Hello, I work at an e-commerce company which sells replacement parts, we carry thousands of products which fall into several categories & subcategories and at the same time, fit different brand, model and version items. Currently the only way for an user to find any part he needs is to provide the brand, model and version of the item he has using a set of select boxes, after that it would be taken to a page with the list of all the categories and then after clicking one of the categories, see a list of all the parts that match what he was looking for. There is no other way to navigate the site, there is no link to the categories or subcategories on the home page. Would this have any impact on the purchase decision of the users? Would the current navigation flow (via select boxes) give the users a "weird" experience and reduce the change that they place an order? I will appreciate your thoughts. Kind regards, Otto
Yes, bad or no a/b testing = terrible sales. Sort of a no brainer here really. You always want things as simple as humanly possible for the end user. That is my short answer. Would need a link to be specific but it sounds like you have already identified a pretty glaring issue. hope that helps, Nigel
Thanks for your reply Nigel, we have been discussing about implementing A/B testing lately. But at this time we are wondering specifically if by allowing a single way to reach the products (using the select boxes) we are making the user's experience "weird" enough that they decide to quit the site, it's reduce the chance that they place an order. I would like to hear more opinions about this, I will greatly appreciate it.
That could very well be the case. If you want to shoot me a link via PM or conversation, I guess its called now, I will be happy to tell you a range of things. Its basically what I do but I have a pretty easy week so I am happy to help really. I can talk about this sorta stuff for hours on end. I have to fix a few wordpress issues for a client tonight but I should be able to send a response with suggestions, tools to fix things and so on, relatively quickly. Additionally, this is a job for funnels in analytics but there are probably easier ways to flesh this out. Nigel
Site structure is vital for site performance and as a result - for conversions. IMHO you should add links to the categories. Cross sells and up sells also work well.
To change the visits into sales, good site structure is must. The website must be user friendly and properly categorized so that user can easily get what he wants without the wastage of time. You must have separate categories and sub categories wherever required.
There's a lot of super true information in this thread. And yes -- the takeaway is that the user experience is make-or-break when it comes to an eCommerce website. If your visitors aren't satisfied with the search and navigation options that your site provides, they won't just have a tougher time converting...they'll straight-up leave your site altogether. This article went up on Mashable the other day and was pretty illuminating: http://mashable.com/2014/01/20/online-retail-sales/ Number four on this list of the "Top 10 Reasons Your Site Is Losing Sales" is "Site Functionality." Number six is "Site Search." These things are super important to people, especially in a day and age where more and more online shoppers are browsing on their smartphones and tablets. The problem with this question and these answers, though, is that there can be a million possible ways to change up your site's search functionality. Where to start? It can be a crazy daunting question. One of the best ways to figure out the best direction in which to take your site's search functionality is to give it to some people who have NEVER used it before. Find some folks that have just never been to your website, and sit them down with it. Tell them to try and buy something. Give them an item to try and find. Observe how they do it. Observe the things they try to do. When you've done this with a good number of people, it's more than likely that you'll see some kind of trend(s) emerge. This information can be used to help guide your site restructuring process, if that's what you decide to do. Hope this helps! _ Sean