Online Merchandising. Bricks and mortar stores figured out the merchandising game long ago. They put the dairy on one side of the store and the produce on the other side, so that you have to walk through the store to purchase the two most popular categories. They learned to put impulse items at the checkout counter – where you will throw them in your cart. They use high-value end-cap real estate to their maximum advantage (did you ever see slow-moving product on an end-cap?)

Are you using your web real estate as well? Is your best selling product on your home page? Is your most important salesperson, i.e. your on-site search, returning a manageable number of relevant answers? Or do you have the ultimate salesperson: live chat? Are you offering free shipping for larger orders – few promotions work as well as this oldie-but-goodie.

Are your prices featured prominently, right on your category pages? (The supermarket doesn’t make you guess what you’ll pay.) Do you have a site map? (The shopping mall tells you where to find things, why don’t you?) Is your product guaranteed, and do you feature your guarantee prominently? Why don’t you look at our guarantee?

Not all bricks and mortar merchandising is transferable to the web. For example, the supermarket has the luxury of putting products on opposite walls so that you have to walk through the store, but you don’t have the same luxury. That’s because once the shopper has driven to the store, hassled with the kids, parked the car, and come in the door, he probably want to get both the milk and the fruit. On the other hand, the web is easy to access, and the visitor can leave from any page, so you can’t force him to walk through your virtual store – in fact, you’re smartest to make it easy for him to purchase exactly what he came for.

Moreover, not all best practices will work for your site. There’s no doubt that you will get more whitepaper downloads if you ask for less information, but does making the visitor work to fill out your form result in a better-qualified lead? Are customers more likely to purchase if the button says “Buy Now” or “Add to Shopping Cart Now?” Only testing will enable you to get definitive answers to these questions.

After we do a website conversion rate assessment, we put together a table of suggested changes with a timeline that includes an opportunity to test, measure and if successful, roll out. That’s one of the many ways we increase your conversion rate.

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