- August 27, 2008 by The Heff
The Industry Average Best Practice blog post
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Best practice tells us that I should start this post with an image so I do.
This will significantly improve the number of readers to finish reading this post. So I hope you will, and Goggle will tell me if you actually did. The industry average length of a blog posting is between 100 and 249 words (see above) so I will try to stick with this.
This brings me to what I want to write about. “Industry averages” and “Best practice”. Two of the most commonly used buzz words these days only topped by “We’ll make it totally Web 2.0“.
Many people see Best Practice as “Everyone does it” or even worse “My competitor does it so it must be good.” There was a wonderful blogpost from our friends at getelsatic.com. They compared 101 Add To Cart buttons. The language alone tells you that these guys are Americans. So if we look at these buttons, what does this tell us? Correct, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘best practice’. Ok 58% use the phrase “Add to Cart” but that will probably not convert many visitors in the UK. So there goes best practice again.
Industry averages are seen as a tool to compare your site, just like Top 10 charts are. However, just like Top 10 Charts, industry averages measure, well, averages…and miss out on an awful lot of things on the way. Conversion Rate (beware the buzz-word-o-meter here) Industry Avergaes is what most of our clients ask us for. Well the answer is not that simple. Commonly the answer would be between 2.5% and 3%. However, if I take for example the Top 10 list of the top converting retail sites I would see a very different picture. First of all these sites convert at 14% and above. For the sake of argument we could say that we should only take the flower companies, if you are a flower business, and we see that the average site converts at 24.35%. Both figures are far away from the Industry Average that you will find in other corners of the Internet.
So what does industry average tell you? I propose that it tells you absolutely nothing, zilch, nil, nada. It isn’t even good for a comparison if you narrow down the number of websites looked at. The all important question here is: “The industry Average Conversion rate is between 2-3%” “AND? What now?” So how are you doing if you convert at 10%? Converting at 10% still means that you don’t convert 90% of your traffic and there is something you can do about it to get your business to convert better.
“So what now?” you ask? The answer is very simple. Instead of asking for Best Practice and Industry Averages you should look at your customers and see what they prefer. Just because Amazon uses a 5-step checkout and makes millions of bucks doesn’t mean that you should use 5 steps. Just because the industry average conversion rate is 2% you shouldn’t give yourself a pad on the back and say: “Great, let’s all go and party in Vegas next weekend, Analytics tells us we convert at 3%”.
Do an exit survey and ask for Customer Satisfaction (No don’t even think about adding a How Did You Hear About Us). Dig down into your analytics, or let us do it for you, and see where you loose the remaining 97% of your traffic. Or start by trying to shift your CEOs business orientated view “It’s all about the Brand”, to a more customer centric experience “Do they find what they are looking for?”. If you are interested, here are some case studies we did.
This post is well above 500 words but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
Any questions, just email me.
- by Amanda
Vote for Pod1!
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We are nominated for .Net magazines ‘Agency of the Year’…get voting: - July 12, 2008 by The Heff
A/B Testing - Strawberries or Cherries?
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Here at Pod1 we are very passionate about things and this goes as well for such dry things as A/B testing. Everyone talks about it but what is it and how can you do it?
With A/B testing you take the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person in the Organisation) out of the equation. HiPPOs are usually the ones who say things like: I like this so you have to do it.
A/B testing puts figures behind guesswork and these usually impresses the HiPPO.A/B testing as well means that you will produce a loosing version and this might lead to lower conversion (if you test conversion). But that is the whole point, as you want to find the winner.
As you may see I can get quite passionate about these things and I tend to take this home with me. This can lead to my Girlfriend being quite upset because after the theatre when she has to listen to me ranting about the Train Ticket machine and its poor usability. I bet Southern Trains has such a high AOV because their interface is so bad.
So in order to make up for that I decided to do, you can guess it, some A/B testing at home. What at home? Yes.
To make up for me always talking about Usability and User experience I decided to make a Pancake for Breakfast for her following the classic test setup.
1. Define a need
Girlfriend hungry.Good that done we need to define our target audience.
2. Define Target audience:
Just Girlfriend is like “ABC 25-35 with lots of spare cash” (yours in this case), too generic. We need to define the persona: She really likes warm breakfast but also Yoghurt with Fruit, but she doesn’t like muesli very much. Often people only look at the first most obvious definition (ABC 25-35 likes warm breakfast) if they dive into the whole persona development thing, but there is a danger here:
If you serve her a Fry Up (warm breakfast), you probably haven’t understood your target audience very well as the result is likely that she moves back to her Mom.3. Define success:
The pancake is the base of all and won’t change, it’s like the outer frame of your website unless you test the outer frame of your website. You have to plan what the filling for the pancake will be and make an educated guess about which one will win. This way you define the goals of this test and you can measure the results against it. Careful here, there are many micro actions that look like success (she making noises of appreciation like MMMMM, Yam etc,) but at the end you want the plate to be empty or a 1-2-1 in a very private area of the house. You define the goals so aim high but not too high.4. Run the test:
Make the pancake and serve it straight from the pan no filling; with this please. Now you need to wait and see how the pancake is perceived. We need to establish a control result to test our variations against. Note down the feedback she gives. If she runs straight to the Jam/Nutella/Sugar Jar, you have done some usability testing at the time. That’s the great thing about testing you do many things at the same time which saves time and money.After this we set up the test variations. My Girlfriend likes Strawberries and Cherries so I decided to use these. The test took a while to complete but I think I have found the winning combination. But you need to be careful with the initial results.
