Two weeks ago, we did a Facebook free giveaway for a Conversion Review. The lucky winner was the webshop Indigobox Jewels. In this post, I’ll highlight a few of the most important things we’ve come across during the review.

I’ll first go through the website as if I were a visitor who wants to buy something. After that, I’ll dive in a bit deeper by going into some interesting data from Google Analytics. You will be shown a screenshot of every step, which I will comment on with what could be improved. That way, you’ll be able to see everything I’m talking about.

Homepage

If I were to come onto the website at the homepage, this would be my first view:

The design isn’t bad, but there are definitely a few things that could be improved on this homepage:

1. The menu doesn’t look like the menu of a webshop. Sure, it has the menu-item shop. But is that what you’d expect from a webshop? No, you’d expect categories in the menu. Everything in this menu should be in a top menu or even a footer. The menu bar you’re seeing there should show categories: Rings, Watches, Earrings, etc.
2. The slider takes up a lot of space, and doesn’t really do anything useful. There are no buttons or calls-to-action in there that could convince me to click through to that item. And even if it did: research has shown that just 1% will actually click the first slide. No one will click any other slide.
3. There’s a HUGE free shipping call-to-action in the middle there, but I can’t click it! And even if I could click it, should this really be the focus of this homepage? No. The focus should be on getting people to click products, or going to one of the category pages.
4. The other calls-to-action are way too boring. They’re black ‘Add to cart’ buttons, that don’t really make me want to click them at all. Testing with a different color, but especially shape and size could give some good results.
5. Lastly, who are you? Why should I buy my products with you? Try to gain some trust from your visitors. Don’t just throw on a few products on a website and think people will start buying it. People will want to know their money is safe.

Category page

I’m not fully sold on any of the products on the homepage, so I’ll click the ‘Shop’ menu item. Here’s what I’m seeing next:

Here are the things I’d do differently on this page:

1. This is exactly why the categories should be in the menu. If I’m not interested in necklaces, or that one bracelet I’m seeing, I need to click again, choosing one of the categories on the left.
2. There’s way too much emphasis on the filtering option. There’s a black button there, that at the moment seems just as important as the ‘Add to cart’ buttons.
3. I’m surprised by the fact that there’s suddenly a “sale” section! Why didn’t I get to see that on the homepage? I’m always interested in getting something cheaper! And these seem like some good discounts, so why isn’t there more emphasis on this?
4. I’m missing a lot more filter options here, actually. Why can’t I filter on what material the products are made of, for instance?

Product page

So lets say I was interested in the top left necklace, and wanted to learn a bit more about it. I’d click the ‘View more…’ link and get to this page:

This is quite a disappointing page to me. Here’s why:

1. I clicked the ‘View more…’ button! Why isn’t there actually more to view? I’m getting the same picture! Granted, I can now click on the image to enlarge it, but it’s still the same image. I’d love a 3D picture of the item.
2. There’s no product description! This just makes that heading ‘Product Description’ even more painful, because it’s just the name of the item there. Try to give as much detail about the product as you can, including material used, size, weight, etc.
3. There are no reviews. This doesn’t really spark my trust. Did no one like this product? It’s really important that you get some reviews on your products. And if you don’t have any on your products, include reviews on your webshop! Don’t just leave it empty.

It all comes down to creating an experience that comes as close to ‘the real thing’ as possible. What I mean by this is that people want to get the information they’d also get by holding the product in their hands and looking at it.

Shopping cart page

Now, if I were interested in buying, I’d click the ‘Add to cart’ button. This is the page I get to see then:

Now there are two obvious problems with this:

1. If I just wanted the one product, why can’t I go to the cart immediately? This should at least be an option next to the ‘Add to cart’ button.
2. The blue bar at the top there is to guide you to the cart. That’s just not enough emphasis for someone who’s just added something to the cart. This should pop out a lot more.

