Cart Abandonment: How not being annoying can get you 67% more cart completions

E-commerce is a lot like magic. According to my in-depth research into the art of illusion (hey, I watched the movie “The Prestige”), there are three basic elements to the classic magic trick:

• The Pledge (set-up)
• The Turn (the trick itself)
• The Prestige (the reveal)

Much like a really good magic trick, you must also have your audience join you on a convincing journey, and deliver real value to them in the end without them feeling, well, tricked. For David Copperfield, that value is entertainment without feeling lied to by the illusion itself. For the classic e-commerce purchase funnel, that value is a quality product without being shocked by an unfair price at the end of the journey.

To that end, you might say e-commerce offer presentation has three stages (which may, in fact, overlap):

• The Interrupt (gains attention)
• The Value (establishes appeal)
• The Price (the reveal)

But when do you reveal price in the cart process? That was a question we received in our recent Web clinic, Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce website. I discussed this topic with our Director of Sciences, Bob Kemper, and here’s what he had to say…

“Rather than a universal constant (e.g., ‘Step 7’) or even a single-factor heuristic (e.g., “as soon as (x) happens”, or “not until you’ve done (y)”), optimizing the integration of pricing in the conversion process involves somewhat of a cross-section of the factors of our traditional ‘standard model’ that include thought-sequence principles and product/process-specific logistical constraints.”

In other words, there is not one right answer we can give you. You have to test to find the optimal price reveal for your cart, based on, according to Bob, the following two factors:

Price elasticity

Reveal pricing when price becomes a/the primary decision factor.  That is, for highly commoditized (highly price-elastic) products, it will be early on. For example, if someone is looking to purchase a book about Harry Houdini that they can buy just about anywhere, price is likely a major factor (likely even a key part of the “offer” as referenced above), and you probably want to lead with that price.

For exclusive, luxury or mission-critical (highly inelastic) products, reveal price later on. For example, if you’re selling a magic cape actually worn by Harry Houdini, something of which there are only a few in the world, you’d likely want to play up the offer and the product well before you get to price.

But, what if you literally sell a commodity? A product where the price is constantly shifting based on market conditions? Admittedly, this is pretty rare, but there are marketers who serve this niche. This may be stocks or bonds, precious metals, electricity, oil futures, even wholesale food sellers perhaps?

“In the case of one of my Research Partners, where prices fluctuate based on the market, it is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT to show price in each step so they know that their price was still locked in for the promised 10 minutes by the ecommerce partner,” said Research Manager Jon Powell.

Pricing model

Do you have a simple “one-size-fits-all” pricing model, or is it a highly customizable buying process?

Some cart processes are just a yes/no decision. Going back to that Harry Houdini book above, the customer likely will only have to enter a payment method and shipping info and click the “buy” button.

However, other buying processes involve extensive customization. For example, if a customer is purchasing a car through AutoNation, he will likely have to configure the color, engine, tires, air conditioning, etc. Or ordering a computer from Dell, she must configure the CPU, memory, hard drive size, software, warranty, etc.

In this case, Bob advises you test different ways to reveal “a la carte” pricing at each step of product configuration.  Later in the process, there will be opportunities to offer package discounts, premium step-upgrades, accessory incentives, etc. This multiple-stage price revelation method holds one element until very late in the conversion process, right before order confirmation.

“So, this is a kind of a ‘slow burn’ price revelation method, which can serve both to offer customer-specific discounts or incentives, and to maximize average order value,” Bob said.

Related Resources

E-commerce: How long should a shopping cart be?

Web Clinic Replay – Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce Website

E-commerce Shopping Carts: How a redesigned checkout process led to 13% increase in conversion rate

Shopping Cart Abandonment: How not being annoying can get you 67% more cart completions

In our most recent Web clinic, Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce website, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin shared our recent discoveries from our consumer marketing experimentation, set out a strategic approach to shopping carts and gave a few helpful fishing tips to boot.

