Many retail ecommerce web sites ended 2007 with a bang according to Nielsen Online and MegaView Retail. Of sites that had a minimum of 500K unique visitors during the month of December, here are the top 10 sites with the best conversion rates:
The Popcorn Factory: 29.5%
L.L. Bean: 23.6%
Abebooks: 20.6%
Hollister: 17.6%
Amazon: 17.6%
Lands End: 17.2%
Coldwater Creek: 17.1%
QVC: 17.1%
Cabela’s: 16.8%
Gymboree: 16%
Until now, the de rigueur of ecommerce web design says that add-to-cart buttons belong on the right column of the screen. Crutchfield.com is breaking that convention, though, by placing the add-to-cart button on the left column. Rather than showing a screen here, you can see one on Grokdotcom’s blog post or at Crutchfield.com.
Having worked at Crutchfield for a short time a few years ago, I know that there are some brilliant minds there, and that they used to test a lot of different screen designs. I wonder if this is a test or if they have seen some data that indicates that a left-side add-to-cart button works.
In any case, I can’t believe that an add to cart button on the right side is actually more effective.
If you have an established company blog, you probably have writer’s block from time to time. Today I want to share my favorite way to brainstorm new topics for your company blog.
If you’re using Google Analytics to track your web site traffic (and your blog traffic), you probably are aware that you can see what phrases people type in search engines to find your web site. This report can be found under Traffic Sources and is called Keywords.
To find great blog topic ideas, click on the Keywords report and show 500 results. Scroll to the bottom and look through the list. You’ll often find that people find your blog using phrases that are related to your blog or services, but you may not have written about these topics in your blog.
For example, one person found my blog in the last 30 days by typing in “landing page success rate.” I’ve touched on landing pages before, but never the concept of how to measure a landing page’s success rate. That’s a good candidate for a blog post.
Keep in mind that this trick works best with established blogs that receive decent traffic from search engines. Also note that if you’re not using Google Analytics, Hittail is another free service that can easily be installed on your blog to get keyword data.
