Comments on: 4 Tweaks We Made To Our Business That Drastically Improved Sales

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:24:39 +0000

@Jon
Our online store is still growing at a pretty fast rate so the only real way to tell Hacker Safe’s effectiveness would be to do some A/B testing over several months. I wonder if they would let me test drive their logo on our store for a short period. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to the rep. If I try it, I’ll let you know how it goes.

By: Jon Kepler

Jon Kepler — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:20:40 +0000

@Steve
I inquired a long time ago, before they were acquired by McAfee, and it was $1700-$1900 for me if I remember correctly. Oh yeah, PER YEAR. Because of that, I’ve never tried it out, but it would be interesting to know how often it really gets that extra 15%. I suspect it’ll make less and less difference over time as the general public becomes more accustomed to shopping online. On the other hand, McAfee thought they were worth $50 million, so what do I know?

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:59:12 +0000

Hi Mark,

I like your ideas. In fact Live Chat is something that I’m looking into right now. As for the forums, that will become a better idea once we become more established and have more traffic. If we did forums right now, they would be pretty dead. I tend to have a different philosophy in regards to ‘multimedia’ techniques. Our customer base covers a wide range. In fact, a good percentage of our customers are either on dial-up or are not good at using computers. I would prefer to keep the shopping experience as simple as possible. Don’t get me wrong. Multimedia has its place but personally I hate shopping at sites with too many distractions.

By: Mark Foo | TheBigDreamer.com

Mark Foo | TheBigDreamer.com — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:34:54 +0000

Hi Steve,

I have 3 suggestions but they are not simple tweaks. They require some effort.

1. Set up a discussion forum on your website so that you can find out what your customers and potential customers really think.

2. Use Live Chat. My personal experience of Live Chat with Hostgator’s customer service assistants was one of the main factors I stay with them.

3. Engage your visitors using ‘Multimedia’ techniques. Displaying your products with the use of professional video clips can be very visually enticing and would be effective to create a mental image in your prospects’ mind how their parties gonna look.

If you’ve not already adopted what I’ve suggested, you might want to consider them, if not for now, then perhaps for the future.

Cheers~

Mark

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:39:36 +0000

@Seamus
I dabbled with the website optimizer early on and I think it’s a great tool, especially because its free. I find that optimizer is best used when making small tweaks to a given page and checking the results. I didn’t really need it for the search experiment but it certainly will have come in handy if I ever redesign the product layout.

@Jon
I’ve debated for a long time whether to add hacker safe to the site. They claim a 15% increase in conversions, but they charge a good amount of money to add the logo.

@Scopulus
I agree with this philosophy as long as all of the buttons don’t look cluttered on the page.

By: Scopulus

Scopulus — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:32:55 +0000

It is said that and if you add PayPal as a method of payment ( that if you have not already), then sales increase.

This is something i have seen working and the idea is that you give your customers as many method so there is more chance they find one thay are comfortable with.

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Twitted by PMolinero — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:07:07 +0000

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By: Jon Kepler

Jon Kepler — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:51:58 +0000

Thanks, great tips! It’s interesting how sometimes small things make a huge difference. I once read of a site who increased their sales by a fair margin by placing their “Hacker Safe” (now “McAfee Secure”) logo higher on the page! I guess if it makes your customers feel good, do it.

By: Seamus Anthony

Seamus Anthony — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:57:50 +0000

This is an excellent bunch of advice and might I add that it makes sense to install Google’s Website Optimizer and split test everything to see what sells more.