In this article you’ll learn what to consider when preparing a perfect landing page for your product, how to focus user’s attention on the most important parts of your sites and also how you can use videos and user ratings to improve your conversion rates.

Professional Design Builds Trust

The most important rule for website usability is to keep it simple. Make your links speak for themselves. Make the structure of your website predictable. Provide clear and visible feedback. Comfort your visitors and make it hard for them to do serious mistakes.

However, while these (quite obvious) guidelines may help your readers to get a solid understanding of how your site works, they will not necessarily lead to more sales. Besides, you may have some goals that conflict with this paradigm of simplicity, the most important of which are probably up-selling and cross-selling.

Build Trust and Credibility

When it comes to building customer’s trust in your company, a professional, trustworthy design becomes crucial. In the Web, people are very likely to mistrust online-business, so you better make sure that you appear credible and serious. Inkd.com does just that with a professional look, a solid grid-based layout and following classic usability conventions.

For everything you do on your website, keep in mind that the user always has to be in control of what’s happening. This holds true for expert users, who will use your internal search to quickly access products they are interested in. They may want to be able to filter search results in a certain way. And it holds equally true for the users-newbies, who wants to see proof of the teasers on your home page and will likely use your primary menu to navigate.

When a user is attracted to the advertising campaign of a product, you have no alternative but to lead that user directly to the product page itself. The next click after that should lead the user directly to the purchase page. By the way, why should you use a shopping cart in this case, if the user wants to buy only one product? The cart becomes totally useless and creates more steps in the sales process. With each additional step, the risk of cart abandonment increases.

The rule of thumbs: if a user finds a product through your internal search engine, he or she shouldn’t have to click more than twice to find essential information about the product.

Deliver the right information at the right time

Speaking of good information, another important rule for leaving users in control is delivering the right information at the right time, whether the information is related to the product, shipping, credit card security risks, privacy or what have you. Because of the large amount of information you can deliver to the user, you need to sort it by priority.

Delivering the right information at the right time is important. Scribbles: before users type in any data, the site informs them about payment methods, privacy and purchase opportunities for educational purposes. However, both privacy data and the “education”-link could be given more visual weight on the page.

The user will have certain questions at each stage of the shopping process; focus on the answers to these questions, and make them the most prominent on the page at that time. Additional useful information can be “hidden” behind a hyperlink (as the “education” link in the Scribble-example above).

Don’t advertise, lead the users

Be careful about using graphic elements to prioritize information; don’t make them look like advertisements. People tend to overlook page elements that look like ads. Of course, you can illustrate the advantages of your products with big pictures — really big pictures. Jakob Nielsen even recommends using full-screen-sized views: “If I click on a product image on a product page, I am certainly asking for a bigger version of that image. And as I intentionally clicked, I’m able to wait for the really great picture. I’m not only able to but I even expect to wait for some loading delay.”

The paradigm of simplicity means that store designers have to be very careful experimenting with new techniques such as AJAX and rich Internet applications based on Flash. If you use these, you will have to run usability tests. New studies show that many people are still unfamiliar with functions like dragging and dropping and do not know what words like “tagging” mean.

Newsberry uses a beautiful layout with attracitve design elements. However, it fails to attract readers to sign up for the service immediately – users need time to find the obscure, modest “sign up”-button. How much time do you need to find it? Probably making the button stand out would work better in this case.

Be careful about using visual elements to prioritize information; don’t make them look like advertisements. Good example: Five Simple Steps

Mark Boulton’s Five Simple Steps does a good job of focusing users’ attention to purchasing options while not making them look like advertisements. Clear visual design and layout reinforce the sales funnel effect.

Getting back to the questions that customers pose, one of their big questions on landing pages is, “What next?” Take a look around the Web. You’ll find tons of stores that hide their order buttons or label them with ambiguous terms. For example, the German store Werbemittelguide includes the terms “Order or ask for an offer” on a single button. While distinguishing between direct orders and solicited offers gives users more control, placing these two different ideas on one button is confusing. In this particular case, clicking on the button does nothing other than put the product in your cart. And the cart is positioned in the bottom-left corner: a clear violation of user expectations.

Highight What’s Important And Use Proper Wording

Go to the website www.guut.de, look for a second and then close your eyes. Open them again for a second and then close again. What did you notice? The big product picture on the left? The countdown? The huge orange order button? The label on the button says “Order now” — a couple of years ago, a lot of Web designers would have regarded that as outrageous, outdated design. Today, it’s state of the art.

