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Archive for March, 2009

Increase revenue through better purchasing processes

Mar 25

Hello, Thank you for visiting - I hope that you will find useful information. Leave a comment but if you have any comments on the subject.

Website. The ordering process is the most important part of any eCommerce site. For this reason, it makes sense to address this issue more intensely, for each optimization can increase conversion rates and lead to higher sales.

Seek and ye shall find ... or not
The user should order the goods will be made ​​as simple as possible. It starts with the fact that the most important elements for a purchase to be made ​​clear.

The ordering process begins with the "Add to Cart" button beside the relevant product. Therefore should be employed on the product page that this button is placed well visible.

Therefore:

  • The button must have a unique label that encourages the user to click.
  • The button should be graphically designed and conspicuously placed near the top in the visible area of ​​the site immediately.
  • In addition, the actual cart are clearly marked. For the user must be clear what happens after you add a product to your basket. Questions such as: Where has landed the product? Where is the cart? How can I proceed with your order? must be answered already in the run-through design, layout and names.

A good example to visualize it added to the cart, for example, the Tyrol is advertising for your brochure order chosen. By the order button a javascript animation flies toward the basket. Thus, the user is immediately clear where the selected products can be found. In addition, brochures already selected are marked with a gray button.

Tirol Werbung - Visualisierung des Bestellvorgangs

Tirol Werbung - visualization of the ordering process

Logically, that the above-mentioned points for the checkout button, so the "Checkout" button in the cart is exactly the same. This could cause even the addition ("You can cancel the order, at any time") as a positive impact. Since, however, vary according to target group and design, can I recommend here to perform more accurate tests. Based on the results one can then decide well whether the addition is needed or not.

An online shop is not a supermarket
Although supermarkets, the sale of candy, etc. at the box office does not work very well for online shops. In the online shop, we have unfortunately not the advantage that any buyer must pass at the ticket office. On the website it's much easier to cancel the purchase, but a simple click is enough on the red X on the right top of your browser, banners or other links. Precisely for this reason should be avoided all distractions in the ordering process. - Schnack ” kann auf der Website betrieben werden, allerdings nur bis max. In other words, cross selling, product placement and similar "bells - and whistles" can be operated on the site, but only up to max. add to cart. Once the customer has decided to purchase and begin the ordering process should be avoided all distractions.

Very beautiful is the industry leader released from the Amazon. Once you click on the button "Checkout" clickt, a separate page opens, which is only for the purchase of necessary information. Without using the Back button of your browser, it is no longer possible to return to the previous page.

Konzentration auf das Wesentliche bei Amazon

Focusing on the essentials at Amazon

Trust and transparency are important
Confidence-building measures can help inhibitions about an online order of time. These could now safely write to each point a separate post. Maybe I'll do it once, but since much is self-explanatory I'll leave now, even with a list of some items is not exhaustive.

  • eCommerce Certification
  • Privacy Policy placed on the website
  • Additional costs such as shipping fees, transparent, and identify as early as possible in the order process
  • Possibilities of exchange and return state
  • Payment of target countries to adapt. If only credit card offers, this can present an obstacle.
  • Integration of descriptive help text
  • Note on a service hotline
  • Clear description of the steps in the ordering process.

Testing, Testing, Testing
In addition, ongoing testing of important details and also extremely interesting. sehr viel bewirken. In order processes can often little things like the color and positioning of an order button, causing a great deal. To be sure whether a development is an improvement but really it makes sense abzutesten something, for example, with Google Website Optimizer.
You can as well be inspired by the course leaders in the industry, because here one can assume that very many usability tests were conducted. But even then ... test, test, test ... there are no easy recipes and it will not be about the same. Age, origin and affinity of the target computer can impact heavily on individual units of varying detail on the performance details.

4 Comments

Posted in eCommerce

Google Analytics Custom Reports

19 Mar

For all who have specific requirements for statistics in Google Analytics, there is the possibility to create custom reports. Through these reports, for example, the individual most important KPIs (key performance indicators) are presented clearly, subsequently, you can make the appropriate reports and automatically send e-mail. This will let a lot of time saving, especially if one advances to customers, supervisors, etc. must provide a regular reporting. Depending on the target can thus be reconstructed currently available in Google Analytics reports and expanded with additional values ​​or simplified and reduced to a minimum.

Such reports can be easily set up under the menu item "Custom Reporting" in Google Analytics. Using drag and drop the required report may be compiled. There are the following fillable fields:

Measured data (blue)
The measured data are the values ​​that are represented as a column later in the report.

Dimensions (green)
On all dimensions is a value that is represented Later in the rows. By sub-dimensions it is possible to nest these values. In the subsequent report will be called when clicking on a value the same table with a changed line contents.

