IA Summit 11: Steps to Successful E-Commerce

For my first afternoon session of the summit on Day 2 I attended the always animated Eric Reiss’s Presentation “Increase The Size Of Your Package In Just Four Weeks: Four Steps To Successful E-Commerce“. Always a fun presenter, Eric went over a lot of the principles of persuasion and how they can affect buying decisions. Additionally he covered a little bit of form design, leading on the importance of international considerations in their usability.

My Notes:

• Designs needs to take into account many things:
  • Rational/Physical
  • Understandable
  • Rewarding
  • Intuitive/Emotional
• If you want someone to give you something, give them something first
• Don’t force the customer into a relationship
  • -wine.com – forces you to choose a state before viewing the site
  • -linkedin.com – confirm you know this person is a lead in for a 6 step signup
• Don’t make it just usable – make it useful
• The top 4 problems with forms:
  • They come at a dumb time
  • They are unintelligible
  • They are difficult to complete
  • They cannot be completed
    • He was trying to make a donation to a site, but they wouldn’t accept his foreign address at all, and because a billing address is required, he was not able to make a donation
  • There should be a shared frame of reference between the site and the user.
    • Showed an example of two different sites selling climbing boots. Only one site got it right, showing the tread of the boot in the picture. The tread of the shoe is a very important part of purchasing a climbing shoe, and the builders need to take things like this into account, by developing a shared frame of reference on all their products.
    • Sometimes sites have the right reference, but forget to provide the audience with context. Eric saw an ad for a shoe that boasted it’s weight, but didn’t mention that the weight was important because it was a steel toed shoe that was still light.
      • It’s important to find and answer the unanswered questions.
• Content is King, but Context is the Kingdom
  • Content is made up through images, words, and sound. But does the user recognize the image, is the language correct, and do they even have speakers.
  • Longer text sells more than shorter text – but when words fail images are needed to justify the content.
  • Showed an example of a vacuum for sale, that didn’t tell what types of bags you needed to buy for it.
• Cognitive Challenges
  • Color and images
    • Red buttons have a higher conversion rate than green buttons
  • Number of choices
  • Social validation
  • Scarcity
  • Fear of loss
  • Framing
    • Selling something next to a cheaper and a more expensive option, will result in the middle option sold most often
    • Selling something after a more expensive sale, means the user will pay more for a product then they might normally, because compared to the more expensive sale it doesn’t seem as expensive.

Slides: