For the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of directing the e-commerce site for C28, an online Christian clothing store. In the last 3 1/2 years, we’ve been fortunate to experience a 1600% increase in sales. I’ve recently been reflecting on lessons I’ve learned through this exciting but tumultuous experience. What follows is a [...]

WARNING: Website optimization testing is extremely addictive. Sitting behind the scenes, pulling the strings, and seeing the effect of positive change is overwhelmingly rewarding. So now you’ve committed to testing your website. Where do you start? What do you test? While you’ll ultimately have to answer these questions for yourself, below are 7 Do’s and [...]

What goes through a visitors’ mind in the first 5 seconds after they land on your site? After all, that just might be all the time you’ve got until they reach for the back button. Let’s speculate on what happens at each moment… Second 1 – Impressions: First impressions are forming. What loads first? Your [...]

It’s staggering to consider how many marketing failures are the result of broken promises. We rarely think of it this way, but every button, every subject line, every headline on our website is a promise. Whether or not that promise is kept determines whether we win the trust of our visitors, or lose them for [...]

Nearly every business collects feedback from their customers, and rightfully so. Yet something has always bothered me about the way most online businesses elicit customer suggestions and criticism: they usually get it from their best customers. In other words, the people most likely to give feedback are the people who spend the most money. So [...]

“Who Are You and What Do You Do?” – Is this possibly the last thought your prospect has right before they leave your website? Too many websites have identity issues. That is, it’s too hard to figure out what the heck the site does, or what sets them apart from the crowd. Simply put, if [...]

There’s a very good chance you won’t finish reading this blog post. Why? Because you’re constantly bombarded with distractions and options. You have plenty of other blog posts to read or emails in your inbox beckoning for your attention. Even if you commit to reading this you may be distracted by a ringing cellphone or [...]

Stop for a moment and consider the goals of your website. Regardless of whether it’s a purchase through a shopping cart, a lead generation, white paper download, or a email opt, I’m going to bet every one of these actions requires a customer to use a web form. With web forms playing such an important [...]

What’s one thing that all successful e-commerce sites have in common, regardless of their industry, technology, or experience? Their customers trust them. E-commerce in particular lends itself to a low trust environment. After all, when you make a purchase online, you’re giving money to someone you can’t see, for a products that you can’t touch. [...]

I recall a memorable staff meeting in company I worked for when the following question was directed to me, “What percent of visitors to our website actually by make a purchase?” Upon responding that our website converted about 3% percent of traffic, a panic went off in the room. “What’s happening to the other 97%!?” [...]