Be Like Google - Always Be Testing

Posted Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 by Mike Pantoliano, in eCommerce Web Site Design

Google finds itself far atop the competition in the overall search engine market share. The latest report from Net Applications has them at 80% of the global market share. Even with that level of domination, Google tests literally everything. If you’re not testing your eCommerce store, you should take a cue from Google. Read on for the Who, What, Why, and Hows of testing.

Over the last few days, it has been reported that Google has begun testing an AJAX interface for their search results. This would be quite a major change to the user experience (not to mention it would knock out rank checking tools, among many other things). However, its not always big changes that Google tests, as a few weeks ago it was reported that they were experimenting with adding favicons to the results pages as well.

For the eCommerce store owner, there should always be an effort to improve conversion rate through testing, be it experimentation with layout changes, different calls to action, moving page elements around, or different copy. Free tools like the Google Website Optimizer make it quite simple to track single or multivariate changes and their effect on conversion over time.

Setting up Website Optimizer is really quite simple, and there’s loads of support docs, YouTube videos, and community forums that can help should a problem arise. A great place to start is the checkout process. Try testing a subtle change like the size of a call to action button over a period of time. Even if that test is inconclusive, it may be a great way to get your feet wet, and won’t take much effort at all to set up. After that test is over, try something bigger like removing the navigation from the checkout process, or adjusting the layout of forms. Even an improvement of 10% in your conversion rate is worth the effort, because at the end of the year, wouldn’t you like to have 10% more orders tacked on to your bottom line?

In addition to Website Optimizer, there are some very cool feedback tools available that can help in bringing your customer’s opinions to your attention. Kampyle and 4Q are two free tools that can be easily installed and customized to your liking. It can be quite difficult to effectively critique your own storefront, so let your customer’s feedback guide the way.

For some more testing inspiration, I’d highly recommend picking up Bryan Eisenberg’s Always Be Testing, which features over 250 testing ideas and tons of tips on increasing conversion through testing.

Don’t let your eCommerce store stagnate while your competitors are making changes and investing in their storefront. Always be testing.