As usual, we received more questions than we could possibly answer live during the Web clinic. A few were simple and straightforward (to which I say, “Yes,” “Maybe,” “One form field for name instead of three,” and “By the pier in Jacksonville Beach using Mayport shrimp as bait.”)

But one question particularly caught Dr. McGlaughlin’s eye…

How long should a shopping cart be? Is it better to have a long page or many short steps?

I passed this question around the lab, and here’s what our researchers had to say. We’d love to hear what you’re learned from your tests as well…

It depends on your product

I think this really depends on the product.  If you have a very simple product, like a DVD, you know what you’re getting as soon as you click “Add to Cart,” so I would get them through the process as quickly as possible.

If you have a more customized process, like ordering flowers with different vases and greeting card variations, I have no problem breaking them each out to their own special page so we can hammer home the value of each step without over-cluttering the long form. This also allows us to better track which specific step someone is dropping off on so that we can more easily determine the leaks in the funnel.

In the end, you have to test checkout process length.

– Tony Doty, Research Manager

The two optimization factors that you must balance

To the customer, shopping cart page length may be irrelevant unless the length is driven by unnecessary information.

I ran a test and discovered that reducing unnecessary fields on a single page inside the checkout funnel resulted in an increase in finishes, whereas including these fields in a similar process outside of the cart resulted in more conversions.

To the client/site, it is preferable to measure in multiple pages so they can track where the leaks are in the funnel.

If everything is one big page, it makes it much more difficult to track where or what causes a visitor concern enough to abandon.

In this case, showing the customer where they are in the process (progress indicator) helps keep the balance and alleviate the effects of that type of process friction (perceived process length).

– Jon Powell, Research Manager

Reinforce the value proposition

Optimizing the shopping cart path – including its length, sequencing of steps/forms, etc. – should conform to our foundation landing page optimization/conversion index analysis tenets. For instance:

• Not asking for any more information than you need
• Not asking for information you do need before you need it (to complete the process step)
• Managing form length and eye-path
• Avoiding ‘visual barriers’ such as horizontal bars across the page, etc.

The emphasis shifts slightly upon transitioning from ‘offer’ phase to ‘cart’ phase, shifting from ‘expression’ of the value proposition towards ‘support’ or ‘reinforcement’ of the value proposition to sustain (rather than build) cognitive momentum toward conversion.

– Bob Kemper, Director of Sciences

Optimize the page or the path

There are two approaches you can test to see which works best with your customers and products. Either have a clear descriptions of the steps (breadcrumbs) to let customers know how many to expect and where they are in the whole process, or create one longer page that includes all necessary billing and shipping fields.

– Zuzia Soldenhoff-Thorpe, Research Analyst

Test on new and repeat customers

How long should a shopping cart be? It is better to have a long page or many short steps? It depends.

Every retailer should test as many different checkout processes as they can. Retailers need to know what their customer target group responds better to. Some visitors will prefer one single, long step and others will prefer a couple of short steps.

Probably for repeat customers, short checkout process (1-2 steps) will work well because they already trust the retailer and are familiar with the process. But even in this case, it is important to test.

– Gaby Paez, Associate Director of Research

Be brief and be thorough

I personally prefer a short cart, incorporating all of the steps in one with accordion-style sections. With this type of a checkout process, it’s easy to get back to previous steps with an ‘edit’ link and it appears short while still collecting all of the needed information.

My favorite checkout process is Gap/Banana Republic/Piperlime – it’s super intuitive and really easy to get back to any step to make a change

My biggest pet peeve is when a checkout does not work in a certain browser. I use Google Chrome, and the other day I was looking at something on the Hobo International site and I couldn’t select from a drop down in Chrome, but when I went to Firefox it worked. Most customers wouldn’t be that dedicated or might not think to check another browser.

