Shopify

Conversion
Rate
Optimization

The Ultimate Ecommerce Guide to

Increase Sales from Drive-By
Visitors in Shopify

by Joshua Uebergang
of DigitalDarts.com.au
Table of Contents

1 Part 1: Introduction and Principles

Why This Could Be the Most Important Ecommerce
Guide You Ever Read
2 The Goliath Product that Broke an Online Store
2 How to Maximize Your Store’s Conversion Potential
4 How to Use this Guide to Make and Not Break Your Store
8 Part 2: Positioning
Why Someone Should Buy From You in an Ocean of
Choices
8 Law of Category
9 Focus on Your Biggest Buyers
11 Leverage Profitable Traffic Sources
12 Sell to Your Foxes
13 Value Propositions
14 Survey Customers to Attract More
15 Survey to Find Out Why Your Visitors Didn’t Buy
16 Live Chat
17 Develop and Sell Your Own Products
17 Avoid Dilution from Extension
17 The Premature Test
18 Simple Customer-Focused Language
19 About Page
19 Brick and Mortar Location
20 Endorsements
21 Suggested Resources
22 Part 3: Design
Ecommerce Web Design that Gets You Sales
22 Axis of Interaction
24 Color Contrast
25 Simplification
26 Carousels
26 Call-to-Actions
28 Hamburger Menu
29 Design of Collections
30 Trust Badges
31 Leverage Brands
32 “Model” the Big Boys
32 Spot Your Design Problems with a Usability Test
33 How to Test Design Changes
34 Suggested Resources
35 Part 4: Technical
The Foundation of Ecommerce Profit
35 Speed
36 Site Architecture
37 Order of Collections
38 Breadcrumbs
39 Descriptive URLs
39 Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
40 Search
41 Filters
42 Perpetual Shopping Cart
42 Links and Images Work
42 404 Pages From External Links
43 404 Page
44 Mysterious Mobile-Device Performance Issues
45 Cross-Browser Performance Issues
46 Suggested Resources
47 Part 5: Product
How to Craft Product Pages that Make Visitors
Demand Your Products
47 Sell a Hot Product
48 Use Your Products
48 Product Name
49 Hot Product Photography
50 Video
51 Write Detailed Product Descriptions
52 Product Description Extras
53 Reviews
54 Testimonials
54 Customer Use of the Product
55 Out of Stock Reminder
55 Social Buttons
56 Show Notifications of Customers Who Purchased
57 Create Urgency
57 Cross-Sell and Upsell
59 Downsell
60 Suggested Resources
61 Part 6: Pricing
Price Strategies to Increase Profit
61 Competitive Pricing
63 Raise Your Prices
63 Lower Your Prices
63 Clear Pricing
64 Subscriptions
65 Bundling
66 The Left-Digit Effect
66 Free Delivery
68 Suggested Resources
69 Part 7: Checkout
How to Make Your Checkout Compel Visitors to Buy
70 Cement Trust
70 Make Fields Optional or Explain Them
71 Cart Up-sell
72 Payment Options
72 The Three Hundred Million Dollar Button
73 Coupon Manipulation
73 Thank You Page
75 Where to Next?
75 About the Author
Before you continue:

Step 1:

Know of someone who runs an online store that would be happy to turn
more visitors into customers? Feel free to share with them the following
link so they can download the latest version of this free book:

https://www.digitaldarts.com.au/shopify-conversion-rate-optimization

Step 2:

Learn the ecommerce growth secrets of “little” online stores owning

their niche to hit $1,000,000 in sales a year and beyond. Free 7-part
course made for Shopify store owners wanting more sales.

Free sign-up available now:

Part 1: Introduction and Principles

Why This Could Be the Most

Important Ecommerce Guide You
Ever Read

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right

things.”
Peter Drucker, the man who invented modern management

A large mining corporation in the early 1900s sent engineers to a rural area.
The mining engineers from their mineral discovery work believed the soils to
be littered with gold. The mining company setup shop to tap the riches below. 6
months later and 100 meters into the Earth, they found nothing. The company
could not fund further exploration in the region with opportunities elsewhere so
they departed.

A couple came along that year to buy the property. They heard what happened
with the mining company then proceeded to get out their rusty shovel, sifting pan,
and explore the grounds where the company dug. One foot in, the couple found a
three pound nugget gold. Then another. And another.

I am sick of seeing good ecommerce entrepreneurs who have worked their butts
off doing a lot right to get sales, but they miss 20% of tasks that lead to 80% of
results. You pour copious time into your products, thousands of dollars into a nice
looking store, and hundreds of sleepless nights to get traffic, only to be left with
sub-par sales (or none!). Unbeknown to you, you could be one foot from sales you
dreamed about. Here is one example.

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 1

The Goliath Product that Broke an Online Store
A store owner had no idea why people didn’t buy one product. It was a beautiful
garden statue handcrafted by indigenous people of the land who used ancient
stonework. Nothing like it was available anywhere.

The statue’s product page had great photos, video, a clear call-to-action, and an
interesting product description. It only cost a few dollars more than the ugly mass-
produced statues from competitors. It was built to get sales. A lot of people were
seeing it yet none bought. Zilch.

The store owner decided to buy the statue herself after her frustration with sales.
She added the product to her cart then proceeded to the checkout. She typed her
address details to order.

And there it beamed into her eyes. She was like a deer caught in headlights.

The shipping cost was over one thousand dollars! No sane person forks out a few
hundred dollars on a statue to pay triple for shipping.

How to Maximize Your Store’s Conversion Potential

“During an interview at the Institute of Advanced Study in
Princeton, a reporter asked him [Einstein] what he thought was
man’s greatest invention. Einstein paused but a moment and
replied, ‘Compound interest.'”
Bank Performance Annual in 1978

This could be the most important ecommerce guide you will ever read. It is a
complete step-by-step guide to get visitors buying – and to buy more over their
lifetime - from your Shopify store.

Your store’s ability to efficiently turn a visitor into a sale is the difference between
a wildly successful store and one that bleeds on tight 20% margins. I refer to the
number of store visitors who turn into customers as your conversion rate.

The most common conversion rate is 1-2%. The metric itself is often flawed

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 2

because stores have bad analytics that track spam bots, employee page-views, and
factor in other behaviors like blog posts. If you write a blog post for your store that
gets read a lot, your “conversion rate” will melt! (I will show you later how to
correct this.)

One puzzle piece could make all the difference for your store to turn 30% more
visitors into buyers. Throughout this guide you will learn what many stores have
done to achieve incredible sales. Some even doubled sales from one small
alteration. Drastic changes are not always possible but nor are they always
necessary. As you improve bit-by-bit working through this guide, these small
improvements add up, until soon enough twice the people purchase from you.

An increase in conversions lets you instantly pocket more money. You can spend
more on advertising, out-bid your competitors in AdWords to drive extra clicks,
and invest elsewhere for growth to extend your advantage. You feed the additional
revenue created out of “thin air” into further traffic acquisition for added sales. A
conversion rate improvement creates waves for years.

How many times do you need to fold a standard piece of paper to make it reach
the moon? One thousands times? One million? Scientists calculate forty-two
times. People are poor at comprehending compounded numbers.

A 20% increase in product views, 15% boost in add-to-carts, and another 15%
jump from order completion is not a one-off boost of 50%. The lifetime sales from
your store increase at least by 63% because more people reach the next step to
order. If you do $50k a month, that's now $81.5k.

What do you do with the profit from the $31.5k? You reinvest for more sales. The
power of compound! An investment in conversion rate optimization (CRO) is one
of the wisest decisions you can make to increase your sales.

No one knows the exact conversion rate your store can reach. Rather than
obsessing over your rate, your goal is to improve revenue per visitor month after
month. I also want you to think about check-marking your store for the six critical
areas of conversion optimization:

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 3

 1. Positioning. Get your positioning right and the rest flows
to create a greasy chute that nabs sale after sale. I’m
horrified at how no other conversion guide or book
discusses this lifeline of ecommerce success.
2. Design. A beautiful store is not one that gets you sales.
Amazon is ugly yet functionally brilliant. The crux of good
ecommerce design is revenue. Discover the design
principles any store can use to jack-up sales.
3. Technical. If your visitors cannot convert, they cannot convert. Learn the
tactics without being a coder yourself to speed up your store, spot mobile
device issues within one minute on thousands of phones, hunt down broken
links, and bandage other problems that stop sales.
4. Product. Get simple tactics to improve your products and make them
desirable. Also understand the anatomy of a high-converting product page
that make your products sell like hotcakes.
5. Pricing. Price strategies are the quickest, most-guaranteed method to affect
your profit overnight. Mathematically maximize your profit with simple price
strategies.
6. Checkout. At last, fix the problems your store has with cart abandonment,
get customers to buy more, and help your fans build your business for you.

It is the exact formula I use to rocket my client’s sales. I created this ultimate guide
to boost your Shopify ecommerce conversion rate because I’ve seen profit growth
that has brought tears to the eyes of store owners. 100% jumps are not rare.

How to Use this Guide to Make and Not Break Your Store
“I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety
where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their
theories or themselves to real field testing.”
Tim Ferriss, “The Human Guinea Pig” and author of The 4 Hour Workweek

The ideal scientific approach to research and conversion improvement is to

compare a variation against the original known as “the control”. This is known as a
split-test where 50% of people use the new version while 50% use the control. You

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 4

discover the version that results in the most sales then have the best performer
become the control in a King-of-the-Hill-style battle. You can rinse and repeat an
infinite number of variables and variations.

I recommend a tool called Visual Website Optimizer to test in Shopify. It’s a

popular tool in the conversion industry, simple to navigate, and quick to
implement in Shopify. Convert Experiments is another great tool and the best at
tracking revenue for stores who use the checkout.shopify.com domain. Optimizely
is poor unless you are on Shopify Plus.

Conversion bloggers always say to test, but it’s often a cop-out for miss-
understanding the conversion principles and is unrealistic. It will take you years to
test the conversion tips in this guide. Markets and technology change and you
want the best chance of results now.

You cannot test everything taught. If your store gets 400 transactions per month, 1
test with a single variation may take 1 whole month to get a conclusive result! Low
transaction stores should make educated changes then invest money into driving
traffic.

I recommend you reach 200-300 transactions per variation with a statistical

significance of 95% for the most time-efficient accuracy. This means there is a 5%
chance the improvement is not due to the actual variation and is the scientific
standard for most research.

All optimizers need to make educated assumptions. Ask yourself these three
questions to decide what to test:

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 5

Read the guide from beginning-to-end because the lessons build on each other.
While you can apply the collection of conversion-jolting ideas, case studies, and
hacks in any order, you want to implement what will generate the biggest profit.
Start at the checkout to capture easy wins that impact revenue then proceed to
positioning where you unlock your biggest jump potential. Get your positioning
right and the rest flows to create a greasy customer chute that gets visitors to the
finish line.

You test because you will encounter a change that for whatever reason, decreases
sales for you. Be satisfied you found a way to not do something and you did not

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 6

permanently implement the change.

“Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.”

Elbert Leander “Burt” Rutan, aerospace engineer

Let’s begin your optimization by learning how to make a visitor buy from you
instead of a competitor or online giant.

Part 1: Introduction and Principles 7

Part 2: Positioning

Why Someone Should Buy From You

in an Ocean of Choices

“There is more similarity in a precious painting by Degas and a

frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible.”
Alfred Taubman, owner of the A&W chain, comparing marketing challenges faced
following the purchase of a 241-year-old auction company

Y our visitors could buy your product from an online competitor because they
provide a broad range that drew interest, from a brick and mortar store
because of kinesthetic interaction, eBay to save on cost, or Amazon to get faster
delivery – and that is just for the same product. If you sell one brand of bicycle,
every store that sells another brand of bicycle is a competitor.

