Shift Happens

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Shift Happens

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How to improve the usability performance of the Product Information Page (PIP)

Your product information pages (PIP) are your key selling pages on your site and act as your online sales force, even if the visitors have only come to research the product/service that you sell.

The main of objectives of the content of the PIP pages are:

1. Effectively communicate the benefits provided by the product/service
2. How the product/service will address the visitors’ needs.
3. Key benefits of transacting with your site for the product/service – weather it is today or at a later date.

Before we can talk about how a Product Information Page can be improved to achieve the stated objectives, we must understand how people interact with online content. Based upon research done by multiple user experience experts, the online consumer interacts with the PIP page in the following manner:

The First 3 seconds: Chances are that visitors are coming to your PIP page either from on-site search results, category page, directly from global navigation or from being deep linked by some online marketing campaign. Depending upon the source, the visitors to the PIP page spend first 3 seconds trying to orient themselves to make sure that they are where they should be and have not come to an unexpected page. To help the visitor in their orientation, make sure that on top of the page you have:

1. A clear image of the product: make sure that this is same as what they might have seen before on search result page or category page, etc.
2. Product Name: make sure that this is same as what they might have seen before on search results page or category page etc.
3. Messaging/Product copy Handshake: make sure that the first snippet of product copy the visitor is exposed to be similar to any messaging that has been used in the referring page. For example – make sure that you use similar words on category page and PIP page

The next 8 seconds: Once the visitors decide that PIP page potentially has the product/service they are interested in, they then spend next 8 seconds deciding if the page has the kind of information that would help them in their purchase/research decision. To help the visitor though these 8 seconds, make sure that your PIP page has:

1. Scan friendly product features
2. Price of the product (if applicable)
3. Any specials/promotions that you might be running
4. Any hidden benefits such as 60 days money back etc.
5. Clearly marked Call to action
6. Clearly marked content categories that can help the visitor make the purchase decision.

The next few minutes: Once the visitor has decided that the PIP page has the kind of information that would be useful in their purchase/research decision, they will spend next few minutes – depending upon the nature of the product/service and their familiarity with the product/service – to understand if the product/service meets their specification AND that it provides them the desired benefits. This is what will make or break you click-through-rate on the Call to Action. To get a high click-through-rate on your CTA, you should provide:

1. Benefits focused content that educates the visitors on how the product/service will help address their needs
2. Provide all the content on the same page. You have many options of presenting the information on the same page – tabs, accordion, pop-up windows for flash and videos, etc. You should use them. Why? Every click you make your visitor go through means a loss of 3% to 5% of the traffic. Don’t make your visitors go to multiple pages to get the information they need to make the decision.
3. Clearly labeled content. Don’t make the visitor guess what each tab or accordion or additional page might contain. Use common speak when labeling your categories rather than some company specific lingo
4. If it is long consideration product, then provide downloadable additional collateral that the visitor can take always with them to share with others – such as white papers, data/specification sheet, case studies
5. Any other content that will help the visitor feel comfortable with the product – 3-D product view, product demo videos, etc.
6. Build Trust – Make sure that you provide information such as return policy, privacy policy, delivery information, etc. easily available on the PIP page.

Call to action: Once you have educated and convinced your visitor, what actions should they take? Here is the key to the question– don’t assume that the only action they want to take is to buy online right then and there. If the PIP page has done its job, then they should, but you cannot assume that. Hence you want to make sure that you provide a variety of call to action that the visitor might want to take (if applicable, and this is not a comprehensive list):

1. Add to cart
2. Free trial/sign up for any content
3. Call Now
4. Chat now
5. Email the product page to friend
6. Add to wish list / gift list
7. Print Product specifications

Of course, as usual, you must TEST, TEST and TEST to see what will work for your site and your visitors. To measure the success of your PIP page, I would recommend that you measure the following:

1. Click-through-rate on the call to actions
2. Average time spent on the page
3. Click-through-rate on product supporting links
4. Click-through-rate on other product links
5. Site abandonment rate on the PIP page

Why you need to make sure that your digital agency has a strong Usability group?

I am a big proponent of using digital agency. Why? They bring many benefits to the table –thought leadership in digital marketing; wealth of knowledge and past experiences from a wide variety of industry verticals; quick ramp up capabilities in resources; etc.

