Tweet

How To Yield a 7 Percent Sales Increase With An Incredibly Easy Redesign

Written by: Karen Scharf

Article Overview: I have some very interesting split test results that I think will really surprise you. Here's the story of a major retailer who increased sales over 7% by going against conventional wisdom.

How To Yield a 7 Percent Sales Increase With An Incredibly Easy Redesign

I have some very interesting split test results that I think will really surprise you. Here's the story of a major retailer who increased sales over 7% by going against conventional wisdom.

Conventional web design tells us to minimize the number of clicks it takes for your visitor to make a purchase. So Michael was pretty satisfied with his clear, graphical web design. Upon entering the home page, the visitor was met by three big, fat, colorful "buy now" buttons - one for each product - neatly lined up next to each other. Clicking either button took the visitor directly to the check out page.

There wasn't a lot of clutter on the page, and the text was very minimal. Michael didn't want to confuse or distract his visitors so he made it as easy as possible: one click was all it took to make a purchase.

But he noticed that lots of visitors abandoned their shopping carts after clicking the buy now button. Obviously something was wrong. Time for a split test...

The original page was kept as-is, a second page was designed as Page B and a third page as Page C.

On Page B, the buy now buttons were lined up vertically instead of horizontally and simple "more information" text links were added underneath each buy now button. Even though the products for sale were "no brainer" commodities, the suspicion was that some visitors still wanted a little more info before making a purchase.

On Page C, the buttons were replaced with text-only links, also aligned vertically, and more complex, text-heavy links were added under the buttons.

Now I will admit, most people who saw design C thought it would never work. It was too cluttered, there wasn't enough white space and there were too many distractions.

Turns out they were wrong. In fact, 40% of visitors clicked the "learn more" links, and Page C resulted in a sales increase of over 7%. I can't exactly explain why the third design was more effective, but it's possible that web users have simply been "trained" to scan down the page looking for text links, rather than scan across looking at graphics (think Google SERPs). And, in these days of banner blindness, maybe the colorful, glaring buy buttons were almost invisible. I can't give you a definite answer, but what ever the reason for its success, this simple redesign is worth a try.

Time to implement: This redesign is incredibly easy since all it involves is text - no need to create any graphics at all. Redesigning the page should take less than half an hour. The time consuming part comes in creating the new product information pages to link to; but hopefully, those will already exist. And, as always, I recommend that you perform a split test before making any changes permanent. Everyone's target market is different.

Related Articles
  When Is the Right Time to Redesign
  80/20 – You Keep Hearing It – But What Are You Doing About It?
  Guerrilla Effectiveness
  Why Small Businesses Won’t Double Their Revenue This Year
  Local Search Continuing To Gain Steam

Article Tags: increase sales, web design



Related Forum Posts
Re: How To Grow Your Business On A $0 Advertising Budget – Ask E - Wow. Incredibly useful information, Evan. Thanks! I have a lot of stuff to read and watch once I return next week. I suppose I should also be trying to get my other chief officers to frequent your blog posts, as well.
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Seek Venture Capital & Funding - Hello, Greetings from India. I am Seeking Venture Capital for Offshore Software Company Start-up. Need advise along with Business Model Sample. I have a basic outline for an offshore company. 1. Technology - like Microsoft Dot Net, Java, LAMP 2. Talent Team - Found Good Technology Developers. 3. Where I can get the leads/potential customers - Leads have been identified who are willing to move forward offshore projects. 4. I do not have resources like funding. It is a very critical factor to me Industries: Manufacturing, Real Estate, Retail, Insurance, Distribution & Logistics, Healthcare, Industry Associations and Software Product Development, Agricultural Industries and Etc. Services: Offshore Software Development Company. Offices to be located: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India and USA. Products/Services/Applications in areas like POS & Billing, Sales & Distribution, Production Planning, Material Management, Inventory Control, Plant Maintenance, Purchasing, Accounting and Logistics. Dynamic Web Programming with Database Driven Content Management Systems, Online Stores for E-Commerce, B2B Solutions, Community Portals, Website Redesign and Development, Custom ERP with Enterprise Wide Functional Modules such as Marketing, CRM, Accounting, Inventory Control, Sales & Distribution, Production Planning, Purchase & Stores, Logistics and Supply Chain. Seek your further questions and help. Thank you, Best Regards, Jayapratap.
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Good News Travels Fast

Do You Deserve To Be Happy and Successful?

ROSI Return on SUNK Investment

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.