Ecommerce today is competitive and the battle for a consumer’s credit card will
only increase as technologies change how we buy and competitors emerge.
Position-focused CRO is effective because the principles work for any store.

Your position is determined by how prospects view your store. Perception is

malleable. Positioning is your savior to the great ecommerce sin of being another
“me too”. It is how you set yourself apart from the competition and solve
problems unique to your business. Let's mold your store into a profit-generating
machine.

Law of Category
You cannot compete head on with the monsters of Amazon. There's likely a
competitor in your broader vertical market, like fashion, that sells every major

Part 2: Positioning 8
brand. Their size carries with them unbeatable economies of scale which drives
down price and provides a wide range of products.

The law of category says, if you cannot be first in a category, craft your own
category. If someone already sells a battery that lasts a lifetime, yours is the first
battery to last a lifetime made with environment-friendly materials.

Positioning gets you heard and makes you remembered. When someone thinks
about a particular problem, they go to you.

The size of your category matters to the point it aligns with your end business goal.
You don’t have to be a giant store to succeed, but you want enough size to meet
your profit goal.

Ideas and questions to position yourself into a unique category:

• What type of people buy your product? Survey to find

why someone buys, where they use the product, and
who they would recommend the product to. If
hobbyists get the product for the weekend, position
your entire store’s message to focus on these people
in that situation.
• Drill down to one benefit. A toothbrush for the
general population is taken, but a toothbrush for
sensitive teeth makes you stand out.
• Mindmap your niche in the center then branch out with specific product
categories. See competitor product categories for ideas. Find a niche within
a niche.
• Do keyword research using Google’s famed keyword planner and check
against Google Trends.
• Search your products to gather a list of your competitors. What do they all
do that you can avoid?

Focus on Your Biggest Buyers

The concept is simple. Identify your biggest buyers then arrange your store and

Part 2: Positioning 9
marketing methods to attract more of them.

Every market is made of bad and good customers. Bad customers buy a product
once then return it. They ask loads of questions from customer support about a
cheap product. A bad customer can cost your business.

Great customers buy multiple products over their lifetime. They require minimal
support for the return they give you. Great customers may even have their own
audiences and endorse your product to them. When you know your great
customers, you understand how to position your store to get them to buy and
where to go to acquire them. Your conversion rate and customer lifetime value will
skyrocket.

There is qualitative and quantitative data to collect then analyze. Craft surveys to
learn qualitative information about your biggest buyers.

Quantitative data is best done through Google Analytics. You need Enhanced
Ecommerce setup in Google Analytics to collect useful data that can help you
identify your biggest buyers. The data you gather from an out-of-the-box setup is
often inaccurate and incomplete so follow my step-by-step guide to get Google
Analytics done right for your Shopify store.

Beginners can start in Google Analytics with everything under the “Audience”
section to see what gets revenue and who is most likely to buy. Affinity categories
under “Interests” may help if you’re a broad-serving store. Throughout this
ecommerce conversion rate guide you will learn how to maximize your CRO from
your analytics.

If you’re comfortable extracting actionable steps from the standard reports, use

Part 2: Positioning 10
custom reports and segmentation to further unlock your biggest buyers. The
“Returning Users” versus “New Users” segments are exceptional. Who are your
biggest buyers, what do they buy, and how do they buy?

To further help you along, use my Enhanced Ecommerce demographics report to

discover profitable age and gender groups based on their average order value and
buy-to-detail rate:

Leverage Profitable Traffic Sources

Get more of the traffic that converts well for you. Sources that lead to visitors
rather than revenue is a common mistake store owners make in a lousy conversion
rate. Your conversions are doomed to starvation before these people see your
store.

The standard “Acquisition” report in Google Analytics is limited. Claw beyond the
generic grouping of channels to get data you can act on. Use my ecommerce
visitor acquisition efficiency custom report then sort by “Revenue per User” and
“Buy-to-Detail Rate”:

The sources in the above example that lead to an exorbitant buy-to-detail rate of

Part 2: Positioning 11
200%+ are self-referrals from inaccurate tracking. As you build profitable traffic
sources:

• Use the Google UTM code on external links you control that point to your
store. It reliably reveals (direct) / (none) traffic.
• Get your setup spot on for cross-domain tracking to eliminate self-referrals.
• Acknowledge the influence of assisted conversions. Review the standard
“Assisted Conversions” report under “Multi-Channel Funnels”. The channel
that gets the sale could be only useful when another channel like Facebook
created initial awareness.

Sell to Your Foxes

Too many companies are afraid to read a scathing comment of an offended visitor
or turn away market segments because their products “are for everyone”. You may
feel uneasy about this – most business owners do. Quiet mediocrity is the formula
to be the little guy with a soft voice.

You will exclude those unlikely to buy from you when you speak passionately to
your best buyers. The late copywriter Gary Halbert called this “selling to the
foxes”:

“There are hundreds of companies in direct response who give

up millions of dollars in sales every year just so they won’t offend
a small percentage of scumbags who will never buy from them
anyway… Stop worrying so much about offending people and
start worrying more about selling them… I didn’t worry about
offending the ‘dogs’. Instead, I concentrated on selling the
‘foxes’.”

Cards Against Humanity excel at selling to the foxes. One holiday they updated
their site with the message: “To help you experience the ultimate savings on Cards
Against Humanity this Black Friday, we’ve removed the game from our store,
making it impossible to purchase.” They then proceeded with a campaign to sell
bull s*** that had staff the whole day on Twitter explaining what people could

Part 2: Positioning 12
literally buy:

30,000 people in one day brought literally crap. Cards Against Humanity’s foxes are
people with a dark humor. Sure the company annoyed a lot of people. I’m sure
their owners don’t care. The ignorance stems from knowing your audience rather
than stupidity.

Your foxes have problems, ideals, emotions. If they believe Kim Kardashian has
done nothing for human life, your store can say that on social media. Does your
product have a defect? Maybe your product should not be used in a type of
situation? Write about it. When you say something the product does well, it is
believed. Tell deep stories, publish video, and single out a situation that match the
lives of your passionate fans. You turn away the dogs and appeal to your foxes.

Value Propositions
A value proposition is a simple message that promises value to the visitor’s
purchase. They can alleviate risk, build trust, save the customer money, or
guarantee a solution to your customer’s problem.

Imagine you were interested in buying a bike to ride along the beach. You arrive on
one of my client’s website:

Part 2: Positioning 13
Do you feel safe? Do you feel Beachbikes is the right store to buy from? Do you
feel confident if you were to buy a bike from here it would be fantastic?

Value propositions pull you apart from the pack. They are well-placed in the
header to quickly communicate the visitor should stick on the store. You’ll have
unique value propositions like “Take Your Bike for a Test Ride”. Here are ones to
get you going:

Do not use vague variations that carry poor influence:

Test the presentation of value propositions because they have been found to
distract. FSA Store boosted revenue per visitor 53% when they removed their five
core messages from below the navigation for a simpler appearance.

Survey Customers to Attract More

Empathy gets you started at what you think should be done; ignorance keeps your
store capped at a conversion rate.
Trigger the survey to appear on your thank you page. Useful questions to ask are:

1. Where did you first learn about us?

2. What got you most excited about buying from us?
3. What convinced you to buy from us?
4. What almost stopped you from buying from us?
5. What are you unsure about with your purchase?
6. What other options were you considering before buying from us?
7. What could we have done to make your purchase choice easier?

When you understand the people who bought, you nudge along people who
previously wouldn’t have bought to become customers. Always integrate what you
learn into your store otherwise the data is useless.

Survey to Find Out Why Your Visitors Didn’t Buy

Trigger a survey to appear when someone fits in your most profitable segments
who does not buy. Refer to the section on surveying your customers for software
to use.

Look at this survey Google gave me in analytics when writing this guide. Your
business can always improve with surveys.

Create a targeting rule that fires the overlay based on their geographic location,
what site they came from, or how long they spent on the store. It depends on
what you want. I recommend rules that match your profitable segments and
another setup with rules that match your least profitable groups, to learn about
visitors who do not buy. The disparity in answers may surprise you.

Ask one question for the best response rate. Questions you can ask:

1. It seems you didn’t complete your purchase, can you share why not?
2. What would convince you to buy from us?
3. What other information would you find helpful on this page?
4. What if anything is stopping you from completing your purchase?

Test Google’s approach of asking what someone is trying to do. When you’re

Part 2: Positioning 15
convinced this strategy works, survey visitors based on other behavioral data. You
may want to know why one product does not sell, why someone who viewed 10
pages left, or what caused someone to abandon cart. Bathe in the new
information gathered then test what you learned about your store.

Refer to WebEngage’s guide for extra ideas to use overlays for CRO. Anything is
possible for a cheap cost given the personalization and return potential. If you
have a magazine promotion, promote a redirected URL then have an overlay with
a discount that only triggers for these people.

Live Chat
Silence makes improvement hard. Live chat is a way to provide instant customer
support without the delays of an email or feedback form. Forrester research
found, “44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live
person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important
features a Web site can offer.”

A live chat widget on your store is not guaranteed to increase conversions, but it is
an avenue to explore if you get many support questions, feel really dazed at why
people do not buy, or have never done it before. How you implement live chat also
matters.

Total Gym Fitness increased sales by 39% with live chat while other stores have
seen a decrease. Several things Total Gym Fitness did well was train staff to ask
different questions based on how high or low the person was into the research
funnel, deliver a chat box sized to mobile, and provide short answers when typing
to a mobile user.

Regularly train and liaise with your live support agents. The problems your visitors
try to solve will differ to each other so don’t take a one size fits all approach.

Record every question your visitors ask or objections raised about your product or
store. These are optimization opportunities and can lead to any change.

Part 2: Positioning 16
Develop and Sell Your Own Products
If you only sell your products through your store, the place of purchase is obvious.
Retailers that pursue their own products are lavished with the highest possible
margins in ecommerce. Your products are partly inoculated against competition.

It works for conversions because you can regulate product quality, possess agility
to respond to market evolution, and just give a damn great product that people
want.

Your own products bring with them negatives. The first downside is you have to be
excellent at marketing to drive the awareness. The second downside is the upfront
cost and risk. You can cut a lot of cost and risk when you craft the product yourself
for the trade-off of time and scalability.

Avoid Dilution from Extension

Products will forever tempt you to dilute your message to a broader audience.
Speak to everyone and you will speak to no one. The purchase rate of products
begin to vaporize when you disobey the law of category.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to
focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no
to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick
carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as
the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”
Steve Jobs

Launch a new brand and store for products that do not serve your core audience –
if you must deviate. Shopify have made it easy to get a new store up in minutes.

The Premature Test

Get a person who doesn’t know about your store to visit it on their phone. Give
them three seconds to view your store then pull their focus away. Ask, “What
person would buy from this store?” Repeat the test with someone on a desktop

Part 2: Positioning 17
computer.

The premature test tells you the immediate positioning communicated through
the design of your store. If your tests reveal contradictory points or uncertainty,
look at the top 200 pixels on the home page. What can you do to speak to the
person most likely to buy from you?

One major mistake I see are messages like, “Welcome to So-and-So.” Use the
visual real estate in a clearer way and your visitors will be unknowingly thankful.

