Design vs e-Commerce Conversion Rates

This is a very rough post. I can’t really focus on making this coherent, but it is simply important I get it written.

e-Commerce is amazing because one can quantify the effect of having two add to cart buttons, or the effect of a certain color on the text. Studies show that two buy icons increase conversion rates by 4%. Studies also show that showing the same link twice increases its effectiveness by a ridiculous margin. Nowhere else can you get information so precise. You couldn’t determine how much more sales a paper ad generated. In fact, you can only have a rough idea what traditional advertising did for your immediate sales.

Anyways, I have been piecing it all together through my intuition. What is perfect, in my eyes? But this article just gave me a few pointers. I had made icons for the small “add to cart” elements, but not a big icon like amazon.com.

And I must admit, they do it nicely. The cart is always accessible and you are ever so reminded of checking out. Using that bar would allow me to include lots of other information as well, such as how many are left, how much you are getting discounted today, etc. how much more you can buy & get further discounts.

http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/02/26/amazon-shopping-cart/

I think this site may turn out to boast great conversion rates after it goes live. I just have much to do programming still. The last step is the fine-tuning of the design.

So, what I have to remember to do is to do a javascript CSS switch to a pure white version of the site. It might be too blinding for others. Ironic, no? that black is the blinding one?

It would also be ideal to have re sizable text, but that is royally difficult to coax into a layout.

One particular direction.

Here is one direction we can head in for Anuva’s new look. Its sleek and sexy. I do wonder if it will appeal to everybody, though. The interesting thing about the wine industry is that its demographic has a rift in it between the past generation who has its own views on the internet, and a new generation who is closely linked to the internet.

I only know how internet design appeals to the latter group. Perhaps this type of design, and new generation features such as flash are only appealing to that group. Perhaps a blank white page looks better and more ‘refined’ to the past generation.

Time will tell. I plan to have many different versions to show everybody I know.