Conversion / Testing video

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5 Ways to Increase Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate with Ayat Shukairy (8:59) Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Dec 29, 2009

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In this video interview, e-commerce conversion expert explains the five steps her firm uses to increase sales conversion rates in online stores -- determining which pages to optimize, changes that might produce best results, selecting pages to test, limiting tests to what is essential, and making only small changes at a time.

First, determine which pages to optimize, based on a study of your analytics. How many users are adding to cart? Is there a high cart abandonment rate? Stats reveal issues also with product pages, category pages, and home pages.

Second, decide what to change on the page you select. Prioritize items to change based on the expected impact on your target markets. Elements to consider include the copy, images, headline, add to cart button, and how the price is displayed.

Third, select the right pages to test using a tools such as Google Website Optimizer. Pages with low traffic and low conversions may take to long to complete a statistically valid test, though low traffic / high conversion pages may be okay.

Fourth, reduce the number of testing scenarios in a multivariate test so that it doesn't take too long to get meaningful results. Try not to run tests for more than four weeks.

Fifth, make small changes or iterations, rather than large changes. Together, the small changes can add up to a big difference.

Ayiat Shukairy is the managing partner of Invesp Consulting that specializes in conversion optimization for e-commerce sites. This interview was taped on December 8, 2009 at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, IL.