Until recently, Google has been focused on organic search results with the primary goal of bringing the best results to its users. Now, Google is taking it a step further by enhancing its product search through Google Product Search, giving users product details, even prior to the user getting to an eCommerce site. Google Product Search is a free price comparison service that allows users to search for various products from a multitude of online vendors.

On August 23, Google announced the acquisition of comparison shopping site Like.com. Like.com is a visual search, shopping engine using visual recognition technology. This is a clear sign that Google is taking strides to improve their product catalog listings, and produce the best possible results for its users. With the help of photo-recognition software and algorithms created by Like.com, shoppers are able to search for similar products based on the color, style and even pattern of a product.

Prior to that, Google struck a deal with Power Reviews Inc. in July of this year. Power Reviews is the #1 destination for trustworthy and useful product reviews. With its new partnership, Google will be able to begin to display product ratings and reviews via Google search results, which would in turn boost sales due to the valuable content provided.

These changes suggest that Google is striving to be not only the number one search engine but also the top product search site as well. Should this be the case, Google may become the one-stop-shop for all internet users who are looking to do anything that involves search on the internet. Don’t forget Google Checkout, the online payment processing service, is still in play and the number of participating vendors utilizing this service might increase in the near future.

So what does this mean for eCommerce sites? There are three things I believe will be critical for eCommerce sites to focus on, if they want to take advantage of Google’s new top-dog position:

Unique product images
Now that Google has access to the image-recognition technology being utilized by Like.com, it is important for eCommerce sites to have unique product images for each product. Multiple images for each product could help improve your Google catalog ranking, if the image recognition tool utilized by Like.com is implemented on the search engine level.

Product tagging
Like.com developed the capability of interpreting search queries like “black shiny purse” or “pink stripped tie” visually. With Google now in play, one can expect that it’s only a matter of time before the capability is introduced on a search engine level. A very detailed product description (or even general content) is something hardly found on product listing pages, but could that be the necessary piece of information required to get to the top on Google’s catalog SERP? Being able to tag products according to the way your customers would search for those particular items couldn’t be more critical. Remember Google is all about crawlability!

Product Optimization
Every product has its uniqueness in comparison to others, now is the time to begin identifying those attributes and strategically placing them in the right categories within your online store – this increases the chances of your product being found in Google’s Product Search. For example, what are the chances of a customer searching for “DKNY Robinson Button Down Shirt” versus “DKNY Blue Striped Button Down Shirt”? The second search term is more likely to be inputted by a user; and thus, more likely to appear in Google’s SERP. Why? Take into consideration that customers searching have a better knowledge of the physical style of the shirt, than the corporate-marketing name.

Google is making it easier for eCommerce sites to capitalize on this latest and greatest capability yet the opportunity lies with the eCommerce community to seek ways to get their products to the top of the list. So, what are you doing to optimize your eCommerce site?

I visited this one coffee seller’s site, and it is a beautiful design — great textures and color palette — but the site has some room for usability improvement, especially on their shopping cart page. (And as you hopefully know by now, when you want to improve your online store, you begin with the shopping cart and checkout, and work your way backwards through the shopping process.) Check out their shopping cart page below:

Before I tell you what I would fix – what would you do? Can you spot the problem areas?

1. User Confusion
The row of buttons while aesthetically pleasing are not intuitive to a user. They all have the same visual appearance and weight. No button is more important than any other, and from a conversion standpoint, we just know that isn’t true.

The checkout button should be different from the other buttons because it is the primary call to action (CTA). When a user arrives on the shopping cart page, their eyes should go directly to the checkout button. But here it’s getting lost. Changing the size or color is an immediate way to give the primary CTA more visual weight and presence on the page.

2. User Confusion
Unfortunately, the color of the buttons isn’t the only problem with them. The order of the buttons: checkout, update, empty cart, and continue shopping, also isn’t intuitive. Let’s take it button by button:

The Checkout button is the first button on the left. While this makes sense in the fundamentals of design – English speakers read from left to right, and thus, the most important information should be on the left – this is one of those times where it’s okay to break the rules. The standard practice on eCommerce websites is to align the checkout button with the Total column on the shopping cart. If you’re going to deviate from the standard, it ought to be for a good reason. And this website isn’t giving a strong enough reason to move the CTA button. As a result, it’s not where user’s are expecting it to be causing them to slow down before moving into the checkout.