Tabs (gray)
About tabs, multiple reports combine, much like individual tables in Excel.

In addition, there is a Google term definition of all available statistical values, this can can be very helpful. Because who knows right away the difference between take-offs and exits.

So much for the relatively straightforward theory is interesting but the whole thing now in practical use. In addition I have compiled some potentially useful reports.

Landing Page Performance
This is a report in which the performance of different landing pages can be compared. By inserting the exit at bottom of page click on the entry page name and the exit side is visible.

Bericht: Landingpage Performance

Report: Landing Page Performance

Adwords Campaign Reporting
In this report, I have figures for Adwords campaigns together. You can click here beautiful display of the group about the campaign, the campaign content campaign by position.

Bericht: Adwords Kampagnen Report

Report: Adwords Report

Visitors to Quality Referrals
In the last example is a little reamed version of the referrer statistics. Here are some interesting values ​​are given in addition.

Bericht: Refererqualität

Report: Referrerqualität

They were now only a few examples as an inspiration and as always, applies here, that the individual must adapt to their own needs. Without e-commerce tracking, it makes little sense, for example, can spend revenues, etc. But when I'm always on the lookout for useful evaluations ... feel free and leave a comment with your favorite reports. Looking forward your comments and suggestions.

1 Comment

Posted in Web Analytics

Blog of the week's magazine t3n

Mar 16

Usually try to stay on the blog so more objectively, today to celebrate the day but I must point out in their own right on the blog the week of t3n magazine. Said magazine has named my blog this week that is on your site to the blog of the week. Thank you very much for this to the guys and Mädls (if it because there should be any) from t3n magazine. On this occasion, even a short interview was published. For all who are interested, here said contribution is to be found .
The closest real contribution to the subject "Google Analytics Custom Reports' then there's Thursday.

2 Comments

Posted in This & That

Email strategy planning - creating a mailing concept

Mar 13

The development of a mailing concept is often neglected or reduced to a minium. "We send a newsletter quarterly yes", you get to the question about a mailing strategy often heard. However, a consistent use of the medium can someone go far beyond. Especially in e-commerce sector, it has become an essential customer retention and sales agents.

Primarily it's about a good mix of automated and manually create threads mailings. This one describes the design process at best a fictitious user of the registration / purchase to Newsletterabbestellung. Depending on the website it can easily happen that there are several scenarios for this must be. Thus, the example being a B2C and a B2B User and press representatives. The whole can then be visualized as follows nicely in a diagram.

Mailing Strategieplanung

Mailing strategy planning

Elements of the concept can be for example the following mailings:

Welcome mail
Welcome email after registration. This message should tell the user what value he receives directly from the registry and what steps are to do next. For example: "Thank you for registering, you are now here to enter your personal profile"

Info Newsletter
May include classical newsletters of a healthy mix of information and offers. It is important above all a value for the subscribers to offer. Thus, for example, offers tips on making better use of a product to integrate special offers exclusively for newsletter subscribers or games.

Standalone / campaign mailings
Mailing in which only a single product is presented. This mail should be sent only to subscribers relevant groups, because there is a risk that users feel disturbed.

Hot News
Relatively simple mail for which current information as quickly and easily can be sent.
Objective: Rapid information of the subscribers on current events such as traffic jams, etc.

Collect user data
Special mailings to the user clearly divided into user groups. This may for example be releases with the linking of two topics. All subscribers have clicked on the thread 1 will then follow in subsequent newsletters on the subject of A. For more information on the user data collection I have in my post: " user data to determine elegant and serious , "explains. In general, this process is integrated with other mailings, but as I point to an important increase in efficiency, I can see it here again listed separately.

Purchase termination
Registered users can cancel the order process automates a mail with the selected and alternative products. In addition, should evidence of shipping conditions, FAQs or missing not return. Orders are often canceled due to insecurity. Uncertainty about additional shipping costs, payment methods, or uncertainty in the operation play an important role. These uncertainties should be taken exactly in the mail as much as possible.

Birthday Mailing
Automated Geburtsstagsmails with a small bonus for the user are always well. XING mailings sent as birthday with Free Premium Schnupperabos. Such actions are usually well received by customers and encourage the purchase.

Winback Program
Users who no longer could long have logged into the site an email with the motto: "We miss you" get. Depending on the website and product can mail this user

But again, like so everywhere, the whole concept must be individually appropriate to the company, target group, matched to available resources and products are. So it may be that a monthly newsletter is absolutely sufficient, or even that additional mailings must be included. Moreover, in practice, often used mixed forms.