Brand names like “Sports Authority” and “Guitar Center” provide clarity. Taglines
beside a logo are effective at speaking to your buyers. Smith and Noble and Dicks
Sporting Goods do a good job with taglines to quickly describe who the store is for.

Simple Customer-Focused Language

Company-focused information gets me mad. You don’t give your visitors bloody
“Consumer Information” or “Customer Care“.

What is Sunbeam’s “promotions” page suppose to be? Promotions is a bad

translation of “specials” or “sales” in normal people language.

When reading corporate speak, I picture a board of bobble-head directors puking

their vile. It is common among large companies that distribute their product to
retailers while also selling to individuals.

The right jargon can be used as a simple way for your best buyers to understand
your product and connect with your brand. Hobbyists love jargon. When your
words mimic the lives of your visitors, you captivate an audience. If you sell to
passionate golfers, write about the golf club that puts an end to army golf and
makes you a burglar.

Write to one person using “you language” – not “people”, “you guys”, or
“customers”. Be guided by “what’s in it for me” instead of “what we do” in
everything. Keep your product descriptions, core content, navigation, and stories
focused on visitors.

Part 2: Positioning 18
About Page
People want to know who they buy from and if they can be trusted. The about
page lets you address these concerns and helps you differentiate yourself. It is a
commonly overlooked area to increase your conversions.

What makes a good ecommerce about page? Tell your story, give a personal
anecdote related to the reason the visitor is interested in your products, share
your passion as though you were talking face-to-face to the person reading, use
video, reveal your team members, and provide contact information.

Another idea that can work well on your ecommerce about page is connecting
your message with a greater cause. A fitness store can show photos of fun fitness
classes it ran for a school.

Examples of good about pages:

• Wrightwood Furniture
• Yellow Leaf Hammocks
• Tessemae
• The Horse

Brick and Mortar Location

If you have a physical location where customers can buy your product, it’s a good
idea to test the message. While it’s nearly guaranteed to boost offline conversions,
it can also boost online sales by establishing trust.

Have a page for your offline location. Test how you attract customers to the offline
store whether through a link in the header or footer of the online store. Anchor
text ideas are: "See our showroom", "Visit us in store", and "Our physical
locations".

John Lewis provide a “Our shops” link in the header that takes you to a list of their
brick and mortar locations.

Do not reference your online store (mystore.com) as differing from your offline

Part 2: Positioning 19
store (My Store). Your company is one body.

Make it clear where users must go when things are accessible in only one place.
For example, let customers know certain products or video instructions to get the
most out of their purchase can only be accessed from the online store.

Endorsements
Your customers admire a person or two. Get a person your audience respects to
endorse your product and you will have people ready to buy before they go to
your store. Every store can use endorsements, though it works best when you
develop your own product. Endorsements if promoted elsewhere will also drive a
lot of branded traffic.

Endorsement strategies include sending your product to the person, offering

equity in the business, or working closely with a charity that appeals to the person
of influence. Superficial endorsements you see all over Instagram are the lowest-
level execution of this strategy (but they still work.)

Under Armour signed NFL athlete Tom Brady for equity in the apparel company.
Brady wears Under Armour clothing and speaks well of the brand given any
opportunity. SK Energy partnered with 50 Cent and the World Food Programme to
provide one meal for every energy drink sold. The Honest Company works closely
with Jessica Alba who reveals a side you rarely see that is authentic and aligned
with the target audience of concerned parents.

Capture video, photography, and as many quotes as possible from the person.
Show the celebrity using your product for the ultimate proof of support. ROC
headphones rapidly built its brand with Cristiano Ronaldo that combined a PR
campaign and endorsement.

Your celebrity’s behavior is a double-edged sword. What they do imposes onto

your brand. Kellogg’s ran from Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps one week after
a picture of him smoking a bong became public. Nike, Honey Stinger, and other
major brands departed from Lance Armstrong following his doping scandal. Total
Flex home gym equipment caught Jean-Claude Van Damme on a British reality

Part 2: Positioning 20
show revealing his disdain to promote the product he disliked.

A superstar is unnecessary – sometimes even ineffective. What matters is your

audience’s awareness and respect for the person.

Suggested Resources
• 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• Drew Sanocki on Customer Value Optimization
• The Finest Google Analytics Setup in Shopify for Splendid Data
• 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
• Gary Halbert on selling to the foxes
• How to find a manufacturer or supplier for your product idea

In the next lesson of the conversion optimization guide, you will learn how to
design a store that gets you sales without being a designer.

Part 2: Positioning 21
Part 3: Design

Ecommerce Web Design that Gets

You Sales

“Wearing a veneer of perfection never did me any good.”

Liz Phair, singer-songwriter and guitarist in an Elle interview on women being women

B eauty is the shallow veneer of good web design. Pixel-pushers have no clue
about conversion rate optimization; designing for appearance and
functionality with only words that “we’ll achieve your business goals”.

Facebook, Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay – all these online monsters
are aesthetically ugly. Functionally, they are brilliant. These companies test and
tweak little elements every week like the addition of an icon on a form, change of
navigation text, or introduction of a new element to see the effect on business
goals.

Store design does not need to be art. The crux of good ecommerce design is
revenue. All else is irrelevant.

The given design ideas and methodology show why certain designs work – and
how you can apply the concepts to pluck low-hanging fruit in your store. It is
tempting to be hand-held into a high ecommerce conversion rate by straight up
doing what worked for another store. Resist and test. What boosted sales for one
store may not work for you.

Axis of Interaction
Joel Marsh beautifully labeled a theory to optimally control eye movement on any

Part 3: Design 22
page with imaginary lines, edges, and blocks in design. Our eyes follow chunks of
images, text and other elements until interrupted to reduce intake of information.
He calls it the “axis of interaction”:

The implications of axises in design is monumental. Everything on your page either

builds an axis or destroys an axis. Groups of centered elements is bad usability
unless you want interruption. Centered logos can destroy navigation.

Want an element clicked? Have it follow the axis of interaction. That’s why form
submit buttons (you want engagement with) are best placed at interaction points
like the “Add To Cart” in the image above.

Notice how the volatile button of “Move to Trash Can” in the Google Analytics
property view is nowhere near an axis line. The feature is available for the user
seeking it but invisible to others. That is purposeful design.

Common points of optimization for stores are form elements, navigation, and
images. Cart and product pages have the most opportunity for Shopify owners.

Part 3: Design 23
Full-screen responsive designs are extremely hard to get right because they
completely screw over axises. Where are the eyes suppose to go? The navigation
for Vapour Eyes and the whole checkout sequence does not control the eyes.
Maybe their eyes are too vaporized? (I had to.) You could compensate with a
movement of key elements or give worded directions of what the person is to do
next, but these bandage weak design that should be intuitive.

SkinnyMe Tea place selection of product quantity beside the “Add to Cart” button.
This may alter the interaction of each form element to affect the average order
value and frequency a product is added to the cart. Whether it’s better for
revenue than a traditional top-down interaction, you should still test it.

Hard data gained from sources like a test or heatmap tool tell you how users
engage with a page. VWO has heatmaps for your tests while CrazyEgg provide
similar tools without split-testing.

Knowing about the axis of interaction gives you an understanding of interaction

data, lets you predict flaws in design, and helps you form a hypothesis to test a
design with intent to optimize.

Color Contrast
Stop the gray fonts on white background. I’m sick of it. You know the low contrast
look I’m talking about. Sure, it looks modern but web pages exist to be read.

Poor contrast is further disastrous for users with poor vision, low-quality monitors,
and glare on screens.

Load up a product page on your store then stand back two meters. Pretend you’ve
never seen your store before. Can you tell where the navigation, product images,
production description, and call-to-actions reside? What are links that can be
clicked?

There is no best color for you. Pick colors that match your brand or have a subtle
psychological influence. Keep your call-to-action colors distinct and consistent.

Color contrast matters most. Be a contrast rebellion. Call-to-actions need to be

Part 3: Design 24
clear and look like they can be clicked. Links need to look like links, not white
blobs.

A “coming soon” collection is not the key piece to draw attention with red.
Consider color as a whole because one element can affect the whole. Color can
form an axis of interaction. Grab your users by their eyes and use color to control
focus.

Simplification
What food additive sounds most dangerous: Hnegripitrom or Magnalroxate?

Researchers found people rated the fictional Hnegripitrom as more dangerous.

The researchers conclude, “…dangerous food additives were rated as more
harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names
were easy to pronounce.”

The effect of simplicity carries over to product purchases. A 2007 study on the
“Preference Fluency in Choice” found that our product preference depends on
how easy or difficult the legibility of options appear. The researchers discovered
that twice as many people wanted to buy a product when its description was in an
easy-to-read font. When the option was difficult, people deferred their decision.

The mind has vast cognitive biases towards noise reduction that minimize the
amount of work required to interact with the world. Break fluency and you will
make people think more than they need to, which leads to indecision and no
purchase.

If something does not have a clear purpose, elimination may boost revenue.
Ecommerce perfection is the state when whatever you add or take away worsens
the results.

Look at the websites your visitors use and how they are designed. These influence
what is expected from your store. Also follow this conversion guide to give people
what they expect from a store to create a fluent shopping experience. A fluent
experience is an intuitive experience.

Part 3: Design 25
Carousels
A carousel is the group of sliding images seen on the front page of most online
stores. Carousels are the most over-rated, over-used, and poorly designed element
in ecommerce. Most carousels suck because:

1. The eye follows movement. Auto-play carousels are a usability disaster.

Natural Stacks avoid this error well with a static hero image.
2. It’s the designer’s way of jamming multiple messages into a group. You
complicate what should be simple.
3. A lot of people do not engage with carousels because of banner blindness.
What is the engagement rate of your carousel images? ND.edu had a 1.07%
total engagement with 89% of those people clicking the first frame.
4. They are poorly designed.

If you use carousels:

1. Really ask yourself if you need it. Take the Should I Use a Carousel? test. Still
not convinced? Well, carousels can present key information in a confined
critical space above-the-fold when used right.
2. Keep the carousel static until the user engages unless you test engagement,
revenue, and timing. Auto-forwarding carousels aid banner blindness.
3. Give the user easy control with clear buttons to click. Please do not expect
people to click tiny circles like Taylor Stitch.
4. Show the number of frames. This can be integrated with controls. The WOD
Life have a home page carousel with no indication of frame quantity.
Everything about John Deere’s carousel is brilliant.
5. Provide an information scent on each frame. Tell the user what to expect
with clear link text and descriptions when the image is clicked.

Call-to-Actions
Buttons and other links greatly impact sales because of their engagement. Every
customer adds a product to their cart making the action a valuable touch-point to
test.

Visit your home page then proceed to buy a product. Write down every element

Part 3: Design 26
you click – these are good test options. Another good idea is to repeat this
purchase process in blur mode:

1. Go to Thomas Spark’s Bookmarklets.

2. Drag the “Blur” to your browser toolbar to bookmark it.
3. Go to your store's home page then click the “Blur” bookmarklet. Bam, your
page goes blurry.
4. Can you click all the buttons to reach the checkout page? If so, you’re
buttons passed the blur test.

