As new browser versions are released new uses are found for the humble favicon. Where they were once relegated to just the address bar you will now see them popping up all over your screen. Arguably the most useful implementations appear in the users favourites and browser history.

Why use a favicon?

1. Firstly, because they are so easy to set-up. 5 minutes is more than enough to set-up a favicon for your store and if it helps bring 1 customer ever than still isn’t a bad investment in time.

2. If you don’t have a favicon then it will log as a 404 error every time one is requested, so adding one will actually save resources (albeit a tiny amount)

3. Your site will stand out in people’s favourites – reminding them about your store every time they see it. This works particularly well if your competitors don’t have one.

4. A well designed favicon can help reinforce your brand identity and help it stick in your users mind. Don’t believe that such a small image can do this? Try our little quiz below.

5. Your site will stand out more when users are using tabbed browsing. Customers comparing stores in multiple tabs will see yours stand.

6. It’ll stand out in the browser history as well, helping customers find you again after they visit.

7. Some users save shortcuts to pages rather than using favourites and the favicon is used for these as well. Consider a 32×32 icons for best results in this situation.

Quiz: The Famous Fav

Time to test your favicon recognition skills.  To the right are the favicons of 18 quite well known websites.  I suspect that most readers will recognise most of them. Despite being only 16×16 pixels these companies have all managed to portray their brands effectively.

How to add a favicon

 By far the easiest way to add a favicon is to use a generator such as Favicon.co.uk . Just upload an image file and they will resize and rename it for you. Upload that to the document root of your site and you are good to go.

 A disclaimer

 Adding a favicon to your site won’t get the same sort of results as some of the other issues discussed on Shopbuild, however it has to be one of the fastest fixes you can apply. If you don’t have one already why not add one in your lunch break today and finish the week with the satisfaction of getting one extra little job done?

 Quiz answers

Working from top left to bottom right, the sites are: Amazon, Google, Play, B&Q, BBC, Blogger, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Yahoo, Facebook, Argos, Ebay, Dell, Apple, Youtube, Wikipedia, Twitter and Bing.

Use the comments to let me know how you got on.

 I recently saw the contents of an email sent to a store that I do work for where a dissatisfied customer listed dozens of sites that he was going to add a “scathing” review on if the store didn’t bow to his, actually quite unreasonable, demands. I’m happy to say that the problem was resolved and the customer left happy. It’s worth mentioning though that despite praising the store for how well the complaint was handled and apologising for the threats he never added even one positive review to any of the sites that he had previously listed.

A happy customer will tell a friend, an unhappy customer will tell everyone… at every possible opportunity

 And, boy do the wide selection of review sites available online give an unhappy customer plenty of opportunity to do so! As well as dedicated store review sites ReviewCentre.com , ResellerRatings.com and Epinions.com there are now literally hundreds of directories and price comparison sites that encourage their users to review your store and have enough presence to be seen when potential customers are researching you.

Heading off problems

 Probably the most unfair situation that peer review sites can cause a retailer is when a single customer decides to try an make life difficult. Whilst we like to think that every customer leaves happy there are occasions where this doesn’t happen and the worse situation is that they publish their dissatisfaction on countless review sites without you even being aware that there was an issue.

 For smaller retailers in particular this can be a problem. Whilst a smaller retailer might have a handful of reviews on some of the review sites it is unlikely that they will have a robust number on all of them – meaning that a single customer (or worse – competitor!) could give the impression of a larger problem.

 The easiest way to mitigate this potential problem is to make sure that you find out quickly. Google alerts is a great tool for this. Assuming that you have a Google account already just enter in variations of your company name and website address separated with OR and Google will kindly email you whenever it finds new places that they find a new page where you get a mention.

 Trust Pilot also provides a useful service for store owners wanting to keep an eye on their reviews. As well as including reviews from their own users they scour popular review sites and compile the results on one, easy to check, page.