1 Comment

Posted in eMarketing

Nicer underlining

Mar 11

The regularly bother me quite ugly and not great Typographically underlining that are normally found on the web. Specifically, it bothers me that the descenders of the characters are crossed out and the whole effect urged by much. For this reason, I went over to the actually intended for this purpose and common days CSS text-decoration: underline; to boycott. I think it's much nicer than the underlining command to implement border-bottom.

For typographic point of view this is still not the optimal solution, since not meet the descenders and underlining. Therefore, the scope could still put on a pixel downwards. Depending on the font, font size and line spacing, but that can gobble up too much space. So I used on this distance Siete no.

The 3 variants in comparison:

? View Code HTML 
  text-decoration: underline;
 border-bottom: 1px solid;
 border-bottom: 1px solid; padding-bottom: 1px;

Typography

Not so nice ...

Typography

Perfect ... in this view, at small point sizes, but also touching descenders and underlining.

Typography

For small Schriftgröen favorite playing grounds ... the best choice

It's this time but only a little but this little note from my perspective and I immediately start calling for "more beautiful underlines". Apart from this there are still many more typographic sins on the Web, but to another time.

No Comments

Posted in Graphics & Design

Google Analytics Filter make life easier!

04 Mar

Filters in Google Analytics are a very handy and powerful tool at the same time. This makes it possible to manipulate the statistics data, extract, or even integrate. For this reason I have compiled some practical examples to explain the operation of the filter in Google Analytics.

Basically, the filters can filter manager, who is linked on the Google Analytics Overview page under the site profiles are created. The following examples must be assigned to each at the end of a site profile, only the data of the corresponding profile manipulation.

Requests from their IP addresses to exclude
This is the classic of the filter, the self-inflicted traffic is hereby excluded.

Filter Type: Exclude all traffic from an IP address
IP address: 193.0.0.0

Google Analytics - IP ausfiltern

More information will include an explanation on how to exclude IP ranges I've explained in this article:
Google Analytics filter out its own IP (Part 2)

Full referrer Show

The referrer is not Google Analytics represented completely. This filter is a workaround for the entire Referring URL impersonate user-defined segment.

Filter Type: Custom Filter -> Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: link (*.)
Field B -> B extrahierern: leave blank
Output in -> Constructor: User Defined $ A1 segment
Field A Required: Yes
Field B Required: No
Override Output Field: Yes
Case Sensitive: No

Google Analytics - Filter für vollständige Referrer

Then we get the statistics in which one Google Analytics within the referrer statistics page, the dimension of the Referrerauflistung on "Custom Value" surrounded.

Url shortening

If all the pages can be tracked in the same subdirectory of the urls shown for clarity will be reduced. The example below assumes that all pages of this blog in / blog / lie. Across the filter the directory name is removed.

Filter Type: Custom Filter -> Find and Replace
Filter Field: Request URI
Search string: grafixx.at / blog /
Replacement string: /
Case Sensitive: No

Google Analytics Filter: Url verkürzen

SEO rankings tracking

This filter is more complex, but also more powerful than the previous one. Here, the referrer URL will be processed like regular expression. If there is an access via Google, is issued within Google Analytics, the position of the entry in the Google search results.

Filter Type: Custom Filter -> Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Reference (\ | &?) Q = ([^ &] *)
Field B -> Extract B: Reference (? \ | &) Start = ([^ &] *)
Output in -> Constructor: User Defined segment $ A2 (Page: $ B2)
Field A Required: Yes
Field B Required: No
Override Output Field: Yes
Case Sensitive: No

Google Analytics Filter: Seo Tracking

Then we get the statistics in which one Google Analytics on the inside of keyword statistics page, the dimension of the keyword list to "Custom Value" surrounded. In this Satistik is no page specified is the first page, beyond 10 stands for page 2, 20 for Page 3, etc.

URLs converted to lowercase

A relatively simple filter but the clarity is greatly increased. With this filter, all lowercase URLs and thus not only listed once.

Filter Type: Custom Filter -> Advanced
Filter Field: Request URI

Google Analytics Filter: Urls klein schreiben

Traffic from Social Media platforms track

With this filter requests from social networking platforms (in this example: Facebook, Twitter and Xing) are summarized in the campaigns Statstik under the term social media.

Filter Type: Custom Filter -> Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Campaign Source facebook | twitter | xing
Field B -> Extract B: leave blank
Output To -> Constructor: Campaign Media Social Media
Field A Required: Yes
Field B Required: No
Override Output Field: Yes
Case Sensitive: No

Google Analytics Filter: Social Media Tracking

Then we get the statistics in which one Google Analytics within the campaign stats page, the dimension of the keyword list to "Medium" surrounded.

They were even a few for now hopefully useful filter. This may or must of course be adapted to the exact needs of the respective website.

27 Comments

Posted in Web Analytics