The text and design to use on your buttons that maximize your profit does not
need to be the same as other stores. Here are call-to-action ideas to consider in
your tests:

• Links to reach the store. This is most important for sites that provide content
other than just an online store. Phone case store Lifeproof changed their
“Store” link in the top navigation to read “Shop Now”. 13% more people
clicked through to the store and the company equated a 16% boost in
projected revenue.
• The “Add to Cart” text on your product page. Black and Decker changed the
primary call-to-action button of “Buy Now” to “Shop Now”. 17% more
visitors proceeded to vendor pages for a yearly projected revenue boost of
six figures. “Add to Cart” is a time-tested winner though “Add to Bag” is
becoming popular.
• Button design. Weird could work because it makes the button stand out.
Design ideas to consider are icons on the button, button shape, color, and
size.
• Vague is bad. “Continue”, “Next Step” and “Submit” are common mistakes.
• American Apparel users when selecting their shipping option either failed to
click the apply button or mistook it as a way to submit the checkout form.
People do not know the role of buttons like “Update Cart” or other weird
alternatives like the refresh arrows on Pure Fix cycles in the checkout
process. Christian Holst found users expect fields to auto-update and there
to be one button at checkout. Auto-update forms at checkout with ajax to
simplify.

Part 3: Design 27
 • The “Checkout” text on your cart page. There are many viable options like
“Place Order”, “Proceed to Checkout”, and “I’m Ready for Payment”.

Hamburger Menu
What do these icons mean?

Systems designer Wayne Pau says the answers are:

1. Motorola Hardware Menu Button

2. MS Word Bullet Butcon
3. Android Holo Composition Icon
4. Android Context Action Bar Overflow

You’ve seen the hamburger-like icon in many

digital locations. Most ecommerce stores use it
as a menu icon for mobile users.

Amy Schade makes a good point that the

hamburger menu has a high-interaction cost.
Users cannot see what the menu contains, have
to press it with their finger, and possibly scroll
to locate what they want. Designers make the
mistake of jamming the entire desktop menu Everyone loves a hamburger in design,
into the hamburger and fail to consider how but it clogs your conversion arteries.
else to present core information to a mobile Image courtesy of ethanbodnaruk.com
user.

Peep Laja for a scented candles seller found the hamburger menu with a border
and “menu” text beat out the plain hamburger to increase revenue 6%.

Part 3: Design 28
Booking.com shared they found no difference with the use of “menu” near their
hamburger.

Reconsider the icon design because of its confusion and influence on the user-
experience of 50% of your visitors. The first lesson of the hamburger menu is to
taste-test. Well, split-test. The second is to attack assumptions that affect a lot of
your users. You may surprise yourself at what you find.

Design of Collections
My analysis of client websites show user interaction with categories, or what
Shopify calls “collections”, make up 25% of the online shopping experience. The
data shows collections are viewed as a middleman to achieve a goal and often
have a lower engagement time compared to the rest of the site.

This means a good page design for your collections is likely to let people synthesize
the best option for them in the quickest time. Factors to test on collection pages
include:

• A title and brief description. It clarifies what the person is looking at and
helps SEO. Electric Styles do it on their collections.
• The display of results can be broken into either a list-view or a grid-view.
Most Shopify stores have a grid-view. Wheelchair store spinlife.com found
list view increased sales 16.1%. I hypothesize a grid-view is best suited to
collections that have similar attributes where visual differentiation matters
(e.g. clothing) and list-view is favored for products that require text for
differentiation (e.g. bikes). The only way to discover what is right for your
visitors is through a test.
• Filters to help people sort through the attributes that matter to them.
• Be careful how you use internal promotion banners above your collections.
Keep it relevant like Tuckernuck because users assume the banner to be
category-relevant.
• Information in the product card. Images are a must. Other elements to
consider are product titles, descriptions, ratings, price markdowns, and call-
to-actions like “wish lists” and “see it”.
• The default image size. Maybe your images are not large enough to help

Part 3: Design 29
 people see what they want. Mall.cz got a 9.46% boost in sales from enlarged
product images and moving the short description to viewable only on a
mouse-over event.
• A product preview. The Quick View app lets people see a bigger image and
quickly access more information about the product. View it in action on
sendgiftbhubaneswar.com.
• Pagination. You can use none, numbers, or wording. The Online Legging
Store use “Next” and Prev” with arrows. Infinite scroll didn’t work for Etsy.
Larger stores can also test the ideal number of products to display per page.

Trust Badges
A trust badge is an image that increases a visitor’s confidence to buy from you.
Ecommerce stores typically use images that show their authorized SSL certificate
provider:

Most studies out there that survey visitors about trust badges to discover “79% of
people abandon checkout because they don’t trust you” are questionable because
they are funded by companies that issue trust seals. Be weary of that. There are a
lot of ways you can use badges to increase sales. Trust badge ideas to test are:

• Logos of your payment gateway like PayPal. A lot of Shopify stores use
accepted credit cards in the footer.
• Logos of your delivery companies like UPS.
• Core messages. Brosa reinforce their returns policy with an icon on product
pages and Spigen use a guarantee in the footer.
• If you’re an American company, you can use the BBB dynamic seal.
• Shopify have designed two of their own logos vendors can test that you can

Part 3: Design 30
 grab.
• Become a Google Trusted Store. (Available only to Shopify Plus stores.) Even
if the logo fails to establish trust, the monetary guarantee is assuring to
visitors.
• Lesser known ways to use trust badges are logos of charities you donate a
percent of profits to, institutions or organizations in which you are a
member, review widgets, and press.

You can also explore where the trust badges are situated. I’ve seen logos take
away conversions because they are situated too close to order buttons. iMagnet
Mount use a satisfaction guarantee star, refund guarantee star, and the logos of
accepted payments on the product page. The best placement of a trust badge
either fortifies a statement or addresses a visitor’s concern when it is expected to
arise.

Before you go chase your designer to plug every trust badges you can find onto
your product pages, footer, and checkout, do it with a test. One study that looked
at trust seals in computing tracked eye movements of 60 people and found 38%
didn’t see the VeriSign and TRUSTe logos. Researcher discussions with the
participants also revealed the tested subjects had “significant misconceptions of
their meaning”. Use security images when security is not a concern for your users,
and you may make people become concerned about security to complicate their
decision.

Leverage Brands
Make known the brands that trust you. It is a favorite strategy in the software
space underutilized in ecommerce. What well-known businesses or individuals
have purchased from you? If no large businesses have purchased from you, who
has purchased products you sell?

Include a section of logos and messaging on your home page or product page
sharing who uses the product. By leveraging another business' trust in you, you're
subtly suggesting to your customer, “You can also trust us.”

Always respect the privacy of people and businesses by requesting their

Part 3: Design 31
permission to share their use of your product. Get permission to use any logos.
Thirdly, do not confuse people that bought your product from somewhere else
that they endorse your store. Be an ethical, law-abiding store owner.

A similar strategy is to list the brands you stock. School Specialty do this at the
bottom of their home page:

“Model” the Big Boys

I rarely recommend you copy a competitor’s design because most stores have no
idea what they’re doing. If you do because they seem to follow a lot of the
principles in this conversion guide, who cares if your store is not unique. Design is
about revenue and your visitors couldn’t care about a unique experience.

The big boys of eBay and Amazon understand conversion optimization. They run
copious amounts of split-tests every day so model design ideas off them.

When you complete this guide, you can identify why a store might use a word,
image, or design. You become Neo in The Matrix; possessed with a perception to
filter ideas for your tests.

Spot Your Design Problems with a Usability Test

Everything seen on your store is design. Surveys, live chat, and forum discussions
reveal only so much. The source of massive jumps in conversion rate often come
from solving unique problems in your business.

Eliminate usability issues on your store to make purchases a friction-free

experience. A user test helps you realize issues you overlook.

Part 3: Design 32
Get your test subjects to find one particular product then buy it while talking out
loud. Record their screen and audio. Services like UserTesting.com can do it for
you.

One test subject is better than none, but elaborate usability studies are a waste of
money. Jakob Nielsen with Tom Landauer for the Nielsen Norman Group found,
“The best results for usability tests) come from testing no more than 5 users and
running as many small tests as you can afford.”

Run user tests every six months to address issues that crop up with site updates
and design trends. Follow this simple user-testing plan and you will have accurate
scientific data that patches your store’s blind spots.

For one store I tweaked a guarantee to boost sales 50% instantly because the
product was inherently risky. The heart of your Shopify store’s CRO problem may
not be a simple design change. The biggest growths may initiate from discussions
with qualitative testing.

How to Test Design Changes

Visual Website Optimizer was always my recommended tool in Shopify to discover
what gets you the most sales. Recently I’ve been loving Convert.com because it is
the most accurate at tracking revenue for my clients not on Shopify Plus. Don’t
even bother with Optimizely as they’ve been very explicit about not supporting
Shopify.

Though each of the tools are a visual editor, you need design skills to make
advanced changes. Always track revenue. Additional tips I have:

• Implement the VWO tracking code in Shopify following the documentation.

Integrate VWO with Google Analytics so you can segment all data based on
the test variations. This lets you see how user behavior differs. Every piece
of data in analytics from a test variation can lead you to test a hypothesis.
• If you’re using Convert Experiments, following their Shopify integration
knowledge base. I’ve helped them clean up this documentation so it’s
straight-forward.

Part 3: Design 33
 • Speed up the creation of some variations with Shopify’s theme
customization, view then copy the source code of the changes, revert your
changes, then paste the code into VWO. This little hack is limited to the
options built into your theme.
• If you append ?view=list to any collection URL, your store will use the
collection.list.liquid template. If you use ?view=grid at the end, the store will
call the collection.grid.liquid template. The method can be used on any
liquid file.
• The coolest trick is how you can test major design changes. Read my guide I
wrote for the Shopify blog on how to test for revenue, themes, and nearly
anything.

Suggested Resources
• Color theory and conversion over at Unbounce
• 5 dangerous UX myths debunked by UX content strategist Jerry Cao
• Want To Win Fights With Your Web Designer? Use These CRO Tactics
• Austin Shopify theme. My favorite publicly available theme I recommend
to new stores. It ticks a lot of design check-boxes.
• Christian Holst at The Baymard Institute does a great job with ecommerce
usability testing

Good job completing the lesson! The following part reveals how to find technical
issues and make other technical improvements to boost sales without being an
advanced coder.

Part 3: Design 34
Part 4: Technical

The Foundation of Ecommerce Profit

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that

automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the
efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient
operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
Bill Gates

S omeone cannot convert if they, well, cannot convert. Sniping technical

bottlenecks and opportunities to make the purchase experience a breeze takes
longer than a test booking from your browser.

Technical conversion optimization looks at the usability of your store in a variety of

situations and covers ways you can use technologies to turn a visitor into a sale.
Adjustments either have a monster-sized impact on sales because the issue hurts
user experience, or a minuscule impact on sales that when combined with other
changes add up.

Speed
Store speed correlates with revenue per user. Tests and research prove the
correlation time and time again across all types of business.

Walmart found: “For every 1 second of improvement they experienced up to a 2%

increase in conversions” and “For every 100 ms of improvement, they grew
incremental revenue by up to 1%”.

Excellent servers are critical to a lightening fast store. Shopify was the first hosted

Part 4: Technical 35
ecommerce software to use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN has servers
placed around the world so visitors pull and push data to the nearest server. The
server speed is taken care of for you.

One thing store owners and marketers can optimize is images. Screaming Frog is
one way to identify large image files. Pingdom’s FPT tool provides an insightful
waterfall chart to see slow images on a page and other reasons why a page lags in
performance.

Work on your slowest pages that get views. Go to your Google Analytics then
“Behavior” > “Site Speed” > “Page Timings”. Filter by “Avg. Page Load Time (sec)”.
Expand the date selection to get more data points if need be:

The majority of speed optimization has to do with your theme. A good developer
can refactor CSS, replace images with CSS, concatenate files, and minify files.

Site Architecture
If your visitors were told to find one product, would most find it within 20
seconds? How about you actually find out with a HIT on Mechanical Turk.

