We took a look at 5 online sales myths, earlier this week, which can hurt the user experience and thus your conversion rates. Today we’ve got 5 more myths to debunk that should help you create a better user experience and get more sales.
E-mail Marketing is Dead
Yes, there are 50,000 unread e-mails in my Inbox on Gmail. Yes, there are tons of lists I signed up for where I never read so much as a single e-mail from the company I signed up with. E-mail marketing is often spam. But not all e-mail marketing is spam; there are several companies whose newsletters I read weekly or daily. So what’s the difference between the two?
Author/Copyright holder: Jonny Hughes. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
Content. You are in charge of your e-mail programs if you want to send me robotic “buy now!” messages without a hint of value – that’s fine but excuse me if I don’t read your e-mails either. If on the other hand you use the newsletter to add value to my life then I will read everything you send me.
If Our Site is Gorgeous We’ll Make Money
Most UX professionals will already know this but the way your site looks doesn’t count for toffee if working with your site is a PITA. The underlying ease of use, well designed processes and a focus on conversion is way more important than the look of your website. Amazon’s site isn’t all that beautiful and yet, it sells more stuff online than any other site. Never put graphical design ahead of UX design.
We Don’t Need Analytics
Author/Copyright holder: Yuko Honda. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0
Trying to figure out if you’re running a good business just by counting the cash that comes in is foolish. Analytics tell you where you can improve your website to further boost conversions. Given that tools like Google Analytics are free… there’s really no excuse for this kind of behaviour any more. You need to dig below “number of hits” and “cash made” to understand exactly what is going on and what you can do to make things better for your users.
We Can’t Beat Amazon
Amazon may be the biggest retailer online but that doesn’t make it the only source of product purchasing either. In fact in many markets Amazon’s market share hovers around the 10-20% mark and that leaves plenty of room for improvement. Sure, beating Amazon is tough but being the best in any field is tough. You have to aim high to succeed.
Price is the Critical Factor in Getting the Sale
Author/Copyright holder: Unknown. Copyright terms and licence: Unknown Img source
Yes, there are a lot of people out there who use the Internet as a bargain basement shopping center but interestingly, recent research by PWC, shows that price is not a factor in retaining customers and more importantly all customers said that price was not their key criteria when making a purchase online. So concentrate on quality of your online offering and the sales will come even if you are a bit more expensive than some other retailers.
Header Image: Author/Copyright holder: Unknown. Copyright terms and licence: Unknown. Img Source
