hi, Catherine, I think it very much depends on the site & what you're trying to do. If your business wants to push one single product, then it makes sense to feature that most heavily.

A popular middle road is the 'rotating' image. ie. one big image that changes every 10 seconds or so.

Hi Catherine,

I would let your target audience decide what works for them.
If you have enough traffic I would A/B test the landing page to see what converts and what not.

I hope this helps.

Thanks all,

I agree A/B testing is great but in these testing times for retail ecommerce it is hard to justify such a big experiment on the landing page of the site. 

Does anyone have any data for how adding a splash homepage like the Reiss website (http://www.reiss.co.uk/gb-en/) with its big landing page and no direct access to products from the homepage compares to a page like the one David describes?

Also - does anyone know the average conversion rate for a retail (specifically fashion) website?

Ta

On 07:48:15 18 October 2008 DavidIwanow wrote:

Catherine,

I think that a larger single image for your main product such as Toyota would have cars, also with smaller relevant images such as finance, spare parts, company information would be the best practice. One large single image would be a waste as it can never be perfectly matched and may increase bounce rates

You can also use google analytics to run a/b testing with a single image vs multiple calls to action, there are also tools that you can generate activity heat maps to see how users interact.

thank you

Sorry forget to add the info about conversion rates.

The UK average is between 1 and 3% - for fashion i would expect around 1.5 to 2% but it is hard to know because this does vary between brands dependent on your customer demographic, ASP, product range etc. Some niche brands will get conversion rates over 3% but if you have a reasonable size site (£1m+) then anywhere between 1 and 3% is acceptable.

thanks

james

Hi Catherine

I also agree with this advice...it's always better to test if you are not sure and then go forwards with the right solution. It needn't be expensive and will be worth it.

Good luck!

Ally Manock

Swamp Digital Marketing Agency
Internet Marketing Strategy Blog
 

On 19:34:52 19 October 2008 JamesGurde-inbusiness wrote:

Hi Catherine

I do like to be devil's advocate so here goes....

In the current climate, surely you can't afford not to test? A landing page is important - if it's not working, why stick to the fomat? If your bounce rate on the homepage is low and customers are finding what they want effectively, then perhaps you're right. However, sensible testing can help to improve on what you've got. The reality with A/B is that you can test over a small period of time, so if any particular treatment is putting people off, you can remove it and focus on the stronger treaments. My belief in testing comes from having made mistakes by ignoring it in the past.

Good luck with whatever you decide.