Why do customers abandon the checkout process?
Problems with the checkout process constitute the single biggest loss of revenue for many e-commerce sites, with almost half of online retail transactions abandoned at this stage.
According to figures from Marketing Sherpa, the average abandonment rate for shopping carts is 60%, of which 12% give up before hitting the checkout. This means 48% of potential customers bail out at the checkout stage.
Tips for email landing pages
Almost 50% of people that visit landing pages from emails will abandon the site in the first eight seconds, meaning a lot of the effort marketers make to get people to click on links in emails is wasted.
Silverpop's latest email study, '8 Seconds to Capture Attention' (registration required) looks into what makes an effective email landing page by studying the landing pages from the campaigns of 150 companies.
Navigation tips for websites
Any decision on a website's navigation is critical to usability, findability, accessibility and SEO. It can be difficult to undo if you select a poor design. So usable navigation is best established early on in a web project.
There are many different examples of main navigation systems, (i.e. the main method for accessing content in different site sections) but the 'three Cs' of convention, consistency and context are important whatever the design.
Yahoo! goes blue for search results
Yahoo! is testing a new design approach for its search pages, topped by a distinctive shiny blue bar.
The Guardian redesigns its home page
The Guardian has today unveiled a new look for its homepage, with a more image-heavy approach than the previous version...
Site redesign tips from Jakob Nielsen
Jakob Nielsen's latest article looks at site redesign tips which will lead to increased sales and improved customer loyalty.
Nielsen has 10 redesign recommendations that are the most likely to increase return on investment for your website, most of which should be relatively simple to implement.
Interview: Persuasion guru BJ Fogg
BJ Fogg directs research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab , and is pretty much The Don of captology - the study of how computers can be used to influence people's behaviour.
We asked him a few questions about how internet marketers could be using persuasion techniques more effectively, as well as some of the more scary implications for individual web users.
E-consultancy seeks Head of Website Development
E-consultancy has doubled in size over the past year, but with that has come new challenges - let's just say we have a hefty development to-do list.
With that in mind we're on the lookout for a world class Head of Website Development. Somebody with very strong technical / development skills, as well as an understanding of how our plans fit in with business and marketing goals.
More details after the jump...
Web 2.0 fonts and logos
I’ve always been partial to a good-looking font, preferably sans serif. Stuart Brown over at Modern Life Is Rubbish has compiled a few typefaces for the Web 2.0 crowd.
He has selected the following fonts, each of which is used by a 2.0 company logo, but can you match the company to the font?
Marketers in the dark: Visitors vs Concurrent Users - Web Capacity and Load Testing
When your sales conversion is lower than expected - asking the tech team for web performance metrics may not help: visitors per hour is not enough, concurrent users is plain unhelpful.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