Links on your site connect the user experience. The old rule of “the user should be
able to find anything within three clicks of the home page” is a load of crap. You
can have everything accessible in three clicks and make people befuddled at
where to find information. Depth is not correlated with clarity.

Have links to key pages like contact, returns, and postage in the footer. Consider
testing a broad categorization of products visible in the header rather than
lumping them together under “Shop”. Test a link to your product page in the top.

Part 4: Technical 36
The most important part in ecommerce architecture is the categorization of
products. You don’t want a product to slot into multiple collections that are meant
to differentiate products. Do you know the difference between “Custom Options”
and “Custom Store Options”? What’s the difference between shop “By Category”
and “By Collection”?

A good categorization structure helps conversions, SEO, and possibly average order
value. You get it right when your visitors look at your collections then quickly know
where their product is most likely to be.

The process of good categorization depends on store size. A store with less than
200 products can list all product names in a spreadsheet then group similar ones
under a column. Large stores with diverse SKUs can model Amazon or eBay and
get ideas off competitors.

Well organized collections can be brands like Ben Sherman, Timberland, and Under
Armour. It can be interests like basketball, netball, and tennis. Avoid being too
specific like having a collection of “Adidas Basketball Black” as it leads to an
overwhelming navigation bar.

Order of Collections
The order of your product categories affect sales. Have your most important
categories display first based on page views and page value.

Use my Shopify collections report to analyze the performance of your collections.

Alternatively, go to Google Analytics then “Behavior” view “All Pages”. Do an
advanced search for “/collections” to filter your categories. Consider a structure
based on what gets viewed the most and has a high page value:

Part 4: Technical 37
Bonus optimization ideas:

• Group similar navigation elements together to help visitors identify

products.
• Explore the verbiage for navigation links. Designer Marta Eleniak talked one
company out of calling their “Personal Vehicle Leasing” product “Just Drive”.
You enable people to easily find the products they want and you want sold.

Breadcrumbs
A breadcrumb is the trail of links that tell someone where they are on the site. See
an example on The WOD Life.

Breadcrumbs cut user anxiety, reduce bounce rate, and assist SEO. Imagine you did
a Google search for “women’s short exercise shorts” then come across WOD Life's
product. The shorts are not your style, but you see the breadcrumb then click
“women’s apparel” to find other options.

A breadcrumb matters to conversions because it provides context for the user at

no cost. Jakob Nielsen has recommended breadcrumbs since 1995, “Breadcrumbs
never causes problem in user testing. Users pay attention to breadcrumbs only
30% of the time; when they do, it helps and even when they don’t, it doesn’t
cause any harm.”

Part 4: Technical 38
Descriptive URLs
A descriptive URL reassures a visitor they are on the right page. Compare:

http://www.example.com/collections/new-balance/43545

to

http://www.example.com/collections/new-balance/purple-packer-new-balance-
shoes

A miss-match or lack of clarity can hurt conversion. You also improve SEO with
clear URLs that match the page. A hidden conversion benefit of a descriptive URL
is you help someone locate the page when they try to revisit it in their browser
window:

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Not an area many consider for conversion because title tags are one of the most
important on-page factors of SEO. Title tags and meta descriptions can set you
apart from competitors. Each provide context that matches your page with visitor
intent.

Title tags make it clear for returning users when they try to find the page in their
browser or bookmark the page:

Part 4: Technical 39
Search
People who search convert 1.8 times better than non-searchers and bring in a
disproportionate amount of revenue. Zohar, CEO of Instant Search Plus, tells me
this stat is far below their data for over 1,000 stores. He says people who search
convert anywhere from 2x-10x better than non-searchers.

I agree Zohar’s data looking across the stats of my clients. See the search stats for
one of my clients. Searchers convert at 6.57% compared to 1.79% – that’s a 360%
difference.

Internal search seems to matter most on sites that have a large product range or
products with intricate details like shoes and jewelry. Search can bandage poor site
architecture, overcoming a lack of clear navigation and filters (though the best
action is to stop the bleeding.)

How you implement search is as critical as its

deployment. One study found 25% of shoppers refine
their search query and another learned 73% abandon
the site after 2 minutes if they cannot find what they
want.

Here are ideas to explore search that have worked for my

clients:

• Test autocomplete search functionality.

Part 4: Technical 40
 • Test product images beside autosuggestion results.
• Test verbiage within the search box such as having no text versus “What are
you looking for?” Inside the search box, the text “Search the store” does
better than “Search” because people are assured they will stay on your store
rather than be taken to Google. Compare search button designs like an
image of magnifying glass to “Search”.
• Avoid including blog posts inside your internal search.
• Track internal search queries to see what people want and how you can
better serve what they search.
• Conduct the same searches as your visitors with the data from your tracking.
See what people encounter. Are the results accurate and helpful?
• Consider new categories or reworking existing categories if common
searches appear for products. Make your collections based on user
preference.
• Assist shoppers in refining their search results with filters on the results
page.
• Provide default suggestions like bestsellers on the search results page when
no products match the query.

You can do all this with Instant Search Plus. It is the best search app in Shopify.

Filters
Options make decisions hard. We handle complicated situations with inaction.

Help your shoppers find what they want with filters when your store has product
options that are complex or apply to groups of people. Nothing is more frustrating
when you find great shoes or clothes and they are not made in your size. I’m 6’9″
and have been there many times…

Midori Bikinis provide a simple checkbox filter that works well with their full
screen product results. Lake House have an Amazon-style filter that allows sorting
by bestsellers, price, newest items, and more.

The collection filter app helps a lot of Shopify stores with filter functionality and
design. It is capable of doing what you want with filters.

Part 4: Technical 41
Perpetual Shopping Cart
Forrester Research found the fifth most common reason people abandon cart at
checkout is to resume their order at a later time.

You can fix this with a free Shopify app called Shareable Cart. A perpetual
shopping cart remembers what someone had in their shopping basket by
providing a link they can access later without having to log-in.

Links and Images Work

Confirm your links and images are functional to make a good user experience. You
don’t have to click every link or view every image to verify they work.

Use Screaming Frog to scan your website. Once the tool completes its scan, click
on the “Response Codes” tab then sort by “Status Code” to identify 404 errors:

Click the “Inlinks” tab at the bottom to identify where you need to update the
broken links or images:

404 Pages From External Links

A 404 means the page viewed is non-existent because it was deleted or moved to
a different address. If a journalist or blogger promotes one of your products with a

Part 4: Technical 42
good word so readers are pre-sold, a broken link will cost sales.

Use my custom 404 report to identify links that point to black-holes on your site.
You may need to edit the report so it can identify what is a missing page. By
default it looks for pages with “Page Not Found” in the title tag:

The report helped me identify a broken link in my YouTube video on AdWords

conversion tracking in Shopify.

404 Page
When your visitors find a non-existent, how does your store help the sale? Type
your store’s address into a web browser with a non-existent address like
mystore.com/errortest to check.

Control the message by telling the visitor what happened and what to do next.
High-converting 404 ideas in ecommerce are:

• Use the same design as the rest of the site.

• Follow your brand’s image and have the page sell to your foxes. Do you sell
clothing for dancers? Have a decked out cartoon figure busting a move. Give
some tongue and check. ZURB University has good examples.
• Check the 404 did not happen from a page that should exist.
• Provide a search option.

Part 4: Technical 43
Mysterious Mobile-Device Performance Issues
The obvious test is to jump on whatever mobile device you have then use your
store. I’m surprised at the number of marketing managers and store owners that
haven’t done this.

There are thousands of mobile phone models and more mobile phones than
people on the planet. Mobile makes up half of your store’s traffic. How the heck
do you discover when someone on a Samsung Galaxy 2 is unable to purchase then
leaves your store when they don’t tell you the problem?

No foolproof method exists. The best way I know to spot mysterious mobile-device
problems is this custom report in your analytics. Sort the report by ecommerce
conversion rate:

It’s ideal to have every page perfect for every mobile user, but you have a budget.
Make the business decision to focus what affects your bottom-line:

Part 4: Technical 44
 1. Expand the timeline of your report for a greater sample then create an
advanced filter for devices with one hundred or more users.
2. Pay attention to the combination of bounce-rate and average session
duration. A high bounce-rate with low session duration on one device
indicates a major usability problem for those users.
3. Check outlier conversion rates. Android users in the provided example are
66% less likely to convert than iOS users. It’s a worrying difference that
needs investigation. The report lets you click on the operating system to drill
deeper.
4. The custom report also has a page-specific diagnosis. Analyze the bounce
rate, session durations, and conversion rates on popular pages.

Sometimes your target audience use a brand of mobile device that explains
conversion difference. Check and be sure.

Many online tools say they replicate mobile device usage, but I’ve repeatedly
come across strange problems missed by these tools. Use tools like BrowserStack
and Google’s mobile-friendly tool to purge obvious problems.

The final test is to use all features of your store on major devices. You can do this.
The solution is OpenDeviceLab.com. ODL is a community movement where free
labs are setup worldwide for the public to test sites and applications.

Cross-Browser Performance Issues

Cross-browser usability refers to how your store behaves on various browsers such
as Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and others.

Review your “Browser & OS” report in analytics to see a report like:

Part 4: Technical 45
Look for browsers with a variant average session duration or conversion rate.
Regardless of what you find, I recommend you test your store in the various
browsers. Browser performance issues are easier diagnose than mobile issues
because most are downloadable on one computer.

Suggested Resources
• Image optimization tips on the Shopify blog
• Course by Gavin Ballard to master Shopify themes
• Shopify SEO Guide to Perfect Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
• 24 Usability Testing Tools
• What design elements are compatible in browsers and devices
• OpenDeviceLab.com for cross-device testing

You are well past half-way of the ecommerce conversion guide. Keep going
because some big growth hacks are ahead. You are about to learn how to craft
product pages that make visitors demand your products.

Part 4: Technical 46
Part 5: Product

How to Craft Product Pages that

Make Visitors Demand Your
Products

“Sure what we do has to make commercial sense, but it’s never

the starting point. We start with the product and the user
experience.”
Steve Jobs

A pple spent $1.7 billion on research and development in the June quarter of
2014, and is rumored to spend $600 million on retail store facilities in 2015.
That’s a lot of spend on product and how it is delivered.

CEO Tim Cook invests in how the product is sold because he knows the value of
experience. Every square foot of an Apple store is designed to make you spend.
Every pixel of your product pages can have the same influence.

Conversion optimization of a product page begins at the product. You then learn
ways to optimize the experience for commercial gain. A high-converting product
page has an anatomy that can be cut-up then analyzed so you can replicate the
experience it gives to visitors.

Sell a Hot Product

There’s no better way to have a killer conversion rate than sell a product someone
wants to desperately buy before they hit your store. Bad markets alone can be the
sole source of a stinking conversion rate.

Part 5: Product 47
How do you sell a hot product? Check search volume and trends overtime. The
most reliable way is to see what is brought.

A lot of stores have a bestseller category. See the bestsellers of your competitors.

Terapeak is devastatingly effective at gathering every piece of information from

eBay and Amazon. Know the sell-rate of products, number of bids, and average
purchase price for products, categories, and keywords. Map out exactly what to
sell and how much of it.

Use Your Products

Ideally you use your products day in, day out. If not, why not? Don’t be that
company who is out-of-touch.

You have to know firsthand what’s good and bad about what you sell. Maybe your
manufacturing process needs improvement, you need to source the style of
product from another brand, or you realize how awesome the product is and your
product photography does it an injustice.

