Month: September 2006

If you run an e-commerce site, you’ve probably heard about “website usability.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_usability At first I thought this was some buzzword self-proclaimed experts or agencies concocted to drum up more business. How wrong I was. As one lovable cartoon “character”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKWntmFt5ps would say DOH!!!
Our “website”:http://www.searstravel.ca relaunch earlier this year showed me usability optimization makes a difference. Despite an overall reduction of operating expenses (including marketing) year over year, our sales are up especially on higher margin product.
Although a new web-only pricing strategy was a contributory factor in our success, our website redesign (as a result of a usability audit by an agency) was the other major factor that contributed to our improved performance.
It’s naive to think you can improve everything at once, unless your financial and manpower resources afford you that luxury. So my humble suggestion is to pick one key area for your website and focus on optimizing it. Once you are done that, move to the next priority.
For example, if your number one goal is to increase sales, take a look how your website sales conversion is going. Is it good enough? If the answer is no, look to improve the booking flow or purchase path for your shopping cart from a usability perspective. Sometimes it’s a function of simply fixing the colour or size of the ‘Buy’ button. Sometimes it’s more complex.