4 elements of a winning homepage

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BEST PRACTICES IN RETAIL WEBSITE TESTING AND OPTIMIZATION

4 ELEMENTSOF A WINNING

HOMEPAGE

4 Elements of a Winning Homepage : : Best Practices in Retail Website Testing and Optimization

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Table of Contents

3 The Purpose of a Homepage

5 Elements of a Homepage

6 #1 Imagery

7 #2 Promotion

8 #3 Navigation

9 #4 Search

10 Case Study

11 Making It Work

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Because too many online retailers — and their marketing teams — are taking a hit-or-miss, shot-in-the-dark, throw-stuff-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks approach to their websites.

The result is consistently inconsistent conversion rates, or worse, consistently abysmal revenue numbers. And, as far as homepage bounce rates go, anything over 55% should be a red flag that something is terribly wrong.

Your retail website has one simple goal: To make customers buy something.

But getting visitors who land on your homepage through to checkout can be a complicated ordeal. In fact, getting them beyond the homepage alone is a challenge for many retailers.

Why?

eTailers, it doesn’t have to be this way.

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Make Your Customers Feel at Home

In an ideal world, your homepage bounce rate would hover somewhere around zero. Every visitor who lands on your main site page would be enticed by just the right offer or just the right product — almost like you have a team of mind readers pulling strings behind the scenes.

In reality, even the best sites have bounce rates of up to

25%.

Heck, even a bounce rate of under

40%

is still pretty respectable.

Sadly, plenty of retailers find themselves looking at far bleaker numbers, and even the occasional spike in click-through rates isn’t enough to cover the truth: consumers who land on your website aren’t getting the experience they need to commit to further shopping on your site.

If you want to learn more about

becoming a mind reader — or a

real-world approximation of one,

read our eBook on personalization,

“This Time It’s Personal.”

It’s time to make it stop.

http://go.maxymiser.com/PersonalizationeBookApril2012_WebsiteLandingPage.html

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Elements of a Homepage So where do you start? If you’re thinking big picture, here’s what every homepage must provide:

And for all the fuss and muss that can go into a homepage, all of the agonizing hours that go into getting design just right and into tweaking copy until it sings with just the right tone, the essential functionality of any homepage is actually pretty straightforward.

Really, there are

4 key elements that any retailer’s homepage must have…

Clarity Make immediately clear to the customer which products or services you offer. Visitors should never have to move beyond the homepage to get a basic understanding of what you are actually offering on your site.

Navigation Provide clear site navigation that is intuitive and easy to use. Top-level navigation is the North Star of your site, and should allow visitors to easily orient themselves at any point in the shopping process. Experience Give visitors a clear path to category and product pages. It shouldn’t take more than a few clicks for customers to drill down into specific categories and product offerings.

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This is the lead site image, normally under the navigation and above the fold, that is the main attention-grabber on the site. It can be static or it can be part of a slider, but this will be the first thing that the average site visitor notices upon landing on your homepage.

Element #1: Hero & Product Imagery

Displays product in a clean and compelling way yet not in the traditional grid format or hero image l encourages visitors to engage and scroll down page

Instead of telling visitors about the products, this site shows and engages visitors

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Drive customers to take advantage of special site offers or to shop sale products. Introduce them to new products or promote seasonal offerings or interest-specific landing pages. These regularly changing site elements are one of the best ways to capture visitors’ attention, while appearing fresh and relevant.

Element #2: Promotional Calls-to-Action

Sale banner gives visitor the ability to easily go to relevant content with the CTA buttons within banner (Men’s, Women’s, Kids’)

Very product focused but in a non-traditional way l as a visitor, you are encouraged to scroll down and engage

Shows a lot of product (Men’s, Women’s, Kids’, Shoes, Accessories) without overwhelming the visitor with images and information

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While hero imagery and promotional areas on your homepage are important, remember that many visitors might come to your site with a purpose. An easy-to-digest navigation bar is essential. With a range of categories — and products in those categories — this navigation grounds the user experience no matter where they are on your site. Consistency, ease-of-use and branding are all essential to conversion rates.

Element #3: Standard Site Navigation

5 Top navigation has the family of sites persistently placed

6 Boosts brand recognition for lesser known brands

7 Top navigation builds a long-term visitor as visitors become familiar with the site for wedding planning, then go back for advice, information, and products around home décor, pregnancy, and beauty

1 Persistent top navigation for 6 sites 2 6 sites, one cart, persistent “My Account”

module on top right

3 Ability to reorder your “stuff” 4 Tools encourage people to return

and become repeat buyers

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The search function — it’s common on almost any website, but most retailers may not realize what a valuable impact it can have on the customer experience, as well as average order values. A customer who comes to your site with a specific purchase plan should always have an immediate way to track down a desired product; a search feature fulfills this need.

Element #4: Search Baror Widget

1 “I want __” prompts visitors

to finish the sentence to find their search

2 # of results displays in the far right of the search bar, automatically updating based on visitor input

3 Search icon used instead of text

4 Interactive search widget allows for:

• Easier search functionality• Increased site engagement

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“Our website header is high-visibility real estate and includes the essential function of on-site search, so it was a key focus for us. Accessibility to checkout was of even higher importance. Maxymiser helped us plan a test that not only drove measureable improvements to interactions but also led to quantifiable improvement in sales.”

Harry & David and Maxymiser put their heads together to find which design would increase engagement with the global Navigation search tool. Using Maxymiser’s MaxTEST™ MVT solution, more than 2,500 experiences were tested to determine if changes to the shopping cart look and feel, the search box layout, the search term copy, the search box outline, the search button look, and the search button color would drive increased conversions and revenue.

When Elements Come Together to Cause a ReactionCase Study:

Default Content Winning Experience

The winning combination of elements included an alternate button (as compared to the default arrow), presenting the search term inside the search box, presenting

an alternate search term (as compared to the default “Search”), and using alternate cart imagery and messaging (as compared to the default “cart” wording).

— Kevin Higgins, Senior Manager, Web Analytics, Site Testing, and Usability, Harry & David

The test ran during Harry & David’s peak revenue season, the December holidays, and tested more than 2,500 experiences, producing a double-digit uplift in conversion rates, leading to increases in average order values and revenue.

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Once you’ve mapped out the elements of any successful online retail site homepage, you’ll find lots of room for creativity, experimentation, and adaptation.

By playing around with images and colors, by swapping out content and offers, by featuring different products and tracking click behaviors along the way, you’ll begin to discover which approaches, in particular, really resonate with your customers. The best part is: with A/B and multivariate testing, you can not only try these elements, but track their value and impact on conversion and bounce rates.

But don’t get too comfortable. There is no final, perfect homepage for your fickle customers, whose wants and interests are always shifting and evolving. You’ll always be testing and optimizing homepage content to get the results you want.

The perfect homepage isn’t the stuff of myth, but it’s not a perfect science either.

Ensure your homepage is doing all it can to maximize your ROI.If you are interested in speaking with someone at Maxymiser, please email [email protected].

mailto:info%40maxymiser.com?subject=4%20Elements%20of%20a%20Winning%20Homepage

4 elements of a winning homepage

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