The form was simple. The fields were Email Address and Password. The buttons were Login and Register. The link was Forgot Password.

We may have all seen this sort of form on any number of e-commerce sites. It’s there to help returning customers checkout quicker and direct new customers to sign-up to speed along future purchases. Seems harmless right?

I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.

New users often resent having to register for your site just to make a purchase. When you enter a brick-and-mortar store they don’t force you to register for their mailing lists before you can complete your transaction. Of course they ask – that’s to be expected.

Later, we did an analysis of the retailer’s database, only to discover 45% of all customers had multiple registrations in the system, some as many as 10. We also analyzed how many people requested passwords, to find out it reached about 160,000 per day. 75% of these people never tried to complete the purchase once requested.

Because many of the returning customers could not remember their email addresses and passwords used when originally signing up they resorted to creating a new account which in turn artificially inflated the database of users. Even many of the customers that requested their passwords did not go on to make a purchase presumably out of frustration with the process.

The Solution?

The designers fixed the problem simply. They took away the Register button. In its place, they put a Continue button with a simple message: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

Such a simple solution with the added benefit of eliminating a needless button.

And the results

The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000.

So $300,000,000 from realigning the way your form worked to cause less headache for your users. Are there any places on your site that might be costing you money? Not sure? User testing and asking your customers would be a great way to find out.

Read the whole story

RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.— Wikipedia

Imagine for a second that you could check the current deals of your favorite store online without actually have to visit their website and search for the “Hot Deals” or “Newest Specials”. This is the power of RSS. Unfortunately, a large portion of internet users have no idea what RSS is or how it may benefit them. This is a great opportunity to educate your customers and help them help themselves. As far as e-commerce goes the idea of using an RSS feed has only been applicable to the more tech-related industries. Does this mean that other retailers wouldn’t benefit from using RSS? In short, absolutely not.

The benefits of using RSS

• Saves time subscribing to specials and unadvertised deals. Check the latest RSS entries before going to work, or even while making dinner. Quick and effective marketing.
• Allows your customers to categorize their subscription in a way that works for them. If they only want to see your newest arrivals then provide a feed for the newest arrivals. You’re bound to get some sales from these customers.
• On-demand browsing. Customers can check their feeds as frequently as they’d like. This puts your users in control.

As RSS gains more popularity in the mainstream market it will become a more viable option for retailers in keeping their customers “in the loop.” It’s also a great way for you to keep tabs on your competitors and make sure your staying ahead. With services like Feedburner you are able to keep track of how many subscribers you have to your RSS feeds as well as how often they’re actually clicking through to check out your entries.

Feeds can also be used to keep your customers informed about upcoming features to your website, as well as, any other quick messages you’d like to get out without having to create a separate email blast just for this message.

Conclusion

For the customers that use RSS regularly you’ll be granting them access to everything they want when they want it and this will only increase their views of your company in the long run. Giving the users what they want will yield great rewards in the end.