 These two methods at least give the retailer a chance to deal with problems as they are occurring. If one angry customer starts penning multiple bad reviews you can try to identify them and contact them – hopefully resolving the issue before it worsens.

 Safety in Numbers

 As review sites rely on the supposed “wisdom of the masses” these issues can be better protected against by having more positive reviews on more sites. If you already have a reasonable number of good reviews then the impact of one dedicated dissatisfied customer will be greatly reduced.

 Encouraging positive reviews can bring benefits that go way beyond just mitigating the occasional rogue reviewer and luckily is easily done. For stores confident in the service that they offer a simply follow up email after scheduled delivery thanking the customer for their order and asking if they might add a review will start boosting review numbers quickly.

 At the very least though store owners, or those who deal with customer service, should have a list of review sites handy at all times. If a customer goes to the trouble of sending a thank you email it isn’t a big step to then ask them if they might consider sharing their review on one of the review sites you are targeting.

 Where are you reviewed?

 Try a quick search now: Your sitename + reviews on your favourite search engine. I’m now working on a big long list of online store review sites, so I’d love to hear where your store has been mentioned.

So many people in hunt of a bargain presents obvious opportunities for a savvy store owner or marketer who uses voucher codes and discounts to their advantage. However, overlook those opportunities at your peril as customers hunger for discounts could actually be costing you money.

Ghost vouchers

Search for almost any store name together with the word voucher and you are likely to turn up scores of voucher code sites who’s listings suggest that they have discount voucher codes available. In many cases these codes simply do not exist, but you have to visit the voucher site to find this out. This can present a number of problems for the retailer:

1. Customers may get distracted during checkout looking for voucher codes and never complete the sale.

2. Some voucher sites will create pages for any store with an affiliate program and set a tracking cookie even if no voucher is found. This means you could end up paying a commission on a customer that was not introduced by the voucher site.

3. Some voucher sites will show discounts from competing retailers on your store’s page on their site, encouraging the customer to shop elsewhere.

4. Generally annoyance for the customer who may think that you routinely issue discount voucher codes but they are getting poor deal by not finding one.

Protecting your bottom line : Own your results

These problems are annoying enough when they relate to real discounts, but can leave store owners feeling positively cheated when it comes to non existent “ghost” discounts. Whilst we all understand the appeal of finding discounts in the current economic climate, lost sales and unnecessary commissions can contribute to making that climate worst for retailers.

The solution to reducing the issue is luckily simple thanks to the way that people phrase these searches. Vouchers searches with the greatest potential to cannibalise your profits are those that actually include your store name, which should mean that they are easy searches for you to rank for.

Adding a page to your site that explains your voucher policy should immediately give you a strong chance of ranking for terms such as “yourname voucher” that could otherwise hit your profits. If that page can instantly convey the fact that customers will not find discount vouchers for your site by searching online then you are reducing the risk of losing that customer as they go in search of a code.

 Referring to discount vouchers in your newsletter and social media sign up pages can give you the chance of getting an addition result in the SERPs as well – again reducing the chance of losing that customer.

2 Down, 8 to go

Google will generally only show 2 results from a single domain on the first page of any search, leaving another 8 natural results that could leach business from you. The more sites you can displace from that first page of results the better, so what else could you try to place there?

• Your blog : If your blog runs on a separate domain or subdomain ensure that you have one post (or a category) optimised for voucher type searches. As well as helping you own that important first page of results it could result in extra subscribers

• Social Media pages : If you have a presence on facebook, twitter or other social platforms try to place these for voucher type searches as well. If the landing pages are pitched well then you could also gain more subscribers who think that is the best way to bag a bargain

• Press releases : The beauty of press releases is that there are countless sites you can submit them to, which means unlimited potential results in the search. Consider giving some of your press releases an extra “boost” in the rankings by linking back to them.

 If margins allow and you think that there is significant leakage through voucher searches you could even consider adwords bidding using tightly targeted terms and direct visitors back to one of the pages above.