I won’t go into too much depth about the Update button. I prefer it to be in closer spatial relation to the items it’s updating (such as quantity and promotional code). But the update button can really float around on the page depending on the design.

The Empty Cart button needs to go ASAP. Users already have the ability to remove and item or to change the quantity zero, which is enough pathways for a user to remove items or empty the cart. Don’t provide them this button; it won’t be good for you conversion, and it’s not good for usability. Imagine having four items in the cart, and accidentally, hitting the “Empty Cart” button instead of the update or continue shopping. Suddenly, all the hard work you’ve spent shopping over the last 45 minutes, is a complete waste. Do you think the user is going to go through that again or will they just close out of the site and shop for it “later.”

Again, I don’t have an incredibly strong opinion about the Continue Shopping button. My suggestions are to 1. consider it’s placement in relation to the checkout button, and 2. consider whether it needs to be a button vs. a link. And one more additional thing to consider, where does your Continue Shopping page take the user? To the homepage, to a category page, to the last product page they were on? Think about it, Continue Shopping is a rather ambiguous phrase.

3. Credibility & Confidence
Granted on well-designed, up-to-date websites, user’s will probably feel confident in the site’s credibility and ability to protect sensitive information. However, adding third party security logos (in the footer is a good place) provide an instant visual guarantee to the user that their information is protected. And if you had to choose between a user thinking vs. a user knowing, which do you think increases conversion? Yeah, me too.

These few design changes could have a significant impact on a site’s conversion rate. And you could buy a lot of cups of joe with that dough.

Mentioned in this Post:
Shopping Cart : Java Cabana

So how does it work? Say your name is Bob and you own Bob’s Widget Shop.  You came to Groove to have a great eCommerce site developed on the Magento Enterprise or Professional platforms (hint,hint) and now host it on a server that is located in Virginia.

In your current hosting model, a visitor from California would be hitting your site’s server located in Virginia.  That request can sometimes make 15-20 network ‘hops’ across the country through different internet service providers (ISP) and back to finally be displayed in their web browser.   The further the network distance traveled, the longer it can potentially take for the page to load and the more opportunity for failure if there is a problem along the way.

Here is an example of a network traceroute.  You will see it is 15 hops across the country:

TraceRoute to YourSite1.com

Hop    (ms)   (ms)   (ms)          IP Address    Host name

1      36     48     45            72.249.128.105       -

2      11     26     21            206.123.64.82 -

3      31     14     12            216.52.189.9  -

4      8      18     11            216.52.191.97 core2.tge5-2-bbnet2.ext1.dal.pnap.net

5      57     28     24            12.90.228.13  -

6      14     26     17            12.123.18.18  cr1.dlstx.ip.att.net

7      46     23     7             12.122.214.245       dlstx02jt.ip.att.net

8      36     28     13            192.205.37.50 -

9      50     44     41            80.91.248.208 chi-bb1-link.telia.net

10     73     74     77            80.91.248.193 nyk-bb1-link.telia.net

11     63     51     54            80.91.247.21  nyk-b3-link.telia.net

12     54     63     61            213.248.99.90 netaccess-tic-133837-nyk-b3.c.telia.net

13     59     61     63            209.123.10.101       0.e1-4.tbr1.mmu.nac.net

14     58     63     52            209.123.10.10 vlan801.esd1.mmu.nac.net

15     83     76     60            00.00.00.00   -

Trace complete

Here is an example of a network trip with only 7 hops:

TraceRoute to YourSite2.com

Hop    (ms)   (ms)   (ms)          IP Address    Host name

1      20     20     11            00.00.00.00   -

2      12     12     30            8.9.232.73    xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net

3      26     11     8             4.69.145.12   ae-1-60.edge2.dallas3.level3.net

4      14     14     15            4.59.36.50    rackspace-m.edge2.dallas3.level3.net

5      17     11     8             72.3.128.21   vlan901.core1.dfw1.rackspace.com

6      18     15     8             72.3.129.27   aggr7a.dfw1.rackspace.net

7      24     26     32            00.00.00.00   yoursite.com

Trace complete

Most small business’s can’t afford to have multiple servers co-located and replicated across the country to cut down.  Enter the CDN.  Akamai is one of the oldest and most well known, but new platforms such as Rackspace’s cloudFiles and Amazon’s Cloudfront have brought affordability and access to any site owner that wants to take advantage allowing you to pay for only the bandwidth you need to use with very low monthly minimums.

