Customized Retail Websites Star in Holiday Season!

 Online retailers have known for long that the design of and features in a website can affect sales. So, many online retailers have been making small but effective changes to their websites in preparation for the holiday shopping season in the final quarter of the year.

For instance, eBags has been experimenting with letting customers rate products using a five star scale. The online retailer tested three sites – the control group without a rating system, a site with the five star rating system, and one with a graded scale to rate products. The retailer found that the site with the rating system registered around 8 percent more sales, with the star rating system performing marginally better. So, from Thanksgiving this year, the retailer has introduced the star rating system.

“There’s no silver bullet to growing sales,” said eBags co-founder Peter Cobb. “It tends to be a lot of incremental improvements made on the website and in the customer experience” He added that the `star’ change has so far helped increase eBags sales by 32 percent this holiday season against sales in the same period the previous year. Cobb, however, declined to reveal the underlying numbers behind this statement.

Amazon has used this method of testing A and B sites for some time now. Other online retailers have started following this as well. Many online retailers now retain consultants such as Maxymiser and BazaarVoice to obtain advice on how to tweak their sites to increase sales. Such consultants charge thousands of dollars to come up with suggestions.

Given the growth in online retailing – this sector has grown 15 percent year-on-year – and the increasing competition, online retailers are willing to pay for the advice.

Another company that started testing alternative sites prior to the holiday season is Harry & David. It tried a variety of search box designs and colors. The site also experimented with and continues to test the responses of visitors to `Cart’ and `Your Cart’. Such ongoing research into customer preferences is a part of the strategy adopted by many online retailers.

Amazon recently tested a less cluttered home page with fewer buttons, more white space, and an emphasis on digital products. Sucharita Mulpuru, research analyst at Forrester said that such website “optimization” was growing. She added that e-retailers “hear about companies like Amazon… and they want to make sure they’re not missing out.”

Source: The Wall Street Journel