You also use the product to gather a kinesthetic experience that helps you
empathize with your customers and write in-detail. Good copywriters like John
Carlton would sift through all words of an educational DVD set to pick every lesson
then write a captivating bullet point on it.

A great product does not equal sales, but a long-term kick-ass conversion rate is
hard without a great product.

Product Name
A product name can influence visitor interest, bounce rate, SEO, and PPC.

To name your products right, know what visitors look for in them. You can be
informational (brand, model, version) or descriptive (colors, dimensions, styles).
The 3D Printer uses brand and model in product names because knowing the
manufacturer is important for repairs and accessories. Color and size in clothing
can be important descriptive attributes to include in product names. Ron Bennett

Part 5: Product 48
names their clothing with color.

Site architecture can also influence product name. Ron Bennett uses "jacket" in a
lot of products listed under the “coats and casual jackets” collection to reinforce
product clarity and no doubt help SEO. A conversion-focused idea is to include
“benefit language” in the product name like “Nike Free Runner Shoes – Super
Comfortable for Exercise”.

Optimize and adjust product names as you go with Google Webmaster Tools.
Under the “Search Analytics” report, check the “Pages” radio button to see the
search queries that lead to the most impressions and clicks. Front load your most
important words in the product name.

Hot Product Photography

People identify images within 13 milliseconds. We notice product photos first on
product pages.

Have yours count instead of using drab photography or unclear manufacturer

photos. Photos can make an otherwise disinterested visitor curious and an
interested visitor more likely to buy. Here’s how to make your product
photography convert into sales:

1. Make your photos high-quality. This includes

getting professional photography done. Black
Milk Clothing have hot photos.
2. Use a white-background for your primary shots.
Upgraded Ape did so instead of their already
good photography on a rug to increase their
conversion rate 21%.
3. Have product photos taken from various angles.
It eliminates questions in the mind of the
interested buyer. Capture important elements
like the dials on white goods.
4. Provide context in your photos. I call these lifestyle photos. Show how your
customers use your product. Tattly do this for their tattoos.

Part 5: Product 49
 5. Provide photos of variations. Studio Neat do a great job with their Neat Ice
Kit. Free People replace existing photos with the clicked variation.
6. Have a zoom feature on images. Take this to the next level if you have
money to invest with 360 degree photography or an interactive photo to
increase perceived ownership.
7. Combine photography with graphic edits to reveal facts about your product
that standard photos cannot show. That Inventions use graphics for
ThawTHAT to show heat regulation. Bionic Gloves create a kinesthetic sense
hard to replicate in words for how gripping their golf glove is by blending an
octopus with their glove.

Video
Video nearly universally increases conversions over no video. The reasons good
product photography boost conversions is similar for video. Video reveals product
intricacies and allows you to sell to your biggest buyers with detail and visual
stories. It’s the most time-tested proven way online retailers can get visitors to
experience the product.

Matt Lawson from ao.com found, “Video gives us the opportunity to wow our
customers and this in turn delivers results. We have tested and proven that when
someone watches our video reviews they’re 120.5% more likely to buy, spend
157.2% longer on the site and spend 9.1% more per order.”

1. Make your video informational rather than a

cheesy product pitch. Although if your video was
awfully funny, it could work because it is overly
bad and lead to loads of traffic. Zappos do video
great by educating viewers.
2. Consider your narrator. EyeBuyDirect.com found
a male-narrated video had 9.28% conversion
rates compared to a 2.78% conversion rate for
the female-narrated video.
3. If you find video increases your conversions – and you most likely will – get
more people to watch the video:
• Embed the video rather than only provide a link. Thinx use embed,

Part 5: Product 50
 autoplay, and transparency well. See an example.
• Use a play button overlay or test other overlay information.
• Provide a clear-to-action like “Click to Play”. Draw attention to the
video in product descriptions like, “See how fast this widget cuts food
by clicking here to watch the video”. BodyBuilding.com use video with
a strong image of credibility above it.
• A good thumbnail helps video engagement.
4. Video isn’t limited to products. Video injects added power to testimonials
and the company story.

When testing video, look at the micro-conversions of views and time-watched to

gauge behavior. You can more quickly optimize videos this way to learn what
interests visitors. YouTube makes this easy with YouTube Insights.

Lack the budget for good video? Test it on your bestsellers.

Write Detailed Product Descriptions

I estimate three of four stores have poor product descriptions. Most are either lazy
by using a manufacturer’s description or don’t write enough.

PJ O’Connor Jewelry Designs provide custom jewelry and have a great opportunity
to show-and-tell the manufacturing process of each piece. Instead they provide 11
words.

The ideal message and length of a product description is

one that accurately reflects that product and provides
enough information that lets someone convince
themselves to buy. Follow these tips for product
descriptions that convert into sales:

1. Make it known who is it for, what are the details,

where someone uses it, why someone uses it,
when is it used, and how does someone use it.
Don’t be afraid to sell to your foxes. Go into detail. Refunds and returns will
plummet.

Part 5: Product 51
 2. Answer every possible question someone could have about the product.
Provide full specifications like sizing, dimensions, and product materials. You
discover more unusual things someone wants to know about a product with
surveys and chat. I love how Eastbay provide a Q&A section for products.
This is doable in Shopify with the Yotpo app.
3. Transform features into benefits to make ’em drool. Even professional
copywriters accidentally revert to feature-focused language. Wrangler do a
good job with their jeans that promote your “assets”. The “waterproof
runners allow you to exercise in any weather while keeping your toes dry
and snuggled-warm.”
4. Use personality to match your image. If you think your product is boring,
you’re either in the wrong market or need inspiration. Home Shop give
some flare to simple hand wash. A lot of Etsy sellers seem to understand
how to do product descriptions possibly because of their personal link with
what they make.
5. Tell a story. It can be a personal use of the product, from a customer, or the
manufacturing process. One Etsy seller slips in little story comments in her
Unicorn Farts lip balm product.
6. Help readability with simple words, bullet points, and formatting. Share your
strong points first. Nike provide a short description then link to more details
in a section beneath. It keeps core call-to-actions and information above-
the-fold.

Split-test product descriptions of your bestsellers to get the quickest data of what
works and to scientifically convince yourself it's an area to improve your store.

Product Description Extras

Most online stores stop product detail at descriptions and specifications. Increase
conversions with extra tid-bits of information to reinforce trust and build value.

Three critical product description extras to consider for all product pages are:

• Guarantees, warranty, and returns. Mention your guarantee in more places

than your footer. Reinforce the minimal or zero risk to the customer on the
product page. Furniture company Brosa repeat their clear returns policy as

Part 5: Product 52
 icons on the product page and in the header. You do provide guarantees and
returns, right? They reduce risk and are no-brainers to boost conversion.
• Delivery. Do you offer free delivery? A link in the footer of your store is
insufficient. Repeat delivery and return information on the product page to
build trust. Living Dead provide such information in a popup link below the
product description.
• Product use and care guidelines. You help customers get the most out of
their purchase and increases the value of your offer. Kookai give care
instructions for their clothing. Bali Body sell body oils and advise visitors
“ways to use” their purchase. This makes readers see themselves stepping
out of their shower then applying the product lotion to their skin as the
“natural goodness” is absorbed.

Reviews
People shop together as a hungry hoard even online. We use people to figure out
if the product will work for us and whether we’ll love it. High-converting product
photography and descriptions begin to address these concerns. Social proof
through reviews from customers is even better.

A 2011 iPerceptions study found 63% of people are more likely to make a purchase
from a site with user reviews. Jupiter Research found 77% of consumers read
reviews before an online purchase. Reevoo says reviews produce an average 18%
uplift in sales. Reviews affect your conversions.

Reviews seem to have the biggest impact on conversions when there’s 0-10
reviews with a plateau around 20 and another 18% uplift between 25-50 reviews.

Try Yotpo Reviews , Judge.me, or Shopify’s own Product Reviews app to get setup
with reviews then get your customers commenting on your store. Require reviews
be approved first to moderate spam. Monitor reviews and respond by addressing
product flaws or negative experiences.

No reviews risk hurting your conversions because it says no one is buying the
product – social proof works against you. It can be a trade-off of sacrificing
conversions early to get customer comments. Follow-up emails and social media

Part 5: Product 53
comments are the best way to get reviews. As part of my email marketing service
for Shopify stores, a customer engagement email series helps you drive more
reviews and conversions for your products.

Testimonials
A testimonial is a quoted endorsement. Testimonials from celebrities, customer
emails, user quotes, or social media comments slipped onto a page can handle
objections that fall in the “will it work for me?” category.

Savvy shoppers are numb to vague, quoted remarks from so-called customers. You
have to do quoted remarks right to make a testimonial convert. Specifics like
features loved and results achieved bolster credibility. A brief story of what the
person tried, how the product helped them, and who they'd recommend the
product has been effective for copywriters.

Sometimes your customers will email you great comments or rave about you on a
forum. Leverage their comments for conversions. Coffee Joulies use testimonials
from their Kickstarter project where good comments were made before any
review system was in place on the store. The testimonials could be made more
believable with names, photos, and locations to build truth in the social proof.

Customer Use of the Product

Have a section on your product page where customers show off what they bought.
It’s a great way to use social media and social proof in ecommerce. An automated
email a few days following the delivery of their purchase is a good time to make
the request.

ThinkGeek provide an area on the product page where customers can submit
photos. It’s common for their customers to geek-out in photos with humor,
scenarios, and full gear because ThinkGeek know their foxes. They provide clear
directions to submit a photo and incentivize with a $100 gift certificate.

Black Milk Clothing upload photos of women wearing their clothing once they tag
a photo on Instagram or Facebook with the appropriate hashtag. The company

Part 5: Product 54
links to the original social post for added proof which also allows interested
visitors to speak directly with advocates.

If you and your audience are big on Instagram, the Social Photos app can automate
the collection, organization, and publishing of Instagram product photos.

Out of Stock Reminder

If you can’t prevent products from going out of stock (but you should try), have a
feature that lets visitors get a reminder email when the product is back in stock.
Frame the notification in a way that compels visitors to show their interest to
make the product available:

The Simple Stock Notify app works well for Shopify stores.

Social Buttons
You may find social buttons increase conversions and visitors. 39% of marketers
say social sharing is very effective at increasing conversions.

If the product gets poor social engagement, it may be an unnecessary piece on the
page that adds to clutter or distracts. Finnish company Taloon.com removed their
Google+, Pinterest and Facebook share buttons from product pages then had
11.9% more clicks on their “Add to Cart” button:

Part 5: Product 55
Test the location of social buttons and whether having them impacts conversions.
Review your social shares on pages you want to test and the traffic coming to the
page via the social sharing to judge if any new conversions outweigh traffic gains.

Show Notifications of Customers Who Purchased

We look to other people’s behavior for direction. Robert Cialdini in his book
Influence writes, “We seem to assume that if a lot of people are doing the same
thing, they must know something we don’t.”

Reviews, testimonials, and customer use of the product are three ways to guide
your visitors into what other people. Visitor notifications of customers who
purchased is another way ecommerce can leverage social proof.

Booking.com are the pioneers of sale notifications. They inundate a visitor

browsing a particular listing with notification boxes in the bottom-left to build
social proof and continue through checkout with other popups like “Cheapest
price in the past 40 days”. eBay have used similar social prompters for years. Look
at all the red. There’s a reason eBay repeats the number of people who purchased.

Part 5: Product 56
Shopify stores can use the Credible app to show notifications of customers who
purchased. It works out-of-the-box and you can customize the design to suit your
brand.