– Gina Townsend, Director of Operations

Related resources

Free Web Clinic, May 18, 4-5 p.m. – Optimization Researched: Latest findings about effective LPO practices based on data from 2,673 marketers

Web Clinic Replay – Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce Website

E-commerce: How your peers optimize shopping carts and product pages

E-commerce Shopping Carts: How a redesigned checkout process led to 13% increase in conversion rate

Shopping Cart Abandonment: How not being annoying can get you 67% more cart completions

Whenever I work with a Research Partner that is involved in e-commerce, I always come across problems with the product details page. A potential customer’s experience here should not be much different from the moment you pick up an item at a store and look at it. Imagine it:

• You’re browsing the aisles of your favorite store, going from category to category
• Finally, you see something that gets your interest
• The price doesn’t stop you from picking it up – you could buy it today, or come back next week when you get your paycheck

This is it…

• Do you put it in your cart or put it back?
• If you put it back, why? Does the price now start to look expensive seeing what you actually get compared to what you’d pay?
• Do you put it down and pick up a competing brand? Or do you look at both at the same time?
• Or do you decide it’s worth the money? Do you see yourself using it, feeling good about the purchase?

This happens on e-commerce sites just as much as it happens in stores. The only difference online is that the website is usually the one responsible for the final packaging/presentation of a product, whereas in a retail store they are mostly just responsible for placing the already packaged product on a shelf.

The challenge with e-commerce product template pages

We discovered this was an area of opportunity with one of our well-known e-commerce research partners last year. You could easily add one of their many products to the cart without having to understand all its details, but a number of visitors were actually visiting the product detail pages and then NOT converting.

Here’s what their product details page looked like: (to protect their privacy, I’ve re-created the page in wireframe format)

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Major areas for testing

I used the MarketingExperiments Conversion Index to determine what to test:

Here is what I determined:

• Headline only contained the product name and nothing else (-v)
• The call to action comes before the product value (-v)
• Credibility indicators are out of the proximity of the call-to-action (+a, -v)
• Primary product benefits, guarantees and testimonials are trapped in tabs out of the primary eye path that require an extra click (-v, +f)
• Product imagery is generic and does little to add /support its value (-v)
• Page tone was very technical and not conversational (-v)

The preliminary research question

Was the product no longer worth the price once they looked at its value? Or were visitors simply not able to see all the true value of the product BECAUSE of the Web page?

The test was designed to answer these questions. Since these particular products were part of our Research Partner’s signature line, we wanted to be sure that the product didn’t need optimization before the presentation. This was our way of finding out.

Will a radical, clear presentation of existing product value result in an increase in sales?

A new presentation approach

I remember brainstorming with our lead designer, Charlie Moore (to whom I owe much of my success), on this one. How could we take the existing product value and represent it so that potential customers don’t have to search and click to figure out if they want to make the purchase?

It wasn’t just the value itself that wasn’t being presented properly; it was the tone of the page as well. We had to take what looked like a very technical page and turn it into a product presentation that an everyday consumer could connect with emotionally.

This is what we came up with: (to protect their privacy, I’ve re-created the page in wireframe format)

Click to enlarge

Major changes:

• Used the primary product benefit in combination with product name for the headline (+v)
• We moved ALL the product benefit, guarantee and feature copy to the primary eye-path (+v, -f)
• All un-related links were moved to the header/footer area (-f)
• Supporting content found in the tabs were moved into the supporting column (+v)
  • We used visual indicators to support value for visitors that like to quickly scan and improve the tone
  • We focused each header on a primary benefit and supported with feature specific copy
• The call to action and product price was moved after the product value (+v)
• Credibility indicators were placed in closer proximity to the call to action (-a, +v)

Note: The only content we substituted in this treatment was visual indicators (for the generic imagery) and page colors. The rest of the content was available in some form or fashion on the control.

Promising Results

It only took us ten days to discover that there was a difference between these two pages statistically. The treatment outperformed both the control and double control with an 83.79% increase in product sales (not just add to carts).A double control is a technique high-traffic, high-converting use (essentially splitting traffic to two identical control pages as well as a set of treatments) to determine normal variance as well as defend against validity threats, such as instrumentation effect.

