A couple weeks ago, I posted on 22 features for site search nirvana . We can add one more to this list. Staples.com is leveraging “how to” buying guides at the top of search results for its most popular terms, like “paper:” This attention-grabbing tactic can help reduce bounce rates on key search pages (the percentage of visitors that abandon the page within 5-10 seconds), and help customers understand which search results... 

If you offer products and services that generate recurring revenue through subscriptions (including software, music, games, media or wireless plans), remarketing to your existing customers is the most important part of your business – as they say, it costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to satisfy an existing one. An upgrade or renewal email is an effective way to keep the customer “in the fold.” Some businesses bank on existing... 

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. August 2010 will go down as “checklist month” as I found a lot of great checklist style posts in my feed reader, check ‘em out: The 5 Minute Conversion Health Scorecard by @unbounce The SEO Audit Checklist via @lunametrics What to look for in your web analytics by @richpage Another... 

As eCommerce marketers, often our opinions about our customers’ shopping behavior clouds our judgment and leads us to make decisions that may harm our conversion rate. It’s easy to make incorrect assumptions based on web analytics data, or worse, to presume that our customers think and behave the same way we do. Research into the real attitudes and behavior of our customers can provide insights that contradict our assumptions.... 

Error-handling is one of the most often overlooked pieces of usability and conversion optimization. We can become so focused on cart button design, home page layouts, featured products, promotional offers, email subject lines and the like that we forget that the biggest points of friction are when the customer inputs something incorrectly in a form field. When customers don’t understand what they did wrong or how to correct it, they abandon... 

What makes for great site search? Here are 22 features to consider to optimize your site search tool for usability, guided selling and customer satisfaction. Search Box 1. Placement 2. Size 3. Scope Placement Search boxes should be easy to spot where customers expect them (top right hand corner or top center). Avoid “Search” links in navigation menus – most will scan your page for a box. Also avoid placing email sign-up boxes... 

According to Oneupweb , 59.1% of consumers expect your website to offer a tax and shipping calculator to help them estimate the total cost of purchase before checkout. Our consulting practice recently conducted a quick-and-dirty user test for a client and found that 4 out of 4 test participants believed that the tax and shipping estimator was a required step on the shopping cart page – even though the box clearly stated this was an optional... 

In our most recent webinar Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing , an audience member asked a great question about site testing near a product launch. A perfect industry example is packaged software. A software product may release a new version every year or two. For the first few months after release, marketing runs a number of campaigns, traffic volume spikes and sales go through the roof. For the rest of... 

Get Elastic is on holidays this week and will return on Monday, August 16. But never fear, we won’t leave you sans Elastic. In High Fidelity style, here are my top Five 13 personal favorite posts to take you through to Friday the 13th. Social Media Top 10 Web 2.0 Activities for Ecommerce Customer Reviews Thinking Positively About Negative Reviews Site Content Can Product Images Improve Conversion? Showing Products in Context Paid Search... 

What’s a more persuasive offer in a headline — “25-50% off” or “up to 50% off”? According to Marketing Experiments ‘ Yoda-smart Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, when shown an X-Y range of numbers in an ad, most people will revert to the first number as the mean (average) standard . So with a headline of 25-50% off, it will be assumed most items are 25% off, and very few are 50%. (This is not surprising when you... 

Though site testing can have many benefits, these common A/B and multivariate testing “gotchas” can lead you down the wrong path. Don’t make these mistakes! 1. Leaving Web Analytics Un-Optimized Before you get started testing, you want to make sure your web analytics are set up properly, not only so you can do proper analysis before designing your test, but so you are tracking the right things during and after the test. Make... 

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. Treepodia shares the results of 2 A/B experiments with product video . Great news for PPC advertisers, Google Adwords has opened up Broad Match Modifiers to the US. The RKG Blog describes the benefits here . George Michie clears the air on Misinformation and Disinformation about paid search, myths... 

This is the fourth in a series of posts based on the material covered in our latest webinar: Taking Your Site Performance to The Next Level With Optimization Testing . The ultimate goal of a Web optimization project is to improve revenue and profits driven through your site. Success is measured by tracking changes in KPIs (key performance indicators), most commonly AOV (average order value), conversion rate, days to purchase, bounce rate, cart... 

If you’ve been trekking along with us in our Site Testing 101 series, you’re already familiar with the difference between A/B and multivariate testing (opens in new window if you haven’t read the article and would like to get up to speed). Today’s installment looks at choosing the appropriate testing method for your experiment. A/B Split Testing Use A/B split testing when: You are just getting your feet wet with testing. A/B testing... 

If you’ve been trekking along with us in our Site Testing 101 series, you’re already familiar with the difference between A/B and multivariate testing (opens in new window if you haven’t read the article and would like to get up to speed). Today’s installment looks at choosing the appropriate testing method for your experiment. A/B Split Testing Use A/B split testing when: You are just getting your feet wet with testing. A/B testing...