In the new hosting model, a visitor from California would still be hitting your site’s server located in Virginia.  But all of your major site assets such as images or video would be delivered from the closet end point possible from a network of thousands of servers spread around the world. For most sites, these assets typically make up 80-90% of your sites overall bandwidth usage.  Why wouldn’t you want to deliver them faster?

So what works good for CDN hosting?  Any non-dynamic, non session based files.  Things such as images, JavaScript, CSS, Flash  and video streaming are all perfect candidates.  Typically things such as a complete shopping cart, cookies and databases are examples of things that can be far too complex to host on a CDN.

Theoretically, the closer the content the faster delivery, but there are other factors that play into performance as well such as reliability and scalability.  Instead of a single point of failure with one or two servers, you are able to leverage the reliability of a network of many servers.  From a scalability standpoint, could your current setup handle a mention from Oprah or David Letterman?

These aren’t screams of Oprah ecstasy… It’s your web server screaming in pain…

Again, this network of severs can help you significantly scale by removing some of the load from your current servers.  You want it doing the important things like processing credit cards, not overwhelmed by serving up images or JavaScript.

The first step is to segregate all of your sites images, JavaScript and CSS to either a sub-domain (images.bobswidgets.com) or separate domain (bobswigdets.net) and call those elements as absolute url’s from within your site platform.

For example:

<img src=”/images/product1.jpg” alt=”Product 1″ title=”Product 1″ />

Would need to become:

<img src=”http://images.bobswidgets.com/images/product1.jpg” alt=”Product 1″ title=”Product 1″ />

From there, you will need to customize your site to either upload those asset files realtime or replicate them to your CDN on a regular basis.  Platforms like Wordpress and Magento have CDN extensions available to install, but they typically take some work and little know how to get them bulletproof.

A little extra planning from the beginning of a new site project can get you ready for the holiday rush.  It used to be that only large. big budget sites could leverage this power to increase your sites reliability and scalability.  Now its available to everyone at affordable prices.  Isn’t it worth a little extra work to potentially increase your conversion rate and help your search rankings?

As the economy boomed through the middle of the decade, those concepts of engaging experiences, authentic companies and personal value seemed to fall by the wayside. Jump to the economic struggles of today, and companies are rediscovering that customer experience is more important than ever, especially when it comes to the online customer experience where you inherently lose the personal connection.

There’s a saying that rings very true: people do things for their reasons, not yours. To provide a positive customer experience, your website needs to do several things, and do them well.

Prove your value.
Does your site clearly show a potential customer that you do a better job than your competition, be it selling a product, selling a service, or providing information? Do you effectively convey your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? For the most part, people are not coming to your site to support your company. They are coming to answer a question, solve a problem, or find a product. People use ingdirect.com online banking because they help you “save your money!” Zappos.com promises “free shipping BOTH ways, 365-day return policy.” Your site may not be the well-known brands that ING Direct and Zappos are, but you still need to demonstrate that USP.

Make your customer feel special.
AT&T reps are now instructed to answer calls with “how can I make you feel like a valued customer today?” How can your website “ask” that question of an online visitor? Do you provide loyalty services, special privileges, or free gifts? Ask your customers for advice – get their feedback on what they want, and then give it to them.

Have a conversation – talk to your customers.
As web-savvy as the population is, many people still want to talk to you, and putting up a website and walking away is not going to cut it anymore. Your visitors must be able to find your contact information on your website. At a minimum, prominently place your phone number and email address, or a contact form, on your site. Offer an easy way to locate a brick-and-mortar location (if applicable). Online chat and text messaging are making their way onto websites as methods of accessible and immediate customer service.