Other ways of mitigating the problem

 Owning the voucher related searches will help reduce the problem, but may not be enough if it is a significant issue for your store. Other tactics you could consider employing include:

• Not mentioning vouchers during checkout : This could encourage people to go searching. More about this here

• Changing affiliate program policies : Some stores do not allow voucher code sites to be part of their affiliate program except by special arrangement

• Communicate with the voucher sites : If you really don’t offer public discount vouchers you could ask the store owners to remove your site from them, although you may want to weigh this up against the possible benefits of additional exposure

If you can’t beat them…

 After all that talk about mitigating the problems associated with vouchers it is worth reiterating that public facing vouchers are not in themselves a bad thing. If you have protected your bottom line against the effect of ghost discounts then the next logical step is to try to capitalise more on voucher type searches and close the sale with those bargain hunting customers. That, however, is a topic that we’ll have to come back to.

 In the mean time, we’d love to hear about your experiences with ghost discounts and public facing discount vouchers. Does your store have a problem with this? Were you unaware of how many sites are competing in the search engine for people searching on your brand name? Do you think that it isn’t a real problem at all and we all should just issue more vouchers? Leave your comments below and share your thoughts.

Whilst there is no one right answer for everyone, there probably is a right answer to your store, so which one is best for you?

What do the big players do?

I don’t think it is generally a good idea to blindly follow what the largest retailers do, as “one size fits all” answers tend to fit everyone poorly.  However looking at examples that have probably undergone round upon round of testing can still be useful.  Looking at 10 of the UK’s top online retailers [1]  there is definitely a clear pattern.  8/10 of the top retailers I looked at used some variation on the add to cart theme.  Actual wording varied from one to another, but the key element of “add to” was present.  The ‘black sheep’ were Argos who use the wording “buy or reserve” in order to reinforce the purchase options available and Play who take the minimalist approach with just the word “Buy” used.

Why “Add to cart” is popular

Larger surveys reveal a similar pattern to the above with top stores showing a distinct leaning towards to variations on the “add to cart” theme.  If big retailers are doing this you can be assured that the decision has been backed with substantial testing and that the ‘add to’ wording works better for them.  Why it might work better for some retailers could be down to a number of factors, but two big ones stand out as obvious contenders:

1. Add to cart converts better for them.
   The idea of adding something to a cart or basket does not involve much commitment.  It’s an easy thing to do and it implies that you can always take it out again later (or just leave the cart behind!).  Actually buying something (or buying it “now”) by contrast seems a lot more final.  These subconscious notions may help ease hesitant customers in to the buying process and therefore play a part in increasing conversion rates.
2. Add to cart helps people buy more.
   Putting something in a shopping trolley or basket suggests that you will put something else in with it.   As part of a checkout process that has been tuned to maximise basket values this small hint could play a part in increasing average sale values.

When “Buy now” might be a better option

Reading the above it might seem that “add to” type buttons are the obvious choice.  That would suggest that retailers such as Play.com are missing a trick with their “buy” button, which seems unlikely to such a major retailer.  So, why do “buy” buttons work better for some?  “Buy” or “Buy now” is certainly a stronger call to action and may work better for some customers.  “Buy now” also suggests more immediacy and possibly that the customer will be whisked through the checkout without further delay.  Another advantage is it’s clarity.  Where as the meaning of “add to cart” may not be clear to some (Particularly in the UK where that terminology would almost never be used offline) it is hard to misinterpret the meaning of the words “buy” or “buy now”.

It’s also worth considering that “add to cart” (or basket, or whatever) and “buy now” might not be mutually exclusive.  The two have slightly different meanings.  It would be feasible (if possibly a bit confusing) to a store to have both: An add to cart button that adds the item to the shopping cart and allows the user to continue shopping and a “buy now” button that takes the user straight to checkout with just that single item in their cart.