I’ll click on the ‘View Cart’ text link next:

There’s a lot going on here, especially for a cart:

1. I put something of $15.95 in my cart, but now the order total shows me $22.18?Unexpected costs are the #1 reason for people to abandon their shopping cart. Sure, I could’ve guessed that I’d have to pay some shipping, because I’m not over the $25 limit, but the tax, at least, should be included.
2. There’s absolutely no focus on this page. There’s three calls-to-action fighting for attention. The only distinction is that the ‘Proceed to Checkout’ button is slightly bigger. That’s too small a distinction. The ‘Apply Coupon’ and ‘Update Cart’ buttons should simply be text links.
3. Why is that Calculate Shipping text link there? The shipping fee is already there, isn’t it? This makes it all confusing and very uncertain for someone who wants to purchase something. In conjunction with that note text there (“Note: Shipping and taxes are estimated (taxes estimated for the United States) and will be updated during checkout based on your billing and shipping information.”), this doesn’t really make me trust this is the end price.
4. Why is there no message telling me “order for just $9.05 more, and get free shipping!”? The shipping is at least $4.95, so a quick little sum tells me that would actually just cost me $4.10 more. So this is definitely something any webshop owner should be pushing!
5. Lastly: I’m missing a progress bar. Let me know how far ahead I am in the process of ordering your product. This will lead to gamification, which means more people will finish the whole process, and more quickly.

Checkout page

I don’t want to apply any coupon, update the cart or calculate any shipping, so I’ll click ‘Proceed to Checkout’:

There are a few things here that meet my eye:

1. I just went to the checkout page, and I’m confronted with these ‘error’ type messages. These should really be a lot less intrusive, because now it looks like I’ve done something wrong.
2. See that small text next to Shipping Address? That says ‘Ship to some other address’. This is really hard to read, so that should definitely be a lot bigger.
3. I’m missing my order here. That’s all the way at the bottom of the page. I don’t want to fill in all my details before I can make sure the order is alright. So the details about what I ordered should actually be on top.
4. There’s only one payment option on this page: PayPal (can’t be seen on the screenshot). If people see your website has (multiple) trustworthy credit card logos, they’ll feel safer on your website! Maybe even more important: 59% will simply abandon their transaction if the preferred payment option isn’t available.
5. You should really use inline validation, which I’ve already written about in a previous post about our own checkout page. Giving people direct feedback will gamify the process of filling in your form fields. This will make it more likely they fill in the entire form!

Google Analytics

Of course the front end part of the purchase process is very important for conversion rate optimization, but when it comes down to it, the base of it all is data. And that’s why you need Google Analytics. However, in order to get useful data out of Google Analytics, there are a few things you need to do. Especially if you have a webshop.

Goals

The setup of the Google Analytics of Indigobox Jewels was missing goals. Goals are a very important measurement for any kind of website really. No matter what kind of website you have, there’s always something you want your visitors to do. And that’s why you set up goals, to see how many of your visitors are actually doing what you want them to.

Goals allow you to see how many people start in your so called ‘funnel’, and how many proceed to the next step in this funnel. This allows you to see the conversion rate of every step. Obviously this tells you a lot about where you have the most room for improvement, which is invaluable data in itself.

Ecommerce tracking

Ecommerce tracking is the tracking of your revenue. This is a must for anyone selling anything through their website. Unfortunately, Indigobox Jewels were missing a setup for ecommerce tracking as well.

With ecommerce tracking, not only can you keep track of what your revenue has been for any given period of time, but it also shows you which pages are worth the most. Google Analytics calculates this by measuring which pages eventually led to a sale 1 or 2 steps down the road. In knowing this, you know which pages to put more focus on, and which pages can use some improvement.

Mobile traffic

When going through the Google Analytics of Indigobox Jewels, I noticed the site had a very high percentage of mobile visitors:

And the orange piece of the pie there is the percentage of visitors on a tablet. This is nearly 60% on mobile devices! With numbers like these, you need to make sure your mobile website is up to par. And if you’re selling things on your website, your purchase process should be working flawlessly on mobile devices as well.

Indigobox Jewels had a pretty nicely responsive website, but there was room for a few improvements on their cart page:

As you can see, the menu and header take up a lot of space on a smartphone. Half of the screen is taken by it, in fact. The call-to-action to go to the checkout page was a long way down. You always have to make sure your most important call-to-action of every page is easily accessible, even on mobile devices. And apart from that, make sure everything fits and doesn’t “fall off” the page on a mobile device. Having your total not completely visible, as in the screenshot above, will definitely not help your conversion rate.

Optimizing for mobile devices

Optimizing for mobile devices can be quite bothersome. There are always hard choices to make, but some choices you can’t go without. With Indigobox Jewels this was the amount of visitors accessing their website using iDevices:

Of their mobile traffic, 52.7% came from an iPhone, and 21.2% came from an iPad. So if there’s any place to start the optimization for mobile devices, it’s with iDevices, in Indigobox Jewels’ case. Always check your statistics to make sure you’re making the right choices.

That’s it!

As said, this is only a small part of what we’re looking into during our Conversion Reviews. Do you have any questions or remarks? Let me know in the comments!

This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!