So, have I said anything up to now that many companies have not already thought about? No. So why right the post? The reason I am writing this post is because when companies are shopping for a digital agency, they make sure that there is compatibility in all areas expect one – Usability. And this is one of the key areas any company needs to think about. If an agency is able to create a good user experience, then all the work will be for not. So in the agency selection process, my recommendation is that you understand the following-

Does the agency have comprehensive usability strategy? This strategy should include not only designing the site or pages, BUT also actionable recommendations in the areas such as (Yes I believe that the following are part of online usability strategy):

1. Content strategy
2. Call to action strategy
3. Information Architecture strategy
4. Visitor feedback survey strategy
5. Nomenclature strategy
6. Post launch testing strategy

Is usability group used strategically by the company? The agency should be using its usability resources in the planning stages of campaign and their usability team should bring the following to the planning table:

1. Learning from previous campaigns of what has worked and what has not worked for a similar campaign for similar verticals
2. Industry research, benchmarks and best practices applicable to planned campaign.

Will the Agency have enough usability resources assigned to the account? You should find out from the digital agency if they have appropriate level of usability analysts in house. Again, quick and effective optimization of the site is key to online presence. If the agency has very limited usability resources, the question is, will your program get the appropriate level of attention at the right time from the usability resource?

Sample of usability work? Ask the Agency to provide sample of usability work similar to what you are thinking of running.

Four quick steps to improving the usability performance of the checkout process

1. Do Not Require Sign to place an Order: I am surprised how many sites, B2C and B2B, require visitors to sign in before they are able to make a purchase online. Why create roadblocks when you don’t have to. The visitor has taken the ultimate step you want them to take on your site; the best thing you can do is get out of their way and let them place an order.

If, for whatever reason, you have to have a login in your checkout process, then give the visitor an option to login as a guest. And at the same time provide a strong value proposition for creating an account with your site. Here is an example

2. No Surprise fees: Many customers are wary of shipping fees, especially when they are not shown in the shopping cart - what most customers may not realize is that shipping fees are dependent on the shipping address. So how do you balance the need to actually display shipping fees vs. avoiding the perception of hidden cost if you show shipping fees in the last step of the checkout process? By showing estimated shipping fees in the shopping cart and emphasizing the fact that it is estimated shipping cost that is subject to change. Here is an example

3. Build Trust: Web has given the consumers more venues to shop than ever before; but at the same time, it has also created a level of anxiety that consumers have not experienced before, even on well known brand sites. “What if I do not like the product?”, ‘What if the product is not what I want?”, “What if the product is defected?”, “Can I trust this company to exchange the product without any hidden costs?” etc are many of the questions that run thought the online consumers mind when they are looking to check out.

One of the best things that you can do in your checkout process is create trust in the mind of your customers at every step. Be upfront in addressing any concerns your customers might have and be ready to answer questions they might have at each step of the checkout process. Make sure that when addressing these questions, you use pop-up window to provide answers and not take them out of the checkout process.

4. Provide multiple payment options: Increasingly, online population is looking for different options when it comes to making payment for their purchase. Sadly, most of the e commerce sites are still stuck in the Credit card only mode. If a site offers only one payment option, then it might find it cart abandonment increase as more and more people adopt alternate payment options. Here is an example

Finally, you need to Test, Test and Test to improve the performance of your shopping cart!

4 metrics to help you identify usability issues on your B2B site

More and more B2B buyers are starting their search/research online and they look to product provider websites for content. Hence it is becoming ever more important for you to track and optimize the usability and usefulness performance of your sites.

How can we quickly identify any usability issues without going through extensive lab testing? And even if we are open to lab testing, what areas of the site should be testing? One way is to track some key web metrics to identify areas of concern. I have found the following four metrics to be some of the most important metrics to track to identify usability issues for B2B sites: (I am sure there are others)

Product page Call to action Click-through-rate:

Measurement = (Total clicks on Call to actions on Product Pages) / (Total visits to the product section)

Why this metric: Here we are trying to measure how effective is the content of the product page in convincing the visitor that the product is right for their needs

Average time spent on Product page:

Why this metric: This metric can help us understand if the visitor is engaging with the content on the product page. For example, if the average time spent on your product page is 30 second and you know that there is no way anyone can consume the complex content in that short of a time then it could be simply because the visitors found the page or content not very useful or usable.

