Since many small businesses (especially in today’s economy) don’t want to spend a fortune on testing and research, I was pleased to see Marketing Sherpa’s brilliant new article called “Case Study: Increase Conversions with Simple Site Redesign: 7 Steps” (you can read this article and see creative examples for free until April 15th).  The article provides some great advice to companies looking to test redesigns on the cheap.

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I’m digesting this blog post today from Bazaarblog about how Office Depot increased clickthrough, conversion and sales from their Google ads simply by putting information based on customer reviews in their ads.  What a great idea!  Office Depot recently started a creative test to see how searchers would respond to messaging from product reviews on their site.  The result was a 78% increase in clickthrough rate, 23% increase in conversion and almost 200% increase in revenue from their Google ads.

Here’s a sample of one of their ads (from the Bazaarvoice case study):

Office Depot Google ad

This would be an interesting test for online retailers that test copy in Google ads.  You can bet we’ll be testing it!

I’m loving this blog post at the Get Elastic blog that comments on a You Tube case study where the guru in the video suggests that one buy button design always works the best.  Folks, please don’t be tricked into thinking that there is one button style that works on all web sites.  It simply isn’t true.

Read the commentary in the Get Elastic blog post and I think you’ll agree.  My personal experience from testing hundreds of sites proves that there’s not one “magic” buy button, page layout, or product display.  All businesses and sites are different (thus keeping me employed and working on new projects).

The video, though, does bring one point to light, and the point is that you can’t improve your results if you don’t test.  Spilt testing can reveal better design that helps you sell your products more effectively.

Thanks to the Marketing Experiments blog for posting some recent research on optimizing client testimonials.  We all know that client testimonials (or customer testimonials, customer ratings) are relevant and have credibility with web site visitors, but is your site using customer testimonials effectively?

You can read their findings here or if you didn’t see their webinar on July 9, you can watch it here.

I’ve had quite a few clients and prospective clients call and ask, “What is a good conversion rate?” and “What is a good shopping cart abandonment rate?”

While the Fireclick Index can give you the average conversion rate and shopping cart abandonment rate for your general industry, many web sites have intricacies that make them different from the “average” site. Additionally, many smaller web sites process e-commerce transactions through “canned” e-commerce systems (like Miva Merchant, Yahoo Merchant Services, osCommerce and others) and either can’t or don’t customize the checkout process.

My answer to the question of a “good” cart abandonment rate or conversion rate is to re-frame the question. Rather than asking what a conversion rate or cart abandonment rate should be, the question you should ask is “What can I do to my web site to improve the conversion rate and cart abandonment rate?”

I tell clients to use the Fireclick Index to get a general rule of what their e-commerce conversion rate should be, then compare it to their actual conversion rate. Is it close to “average,” or is it not in line with the average for your industry?

Once you answer that question, the real question is how you improve your conversion rate. We answer the question of how a site can improve by performing a web site assessment, which is an exhaustive analysis using qualitative and quantitative data, including testing a site with real customers. This helps uncover issues with web sites that make them easier to use, improving conversion rates.

So rather than asking “What should my conversion rate be?” or “What should my shopping cart abandonment rate be?” ask instead what you can do to improve it.

Normally, abandoned shopping carts make e-commerce retailers frown. Not in this case, however. Check out this video on You Tube and you’ll have a whole new view of the abandoned shopping cart (and a good laugh).