E-Commerce
E-commerce sites have a large amount of touch points with the consumer and thus provides a great deal of opportunity for optimization and testing. Everything from the landing page, product page, purchasing funnel, credit card submit page and even a contact us page will all have an impact on the conversion rate.
All too often we see fundamental design rules being broken. Our initial phase is a full design audit to pin point all the areas that need optimization. We create a roadmap of each area, what will be done and when it will be done.
Our design goal is to create a user experience that is always easy and intuitive for the consumer, they shouldn't have to 'figure it out'. With this strategy, it's not uncommon for us to increase conversion rates from 30-400%. Impressed? Our clients are, that's why they love our design team. The results we achieve in design have the power to single handily elevate an online advertising campaign from good to great.
Leaving nothing to chance, we continually optimize, test and compare results between multiple designs to reveal the highest converting design.
How Do We Do It?
Product And Brand Specific Landing Pages
First impressions last. When a user lands on a webpage, they decide within 2 seconds if they want to stay and review further or if they want to go back. Does your page say:
"Read on, we have EXACTLY what you are looking for"? We focus on creating specific pages to match the user's search query.
If a user searches for "ladies evening shoes", we can send the user to a:
A) Homepage.
B) Shoes page.
C) Ladies shoes page.
D) Ladies evening shoes landing page.
Which do you think will have the highest conversion rate?
Overall Site Optimization
The little things count. To often we have clients come to us and the first thing we help them do is effectively communicate their Unique Selling Propositions (USP). Our role in design optimization is to help communicate to the consumer why to buy this product and most importantly, why to buy from this site.
Funnel Optimization
Between 'Add To Cart' and 'Rush My Order' a lot happens. The average e-commerce site has between 10-40% abandonment between these two points of the site. Our funnels are designed to compel the user to complete their transaction. Working within the various limitations of e-commerce platforms, we have been able to continually provide significant improvements in funnel retention rates, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
Abandonment Monetization
Want an extra 10-20% lift in sales? In working with our Upsellit platform, we consistently recover abandoning visitors by simply helping them over their final purchasing hurdle. As an additional benefit to the sales, we are able to capture critical customer data and make business decisions from this data.
Term Of The Day:
January 27, 2025
Cost-per-click (CPC) – The price that an advertiser pays to have a user click on one of their advertisements
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Above the fold - the section of a Web page that is visible without scrolling.
Advertiser/Merchant - The advertiser in an affiliate marketing relationship. Pays affiliates (webmasters) for sending traffic to their site to purchase or generate leads.
Advertising Network - A network connecting web sites that want to host advertisements with advertisers who want to run advertisements.
Adware - Refers to any software application in which advertising banners are displayed while the program is running. These ads are commonly viewed through pop-up windows or through a bar that appears on a computer screen. Adware is a nuisance because it continually interferes with what you are doing. The justification for adware is that it helps recover programming development costs and therefore holds down the cost for the user. Adware reads the page and displays ads relevant to the web page (rather than user's surfing patterns). *Main difference between Adware and Spyware is that user knows it's downloading Adware, but doesn't know it's downloading spyware.
Affiliate - The publisher in an affiliate marketing relationship.
Affiliate Agreement - Terms of service between advertiser/merchant and affiliate/publisher.
Affiliate Fraud - Bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.
Affiliate Marketing - Revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.
Affiliate Network - A service that connects advertisers and publishers who want to increase sales and drive leads through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Program - An advertising program offering a monetary incentive for webmasters to drive traffic to the advertiser's website. This eliminates the necessity for the advertiser to find websites with related content to list their banners. It also increases the response rate by giving the "affiliate" websites a stake in the response rate.
ALT Text - HTML attribute that provides alternative text when non-textual elements, typically images, cannot be displayed.
Animated GIF - a graphic in the GIF file format that creates the effect of animation by rotating through a series of static images. (a rotating banner with the same message ex. Nike....Just....Do....It) *A jpg and ping cannot animate.
Banner ad - an online advertisement on a web page that links to another web site or landing page. It is called an ad banner because it is in the shape of a banner, usually placed at the top or bottom of a Web page. The term "ad banner" loosely refers to any form of online ad, including small rectangular boxes known as buttons and large vertical boxes known as skyscrapers.
Button ad - a graphical advertising unit, smaller than a banner ad.
Cache - Web browsers store web page information so the user can quickly access the page at a later time. Cache reduces the amount of information that needs to be transmitted across the network and hence increases the load time of the page.
Churn Rate - Proportion of contractual customers/subscribers who leave a supplier during a given period. This is a possible indicator of customer dissatisfaction, cheaper/better offer from competition, customer life cycle or any other reason. Involuntary churn: company terminates customer's account/contract, usually b/c of poor payment history. Voluntary churn: customer decides to take business elsewhere.