Which is right for my store?

As a general rule of thumb “add to” type buttons are probably going to work better in stores where you expect customers to largely buy more than one item in a single transaction.  Conversely “buy” buttons are likely to work better in stores where you expect transactions to be for a single item.  The real answer to what is right for your store though is the one that gets you the best results.

Your call to action button is a very easy element to test the effectiveness of.  Split testing the options would be an ideal solution:  A system like Google Website Optimizer will easily allow you to serve up different button versions to different customers and measure the effectiveness of each.  Even without split testing though you could get an idea of how alternative buttons might work by switching the image and measuring the results over a period of time.

Whatever testing method you use remember to factor in changes to the average basket values as well as the more obvious conversion rate.  You could find that (for instance) the “buy” type button increases your conversion rate but that overall the “add to” type is more profitable as it results in higher basket values.  Only testing will tell.

Footnotes

[1]  Amazon.co.uk , Argos.co.uk , Play.com , Tesco.com , MarksandSpencer.com , Next.co.uk , Asos.com , Littlewoods.co.uk , JohnLewis.com & Debenhams.com

The clips, each lasting only about 3 seconds, start running when the thumbnails are hovered over and show a child performing various cute actions whilst wearing the item of clothing being viewed.  A quick straw-poll around our office resulted in reactions ranging from “ugh” to “OMG how cute, I want a baby”.  What was noticeable though was that people were commenting on the children rather than the clothing being sold.

Whether the addition of micro video clips aids in conversion or not I suspect that it will at least create some additional traffic and awareness as links to the pages are forwarded on.  As of today the micro-video is only included in the baby section.

Closed for Business

It’s great to see high visitor numbers to your online store, but sometimes you can’t help wonder why more of those visitors don’t buy something. It’s true that many people are only browsing and we live in hope that they will tell a friend about our great products or maybe return one day to buy something themselves. It’s less reassuring to consider that a proportion of your visitors come to our online stores with the sole intention of making a purchase, but we do something to change their minds in the process.

So what makes a happy potential customer change their mind? This list is far from exhaustive and it’s a topic that we’ll come back to, but here is 20 possible reasons to bare in mind.

Long load times

Forget cart abandonment, your store could be losing customers long before you even show them a product. Hopefully the days of painful slow flash intro pages are gone, but the truth remains that every second your homepage takes to load will lose you more customers.

What can you do about it? Make sure your site loads quickly – even at peak times. If you don’t look after the technical side of your site yourself tell your developers that you need to shave 30% off the home page load times and see what they come up with. It’s often easier than you would imagine.  Tools such as Yslow and PageSpeed can help identify bottlenecks.

Don’t look relevant

When a customer arrives at your store you have just a few seconds to make a first impression and assure them that they have arrived at the right place.  If the graphics and key page elements don’t match what the customer is expecting then they may hit the back button before they’ve even read a page heading.

What can you do about it? Look at the key landing pages of your store.  Imagine each of them without any text and ask yourself what it looks like the website does.  Better still ask someone who doesn’t already know the answer to do the same.  If they can’t tell you then look at key elements, such as the page headers and see how you can make your site more immediately relevant.

Don’t give customers an easy first click

When new customers arrive at your site there is a critical period when they are still deciding whether to stay on your website or not.  Once your customer make the first click within your site they have at least resolved to give you a chance so getting that first click is just as vital as getting them to click “checkout” later in the process.  If the customer cannot see an obvious way to find what they are looking for you could lose them to the dreaded back button in those critical first seconds.

What can you do about it? Look at the bounce rates of all your top landing pages paying particular attention to your home page.  If you use an analytics package then you can also break this down by entrance source.  If a page has a particularly high bounce rate then there is obviously a problem.  However a page might perform well overall, but might (for instance) have a much higher bounce rate for customers coming to the page from a particular search term.  Looking at entrance sources in particular will give you some clues as to the motivation of those customers.  Once you know what they were looking for then you can alter the page to give greater emphasis and obvious paths in to the site for those users.