Create a customer loop.
Create a portal for communication – this is what will keep people coming back. Keep your customers in the loop by confirming orders and providing shipping notifications, solicit ideas on how you can improve their experience on your site, or allow them to share your information with their social network. Provide all of your contact information in an easy-to-find manner. If applicable, provide a comprehensive FAQ page. Repeat contact with your customers increases brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Customers are kings once again. Your job is to provide them with first-class solutions to their problems and encourage a relationship that will keep them coming back for more.

Mentioned in this post
Pine and Gilmore quote :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience
AT&T quote ::  http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/70492.html

His take was that utilizing the PowerReviews branded “star system” gave customers a greater sense of trust because they recognized this review feature across sites.  From a design perspective, we maintained our point of view.  However, the bigger conversation prompted the questions what is the purpose of reviews and how much does it matter that they maintain their own identity in order to provide better reassurance versus fitting well within the site design.

Fast forward to this week and Google’s announcement regarding their deal with PowerReviews and the option for users to now select Ratings and Reviews as a filter when searching for products.  Internet Retailer estimates that PowerReviews currently works with approximately 1,000 online retailers and almost 3,500 websites.  With this type of adoption and now with everyone’s favorite search engine giant jumping on board, the question becomes should retailers stick with the “star system” PowerReviews provides and maintain a slightly separate identity from their site, or continue to try and brand these product review systems as their own?

Now take this back to the client we were discussing.  Does his average customer find this review system more credible because they recognize the PowerReview system on his site from other online stores and therefore finds these reviews more credible?  How does this help or hurt the overall branding of the site?  Does the online shopper really care?

As we have seen, eCommerce remains a constantly evolving experience.  But, despite the nature of change in this business, maintaining some familiarity is the key to adoption.  Just as we would never encourage someone to change the colors of some of the top assurance badges (because users recognize them), maybe there’s an argument to setting aside brand with Product Reviews and Ratings as well.

Sounds like a great testing opportunity if you ask me…

In addition to this feature, Version 1.9 will also allow you to enjoy a handful of other new tools:

• Gift Registry module
• Advanced attribute management capabilities
• Solr Search
• Improvements to the full page caching module

Get more information or register for the Magento Enterprise 1.9 Webinar this Thursday, July 22^nd check out this link:

While Magento’s team made it clear they were doing all the right things to obtain their PA-DSS certification, it’s even more exciting to see the continued evolvement of this young platform as this is the third enterprise update of the year giving users  new features that are the result of a great ongoing g dialogue between Magento, their partner channel, and their customers.

Stay tuned to see what’s next…

For this month’s Design 1, 2, 3, let’s take a look at a popular amusement park’s eCommerce Shopping Cart and see if it makes for a spectacularly speedy checkout.

1. Visual Heirarchy: What stands out on this page the most? A quick blur test (below) might help you.

Even though the company has managed to keep this page simple without a lot of distractions, the red, top navigation is drawing all the attention. It has a nice, subtle gradient on it that adds some depth. The rest of the page is mainly blue and black on white. No gradient, no shadows, no depth. The page feels very flat and my eye isn’t getting pulled anywhere. It lazily floats around the page. This is important because as a result, the “Checkout” button gets lost.

The Checkout button is the exact same size, styling and coloring as the “update,” “apply” and “continue shopping” buttons. When a user arrives on the shopping cart, it should be very obvious what the next step is, but on this page it’s not. This could be remedied by applying a subtle gradient (like the one used in the nav) to the checkout button and making it larger. It’d still fit the color scheme, but it would stand out as the more important button that it is.

2. User Confusion: As mentioned before, during the checkout process, the user should always know what the next step is. Well, if you’re buying a season pass from this site, you might be perplexed to realize that “continue” isn’t the next step. After tapping on the button several times, I thought it must be a dead link and I reloaded the page. Click, click, click, nope I still couldn’t continue. My confusion increased. Until after a few seconds of scanning I saw in bold, red, starred text: *Enter Pass Information. Hmm… I wonder if this is what’s stopping me from proceeding.