Click-Through - "Ad clicks" or "requests". The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's website.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) - Average number of click-throughs for an online ad per 100 ad impressions; a 2% click-through rate means for every 100 times the ad was seen, two people clicked on it.
Contextual Traffic - (Adware, spyware, actual text, search.) Form of targeted advertising for ads appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in media browsers. Ads are selected and served by automated systems based on various factors such as relevancy of ad to webpage content, demographic attributes of user, historical conversion rate of ad or price paid by advertiser. A system scans the text of a website for keywords and returns the ads to the webpage based on what the user is viewing. The ad may be displayed on the webpage or a pop up. For example, if a user is viewing a sports page and that site uses contextual advertising, the user may see ads for sports-related companies. In regards to search engines, display ads depend on user's search results based on keywords in the user's query.
Continuity Campaign - A product that provides a good or service to a consumer on a continual basis, usually monthly. The user is provided the product or service and is billed each month.
Conversion rate (CVR) - The percentage of visitors who take a desired action such as complete a lead form or purchase.
Cookies - Message given to a web browser (e.g., Explorer, Firefox, Safari) by a web server (domain). Cookies are used to identify users and their information, such as what the visitor purchased and what site the visitor was on immediately preceding the visit to the Web site. This information can be used in a variety of ways such as preparing custom content for the users next visit to the website. Cookies have attracted a great deal of legal attention recently due to customer privacy concerns.
Co-registration Path - A path of offers a consumer enters upon providing their e-mail or zip code into an initial offer of something free. In order to receive the free item, the person must sign up for several of the offers. The offers in this path are called "incentivized offers" because the consumer signs up for the offers only because they want the free gift.
Cost-per-action (CPA) - The calculation used to determine the cost to acquire a specific action (e.g. lead or sale.)
Cost-per-click (CPC) - The price that an advertiser pays to have a user click on one of their advertisements
Cost-per-order (CPO) - The calculation used to determine the cost to acquire a customer
Coupon Site - A web site that specializes in offering free coupons for online shopping so users can buy products and services at discounted prices.
CPA Affiliate Network - A place where publishers earn revenue on a cost-per-action basis by promoting a group of select advertisements via email, banner, search and contextual links.
CPA Wall - A site with numerous CPA campaigns. This is usually positioned post transaction as a way of generating additional revenue from a user by offering them complimentary products.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - Cost per thousand impressions. M is used as it is the Roman numeral signifying one thousand.
Creatives - Name for the collective group of graphical designs used for email marketing and banner advertisements.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - The cost associated with acquiring a new customer.
Email Header - The header is the name for the part of an e-mail message that precedes the body and contains, among other things, the message originator, the date and time, and the subject line.
Exclusive - A campaign that an advertiser has granted sole marketing rights to one agency.
Exclusivity - Contract term in which one party grants another party sole rights with regard to a particular business function.
Exit Pops - These are web pages that are set to open up, without user action, after you close a web page.
Footer - One or more lines of text that appear at the bottom of every page of a webpage. (ex. Terms and Conditions)
From/Subject Lines - the approved phrases that are allowed to be used in the From section or Subject section of an email marketing campaign.
Hijacker - A "hijacker" is a type of spyware designed by certain online publishers that allow them to snoop on user browsing activity, invade privacy, and flood the user pop-up ads.
Hit - request of a file from a Web server (every time a webpage is viewed).
HTML banner - a banner ad using HTML elements, often including interactive forms, instead of (or in addition to) standard graphical elements.
HTML e-mail - email that is formatted using Hypertext Markup Language, as opposed to plain text email.
Internet Advertising Board (IAB) - An organization that oversees the development of Internet advertising standards and protocols. It acts as a liaison between the Internet Society (ISOC) and other standard bodies.
Image pixel - ability to track a user's movement on a specific webpage using a pixel, which is generally thought of as the smallest complete sample of an image (action has been placed - pixel is 'fired' sending tracking data to a tracking system such as Google Analytics or any other tracking platform.
Impressions - The number of times a particular ad or webpage is viewed.
In-text Advertising - Advertising strategy that places hyperlinks directly in the text of the webpage. Typically the text associated with an advertisement is underlined for clear visibility to the user and often an in-page window containing the ad content appears when cursor rolls over the corresponding text.
Incentivized - Pay plans designed to reward the user for a specific action. For example, 'Win a free ipod when you sign up to this offer.'
Interactive agency - an agency offering a mix of web design/development, Internet advertising/marketing, or E-Business/E-Commerce consulting and advertising.
Interstitial - an advertisement that loads between two content pages.
IO Insertion Order - contract between advertiser and agency to designate the legal terms and conditions for a particular advertising campaign.