Make it hard to find products

The easier you can make it for customers to find the products you are looking for the higher you will see your conversion rates go.  You probably know your online store inside out and could quickly find any product within it, but your structure and navigation might make less sense to new customers.

What can you do about it? Even if it only involves having friends look over your site do some sort of usability testing on it.  It’s amazing how much you can learn about your store by watching someone else use it.  Also consider how your customers shop and use your user feedback and website stats to learn more about this.  If you run a clothing store that is organised by brand but most of your customers come looking for “skinny fit jeans” then you mght be making their shopping experience more difficult than it need be.  If your store has an internal search (it should!) then look at the logs of what people are searching for and do the same searches yourself.  If these searches are not showing accurate results then you may need to tweak some of your product information.  Even if they are showing accurate results though you may want to look at highlighting things that customers are regularly searching for on the site so that they don’t even need to do a search.

Bad or small product images

Customers like to see product images.  If they have not seen the product in person before the image can tell them more about it more quickly than any product description will.  Even if the customer is familiar with the product a clear image gives them an instant re-assurance that the product they are looking for is the one that they were thinking of.  Product images also form a key part of your site design and poor imagery reflects on your professionalism.  Most importantly though your product images are the most powerful sales tool on your product page.  Even if a customer doesn’t read a word of text they will have almost certainly have seen the product image which makes it vital to get right.

What can you do about it? Look at your product images and ask yourself whether they a showing your products in the best light or whether they “just do”.  If you think that they could be improved talk to your suppliers and see what they have available.  If you have the resources also consider having images taken exclusively for your store.  Having all your own product shots taken can be an expensive/lengthy process but can also really pay dividends.  If your competitors are using small stock images and you are using large, vibrant images that show the product from various angles and even in context then you have gained an advantage.

Don’t provide enough product  information

It is essential to provide enough information about the product to allow the customer to make a purchase.  Information for information’s sake is rarely a good thing, but providing key details either in the product description or in addition to it can help answer questions the customer may have and give them the assurance that the product they are looking at is what they are looking for.

What can  you do about it? Identify what are the key questions that customers have about the various types of products that you stock & ensure that this information is available.  If the information is extensive (for instance, with technical products) then consider adding data sheets to the product pages.

Hide the ‘add to cart’ button

If customers don’t see the add to cart button then there is a chance that they won’t even realise that they can buy online.  A related problem is an add to cart button that isn’t clear about it’s purpose.

What can you do about it? Ensure that the add to cart button is clearly visible above the fold  on all product pages, even when they are viewed on lower resolution screens.  Don’t be too clever about the design or wording on this button: It should look like a button and leave no question about it’s purpose.

Confusing checkout process

If customers have any anxiety about making an online purchase (which many do, for many reasons) then any confusion in the checkout process at all provides an easy excuse not to complete the sale.

What can you do about it? Make the checkout process as uncomplicated and unthreatening as possible.  At each step make sure that it is obvious what needs to be done next.  Communicating where in the checkout process the customer is and what they still need to do can greatly help customers understand the process. Strip out everything that is not essential from the checkout process.

Don’t provide contact details

Providing contact details is a legal requirement in many countries, but also just makes sense.  Having an easy to find contact phone number and physical address  not only demonstrates that you are a “real” company, but also provides the customer with the assurance that they will be able to talk to someone if they do have a problem.

What can you do about it? At the very least have a clear “contact us” link on every page with a geographic address and telephone number on the resulting page.  The addition of a phone number to all pages on the site can also help with trust issues particularly if this is presented during checkout.

Insecure checkout

Not securing pages that request card details can be more than a little problematic and lead to issues that do way beyond lost sales, but this is thankfully becoming rarer.  With the increased popularity of third party payment gateways it has however become quite common to only secure the payment pages and leave other pages that request personal information outside of SSL protection.  For more technically aware customers this can be a deal breaker and cause them to immediately abandon their cart.

