Buying online – what are people scared of?

Written by josh on October 30th, 2009

It’s no wonder that buying online has had such a slow uptake. With credit card scams online and the fears placed into people from their banks and the media, many are unwilling to enter their card details and make a purchase.

Times are changing and what originally was fear and skepticism has turned into a calculated decision to determine whether a site is safe to use.

If you have an online store, it’s very important to know the elements the visitors look for to decide whether to purchase from you. It’s true that most people expect to find bargains on the internet. With the reduced cost of operations compared to a physical shop, the owners are able to make the same profit with a cheaper price tag. But it’s not always the cheapest shop that most people select, it’s often the one they feel the most comfortable to deal with.

So what are they looking for?

Visual

If an online store looks antiquated, sloppy, has bad grammar or spelling or gives the impression that the operator is unprofessional, people are less likely to trust it. Unless you know the website operator, it’s near impossible to know if they are trustworthy. So many visitors have to determine this from the appearance of the shop. Ensure that the style of the site is consistent and font sizes and colours are pleasant. If the site looks like a ransom note people may treat it as one!

Security

The majority of people these days know not to enter sensitive information onto a non-secure website. They look for the lock symbol on the browser, and check the name. If you are to going to accept credit card information then security is a must otherwise the majority will not proceed with the payment.

Payment options

With services such as PayPal and Google Checkout storing customers bank details, more and more people are purchasing online using these types of services, as they feel that there is an element of trust with the third party company. This may only be a sense of security but having these options may increase the number of purchases in your store. As these services are not banks, be aware that they may not be required to follow the guidelines that the governments expect, and generally the moneys are kept in a holding account at the service rather than the money being immediately accessible by you.

By having other options such as direct deposit, BPAY and possibly COD, people who do not have a credit card or feel more confident with being in control of the amount being paid, have an option to place an order.

Delivery calculations

Unless you offer the item to be picked up, there is usually a delivery fee that people expect to pay on top of the price for the items. By having the delivery prices available on the site before payment time, people will know what to expect to pay overall. If the delivery prices are not calculated until after an order is placed, then customers wont know what it’s going to cost all up, and may be dubious about placing the order. Some customers may have had items lost in post before, so ensure that they are able to request registered post or sign on receipt courier services.

Information

Unless you are selling a brand name that people can look at in a department store, the description of the items on the website needs to be comprehensive and correct. A good quality picture (or more if the item deserves it) and a well-written description are necessary to allow the shopper to understand what the product is like so they can make a decision whether to purchase or not. Unless described, the feel and smell of the item are not conveyed. For products such as fabric or scented candles, these become important.

Something to be careful of is conflicting information. Check the description to make sure that specifications match wherever it is stated twice, especially if title contains some details. A confused shopper is likely to abandon the cart.

Whenever images are used, it is important that the image be representing of what the customer will receive. If a black item is shown in the picture but the customer receives a white one, they will not be impressed. It’s ok to have a difference is if there is a variant to choose from, for example t-shirts that have a colour choice for the fabric.

Contact Form

If a customer has any questions it’s comforting to be able to contact the shop owner. A contact form is a great way to be able to ask questions. The sooner the customer receives a reply from the shop operator the more likely they are to return to the shop.

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Improving your visitor’s experience – optimising images

Written by josh on October 12th, 2009

Internet connection speeds vary. A lot. When a visitor from a slow connection accesses a website, they have a limited amount of patience. If the website takes longer than 20 seconds to load, most visitors will stop browsing through the site.

The largest part of most websites are the images, and depending on the format and dimensions of the image the size can vary dramatically for the same visual appearance. When images are saved at their optimal size, the visitor will experience a reduced loading time, and this may increase the likelihood of them staying longer.

To process an image you can use software like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or Irfanview.

Image Dimensions

Often, people tend to upload the best quality picture they can find, often straight from their digital camera, and then resize the image in the website editor. But all this does is change the size the web browser should display it as. The result is an image that looks terrible and takes forever to load. By changing the physical width and height of the image, by scaling and/or cropping, to the size you want it to be on the site, it will visually look the best.