Landing page - A specific page that is designed for a specific user action such as a sale or lead completion. A webpage may have stand alone landing pages that are focused on one specific action as opposed to all the companies offerings.
Opt-in - The act of explicitly requesting an e-mail distribution. For example, when a user signs up to receive an e-mail newsletter, they are "opting" to receive it.
Opt-Out - When a user requests to be removed from any kind of online program. For example, if a user no longer wants to receive an e-mail newsletter, they have the ability to opt-out. Also known as unsubscribing.
Pay per click (PPC) /Cost per click (CPC) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying clicks.
Pay per lead (PPL)/ Cost per lead (CPL) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying leads. Lead can be through sign-up for a newsletter, lead form or other desired action.
Pay per sale (PPS)/ Cost per sale (CPS) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying sales. Also known as Cost Per Order (CPO).
PING or Ping - (1) Traditionally this term refers to an Internet program used to determine whether a specific IP address is accessible or online. It works by sending a packet to the specified address and waiting for a reply. (2) Seen in email or text messages as "ping me when you get a chance" (not written in ALL CAPS like the acronym) it is used as slang for getting someone's attention.
Pop-under ad - Ad that is displayed in a new browser window that appears under the already-open window.
Pop-up ad - Ad that is displayed in a new browser window. These are pages that open on top of another page without one's doing.
Pre-pop - a subpage that loads before the primary one.
Rate card - document detailing prices for various ad placement options.
Rectangle ad - any one of the large, rectangular banner sizes.
Responsive Design - webpage design that changes based on the size of the user's viewing resolution.
Return days - the number of days an affiliate can earn commission on a conversion (sale or lead) by a referred visitor. (for example, a user visits site, but no action; user comes back 20 days later, cookies recognize this user, this time the user purchases, sale is recognized. The affiliate is paid if the 20 days is within the contract stated terms.
Shopping cart - software used to make a site's product catalogue available for online ordering, whereby visitors may select, view, add/delete, and purchase merchandise.
Skyscraper - An online ad which is taller vertically than it is wide horizontally, thereby resembling the shape of a skyscraper. There are two sizes: 160 x 600 pixels is considered a " wide" skyscraper, and 120 x 600 pixels is the size of a regular skyscraper.
Spam - The word "Spam" as applied to email means Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE"). Unsolicited means that the recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. In order to email a user, they must have selected to opt-in. Regulations state that a user can be sent one email from a company or individual and this will not be considered bulk email and hence the sender is not in violation. A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk. *(Spam = 1. user never opted-in but received email anyway and does not contain opt-out link.; 2. receiver opted-in, but wants to opt-out, but no link in e-mail; 3. e-mail a user twice or more in bulk but they never opted in. Bulk = send bulk email to someone more then once who never opted in).
Spam Trap - advertiser plants "seed" email address in it's suppression list in an effort to monitor activity of it's affiliates. Alternatively, various internet privacy groups add a seed email address to various online forms to monitor their email marketing behavior.
Spyware - software that is intentionally installed on a personal computer (w/o user knowing) to intercept / take partial control over the user's interaction with computer. Secretly monitors the user's behavior i.e. Internet surfing habits, visited sites, can change computer's setting to affect connection speed. **Main difference between spyware and adware is that user doesn't know it's installing spyware, but does know it's installing adware.
Suppression File/List - A list of email addresses from people who have chosen to no longer receive email advertisements from an advertiser or marketing organization.
Test Budget - Before committing a large budget for an online advertising campaign, it is common for an advertiser to allocate a certain amount of money which is used as exploratory and testing various concepts such as page design, media buying efforts, time of day etc.
Text ad - advertisement using text-based hyperlinks.
Text Email - an email advertisement that contains no graphics and is written in ASCII text and text links.
Text Link/Ad - An online ad that consists of a text-based hyperlink. Commonly seen in e-newsletters and in the footers of web sites. The ad is often highlighted, underlined and/or double underlined.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP) - These are the unique reasons a company offers their consumers to purchase from. This can be both tangible and intangible. Common examples include; Money back guarantee, free shipping, long standing reputation, exclusive range of products, high level customer service.
Unique visitors - individuals who have visited a web site (or network) at least once in a fixed time frame, typically a 30 day period. Site analytics tracks and counts Web site traffic that can distinguish between visitors who only visit the site once and unique visitors who return to the site. This is different from site hits or page views -- which are measured by the number of files that are requested from a site. Unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses, which are an online version of a users' fingerprints, and unique visitors are counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site.
Unsub (Unsubscribe) - To manually remove a name and e-mail address from a mailing list. Also known as opt-out.
Vertical banner - a banner ad measuring 120 pixels wide and 240 pixels tall.
Web site traffic - the amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.