Lead Funnel Completion Rate:

Measurement = (Total visitors who completed a conversion funnel) / (Total visitors who started the conversion funnel)

Note – Here we are trying to see how clean and clear are the conversion funnels on the site. This is THE most critical metric that we can track on the site.

Homepage bounce rate:

Measurement = (Total one Page visits to the Homepage) / (Total visits to the homepage)

Note – I hesitated in putting this metric- even though it is important. Why? Well because many companies will focus on trying to fix this performance first. Even though it is an important area of Site that must be fixed, it is NOT the first area that must be addressed!

Five tools you should have to optimize your site

1. Analytic tool

Why: If you do not know what is happening on your site, then how can you optimize it? This will not only give you general KPI trends on your site BUT also will tell you what the visitors on your site are doing.

Which one: Of course all the web analytic tool companies will tell you that their tool is the best, but in my experience they all are pretty much the same. The key here will be how effectively you are able to use the information from the tools to optimize your site performance. If you have limited budget then I would recommend going free with Google Analytics.

2. A/B testing tool

Why: Once you THINK you KNOW what is wrong with you site, you want to be TESTING out different designs, content and/or navigation. Again the idea is let your visitors tell you which of the changes to the site they like the best.

Which one: There are many options out there, such as – Sitespect, Optimost, Offermatica (now bought by Omniture), etc. I really do not have a favorite. If you have limited budget then I would recommend going free with Google’s website optimizer.

3. Online survey tool

Why: It has happened many times. You have analyzed the site performance and then you have A/B tested what you think should be the new site design, content and/or navigation. BUT the results remain the same. What happened? Well it seems that site visitors did not agree with the educated opinion of what is the problem with the site and diagnosis of that problem. To solve this puzzle you need to go directly to the site visitors and ask them what they think is the issue with site.

Which one: There are many options, such as – Usability Sciences, Foresee Results, iPerceptions, etc. I personally like usability sciences. If you have limited budget then I would recommend going free with 4Q online survey.

4. Secondary research:

Why: Many times, we all need a starting point of what should be changed to optimize the performance of site based upon what has worked in the past for other companies. This is not to say that it will work for your site also – it is just a nice point of reference. There is a lot of heuristics research that is available that you can and should use to optimize your site performance.

Which one: Here are some that you might find useful – Jared Spool at www.uie.com, Jakob Nielsen at www.useit.com, www.usability.gov/, Daily trending data from www.eMarketer.com

5. Screen capture tool

Why: A picture is worth a thousand words! When you see some design, content, idea or navigation that you like or think is effective, pay them a compliment – capture it and see if you can use it to optimize your site. Or use it just as an example of what to do or not to do.

Which on: The one that I have been using is Snag-it. But there are many free ones available as an add-on to Firefox.

When hiring usability analyst, what should you be looking for?

Your Usability Analyst should be a strategic partner of the owners of the online organization. This strategic partner should not only be the keeper of the lore – of what has happened in the past with the web site AND why – but also someone who would help to improve the current site AND helps in the planning of future site improvements.

One must recognize that an Usability Analyst is NOT an entry level job. A true Usability Analyst needs to have in-depth knowledge of the following four areas to become a true strategic partner of an organization

1. Online Usability: Of course an analyst needs to understand the fundamental understanding of the website usability. Please do note, web usability is very different than product usability
2. Online marketing: A good web usability analyst has to understand how the different a visitor can come to the site and how these different reference channels work
3. Statistics (though Analyst is NOT a Data puller but an Analyst DOES start with Data)
4. Online technologies

At the same time, an Analyst must develop the following soft skills-

1. Ability to work with people with different backgrounds in the company. Such as: Website owners/managers, designers, Copy writers, Agency partners, upper management, etc.
2. Build and give meaningful presentation to ALL levels of individuals in a company
3. Be an advocate for the Customer / User / Visitor of the company in online space
4. Ability to gather and see trends in customer/industry research (Primary and Secondary)
5. Ability to incorporate other people’s ideas into their recommendations
6. Ability to accept the fact that their recommendations are just that, recommendations. Testing is required to validate them.
7. Ability to accept the fact that recommendations which have worked for one program may not work for another
8. Ability to constantly educate themselves to stay on top of the new and upcoming things
9. Ability to ask a question Why – even when it is to yourself and your own preconceived notions of what are the best practices and what will or will not work.