Tag Archives: e-commerce Blog

Making Your Website Intuitive

People don’t want to think, they want to buy. Making a website intuitive makes it a delight to use, which gives users a great experience and increases the likelihood of conversion.

In an intuitively designed webpage, the constituent elements are built and organized in such a way that the user can access information, navigate, and transact naturally and effortlessly. Intuitive design is inconspicuous, but not necessarily unremarkable.

To make sites aesthetically pleasing, designers often sacrifice usability. This is a crime, considering that if the user does not find a clear value proposition within the first 10 seconds, they are very likely going to bail out. The site needs to make its purpose obvious through its design.

This article offers ideas to make your website more intuitive, create better calls to action, and delight visitors by making it easier for them to find what they’re looking for and complete a transaction.

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The Religion of Tech

This article takes us briefly outside the matrix of modern technology. As cool, helpful, and exciting as today’s tech may be, the ideology behind it is, in this author’s view, founded on a body of beliefs that users readily accept but that serve creators and purveyors far more than consumers who end up paying for products they don’t truly own, and give away personal information over which they no longer have control.

The greatest of the United States’ homegrown religions – greater than Jehovah’s Witnesses, greater than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, greater even than Scientology – is the religion of technology … By spreading a utopian view of technology, a view that defines progress as essentially technological, they’ve encouraged people to switch off their critical faculties and give Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and financiers free rein in remaking culture to fit their commercial interests.

For many, especially younger consumers, notions of privacy and surveillance are no concern. For others, this is the dawn of the ‘Big Brother’ society, which gives unprecedented power to those who control technology, commerce, and information. If the latter is the case, how can a society founded on principles of individual freedom and liberty be led down such a path so easily?

John Kenneth Galbraith coined the term ‘innocent fraud.’ He used it to describe a lie or a half-truth that, because it suits the needs or views of those in power, is presented as fact. After much repetition the fiction becomes common wisdom. ‘It is innocent because most who employ it are without conscious guilt,’ Galbraith wrote in 1999. ‘It is fraud because it is quietly in the service of special interest.’ The idea of the computer network as an engine of liberation is an innocent fraud.

It might be a good time to take our eyes off our screens to consider how far technology has come and how quickly power is shifting. As we become more dependent on our devices and connections and the entities that provide and manage them become more consolidated and enriched, is unquestioning faith still justified?

Read full article: http://bit.ly/2cdWNN4

Understanding Users

In the end, we’re all users. No, not the manipulators who want to steal someone’s time, money, or ideas, but the everyday people who use technology. Those of us that create solutions from tech often take users for granted or consider them with disdain when we see the ‘mistakes’ they make while ‘using’ our latest product. But we all know what it’s like to be left adrift by technology that hasn’t been well thought out or whose developers have made assumptions about us that are ill-founded at best. This article sheds light on tech from the users’ end, which can serve as a guide when we’re designing something with the goal of someone doing business with us online. The quick take-aways? Make it easy, put yourself in their place, and never call your customers ‘dumb.’

Read full article: http://bit.ly/1ORqWOQ

Twitter IPO: Why Social Is the New Low-Fat

Everyone in the tech world wants to come up with the ‘secret sauce,’ the ‘killer app,’ the one ingredient that makes their product or service irresistible and essential. With Twitter’s successful IPO, it’s time to recognize that that ingredient is social media.

The situation was somewhat like several years ago when fat-free foods were the rage. Reducing fat in our diets was believed to be a key factor for health and longevity, and this is probably true. Food producers quickly began touting their low-fat products and low-fat versions of products that were previously ‘full fat,’ including ‘low-fat’ donuts, ice cream, and pizza. It wasn’t long before almost every edible product available had a ‘low-fat’ label on it. And if that were all that was necessary to ensure good health, it would have been a great thing.

With social media, we’re seeing the explosion of something online that’s been arising since its beginning — the power of mass interactivity. Because communication on the Internet is two-way, brands can target ads, gather data, follow users from site to site, and create profiles of their online activity, all towards getting their advertising messages in front of them. But what’s different today is that interactivity is bypassing the brands altogether. Consumers are now talking to each other via social media about brands, products, services, and prices before making buying decisions.

People on social channels are ‘curating’ (gathering things of interest to post online) and ‘recommending’ (sharing things they like with others online). These two activities are what make social so important. Depending on whose statistics you read, 80-95% of consumers prefer a recommendation from someone they know over a search engine result or an advertisement when considering a purchase. In fact, the very sense of what a ‘brand’ is is changing. It’s no longer what you say about yourself that matters but what others say about you.

So, what does this have to do with low-fat? Soon, most websites will need to incorporate social tools for their users. Providing ‘share’ links to social media websites won’t be enough. Social tools will have to allow customers to connect within a site.

Imagine users curating items into a ‘set’ and then sharing their sets with others to solicit opinions and comments. Or tagging, naming, and saving sets, which others can search for, add to their accounts, and edit. Social tools like this could be implemented for everything from clothing and household items, like on Polyvore, to color palettes and swatches like on Adobe Kuler to news, movie, and TV content. Consumers would learn from and be inspired by other consumers and eventually begin to expect these tools, just like they began looking for low-fat foods.

Businesses should consider more involvement with social media and explore how they can use it dynamically. The Twitter IPO, if nothing else, will open the door for investment in sites that offer ‘social commerce’ solutions to attract customers. We’re way past the learning curve, with close to two billion people already using social media. And consumers will only continue to tune out advertising. The only caveat is that you won’t be able to sell potato chips that reduce a portion from 300 calories to 280 and call it ‘low-fat.’ You’ll need to provide quality tools that give customers the ability to learn from others, enlighten others, and obtain recommendations that lead to sales. Consumers are ready for this kind of experience. And unlike ‘low-fat,’ social commerce may be a prescription for business health and longevity that actually delivers.

iPad Takes Significant Lead as e-Commerce Shifts to Mobile

A study by RichRelevance illustrates the power of Apple’s tablet platform in e-commerce (m-commerce?). Accounting for “68% of all mobile shoppers,” the iPad has put a charge into the move from desktop to mobile for buying things online. The larger screen undoubtedly helps consumers view full web pages better than smartphones for a more comfortable shopping experience. iPads may also make shopping online more casual since purchases can be made from the couch or kitchen table. Also, people may find that shopping on the go on smartphones is challenging timewise. True m-commerce implies “buying while flying,” which, apart from technologies like Near Field Communications that allow instant purchases, may currently be unrealistic if shoppers want to research and compare when shopping online.

Whatever the case, there’s no denying the iPad’s impact on the all-important activity of spending.

The report, the 2012 Q1 Shopping Insights Mobile Study, finds a steady rise in mobile share of revenue from 1.9% in April 2011 to 4.6% in March 2012, with the iPad driving nearly all shopping, browsing and purchasing in this emerging channel.

According to March 2012 data, iPad users spent significantly more time and money on retail sites than other mobile users, account for 68% of all mobile shoppers, and show the strongest conversion rates (1.5% for iPad vs. 0.57% for other mobile devices).

Read full article: http://bit.ly/HQxXH3