I wanted to run some follow-up tests to try and understand exactly which elements had the most impact on these particular consumers (was it the visual indicators, the testimonials, etc.?) but ultimately I learned that the combination of these elements, all related to quick, clear product presentation, resulted in more sales – sometimes the most important things you can learn from a multivariate test.

Just like in re-creating that perfect cup of coffee, I desire to try and re-create the experience by understanding just how much cream, sugar and black coffee (at what concentration) goes into that perfect, addicting taste with further testing. But at this point, we had driven a significant sales gain, and the battle was won for the day.

Are you paying attention to your product pages?

If you’re in e-commerce, pay attention – The product details page template often times has the most influence on the product purchase decision.

While customer demographics, interests and motivations will vary, what remains constant is that customers must be able to quickly and clearly judge if your product is worth the price you put on it. The more roadblocks you place in their way to making this decision, the more likely they will run away from your product prematurely.

Related Resources

What Else Can I Test…On My E-commerce Or Lead Generation Website?

E-commerce Shopping Carts: How a redesigned checkout process led to 13% increase in conversion rate

Homepage Optimization: Creating the best design to quickly meet multiple visitors’ needs

What Else Can I Test to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate?

“What else can I test?” This is one of the most comment questions we get asked at MarketingExperiments. Perhaps only after… “What should I test first?” and “How do I test?”.

Before I help you determine what to test next, you must honestly determine if you really have exhausted your own test ideas. Testing is both a meticulous and iterative process, so there are no short cuts. There are no silver bullets. If “Page Z” is the most effective webpage possible (most effective at the moment, since the universe is most certainly not static), then you need to test A, B, C, D…and so on in order to get to Z. By going directly from A to Z you will miss small subtleties and large revelations that would have influenced your design of page Z.

In order to exhaust your test ideas, there are two important stages to consider in a testing process:

• Radical redesigns
• Fine tuning

A shrewd procedure to adopt as you begin testing is to “Go radical, then fine tune.” This can apply to landing pages, home pages, shopping cart processes, etc. It’s an effective way to gain decisive knowledge in a short period of time.

Radical Redesigns

An intelligent test design includes a hypothesis that one page will respond very differently from another. By testing radically different strategies, your test will elicit much clearer and decisive results.

So what radical redesigns should you test? I suggest that you develop treatment pages that are a categorical shift from your current page. An example of a radical redesign may be:

• Divergent messaging (“set up free access” instead of “register”)
• Free trial instead of pay up front
• New layout
• New color scheme
• One-step checkout instead of a three-step process

In other words, once you get your testing budget approved, I implore you not to start with a button color test. Sure, a green button may be better than your current grey button, but you have to ask when designing the test, how much better is it? Test elements that you are confident will have a noticeable difference. Even if it’s negative, at least you will learn your grand new idea is actually not grand and you shouldn’t bring it up in front of the board at the next quarterly meeting.

Radical redesigns should save you time as well. In terms of time efficiency, the worst thing you can do when testing is design a test where only minimal difference in behavior is possible.

Fine Tuning

After you’ve ruled out the radical designs that don’t work and you feel you’ve arrived at your best strategy, then it’s time for some fine tuning. This includes:

• Tweaking the headline
• Small copy changes
• Button color/copy
• Order of your bullets/New bullets
• Images

However, you must consider one caveat when testing small elements on your webpages – it can be extremely time consuming. Finding the perfectly worded headline, then determining what color the button should be, then identifying if your primary image should be a man, woman, group… tested individually, fine tuning these elements could comprise hundreds of tests.

Multivariate tests are a way to test multiple small changes simultaneously, thus speeding up your optimization schedule to increase profits as quickly as possible.

Nowadays multivariate tests are easier and easier to conduct. So I’d encourage you to use them to your benefit as you begin the fine-tuning process. Choose a set of variables (headline, image, button), then choose their corresponding values (button: green, blue, red), and launch the test to determine the best combination.