Create Urgency
Procrastination kills productivity and it may also butcher your conversions. Your
visitors think “I’ll keep looking” to find what else is there. Put a fire under their
feet to move them along the purchase process.

There are a couple of ways you can implement urgency on your ecommerce store
to increase conversions:

1. Countdown sales, promotions, and events with a

countdown timer.
2. Time-sensitive coupons for cart abandonment.
3. Mention the hours and minutes the visitor has to
order to get their purchase by a particular day.
Amazon create urgency with a clear countdown
timer related to next-day delivery.
4. Display stock left. Test because you may find it boost
conversions only when products are low in stock. Booking.com provide a
clear period of time a purchase will probably sell out.

Cross-Sell and Upsell

A cross-sell is an offer of another product prior to purchase. It differs from an
upsell which either seeks to add revenue to the order with a higher priced option
or is an offer after payment. Some marketers have slightly different definitions.
The two are interchangeably used in the ecommerce-world, even though they
differ.

Cross-sells and upsells are thought of as revenue boosters rather than conversion
boosters. Amazon in 2006 reported 35% of its revenue came from product
recommendations. An upsell and cross-sell can affect conversions because they
give people a targeted alternative, alter confidence in the product, or present a

Part 5: Product 57
custom offer that prompts urgency.

The type of selling aims to increase profit-margins by getting people to spend

more:

• When someone buys one packet of chocolate, offer another packet at

checkout for a reduced cost.
• If someone looks at a $1,000 television, mention a model up in the product
suggestions section. This of course presumes the higher priced item is more
profitable. The presence alone of a higher priced item may increase revenue
4%.
• At checkout or in the suggested products part on the product page, you can
test “You may also like” and “Customers who bought X also bought”. If
someone buys shoes, recommend socks that match.
• Ezra Firestone’s One-click Upsell lets customers add additional items to their
purchase after payment. Simple way to increase revenue by 20%.
• Add-on upsells and cross-sells I’ve seen work include extra warranties,
product support subscriptions, and training. People love these reassurances
“just in case”.

Cross-Sell is one way a Shopify store can pick the products they choose to sell with
the product viewed. Product Upsell app lets you show a popup once someone
adds an item to their cart (technically a cross-sell). Each app more than pays for
themselves.

South Record Shop have what I presume is a suggestion of similar music yet
provide no context. South African liquor store Mudl Liquor provide mostly higher
priced whiskeys as recommendations for one whiskey. Stores half-hazardously
implement product suggestions because that’s what the owners have seen done
elsewhere.

Test because you need to ensure upsells and cross-sells do not undermine your
primary offer with distractions or confidence, in substitute for added revenue via
another method. Also split-test the design of how the offer is presented, its
location, and the specific products presented.

Part 5: Product 58
Downsell
The downsell lives by the motto “any sale is better than no sale”. The person
doesn’t want a $500 suit? You give a discount or sell them on a $300 suit.

Drew Sanocki from DesignPublic.com and a competitor were the only AdWords
advertisers for a $10,000 lamp we’ll name Lampola. Drew stopped the ad
campaign because it gained zero sales yet the competitor continued. Years later
Drew met the competitor CEO over coffee then asked him if he sold any of the
lamps? “No”, he replied. “Then why were you advertising it so much? I noticed
your ads everywhere.” “Because the visitors who clicked on the Lampola ad came
to our site and purchased the Crapola, and they bought a ton of them.”

The Crapola lamp had high margins and high volume. The CEO was sure to include
the lamp as a suggested product for Lampola.

Not all downsells are healthy for business. A downsell is laden with risk in
ecommerce because the purchase funnel and life cycle of a customer is not linear.
Any sale is not better than no sale. For a moment we move beyond conversion
rates.

People have started to abandon cart on purpose and expect to receive a discount
in an email days after abandonment. It is hard to downsell without jeopardizing
profits or training visitors to eat at your profits.

Aim for maximum lifetime value rather than any sale. If you decide to downsell
with coupons, think again then view your time lag report to see when sales taper
off. Test the follow up of email coupons around this time period. Even then, you
have to consider future purchases. What’s your average customer lifetime value?

All things equal, you are more likely to cut profit from price cuts when you sell
exclusive products because your visitors have fewer perceived options.

The more reliable downsell is a cheaper product in a “similar items” listing on the
product page. It could have less features, be a model down, or just be cheaper. If it
has higher margins at a lower cost to the customer, that's even better for your
bottom-line. Though your product-to-purchase conversion does not change on the

Part 5: Product 59
primary product, your total purchases grow as you help visitors grab what is right
for them.

Suggested Resources
• The Ten Principles of Building Great Products by Avid Larizadeh at Forbes
• DIY product photography tips on the Shopify blog
• “The Big List of 189 Words that Convert” by Buffer

There is one gaping piece you haven't placed to make your product pages sell like
hotcakes. Let's discover how to price your products right. It is the quickest and
most dependable method to increase the profit of an online store.

Part 5: Product 60
Part 6: Pricing

Price Strategies to Increase Profit

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”

David Ogilvy, “The Father of Advertising”

P rice optimization is hard. There is the manufacturer’s price guidelines,

competitor prices, confusion of what metrics to measure, and the complex
research cycle of today’s buyers who spend hours researching the best place to
buy. The challenge of getting your price right is worth it because you can increase
profit overnight with minimal work.

A good price maximizes the lifetime value of a customer – the goal of all good
conversion optimization. All the tested tactics and effective practices provided will
not increase your conversion rate or even revenue, but they have jaw-dropping
power to explode profits. Even if you decrease sales and revenue, a higher price
point can mean more profit from the increased margin. Read this whole section
then apply because the individual tactics are connected.

Competitive Pricing
You can do everything right to make someone crave a
product then have a savvy online shopper buy from a
competitor because they offer it cheaper. I have found this
regularly true for high-priced items ($300+) because people
spend hours searching options for the best deal.

Manufacturers with a minimum advertised price (MAP)

stop destructive price wars of stores who undercut each
other on price. A high-priced item with a MAP is most likely best priced at the

Part 6: Pricing 61
MAP.

People are less price sensitive for low-cost items, up-sells, and cross-sells. Make
the golf club you sell competitively priced, then have good margin on the golf
glove available as a cross-sell at checkout.

Give yourself the edge on pricing relative to your competitors with value
propositions. Irresistible guarantees and return policies are ways to distinguish
yourself from competition rather than a raw battle on price. Refer to the whole
positioning section in this conversion guide for further help.

Monitor competitor prices for high-priced products to see your relation to them. If
the product has a MAP, it lets you report any violation to the manufacturer to keep
the competitor in line for the sake of your business.

I made a Google Spreadsheet to monitor competitor prices for you that pulls
common ecommerce schema markup using XPath to extract a product name,
currency, and price:

Make a copy of the spreadsheet then enter the URLs of products you want to
monitor. If any errors occur, consult the Distilled tutorial or your designer for the
correct XPath expression. Review the spreadsheet at anytime to instantly see the
prices of all your competitors! You could even pull your own price in for ease of
comparison.

Part 6: Pricing 62
Raise Your Prices
A price increase is the quickest and most dependable method to increase the
profit of an online store. A store on tight margins is most suited to consider a price
hike. An increase of 10% can bring in 50% more profit provided it does not damage
conversions.

If you sell an exclusive product, a price higher than competitor substitutes puts
your product as the quality option. The higher costs can form a halo effect to help
customers see your store as high-quality provided all messages are aligned. Other
factors impact the halo effect. If your store looks like it was designed in 2005, a
higher price just makes you over-priced.

Consider at what stage of the customer life cycle the product is frequently
purchased. A customer who spends $2000 on a laptop is more willingly to spend
extra on speakers from you in that purchase than from a competitor.

It’s normal to be concerned that a price increase will terrify visitors. Your worst
case scenario is you decrease profits for a period. Your best case is you increase
profits for the life of the product. Test a few of your bestsellers at the start of the
month (for measurement accuracy) to see the affect for yourself.

Lower Your Prices

The best product candidates for lower prices are high-
ticket times that can be purchased cheaper from
elsewhere or ones that start the customer lifetime cycle
with your store.

Lost-lead pricing is a retail strategy to attract people with

a bargain. Consider this strategy when customers can buy
multiple products and you have follow-up marketing in
place to optimize customer lifetime value.

Clear Pricing
Display your price and every possible charge clearly on the product and cart pages.

Part 6: Pricing 63
Worldpay found unclear pricing is the number one reason for cart abandonment:

Consider tax, delivery and return charges. In what currency are the costs?
Wristwatch company MVMT make their pricing crystal clear. A flat-fee or free
delivery cost helps price clarity by saving people the effort of calculation or
proceeding to the checkout to view the full price.

Subscriptions
A subscription makes future sales simple. Turn that one hard earned sale into six
or more.

Your store’s business model could be built around subscriptions. Not enough
ecommerce entrepreneurs consider this for a business model. Loot Crate delivers
geek boxes each month with an assorted collection of nerdy items from cups,
posters, and clothing. Club Jerky send out assorted flavors of jerky every month.

What can you do if you are an existing store with one-off sales to create a
recurring subscription? UK company Who Made Your Pants? have a “Year of Pants”
collection where visitors get charged 12 times for 5 boxes of underwear delivered
at random times. The number of payments mismatching with box numbers, and
the boxes being delivered at random times, make it an average example of
subscriptions (but the novelty could make it work as well as having payments
spread out.)

Herbal Tea Direct have a clear subscription option on the product page that lets

Part 6: Pricing 64
people buy the tea at a lower price and select the frequency of delivery.
Consumption patterns vary so this is a great idea.

The Recurring Orders app lets you setup subscription payments in Shopify, control
delivery frequency, and offer a discount. Factor in consumption frequency
otherwise people cancel if they get too much or you miss profit by not getting
your subscribers their purchase soon enough.

When setting up a subscription, also consider that people are unsure of getting a
consumable on a repeated basis without first experiencing the product. I
encourage you to follow up on all non-subscriptions orders through email, at the
time you expect the product to be fully consumed, with a subscription option.

Bundling
Bundles boost the average order value. They can also help conversions by
providing choice to different consumer segments.

Thanks to Tommy Walker, now editor of the Shopify Plus blog, I discovered a
Harvard Business School piece that looked at consumer behavior and profit when
Nintendo bundled games with their console system. “Pure bundling” where the
pieces were only available together resulted in worse revenue than if the products
were available separately, or in a bundle and separately. People who didn’t care
about the bundled games or were more price sensitive grabbed the bundle, while
high-end gamers (me!) liked to spend more on the console then pick their desired
games.

The most important ecommerce rule of bundles is to make the items

complementary. What constitutes a complementary product can be logical to you
or gathered from your data of what people purchase with the primary product.

Offer a bundle option to snag the two (or three) items at once on the product
page. Amazon do a great job by bundling items based on customers who
purchased the viewed product. (Use their store and others for bundle ideas.) Test
price discounts and bundle contents to optimize your offer.

Part 6: Pricing 65
Product Upsell provide the technology to bundle products in Shopify.

The Left-Digit Effect

Psychologists found the first digit in a group of numbers exert more influence than
the digits that follow. A price of 79.99 is judged mostly by its “7”. It’s not accidental
the price of Dyson products in Target are jacked with nines. The left-digit effect has
three implications for retail.

Firstly, we interpret prices by slashing off the remaining digits. The rule of retail is
to end your prices in “7” and “9” because these prices in repeated studies have
been found to get more sales. An MIT and University of Chicago study found a
clothing item sold best at $39 compared to $44 and $34.