Sure enough, when purchasing a a season pass, the user must enter in their personal information before moving from the shopping cart to the checkout. There are several ways to smoothly transition the user to this step:

1. The continue button could be grayed out, so users automatically know that something is wrong. Better yet, the button could be grayed out AND their could be an additional linked line of text (next to the button) that says, “Before continuing checkout, users buying season passes must provide their information.” While “Enter Pass Information” was a nice attempt at this, it’s location and language doesn’t tell me this is an immediate and required step before checking out.
2. The best solution? When users are adding the season pass on the previous page, why not pull up a lightbox and have them fill out the information right then as a half-way step before they arrive on the shopping cart? Then no modifications would be needed on the shopping cart at all.

3. Usability: While I was writing this, my shopping cart session timed out. Okay, no big deal, this happens all the time. However, I was not expecting to arrive at this page (below). If you can’t read it, it says “Your session has timed out.”

I had no way to get back to the amusement park site, let alone my order or shopping cart. The page didn’t automatically redirect me or even provide a link back to the homepage. The page wasn’t even branded to the company, which only heightened my frazzledness about what had just happened and the security of everything. When I clicked the back button, I got back to my cart in tact, but whatever link I clicked still took me to this session timed out page. Being web saavy that I am, I played around with the URL, cutting off the timeout.htm extension, and going back to the root domain, and nope neither of those worked at getting me back to the amusement park site.

My point is — don’t do this to your customers. Online shoppers, web saavy or not, are bound to cause errors and go off the beaten path every now and then. Your site has to be there to hold their hand and get them back on task. A session time out in the eCommerce part of the site, should have redirected me to the general, buying tickets page. Even a simply branded Error Page with the top visited links on the site would probably be enough to get someone back on track.

Amusement parks might think they have a lock on consumers because trips usually rely on location. But don’t think that means you can provide a poor experience and expect a repeat visit. Make the best impression possible by providing them with an easy way to skip the lines at the gates by buying their tickets online. If you do, those single day passes might turn into season passes.

Mentioned in this Post
Homepage :: Hersheypark
(NOTE: I can’t link to the shopping cart because of the security, but do check it out.)

Old Spice has taken the use of social media to the next level. Recently, Old Spice launched a YouTube viral video campaign, with their spokesman responding to comments left on the Old Spice Facebook and Twitter accounts. Each video included the name of the original user who made the comment or statement – most responses lasted 30-60 seconds. The Old Spice spokesperson even goes as far as smashing a pirate pinata with a freshwater fish in a video response made just for Demi Moore. The Old Spice YouTube profile has total upload views surpassing 59 million…not too shabby.

If you haven’t seen one of the Old Spice TV commercials , you probably live on another planet. If that is the case, you are probably more worried about your crazy neighbor parking his Corellian YT – 1300 freighter too close to your Naboo Royal Cruiser. Since we are on Earth, I will try and focus on what is going on with us boring Homo sapiens.

For a long time, social media represented a channel where your customers talked about your products or business, and you prayed that discussion was positive. Now, organizations continue to find and experiment with new ways to penetrate this channel and find new ways to interact with their target customer base instead of sitting on the social media sidelines.

However, before you jump into the “game,” make sure you stretch and remember these 3 things:

• Use the dialect and language your customers are using. If Old Spice sent a formal press release responding to tweets and posts, the message would’ve been lost because of the way it was delivered.
• Keep your communication short and to the point. Diatribes are meant for Shakespeare and your journal; meanwhile, your audience prefers frequency and freshness.
• Keep the conversations going. Don’t try to stop them. Your tendency will be to resolve things, but whether it’s positive or negative, showing the interaction and attention is where you score brownie points with your audience. Facilitate and encourage additional participation and you will learn that much more about your audience.

Does your social strategy stink? Reach out to me to learn more about what we’re doing to help our clients cash in on social media…

Check out The Old Spice Experiment

The Simple Desktop Background

You have undoubtedly come across some of the thousands of websites devoted to distributing desktop wallpaper images.  Visitors will find images ranging from scenic photos to unicorns in flight to abstract designs and everything in between.  After using many background images over the years I have come to find a trend among the ones that I particularly like: the simpler the better.  Backgrounds that have less visual clutter allow icons to stand out more and are easier to navigate.  They also make it easier to distinguish between layered windows and applications.  So what, you ask?  Well, the same holds true for web design.