What Else Can I Test?

Now that I’ve given you the background necessary to determine where you fit in the testing-optimization cycle, let’s revisit that juicy “What else can I test?” question.

Today, I will discuss a few strategies to consider for both e-commerce sites and lead generation pages. I will make a few caveats though.

First, these should not be the extent of your testing. These are just a few quick examples to get your brain percolating with test ideas that may deviate just a tad from the norm.

Second, some of these ideas might be quite radical, so I would proceed with caution if you decide to execute something similar.

Third, not every idea works for every site, company, industry, etc. You have to test to see what works for you. And you have to continually test because the Internet, the economy, and customer preference are all constantly evolving.

E-commerce – shopping cart

So often I go to an online clothing or electronics store and see, very prominently displayed, that I have no products in my cart. Well, I sort of know that because I just got here and have not added anything. Really, what’s the point of telling people “you have 0 items in your shopping cart”? It seems quite pointless when you think about it.

What if you used that space more effectively?

You could code that area of the page to communicate value or promotions whenever nothing has been added to the cart. Adagio Teas is a great example of this. They communicate in this space that you get free shipping with orders over a certain amount and that if you order within the next XX amount of time that your products will arrive on XX day. Two great pieces of information that are much more valuable than knowing I have zero products in my cart.

E-commerce – dynamic navigation menu

The things you can do with a top or side navigational menu these days are incredible. Bye-bye to the days where you just clicked on a category or chose a sub-category from a simple dropdown menu. This space can be used in place of category pages. It can be used to promote new products or items on sale. You can use it to guide visitors to the most popular areas or even to sections that are most profitable to you.

When visitors hover over the tabs on the Clinique site, they see a user-friendly menu that lists areas to dig deeper into the site. This type of menu allows your site to direct people to areas beyond simple sub-categories. In Clinique’s case, you can navigate to trends, tools, gifts, etc. Below these options, there is also plenty of room to promote free shipping, new products, or even an offer for a skin consultation.

Lead generation – technology

So often you arrive on a lead gen page that has the same old boring form. Name, email, phone, address…on and on. Well, I say spice it up a bit! There are many simple development techniques that can make your forms more user-friendly and also more visually appealing.

Here is an example of applying jQuery Expose to a form field. The form initially looks pretty run-of-the-mill:

And then when you click on one of the fields:

You may not be able to notice, but the entire page becomes lighter and highlights the singular objective you want the visitor to accomplish. This focuses the visitor’s attention on the form and hopefully away from any links, images, and most importantly that “red x” at the top right of the page.

Lead generation – Focusing attention to the middle of the page

One popular way of focusing attention to the middle of the page these days is the modal popup, or entrance popup. If you’re reading this blog post, you’ve probably seen it when you enter MarketingExperiments.com

Although it’s a popup and sometimes annoying, the reason why this strategy works for many people is that you eliminate all the distractions caused by copy, links, ads, images, and other shared real estate a homepage usually has, and forces visitors to look at one thing. Hopefully it’s something that is impactful to the business.

Question: What if we executed this “idea” completely differently? What if we made a complete paradigm shift? The following is a PPC landing page in which we tested the “idea” of the entrance popup (page anonymized):

[click image to enlarge]

The page looks like an entrance popup. It eliminates distraction like an entrance popup. It focuses the user’s attention on one objective like the entrance popup. But, it’s NOT a popup.

The text, images, and background colors have all been dimmed to place primary focus on the central objective. I know this is an extreme example, but if used judiciously, this strategy can be very effective.

Our test treatment received a 19.6% relative increase over the control. And what did the control look like? It was almost the same design but without the pseudo “entrance popup” strategy.

I hope you received some value from these test ideas. Stay tuned to the blog for more ideas from the ongoing “What else can I test” series to hear new ideas from many different researchers in the MarketingExperiments lab.

Related Resources

What else can I test … to improve my lead generation rate?

What else can I test … to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate?

What else can I test… to increase email clickthrough rate?