What can you do about it? Check which pages of your site are delivered via a secure connection and which ones are not.  If you have your own SSL certificate then the ideal scenario is to secure any pages that ask the customer to enter personal information.   If you are using a third party payment gateway consider also adding and SSL certificate to your website.  These are relatively inexpensive and can be used in conjunction with third party payment gateways to increase security and help reassure customers.

Restrict payment methods

Not offering payment methods that your customer expect to see can prevent customers completing the sale.  For most of us this means at least accepting most major credit and debit cards, but depending on your market customers might expect additional payment options such as Paypal,  payment on account,  electronic check systems, interest free credit or even payment via mobile phone.  Some reports also suggest that offering an altnernative payment method like Paypal or Google checkout can help relieve trust issues as customers are aware that these do not result in the merchant receiving the card details themselves.

What can you do about it? Check the leading sites in your field to see what payment options they offer.  Also speak to your customers about what payment methods they would expect to see.

Add an unexpected cost

If customers suddenly see an additional cost added to their order during checkout and they didn’t expect this it can have a major affect on conversion rates.  Even if the charge is relatively small many customers will feel cheated resulting in a loss of trust during checkout.

What can you do about it? If you have to add additional costs for some reason be very clear about these from the start so that it doesn’t come as a surprise later.  Where possible provide the inclusive price as early in the checkout process as possible.  If, for instance, you quote prices without VAT but add VAT during checkout why not also include the inclusive price on the product page?  Likewise, if some items carry additional shipping charges mention this on the product page.  Even if you can’t do the final cost calculations until later in the process consider adding a small message along the lines of “This product carries a small additonal shipping charge.  This will be calculated and displayed before your confirm your order”.

Hide the checkout button

The hidden checkout button is a phenomena that appears to be on the increase.  Customers know that they have added an item to their basket, but nothing much happens and they haven’t spotted the small text “checkout” link and microscopic cart icon.

What can you do about it? If you consider that every single customer has to find this link that should give you some idea of the prominence it probably deserves.  Make it large and clear enough to be immediately visible even if you just scan the page.  You could also consider highlighting it in some way when the customer adds an item to their cart.   If your orders are almost entirely for a single product then you could also consider having the customer taken straight to the shopping cart page when they add an item to it.

High delivery costs

Customers just hate high delivery charges.  In some cases they just hate any delivery charges.  Particularly in the UK where general postage costs are low customers are often unaware of the high costs associated with courier services and signed for delivery and often feel that the shipping charges are unfair even when offerd at cost price.

What can you do about it? Firstly avoid the temptation to mark up postage unless it is a key part of your model.  Where possible offer alternative lower cost shipping methods in addition to your preferred service.  All carriers work on a sliding scale of costs, so also be sure that you are checking in with your carrier at least once a year to ensure that you are getting the best possible deal for your customers.

Ask too many questions during checkout

The checkout process is not the place to start conducting consumer research.  When customers are in your checkout process they are trying to give you money and it is rude to do anything other than to help them to the end of that process successfully and as quickly as possible.  Every question you add to your checkout process will cost you sales so it is vital to only ask what you absolutely need to know.

What can you do about it? Go through all stages of your checkout process and consider whether you really need to ask that question.  Some cart systems ask questions such as “date of birth” by default and these should be removed at the earliest opportunity for most stores.  As well as looking for questions that you don’t need to know the answers to look at whether you can pre-fill or even hide any.  For example your checkout may ask for both shipping and billing address but these are likely to be the same in many instances.  For those customers you could prefill

Don’t test your site in other browsers

It’s an odd situation that most developers use one browser whilst most customers use another.  Failing to test your site in multiple browsers and with different set-ups could make it impossible for a proportion of your customers to complete a sale online.  The issue is made worse by the number of old, out of date, browsers still in popular use today.

