E-commerce Best Practice Compendium

Overview

Author: Graham Charlton

Pages: 99

About this report

This report contains more than 170 valuable tips to help online retailers to improve the e-commerce user experience and maximise conversion rates. 

It is split into three broad areas:

Site search and navigation

The report looks at best practices for e-commerce navigation and site search, including the effective use of drop-down menus, and how retailers can improve site search.

Product pages

This section has plenty of useful tips on how to use video, copywriting and reviews more effectively, and also looks at some examples of great product pages from online retailers.

For example, Direct Line used a swipe button for the iPad-friendly version of its German homepage.

It's an action that iPhone and iPad users are very familiar with, and this led to a 9.23% increase in registrations for a quote:

The checkout process

Once retailers have persuaded the customer to add items to their baskets and head for the checkout, it’s vital that the process is as frictionless as possible to minimise abandonment rates.

This section outlines the common reasons for checkout abandonment, and looks in detail at how retailers can avoid some of the common obstacles which deter shoppers.

Once you are in the checkout process, what would deter you from completing the purchase?

This advice all comes with a caveat: though we can make recommendations, and there is much to be said for following existing best practice in this area, the best approach to web design and customer experience will vary depending on the type of website and the customer base.

Therefore, we would recommend that online retailers test different design approaches to find the combination that delivers the best results for them.

Table of contents

1. About Econsultancy
1. About the author
2. Introduction
3. Site search and navigation
1. Drop-down menus
1. Usability issues with drop downs
2. How customers activate drop-down menus
3. Mega drop-down menus
4. Examples of drop-down menus
5. Tips for improving drop-down usability
2. Site search
1. Why do retailers need site search?
2. Search box design and placement
3. Site search results pages
4. Learning from site search data
4. Product pages
1. Video
1. Why your product pages need video
2. Consumer reviews: examples and best practices
1. Why you need customer reviews
2. The SEO benefits of reviews
3. Bad reviews are valuable too...
4. How to attract reviews from customers
5. How to present reviews and ratings
3. Calls to action
4. Product page copywriting
1. Why product page copy matters
2. What are the ingredients of great product page copy?
3. Five examples of great product page copy
5. Reserve and collect
1. Why offer reserve and collect?
2. Tips for improving reserve and collect services
6. Examples of great product pages
5. The checkout process
1. The issue of registration
1. Example: HMV's checkout registration issues
2. Consumers hate registration: the stats
3. Approaches to registration
4. Conclusion
2. Checkout abandonment
1. Deciding whether to shop on an e-commerce site
2. Reasons for abandoning sites soon after arriving
3. Postcodes
4. Avoid the dreaded error message
3. Why should you enclose the checkout process?
1. What is an enclosed checkout process?
2. Reasons for enclosing the checkout
3. Examples from retailers
4. Conclusion

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