This weekend I was paying for the 10 gallons I had just put into my old 1997 Honda Civic, when I decided that I’d purchase a nice cold soda for the road. I pointed out the pump where my fueled-up car was located and then slid the cold beverage to the convenience store clerk. He informed me that my total came to $25.89 and then he stopped.

Looking me dead in the eyes, he asked me what my name was. “Austin,” I replied a little hesitantly. “Austin, are you sure you want to spend $25.89 for 10 gallons of gas and a cold soda?” he asked. I nodded and attempted to hand him my Visa credit card.

He denied my overture and informed me that he could only help me if I were a member of his store. So not wanting to cause a scene with the five people who were now behind me, I conceded.

Can I just buy a soda?

He asked for my name again, and then moved on to more personal information. He informed me that my phone number, home address, and email address were all required for membership, but then gave me the option of telling him my age, date of birth, marital status, and household income level.

I, of course, declined. After all the information had been gathered, the clerk then passed me about 60 pages of the legal terms which I needed to sign to become a member.

Finally he took my card. However, in the middle of processing it, another clerk approached me saying that he noticed I was purchasing a can of soda. The coworker then made some suggestions concerning what I might like to buy along with my soda based upon previous customer patterns.

Once I had assured his coworker that I just wanted a soda, the clerk then again reminded me that my total came to $25.89 and again stopped, looked me dead in the eyes and asked, “Austin, are you sure you want to spend $25.89 for 10 gallons of gas and a cold soda?”

This might be how customers see our shopping carts

Ok, so this story is a bit of a stretch for a convenience store, but is an accurate reenactment of the experience at many ecommerce sites. This is exactly what we see across the Web with shopping cart experiences everywhere. In fact, we recently ran a test with one of our Research Partners and here is what the original checkout process looked like:

1)     Product page (click to purchase)

2)     Cart page (confirm you are ready to order)

3)     User account page (if you are new you must choose to create a new account)

4)     Create a user account page #1 (enter name, email and account password)

5)     Create a user account page #2 (enter shipping information)

6)     Create a user account page #3 (enter payment information)

7)     Order confirmation page (confirm order and account information again)

8)     Receipt page

To go from the product page to the receipt page took eight different steps. A customer has to register before being able to place the order, as well as confirm that order twice. After reorganizing and removing unnecessary steps, we were able to optimize this process to a single basic step. The increase in order completions was over 68%.

Is your shopping cart trying to do too much?

What this experiment illustrates is something we see over and over in the shopping cart process. Most shopping carts that companies use are bulky and have more features than needed (i.e. cart registration, order confirmations, cross-promotional offerings, etc.). Sometimes this means a shopping cart looks less like a basic transaction facilitator, and more like a boot camp obstacle training course with high walls and flaming hoops.

For instance, how many times have you had to join a web site before actually buying a product? How many “if you like this product, you might like this product” offers have you endured while checking out? Have you ever counted how many times you actually have to confirm your order before it goes through?

None of these features are bad per se, and some might even be helpful in the overall customer-client relationship. The only problem is when they get in the way of the natural thought sequence of a customer looking to purchase something at a specific moment in time.

Please, just let me out of here!

If I come to a web site, place an order in my cart, and hit “check out,” then please just let me check out. We must make sure our cart processes is sticking to the main objective – namely, closing the sale.

All these customer retention features and cross-promotional options can be strategically accomplished after the initial sale has already been completed. For instance, you can ask for the customer to create an account for future purchases or send them to a thank-you page that has cross-promotional offers.

Overall, this experiment leaves us with one key question: How many people might we be losing in the process by interrupting their order process? For this company, simplifying the checkout process meant 68% more orders. What is your potential?

Want to learn more?

For more information on how to optimize your shopping cart process, listen to our good friend Joel Book, the Director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget and Charles Nicholls, the Founder of SeeWhy, in the free webinar entitled The 7 Secrets To Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickharris/ / CC BY-SA 2.0