What can you do about it? Even if your developers  assure you that the site has been tested make test purchases yourself under different browsers and different versions of those browsers.   Pay particular attention to Internet Explorer version 6.  This is one of the most problematic browsers still in regular use today and can have major problems with otherwise working websites.

Don’t build trust

Customers who don’t trust you won’t buy from you.  If there are issues on your site that call that trust in to question or even if you fail to address and build trust prior to checkout you might find that your otherwise excellent store still fails to achieve a reasonable conversion rate.

What can you do about it? Firstly look for any obvious trust issues and get others to do the same (some of the obvious points are covered above).  Once any obvious issues have been address try to actively build trust before and during the checkout process.  Tell customers that your checkout is secure, any guarantees that you offer, any service promises that you make, any awards you have received, any trust marks you subscribe to and in fact anything else that will give them confidence in your operation.

Send them to another site

If you send a customer to another website there is a good chance that they won’t come back again.  Despite this many stores still use their online stores as advertising platforms and include banners and advertisements for other websites .

What can you do about it? Justify every external link on your website.  If you must have them then make sure that they don’t appear at points where the customer is making purchasing decisions.

Tell them they could have got it cheaper

It might sound mad to suggest any store owner would do this, but a surprising number do just that by flagging up a “discount code” or coupon box during the checkout process.  To many customers this is either an invitation to go searching the web for a discount code or even a suggestion that they are not getting the best deal available.  If the customer goes searching for a code there is a chance that they will be unsuccessful and not bother returning.  Alternatively you might end up giving them a discount that they would not otherwise had or paying an affiliate commission that was not really earned.

What can you do about it? Consider how coupons are dealt with on your site.  Consider removing them from the checkout process (dealing with them elsewhere on the site) or at least addressing the wording to reduce the problem.

Don’t give them a reason to buy now

Lots of customers browse online stores with the intention to return at a later time to buy something.  There are numerous reasons why they might never return from changing their mind or forgetting to buying from a competitor.  All of these factors reduce your conversion rate and ultimately your bottom line.

What can you do about it? Creating a sense of urgency can encourage the customer to complete the sale at the time of visiting rather than returning later.  The most obvious way to create urgency is to offer a time limited incentive such as money off or a free gift.  Over reliance on this can though result in regular customers holding back on making a purchase until a discount is available. Urgency doesn’t have to be created just over pricing issues though.  It works very well focusing on other aspects such as shipping deadlines (”Buy in the next 2 hours for delivery tomorrow”), and stock (”Limited stock – last few remaining”).

As an impulsive online shopper with a credit card in hand the the desire to spoil my first born child I should be a dream customer for online toy shops. Despite this I managed to spend 2 hours online last night looking for something to buy and still ended up spending half of what I intended. Compare this with my average gadget shopping trip which would usually take well under an hour and resulting in me spending twice what I intended and it is clear that something went wrong.

What went wrong?

Imagine a supermarket that stocks everything that you would expect to find in a supermarket, but decides to organise the aisles by brand alphabetically. A customer looking for some breakfast cereal would need to know what companies made cereals and visit each aisle to see what was on offer. As the customer walked between the Kelloggs aisle and the Nestle aisle they would probably question the logic of the layout, but they would miss out seeing products by brands that they are less familiar with. They might even find themselves getting frustrated and leaving the store as they struggle to remember who makes Weetabix (Answer: “The Weetabix food company” who also make Alpen. Thanks Google).

The example sounds far fetched, yet many online retailers do exactly this.

BabyJacks is an example of a retailer who takes this approach. I chose to use them as an example not because they are particularly bad, but because they have a pretty good website with a wonderful product range that I just found difficult to navigate. In short their navigation lost them my sale.

The Baby & Child Toys section of the BabyJacks website organises the products largely by brand, but also with some “by type” categorisation such as “bath toys”. Each category contains up too about 8 pages of products which appear to be organised alphabetically.