Secondly, reconsider the use of cents for items where quality is important. “[99-
cent endings] can give the image that an item is of low or questionable quality,”
says Robert Schindler, a professor of marketing at Rutgers University. A bargain-
oriented store should use cents everywhere.

Thirdly, whenever you discount, consider the first digit change. A cut from $357 to
$307 is far less appealing than if it were $297. It’s not just the $10 difference that
has an influence, but the left-digit effect. A price of $4.6, down from $4.7, is less
appealing than a price of $4.9, down from $5. The right price is not always the
lowest price.

Free Delivery
You jeopardize conversions and profit with un-optimized
delivery costs to the customer. When the visitor is required
to proceed to checkout to see delivery charges, your
abandonment rate will always be higher than it could.
Unexpected charges is the number one reason for cart
abandonment.

Major retailers clued into digital have some type of free

shipping. The offer works because it is attractive and makes pricing simple.

Part 6: Pricing 66
Free is a power word in the English language that makes people do irrational
things. In a famous study city by Dan Ariely, Lindt chocolate truffles were battled
against Hershey Kisses. 73% of people chose the Lindt chocolate when it was
available for 15 cents compared to 27% of people who chose the Hershey Kiss for
1 cent. Do you think it was because Lindt is the better chocolate? When the
Hershey Kiss was free, 69% of people picked it. We love a deal and even more love
a steal.

Free delivery gets people to buy more when done right. When poorly executed, it
eats profits. How can you ensure free delivery builds your profits more than
charging for delivery?

The most popular method by big retailers is free shipping for a minimum order
value (MOV). Offer free shipping above an order total. Use my free online store
and shipping calculator tool to see what gets you the most profit:

Provide an up-sell to push the visitor to free shipping when you have a MOV and
the order amount is short. Shoe brand Mahabis provided clear directions to get
free shipping in a lightbox message when I clicked “checkout securely”. The
Motivator app sends a clear message in the header how much more a customer
needs to order to qualify for free shipping or some promotional discount. See it in
action on Lifestyle Labs.

A MOV works when a percentage of customers spend extra to meet the

Part 6: Pricing 67
requirement. Pick a MOV that is a percentage above your average order value and
average shipping cost while giving extra profit. Consider complementary products
that fit.

A MOV is ineffective if your products do not complement each other because the
goal is to get visitors spending extra dollars to meet the requirement. A flat
delivery fee calculated from the average delivery cost can work and so may
unconditional free delivery. Consider factoring in the cost of free delivery with an
increase in product price – particularly for more expensive products. Always
calculate profit to gauge the true effect.

Make free shipping obvious early with a value proposition in the header and
automatic at checkout to simplify the promise for people. Do not require any
coupons. One retailer cut the requirement of coupons for orders over $100 to
increase conversions by 50%.

Once you have two reasonable shipping charges that may grow your store, test to
see the affect on average order value and conversion rates.

Suggested Resources
• Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by
William Poundstone
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• 10 Questions to Ask When Pricing Your Product

You've almost finished learning all the best ways to get more customers from
visitors. The last part is the final step of the purchase where you learn how to
make your checkout compel people to buy.

Part 6: Pricing 68
Part 7: Checkout

How to Make Your Checkout Compel

Visitors to Buy

“Like an airplane pilot landing in the dark, we want runway lights

on either side of us, guiding us to the place where we can touch
down our wheels… Thinking is difficult and sometimes
unpleasant.”
Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational

I mprove near the money. That’s my motto for the effectiveness of checkout
optimization. Expect an element to have more weight on profit the closer it is –
chronologically and visually – to when the customer is charged for their purchase.

The checkout is the sequence from the cart page to payment confirmation. What
happens within the process is seen in revenue or cart abandonment because it
affects every customer. Shopify handles a lot of what makes a good payment page,
which is only customizable if you are a Plus subscriber.

The checkout chapter of this ecommerce conversion guide covers specific advice
that applies only to checkout. Every lesson on design (especially usability test) and
others like urgency can improve the through-rate of visitors.

A customer that hands over money reveals trust in the store and belief in the
product. Any last drop of anxiety, deficiency in credibility, or uncertainty from your
almost-customer divulges at checkout. You’re about to learn how to make your
checkout a smooth sequence of ease and reassurance.

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Cement Trust
Most trust should be established before the checkout. You learned the ecommerce
trust-builders like live chat, trust icons, value propositions, and policies like
guarantees, shipping, and returns.

Repetition of trust messages can still boost sales. Turntable Lab decorate their cart
page with messages of security, free shipping, lifetime technical support, and a
customer phone number. (Their mistake is not a repetition of trust messages on
the cart page, but the visual prioritization of what to click next.) Pirate Fashions list
the top three concerns and questions people have during checkout on the cart
page.

If you are not on Shopify Plus, your checkout page is hosted on

checkout.shopify.com. A little hack to build trust is to customize the logo used on
the page with extra trust messages. In the logo images let people know they can
call you to get last-minute questions answered.

A survey or live chat can reveal where your store most lacks trust. iMagnet have a
little survey widget that appears at checkout to see if the visitor has any concerns.

Make Fields Optional or Explain Them

Marketers crave information on their customers. The
digital manifestation are web forms that ask for more
information than a first-date stalker. Users feel invaded
when asked to provide seemingly unnecessary
information.

The Baymard Institute from their usability tests

recommend an approach of “make it optional or explain
it”.

If the requested data is not needed to process a person’s order, either don’t ask for
it or make it optional. Change the required fields for your store by going to your
Shopify admin then “Settings” and “Checkout”. The special instructions field on
the cart page is often unclear and can be removed most of the time.

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The Baymard Institute found required fields are more likely to impact
abandonment than optional fields. People have increased willingness to share
personal information for expensive purchases like a laptop where they want to be
easily reached as opposed to an impulse buy of a shirt. When someone wants to
avoid an optional field, they simply proceed to the next step.

Mark every field as either required or optional to create a smooth checkout

process. Tests show people intensely focus on one field at a time and need to be
told simply what is needed so they can get their purchase quick. “Required” or
“Optional” next to each field is effective as opposed to the vague red asterisk.

The second approach of field optimization proven effective in ecommerce is to

provide a reason why you need the data. It seems obvious to you why you need
their email, but people have been trained to expect the worst with personal
details. “Why do you need my full name?” “Why are you asking for my phone
number when you already have my email?” These are two questions every Shopify
store must address.

Share the reason you request such information openly beneath the label rather
than hiding it behind a tool-tip. The Baymard Institute found the best justification
for requesting a phone number is, “Only used to contact you in case of problems
with your order or delivery.”

Cart Up-sell
The cart page is another chance to increase the average order value by offering an
up-sell. Prompt visitors to order something else to complement a product in their
cart or meet the minimum order value for free shipping.

New York shoe company Kith suggested shoe horns when I viewed my shopping
cart that had a pair of shoes in them. Mahabis sell slippers and suggested at
checkout a slipper bag and gift wrap.

Unlimited Upsell lets you recommend products based on what is in a person's cart.
Provide a custom explanation why it complements their purchase to increase
conversions.

Part 7: Checkout 71
Payment Options
Should you accept PayPal and Google Wallet with your standard credit card
processor? After it all, it makes sense to let people use their preferred payment
option. Electronic retailer Crutchfield added a PayPal option for mobile users and
got an increase of 33.7% in conversions.

There is no universal answer that a particular payment method or two is best.

Most Shopify stores either have a single payment method through Shopify’s Stripe
integration or one that also includes PayPal like clothing company Sevenly.

Your visitors may love PayPal because they don’t have to

stand up to get their credit card or multiple payment
options may confuse and distract. If I had to force a single
recommendation for all sellers, it’d be to use the
standard credit card processor and PayPal.

You have to test. It is simple to find out what is best for

you in the split-test by removing the button elements at
the cart page. Remove any other reference of the
payment methods for the tested variation.

The Three Hundred Million Dollar Button

One form made of two fields, two buttons, and one link stopped 45% of customers
purchasing from a major ecommerce site. When fixed, the store saw an extra $300
million in sales over the following 12 months.

The problem? People had to register an account before checkout. Visitors could
not remember their email, had difficulty authenticating their account, and
experienced more problems resetting a password. When all this went fine, emails
were lost in the spam folder.

In place of the account registration form, the designers put a “Continue” button
with a simple message: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases
on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future
purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

Part 7: Checkout 72
Do not require people to register an account. Full stop. Enable the guest checkout
option in Shopify by going to your checkout settings then selecting “Accounts are
optional“. Customers are given the option to create an account at the end of the
checkout.

Coupon Manipulation
The coupon field disrupts the purchase when the visitor does not have a coupon.
People are enticed to leave the checkout, jump over to Google, and search for a
coupon. If they fail to find one, they either abandon checkout or proceed feeling
slight disappointment that they’re missing out.

A high volume store can search its brand name in Uber Suggest to see the list of
Google Instant suggestions (which show queries people search) for the brand. If
the checkout of the store has a coupon field, you will see search variations of
“coupons”, “promo code” and “discount code”.

One approach to handle this is to give the visitor a coupon. Request something in
return by giving a coupon to someone when they subscribe to your email list. Also
have a page, FAQ or blog post that is SEO-optimized for coupon searches that
provide a discount to capture the search traffic.

The second approach is to remove the form field altogether. Bionic Gloves sell a
variety of sport gloves. The company tested removing their coupon field and
increased revenue 24.7%.

Thank You Page

The thank you page is what the customer sees after purchase. You can make many
requests post-purchase like get the customer to socially share their order, like the
store on Facebook, refer friends, do a survey, or make another purchase. The
worst mistake is not asking your new customer to do something.

Analytics company RJ Metrics in their 2015 study of 176 ecommerce retailers and
18 million customer found, “The fastest growing ecommerce companies have a
customer lifetime value 79% higher than their peers.” The research went on to find

Part 7: Checkout 73
the first 90 days is critical to get the customer purchasing again to build a high
lifetime value. See the importance of lifetime optimization? Harvard Business
School found an increase in retention of 5% can increase profits by 25-95%.

I recommend you prioritize actions in a descending order on the thank you page
with the most important goal of getting your new customer on your email list. If
the customer is not automatically signed up to any list, tease them with a free
bonus that complements their recent purchase. If you sell tea, provide a one-page
well-designed infographic to make the best tea. You could ask them to sign-up to
claim a customer-only coupon for their next purchase.

Do you struggle with positioning your products and store? Now is the time to
trigger a customer survey.

Do you sell other products that go well with the purchase? People who missed
your cross-sells and up-sells may still buy these products. Shopify lets you show
specific content based on the product ordered.

Shopify Plus members can control the technical part of checkout pages while
everyone has control over core content and some design. The Happy Ending app is
another way to change what is displayed on your thank you page.

Part 7: Checkout 74
Where to Next?
Well done on reaching the end of the ultimate guide to boost your Shopify
conversion rate.

What you have completed means nothing if you fail to apply. Every day you put off
conversion optimization is a day sales fall through your hands. Learning is
behavioral change.

All I ask of you is to make one simple change right now. Test a trust element on the
cart page, mention of free delivery in your header, or price change on your best-
seller. Get an ecommerce expert to execute this conversion plan if you are short on
time. Once you see your first revenue lift, you will become addicted to the
optimization process.

Go mine that gold one-foot beneath your feet.

About the Author

I help Shopify stores rapidly get more visitors and profit. At 6’9″,
yes, I play basketball! If you liked the guide and want help to
increase your sales, see my conversion optimization service for
Shopify.

Part 7: Checkout 75