“Tell people clearly what they should do next,” says US e-commerce expert Peter Blackshaw. What works with online shopping also holds true for online communication, downloading a PDF brochure or any other form of conversion. Make the most important option the biggest. Links to “More information,” “Details” and “Technical data” are also important, but less important than the conversion itself. They should be displayed in a smaller font or in less aggressive colors.

The US agency MarketingExperiments learned first-hand how strongly wording can influence conversion rates. It tested its own campaign, which aims to convert readers to paid subscribers. Every single element of the email campaign was tested. The button that triggered conversions was labeled “Continue here,” which at first glance would seem to work perfectly. The outcome of the test surprised even experienced experts. A new button labeled “Continue to article” converted 3.3% better than the first; and a third version, labeled “Click to continue,” convinced almost 10% more users.

Video Is Often A Silver Bullet

It is becoming common sense for product descriptions and product pages to include videos that show the products in action. In Germany, almost 60% of all retailers surveyed by the BVDW indicated that they planned to increase their efforts with video.

The bike retailer Fahrrad.de invited sales agents from all brands to its new studio, which was built solely for producing videos for its website. The sales agents were advised to explain why their products were better than others. And most brands sent not only sales people but also cross-country world champions to stand in front of the camera. Some retailers might argue that their products are not suited to online video. By now, though, we can quickly find many products that are being advertised with online videos.

…and GoodBarry.com use prominent video blocks on their start pages. Videos are often used to quickly explain what the product is all about and what advantages it can bring to the customers.

What is very important to understand is that the videos don’t have to be full-throttle studio productions with enormous budgets. In many cases a hand-made personal video will do. It may even perform better than a traditional advertising video because it’s more honest. Websites that push new concepts, like eBags.com, try to build community websites around their product videos, and users can vote on which video they like best.

A very nice idea was used by Pleo, a company that sells a kind of robot pet that looks like a dinosaur. Pleo hit the sidewalks in certain cities, put the dinosaurs on the ground and shot people’s reactions. You could hardly advertise with more authenticity.

And don’t let anyone fool you, there is only one format for online video these days: Flash. Only Flash allows video to be seamlessly embedded onto a Web page and integrated with other elements on the page. Because of YouTube’s success, most users are able to play back Flash video. And producing video is really not expensive, even if it is farmed out to an agency.

Don’t Underestimate The Importance Of User Ratings And Customers Reviews

This may be one of the most important topics of all these days. In tourism, about 60% of all travellers base their decisions on online research. They visit ratings websites to find the best destinations and hotels, free from the marketing overtures of the companies themselves. Similar websites can be found in the electronics and other industries.

This leads us to two questions:

1. Should store owners build their own ratings system?
   
2. How should one deal with criticism?

The first answer is pretty simple. In most cases the answer is, “No.” And there are a lot of reasons for that. The most important reason is that no retailer is trustworthy in this way. People would know that commercial interests are behind any recommendation; the cost and effort to maintain such systems are immense; and only the biggest websites attract enough users to build a valuable rating system. If a website owner decides to build his own system, he must provide the ratings right in the spot where users expect it: beside the products.

Take Thomas Cook Travel an example. After a lot of research, it built its own user ratings system, which is now one major filter in its internal search. An external system like Idealo.de (or PriceGrabber.com) might be a better alternative. Idealo gathers ratings from a lot of platforms and aggregates them with tests and reviews from websites and magazines. The plattform itself is neutral because individual retailers cannot influence the content.

Even as many brick-and-mortar stores are struggling, 11% of US consumers surveyed by Nielsen in June 2008 said they were shopping more on the Web as a result of gas prices.

“E-commerce is a bright spot,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer. “While retail store growth is in the middle-low single digits, e-commerce is still growing at least in the mid to high teens.”

“With gas being such an issue, we know that mall traffic is down more than off-mall traffic,” said Mike Boylson, CMO of JCPenney, in a July 2008 New York Times article. Mr. Boylson said J.C. Penney had an 8.7% increase in Internet sales in Q1 2008, compared with a 7.4% decrease in sales at stores open at least one year. The Times also reported that Gap had an 11% decline in same-store sales in Q1 2008, but a 21% increase in online sales.

The effect of gas prices on consumer behavior has been building for a while. Some 13% of adult consumers in the US surveyed in January by Vertis Communications said they were buying more online.