As a customer who is not yet familiar with many of the brands they stock I would need to work my way through all of the sub pages of each category (as well as clicking through to product pages where I am interested) in order to view their products. I loved the look of what they had on offer, but I honestly wasn’t going to work my way through 103 pages of product listings to find something suitable.

Big stores have problems too

The organisation of products is critical to any store, but this becomes even more apparent if you look at larger stores. Woolworths have recent re-launched online and still stock a bewildering range of toys for children of all ages. The most logical non-brand category I could find there was a “toys for toddlers” section which contained 411 products ranging from cot toys to walkie talkies.

Why this didn’t work for me

Shopping by brand works well when you know exactly what you are looking for and are familiar with the brands on offer. Even our brand organised supermarket would work well for a customer who went in looking to stock up on Heinz baked beans. Many customers however are not as clear in what they want to buy and organising products by brand does little to help these customers find what they are looking for.

The key to effective navigation is to organise products in a way that matches what the customer is looking for. Whilst I have only mentioned two stores above I in fact visited over a dozen toy and baby stores almost none of which had navigation to meet my needs. The majority of those that offered toys for all ages didn’t even organise toys by the age of the child expecting me instead to browse hundreds of unsuitable products in the hope of finding what I was looking for.

A better approach

Big name stores seem to be moving more and more towards the concept of layered navigation. Layered navigation blends traditionally categorisation with the power of product search and offers the customer the chance to navigate the site in a way that suits their shopping needs.

The Early Learning Centre offers a good example of this. Clicking their Baby & Toddler Toys category

returns a large number of results, but the side navigation then allows you to filter the results by the criteria that are important to you. In my example I would have selected “6-12 months” in the age category and “£30-£50” in the price and I’m then presented with a very manageable selection of 19 products to choose from. Additional filtering options such as by type, by brand and by skills are also offered allowing customers to choose the path through the site that best suits them.  Some people might argue that this approach shows me less products so can’t be as good, but the key is that it is showing me products that I am likely to buy rather than those that I am not.

Other large toy stores such as Hamleys and Toys’r'Us offer similar approaches and across other markets this approach seems to be gaining in popularity. I would imagine that the increase in popularity of layered navigation and other means of providing multiple navigation paths has come about as the result of usability testing proving the effectiveness of such approaches.

What can a smaller retailer do?

Most retailers don’t development budgets of companies like The Early Learning Centre and Hamleys, and most of the affordable off the shelf solutions still lack in this area. With some thought though existing systems can be used to provide more choices in navigation.

• Consider how your customers shop
  Before doing anything take time to consider what are the most important criteria for most of your customers and make this the main focus of your navigation. Use your search logs and customer feedback to check that any assumptions you are making are accurate.

• Offer multiple methods where it makes sense
  If multiple navigation paths make sense for your products then include them.

• Don’t mix navigation concepts
  If you want to categorise both “by type” (ie Soft Toys) and by Brand (ie Steiff) clearly separate these choices and label them clearly to prevent confusion. Most e-commerce platforms offer you at least 2 means (category & brand) which you can use to different effect.

• Don’t forget product sorting options
  Even if you are limited in how many ways you can categories your products you may be able to offer additional product sorting options enable customers to find what they are looking for easier.

• Consider linking to internal search results
  If you can see a clear need for a means of navigation that is hard to offer in your ecommerce system consider deep linking to internal search results. With the right product descriptions this should allow you to group almost any combination of products.

Shopbuild is offered by a small group of online retailers and store developers who have been selling online for over a decade. Through these pages we aim to share a bit of what we’ve learned in that time as well as what we continue to learn and the site progresses.

Whilst all aspects of online shopping interest us we’ll be particularly focusing on the online retail sector from the viewpoint of the store owners themselves. From marketing to after sales service we hope to look at all aspects in an interesting and hopefully useful way.

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