Making Your Content Pop

When designing an interface that is meant to move the users eye from message to message, contrast is of primary importance.  Contrast can be achieved in many ways, with changes in size, line, hue, value, color intensity and so on.  To draw attention to the focal points of your design they must stand out against their background.  In keeping your site’s main background elements in the background by keeping them uncluttered and relatively subdued, you give your content a better opportunity to stand out.

Notice how elements such as the navigation, buttons, and text when placed on a subtle background stand out and draw the users eye in the eFootWear shopping cart:

On the flip side, the following site features a busy background which only serves to distract the user from the content rather than focus on it.  While this design is certainly over the top it illustrates the point well:

Of course there are exceptions to the rule here.  A busy background can serve to accentuate an uncluttered element that rests above it.  Such is the case with My Mascot where the content resides in a white container on top of a detailed wooden texture background.  This works because the contrast between the highly textured background and the flat white background makes the content rise to the foreground:

Remove the white container and the content fades into the background and the texture become the main focus.  Here you can see just how important the background can be to a design:

If you are a Designer this concept should come as no surprise, but it is helpful to see it in action outside of web design using your own desktop wallpaper as an example.  Even if you aren’t a designer you can experiment with this concept by playing around with a few desktop wallpaper images, both busy and subtle, and see how much of a difference it can make in usability.  Afterwords you might think twice before choosing that Jackson Pollock painting to “Set as background image.”

Organize.com, a company focused on selling home storage and organization products hosted a virtual party on both Facebook and Twitter as a kickoff to the national Hardware Show on May 4. According to Internet Retailer the event brought in over 1,500 registered guests. During this virtual event the hosts tweeted and posted a number of questions engaging the participants/attendees with a variety of questions that helped give them insight to the lifestyle of their guests. They were able to retain guests by awarding prizes every 10 to 15 minutes.

After the party, participants were given party favors ($5 Off coupons for orders up to $25 on Organize.com). Organize.com brought in $18,000 in sales in direct connection to a similar party they hosted in December, and have brought in$1,500 thus far in sales from customers who used the coupons.

While social marketing strategy does not come in one style fits all I believe Organize.com is a great example of the approach an organization must embrace in order to succeed and achieve an ROI on these efforts.

Here are 4 things to keep in mind when throwing a virtual party of your own:

1. Plan - You must first establish clear objectives and marketing goals. Establish the key metrics you want to measure. Keep these simple and logical, as they could get complicated over time. For example getting 500 attendees, or increasing your newsletter email list by 30%.
2. Discover & Engage - Organize.com spent a good amount of time engaging their guests, and in doing this they were able to learn about how they organized themselves. As a result of this dialogue many guests probably realized they had a new use for one or more of Organize.com’s products. It is through such dialogue that relationships are built. After all, it is called social media, so socializing is key and you only add more value by doing so!
3. Measure – Organize.com gave away coupons at the end of the party. Not only did this serve as an incentive for the guests to visit the site and make purchases, but it also served as a tracking mechanism that enabled them to measure direct sales from the event. You could measure the success of your party in other ways including:
   • Setting up a landing page to serve as a gateway to your site, allowing you to track the increased traffic/visitors driven to your site as a result of the party.
   • Asking guests to become a fan on Facebook or follow you on Twitter in exchange for a link to an online discount coupon. This not only allows you to track the increase in followers, fans and site traffic but also provides you with the opportunity to retain these fans and followers, enabling you to reach out to them in the near future.
4. Reengage - This is not a collector’s game focused simply on how many clicks, fans and followers you have! Don’t waste the opportunity to communicate with your new fans and followers.  Adopting a long-term approach on how to continuously engage your customers and followers is key. With Organize.com hosting a 2nd event of this, they stay in constant contact with their customers and followers and their ROI proves that it’s worth it. More events will surely follow.

So if you apply these 4 basic groovy moves, not only will you be the life of the party, you can expect to see me there!