Over one-half of respondents to an April 2008 Piper Jaffray study selected rising gas prices as an incentive to increase online buying, while slightly less than one-half (48%) cited lower prices as a reason for making Web purchases.

Another April survey by iCongo revealed that high gasoline prices were an incentive for 33% of shoppers to purchase more online.

When building a website business most people make the mistake of focusing only on the technology. There are so many decisions to be made about servers, hosting providers, shopping carts, ad systems, content management, etc. that many people mistakenly de-prioritize copywriting. 

But it’s not enough to put the appropriate search engine keywords on your webpage and string them together into quasi-English sentences. If that’s all that you do, you are missing a major opportunity. 

Instead, you should look at the text on your website as a principal weapon in the war to attract and convert customers. This includes the text that displays on your homepage, on your interior pages, in your navigational menu entries, in your newsletters, and even in your ads. Each of these uses of text is an additional opportunity for you to communicate your marketing messages. 

Copywriting is also important because it has two audiences: human website visitors AND search engine crawlers. It’s your job to make your website copy as attractive as possible to both audiences. Humans will reward you with sales and search engine robots will reward you with better search engine ranking.  

Six Copywriting Success Strategies 

While the technical issues and design of your site are clearly important, I’d suggest that you also be sure to devote copywriting resources as follows: 

Sell Don’t Tell: Customers are not interested in your point of view on your product. They don’t care about all the fascinating features that your team worked so hard to include. What they are interested in is how the product can help improve their lives. This means that your copy should focus on the benefits to them, not on the features which you or your team might be most impressed with yourselves for creating. 

Appeal to Emotion?!: The most successful copy touches the potential customer personally or emotionally. You want to catch their attention by appealing to their own self-interest and in as dramatic a fashion as is appropriate for the context. In other words, people are self-interested — so your copy needs to answer how your product or service will make them feel better about themselves. How does this product make my life easier, help me make more money, look better, lose weight, etc. 

Headlines are Important: Spend extra time boiling your message down to its key components. Eye-catching headlines are your best chance to catch the eyes of passersby. While colors, font size and placement can all help attract the eye, too, it is the few critical words contained in the headline that ultimately attract clicks. (This is especially true in the plain text “subject” lines of email marketing pieces.) 

Call to Action: Even the best writing will fail to help you reach your conversion goals if it does not include a call to action. Determine what action you want the visitor to take before you even start writing. Then be sure to finish your copy by posting a link or offering another specific next step for them to pursue the goal you have driven them toward. 

Add Testimonials: Nobody likes to be alone. Especially in the anonymous online world customers appreciate companionship and validation. Collect and post testimonials from other customers to help provide them with the reassurance that they crave. This simple tool will help them to help you reach your conversion goals quicker. 

Make It Lively: Save the boring, clinical, lawyer-speak for your next deposition. In a world of a million channels, you need to think like an entertainer. There are many ways to do this – you can use humor, sarcasm, controversy, drama, or photos and video to make your site feel alive — even if you only update it occasionally. Even the most formal or boring topics can be presented in an engaging manner. Your copy is a key ingredient in that mix. Additionally, because search engine rankings increasingly depend on other site’s linking back to you, it’s important to offer content that others will take note of and link back to.

If all of this attention to prose sounds like more verbal gymnastics than you’d like, the Internet can help. Copywriting duties can be easily outsourced online. Figure on paying anywhere from $20 to $200/hour for most copywriters, depending on their expertise level.  

The goal of your website is to attract and convert customers. Following these guidelines will help you create compelling copy that builds your business, too. It’s easy and often fun to get caught up in the technical or design details of your e-commerce web site, but remember, there are many simple and even ugly web sites that make plenty of money online. That’s because their message (as presented in the copy) successfully attracts and converts customers.  

If your copy presents your products in an interesting way with the customers’ needs first in your mind, you will make more money online, too.  

“Store sales will be hit harder than Internet sales because affluent shoppers, who form the core of online buyers, tend to ride out economic downturns better than lower- and middle-income consumers,” says Jeff Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, US Retail E-Commerce: Slower But Still Steady Growth.

eMarketer estimates that US retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will reach $146 billion in 2008, up 14.3% over 2007.

“Still,” warns Mr. Grau, “over the next few years online sales growth rates will steadily decline.”

There is little reason for panic, however.

“A drop in the number of new online buyers is an inevitable sign of the maturation of the online retail channel,” says Mr. Grau.

In fact, Mr. Grau sees several reasons to be optimistic about the future of Internet retailing.

