Ok, after six years I’m happy to say that at last my dream is less than a week away from coming true, as I will become the proud owner of an English Bulldog. As most dog owners can relate, the past few weeks have been filled with reading everything I can about the breed and looking at every type of; crate, bedding, toy, and accessory “Kevin” could need.
As I have perused the Internet for some of Kevin’s items and accessories, I found countless websites focused on fully accessorizing your canine companion with everything imaginable from boots to rain jackets. During this search I came across one respectable retailer, who I was forced to “call to the mat” for their shopping experience and walk you through why I didn’t convert.
Orvis, the well known outdoor focused retailer, providing consumers with a wide variety of products while maintaining a commitment to nature and wildlife provides a dynamic eCommerce site to its customer base.
However, despite their honorable efforts around environmental sustainability and various charitable causes, it’s clear that their product pages on their eCommerce site could use a little “saving” as well.
Let’s examine the “Ultimate Fleece Wraparound Bed” to see where things could improve…
First things first, credit the Orvis team for providing both images and video of the product. And bonus points for providing great images of each product color offered. The fact is so many companies get lazy with the ability to view individual images of a product in multiple colors and we have seen this significantly hamper conversion.
Now let’s look at what we call the “Buy Box.” The information is all here, but it’s placement is questionable. The tiered pricing based on size is great but I have to look down in the details to see which size is best. The truth is the average consumer would much rather see this information displayed or reiterated within the buy box (certainly instead of the SKU number) as it provides confidence when purchasing.
The next issue comes after selecting the size in the first attribute setting, as this field then appears again in the “Select Options” section. Once this attribute is selected the first time it shouldn’t be an option again. From a backend standpoint, the SKU should have been determined with the “size” selection so there’s no reason for this to appear twice.
However, of all the things that “irk” me about this page, the worst offense came once I added this to my cart. Notice the other items “You Also Might Be Interested.” This is another classic mistake that is typically the result of laziness by e-tailers. Sure, I just bought a bed, but does it really make sense to try and sell me another bed? This type of proposed up-sell typically stems from a lack of time and consideration on what items should be linked together. As a result these items not only add little value to the shopping experience, they increase the chances of causing confusion around which product to purchase and ultimately may cause a user not to purchase due to indecisiveness.
At this point you have your customers so far into your “eCommerce Sales Funnel,” that sloppy mistakes can cause a significant disruption to your conversion rate. Make sure if you’re going to present upsells here, that the logic is there as to why you’re presenting those items. Remember, they should compliment not compete. Through our testing we’ve actually found presenting products that are just connected by similar category can actually hurt the performance of your site more than providing no upsells at all.
Ultimately, I didn’t buy this bed, not for any particular reason other than there wasn’t a glaring reason to buy. However, several little issues goes to show how easy it is to distract a “would be customer” and that even “the big boys” can work on the frontend usability of their site in order to turn more shoppers into customers.
But for the record, Groove would be happy to provide some additional consultation for a few of those dog beds for Kevin to try out. (Hey a guy’s gotta try, this dog ownership stuff is expensive…)
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