File Format

The best file format of the image depends on what it’s a picture of. Photographs that have a lot of different colours and gradations are better suited to the jpeg (or jpg) format.  Images with blocks of colours and sharp edges work better using the png or gif formats.

The differences between these is the compression methods they use. The png and gif formats are lossless formats, and so keep the colours and pixels identical to the original. The jpg format is lossy and discards information that it believes the human eye will not detect.

To optimise a lossless format (png and gif), the best way is to reduce the number of colours. When you reduce the colours it is best to allow the software to generate the optimum colour table and don’t allow it to dither, as dithering increases pixel variation and can increase file size (plus it doesn’t look that great on the screen)

To optimise a lossy format (jpg), you can choose at save time the quality to save it as. Basically this tells the computer how much to throw away. Some graphics packages allow you to preview what the output will be. Zoom into or look at an area where there is a sharp line with high contrast and set the quality so it looks ok. To further reduce the file size, you can blur the background of the image slightly, this will remove unnecessary detail, and may improve the impact of the image visually.

Examples

Here are some example images showing file sizes for a logo:

GIF format: 1,405 bytes

PNG format: 1,316 bytes

JPG format (Quality: 100): 8,741 bytes

JPG format (Quality: 80): 3,440 bytes

JPG format (Quality:50): 2,354 bytes

As you can see the PNG format is the smallest size. Visually they all look similar, however if you zoom in it’s a different story:

PNG format

JPG format (Quality: 100)

JPG format (Quality: 80)

JPG format (Quality:50)

The smallest JPG looks considerably worse, and the PNG looks the best. For images like this, PNG and GIF will always be a better option over JPG for file size and image quality.

Now compare a photograph image of a flower:

PNG image: 153,076 bytes

GIF image: 56,399 bytes

JPG (Quality: 80): 17,480 bytes

In this example you can see that the lossy format of the JPG is considerably smaller and still looks visibly as good as the PNG. Note that the GIF looks terrible as that format is limited to 256 colours, so it is limited to block colours only.

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How does your Landing Page convert?

Written by jeff on July 14th, 2009

When a visitor lands on one of your landing pages after performing a search from a search engine, the expectations of the visitor are that they do not want to be bombarded with information about non related items or have too many options.

You will increase the likelihood that someone will purchase or enquire about your product if the users expectation match what they have search for in the first place. That is why it is important to think about your Landing Pages for each product or service.

It’s essential to provide the visitor with enough information to make an informed decision to continue. Then it is important that the design of the page is in such a way to easily take the user to the next step being a call to action, either by purchasing, an enquiry form or contact details.

If your landing page has one purpose it will be easier to drive traffic to this page with the right keyphrases and provide a clear message to the user.

Once you have your landing page(s) built, keep monitoring the conversion rates and make changes accordingly. Keep a look out for what visitors to your page typed in a search engine to find that page in the first place, and does the page have enough and relevant information available for the user to make a decision to go to the next step.

Need advice on how to create a landing pages please contact Diggy  www.diggy.com.au

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Having No Online Presence Could Mean Tough Times for Your Business

Written by Diggy on July 14th, 2009

It has been a trend for quite a few years now that online purchases are the way of the future. If you don’t have a web site and means for your customers or prospective customers to find information about your products and or services you could find yourself in a disadvantage to your competitors who will continue to gain market share.

People who tell you having an online presence isn’t necessary are probably also only using their fax machine, send greeting cards.

So why is it that the Internet will continually be used more and more for gathering information and making purchases?

Convenience is the key! The number of online purchases continues to grow because almost anything you could ever want or need can be purchased with the click of a button from your office or comfort of your own home — from DVD’s to clothing to vacations. And most importantly most purchases such as cars, holidays, homes, TV’s office equipment are all researched on the Internet before a purchase is made.

We’re a society of immediate gratification and are time poor.

Waiting in line-ups, being restricted to 9-5 store hours and taking time out of our over-committed day to drive to a shopping centre, fight for a park doesn’t make sense any more when we can log into our computer 24/7, find what we want within minutes and have it delivered to our door.

Kids these days don’t know any different and are searching for toys, sports equipment and clothing online. This target market is continually growing and it is important for your business to be part of it.

So if anyone asks me is an online presence important, I would say if you don’t you will be out of business at some time in the future.

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