“Retail e-commerce could get a boost from underserved consumer segments such as seniors and Hispanic-Americans,” he says.

To take seniors as an example, by 2011 there will be 25.4 million Internet users in the US ages 62 and older. That represents a 7.6% average annual growth rate—more than twice the 3.1% growth rate eMarketer forecasts for the entire US Internet population.

Seniors today enjoy better health, longer and more active lives, greater free time and higher discretionary income than past generations.

“However, as people age they often begin to experience problems with their vision, hearing, cognitive functions and mobility,” says Mr. Grau. “Web retailers should take these factors into consideration.”

Internet advertising is huge
With the growth of information on the internet, the amount of time people spend on it has grown as well, which has in turn generated a new market for internet advertising. Some of the wealthiest companies in the world have made sure that they get a piece of the internet marketing pie, and for a good reason.

Internet advertising is targeted
As a company looking for advertising opportunities to a specific market, internet advertising offers some targeting methods that insure that those who see your ads are the ones most likely to buy. Programs like Google’s AdWords and AdSense match up advertisers with content that their target market peruses regularly. Forget the costly machine-gun strategy of newspaper advertisements, internet advertising is targeted towards the clients you hope to reach!

Internet adverting enables good conversion tracking
It’s impossible to get a good idea of how many people see advertising through traditional means. Tracking the reach of newspaper and television advertisments is difficult. However, internet advertising allows the advertiser to track the number of impressions an ad gets (how many people see it), and how many visits their business web site gets from particular ads, making it easy to see what kind of conversion rates internet advertisements are getting.

Internet advertising has a lower entry-level fees
If you have a limited budget, internet advertising can be much more in reach than traditional methods. A small yellow-page ad can cost several hundred dollars. However, you can bid for advertisements on Google and Overture on a performance basis. That means that you only get charged when visitors click on the advertisement, and bidding starts at a nickle or dime a pop.

Internet advertising can be much cheaper
Because of the targeted nature of internet advertising and the ability to track the effectiveness of ads, conversion rates from internet advertising is typically much better than traditional mediums.

Internet advertising has greater range
One more benefit is that, since the internet spans the globe, pockets of your target market scattered around the world can all be targeted at once, rather than trying to find different publications, radio stations and television stations that cater to a particular geographical area.

On the whole, internet advertising can be a great way to get the word out there about your service or product in a cost-effective, efficient way.

Lets start with the basics of shopping carts:
Open Source Shopping Carts are extremely cost effective and helpful for the small time, young entrepreneur. If you are starting your first business and have $2000 total saved up to spend on marketing, business plan, equipment, and website. Then yes open source shopping carts like,oscommerce & Zen cart will work well. However, please be realistic. If you expect to sell and and high conversion rates,put some money into your shopping cart so you can get the results you want.

The bottom line for shopping cart web design. If your web site looks cheap or doesn’t function correctly, your potential customer will rightfully assume that your product or service is also cheap and doesn’t work correctly.

Online shoppers are finicky. Those who aren’t experienced customers–who haven’t yet discovered the convenience of two-day delivery or easy returns–tend to be skittish during the entire shopping experience. A well-planned, secure shopping cart should make the checkout process easy, clear and flexible for the shopper.
Jupiter Research found that 54 percent of Internet shoppers have stopped buying from certain online stores in the middle of a transaction because they have concerns about service, delivery, shipping or handling. Other estimates range as high as 60 to 90 percent abandonment of shopping carts on some e-commerce sites.
Sometimes it’s because of confusion; other times, frustration over the process or lack of information or uncertainty of the merchants credibility. Some shoppers just use the cart as a place to hold items they’re considering and, in the end, never buy.
When setting up an online shopping cart for a business, consider the following tips:
-Don’t force the shopper to go through a lengthy process of logging in, creating passwords and filling out voluminous forms. Privacy issues and complexity of the process can lead the buyer to end the process before even registering.

-Include a link to a page detailing customer service policies, such as warranties, delivery guarantees, return policy, and shipping fee structure.
-Provide “help” tips, a frequently-asked-questions (FAQs) page and a toll-free phone number for consumers to use if they have problems or questions relating to checkout.
-Offer assurance that credit card information is protected through encryption and a highly secure online transmission process.
-Allow customers to call up information about the items being purchased without having to leave the checkout page, with links to windows that contain the product information page.
-Make it easy for buyers to add or remove items, change quantities, or select different models and styles of a product once they are on the checkout page.
Pictures, pictures, pictures.