Don’t Forget to Cross-Sell
Most communications professionals will tell you that one message is better than two–people have limited attention spans and they don’t take in new messages all that easily when they’re being bomboarded.
But when it comes to ecommerce and website design, making sure there are opportunities for people to let their minds wander is really a key part of the user experience. How many times have you been looking at something on Amazon only to click on their “related products” or “products other people have bought” if only because they caught your eye or made you laugh?
Shopping is inherently a hunting process, and while some people like a cut and dry, in-and-out approach to shopping, most of us like to linger a little while and consider our options.
Therefore websites should offer those kinds of options for shoppers/customers with “related posts” on blogs and related/suggested/trending products on product pages and several different ways to browse products both in the navigation and on the home page. This isn’t to say that things should be cluttered or confusing–in fact, both can hinder a shopping experience and cause people to leave the website right away, but it allows for visitors to experience your site in ways that suit them.
Client Case Study: A New Website
In the last two weeks, we’ve helped a client launch a new site that puts all of the aforementioned principals into practice (multiple browsing options, home page with lots of curated shopping experiences, related products/posts featured) and we’ve seen great early results with a 159% increase in number of pages visited per session and a 27% decrease in bounce rate over the previous 8-day period. The bounce rate has also been extremely consistent since the launch of the new site. These are the kinds of results that we hope to see when we put a new site into action, and we’re excited to keep monitoring to see how things go.
In other news….I’ll be at Content Marketing World this coming September 8-11 with the Convince & Convert team. If you’re going to be there, please come say hello!
