A Reminder Lesson in the imporance of site design

**tombarr** · 07-04-2006, 06:41 AM

although we know from experience how critical web design is to the success of a site, we just had a hard reminder lesson given to us by our customers on one of our retail sites.

as our sales have grown substantially over the last few years, we knew we needed to update our shopping checkout pages to add new features, make more security checks, and make customers feel more secure with their purchase. We set about compiling all the features we would need to add, compiled a set of design features we calculated were important to customers, and then spent a good deal of money coding our new payment page system.....

we tested it, we internally evaluated it, and we had some friends in the business evaluate it.... and we got it all nice and shiny and launched it. We were doing 25 to 30 sales a day on the site before the remake on the pages.. We expected to maintain that level or even better with the new features which were designed to make shopping easier....

Within 24 hours of our launch we knew that our new payment pages were a complete failure! We got some very angry, frustrated emails from customers who did not like some of the new security features, or the layout or checkout process.
And our sales dropped to 2 sales in 24 hours on the same traffic average.... we saw people going into the shopping cart....but just not coming out the other side.

Looking at our page stats, we could actually see people bailing out in our pages....and it revealed a fatal flaw that we had over looked!

The more clicks you make a customer go through to spend money, the more sales you don't complete. We knew this! We knew this! We KNEW this! We went from 3 clicks on our old system to 5 on our new system, thinking the page layouts were more simple but failing to consider the number of clicks to the purchase point in our design.... We KNEW this! Talk about kicking ourselves in the butt!

Anyway, we redid the whole checkout process, got the new features, and now we do it all in 2 clicks for returning customers.. and sales are great...

A good lesson in remembering the importance of design and the number of clicks to the completion of an order.. ! We won't forget again!

maxpower · 07-04-2006, 07:05 AM

Ya I am about to start experiments with a very long page, 3 page tour for my new members site. I am not sure if the 3 pages are going to be to much will play with dropping it to 2 pages and maybe even 1 page. I am also going to play with deactivating some of the flash features “title” and some other things before I make it ready for affiliates. It is weird sometimes how viewers react to a site so as I look at it the more options I have the better. I have also gone a bit over board with the design to make it stands out and reassure people they are going to get a good site.

**Bec** · 07-04-2006, 10:42 AM

Thanks for a great post Tom ... sorry you had to go through that, but it really illustrates how important it is to get people from A to Z in the shortest amount of clicks possible, especially at the checkout point.

Now think you could go over and explain that to Godaddy ?!?! LOL

**tigermom** · 07-06-2006, 01:12 AM

Excellent post. I am not sure the same applies for tours though. If I understand correctly, you were referring to the number of clicks after your visitors reach the shopping cart page, i.e. after they have their mind set up on buying. With a tour, you are still trying to talk them into it, so that's a totally different stage there.

Marc · 07-06-2006, 01:23 AM

What an excellent post Tom and a great lesson. Thats awesome you were able to boil it all down in 2 clicks.

**tombarr** · 07-06-2006, 01:36 AM

The same definately applies to tours as well. The more clicks a customer makes can cause problems. For a while it reflects curiosity in your program. Longer and it reflects possible confusion or uncertainty... Too long and you cause frustration or boredom.

Tour creation is an art of seduction. You want them to be interested in your content, then you have to "stroke" them to get them turned on... (they are mostly already horny by virtue of the fact that they were surfing for porn already), and then you have to tease them to the point that they can't get their credit card out fast enough.

It's a dance of seduction. Think about it in offsite mentality...if someone you were turned on by was teasing you, teasing you more, teasing you more....but not giving you what you wanted, you would get bored or frustrated too, and just give up. The same holds true for a sufer trying
to buy online porn.

Do clicks count in tours... heck yes!

Originally Posted by tigermom

Excellent post. I am not sure the same applies for tours though. If I understand correctly, you were referring to the number of clicks after your visitors reach the shopping cart page, i.e. after they have their mind set up on buying. With a tour, you are still trying to talk them into it, so that's a totally different stage there.