You will get some feedback very quickly (Yam or Yak) but wait until she is finished. If she doesn’t finish the pancake then even if she said it tastes nice initially, you have done something wrong and you need to test a different combination. Careful with trying to do it with too much fruit (think rich media). Results are initially very encouraging but if you get this wrong the result is a lot of soggy pancake on plate.
As with all good things you need to keep testing (I’m doing that now for about half a year). Sometimes you will get it wrong (Strawberries + Yoghurt and no sugar) and sometimes you will get it right but always keep testing.
Once you are done testing the pancakes you can test the next thing, I’m currently working on Brioche, freshly made.
Pancake with Yoghurt and Cherries
10-15 fresh Cherries
1 tbs granulated sugar
Shot glass of water75g plain flour
50 ml full fat milk
1g baking powder
1 Egg3 tbs Greek Yoghurt
Pit the cherries and place in a very small saucepan. Sprinkle with the sugar and put aside for 10 minutes. Place the saucepan on the hob and heat very gently. After 5 minutes add the water and keep on low heat for a little while. The aim is to concentrate the cherry flavour.
While the cherries reduce, mix the flour with the baking powder and add milk and the egg. Use a whisk to make a smooth not too runny pancake dough.Place the butter in a frying pan and fry the pancake from both sides until golden brown.
Take it out of the pan and place the Yoghurt in a line across the centre, top with the Cherries and flap over in the middle. Serve immediately.
Variations:
Strawberries with a bit of Cognac
Strawberries raw but with Honey on the pancake
Banana with Honey and cinnamonMultivariate option:
Cherries and strawberries combined
Fry 1 pancake the day before, then cut it in small stripes and fry again with lots of sugar in the pan (Caramelise it basically). Use this as a crunchy topping on the Fruit/Yoghurt variant. - July 9, 2008 by Fadi
New York Times Hails Pod1 NYC
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Ok ok ok, I’m exaggerating…we have a minuscule mention half way down this page that literally says:
“Kirna Zabête, a clothing retailer, named Pod1, London and New York, to develop an e-commerce Web site.”
Doesn’t link to us, or the client, but hey, it’s a start!
One small step for mankind and all that…
- July 8, 2008 by Fadi
Podders Party in NYC
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Retro cool fashion brand, Le Jean De threw one of their crazy parties in NYC on 3rd July. They were just round the corner so we couldn’t resist popping by..
(Left to right: Dude, Marc, Fadi, Paula, Simon, Catherine)
Pod1 NYC is currently beavering away working on the new Le Jean De eCommerce site which will launch in September 08. In the meantime, check out their eclectic blog.
- by Fadi
Lives not Knives
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Grazia has started a campaign to raise awareness of the ever spiralling problem the British face with knife crime. This is in association with the Ben Kinsella fund.
Matches has partnered with Grazia and have created an exclusive set of t-shirts where all proceeds go to Charity. At the moment you’ll only see a sketch as the real gear has not yet arrived. Delivery will be within 2 weeks.
So go buy a t-shirt on Matches..
- July 3, 2008 by Pod1
Shooting in the office…
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…with very shallow depth of field.
Few studio shots I did yesterday. Everyone in the office seemed to like them. Or maybe they just did not want to be rude… Anyway, you can see the rest of the photos in my blog.
- June 17, 2008 by Amanda
Instore retailing and what it teaches us about selling online….
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Great post from eConsultancy:
”
I recently attended an event in Amsterdam which gathered together senior etailers from across Europe (kindly sponsored by Fredhopper – I owe them at least that plug…).
For me the most fascinating talk was by the VP Merchandising & Buying at a major European multi-channel retailer. It reminded me just how much we still have to learn about how online selling works, and how much we can apply from offline.
The focus of the talk was about (offline / in-store) Category Management.
Now this a BIG topic. There is even a “Category Management Association” focused on “Advancing professional standards in category management”. Within category management you have all sorts of sub-areas e.g.:
- Category Definition
- Category Role
- Category Scorecards
- Format Management
- Assortment Breadth & Depth
- Customer Decision Trees…We were talked through this supermarket’s key categories: “Destination”, “Traffic”, “Routine Volume”, “Routine Assortment”, “Impulse”.”
- May 30, 2008 by Blenx
Reiss Website in the Charts
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Hats off again to the Reiss team…the site has just been ranked 24th in this weeks Design Charts!
- May 22, 2008 by Pod1
UNIQLOCK viral wins the Black Pencil Award
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Recently Uniqlo, one of Pod1’s clients released Season 3 of the UNIQLOCK series which just won the Black Pencil award from D&AD. This series has grown exponentially every year to include a range of features including a screensaver and an alarm clock this year. The updated graphics and movement makes the newest UNIQLOCK look more interactive and more fun than the previous ones.
The focus of this viral campaign is the different t-shirts that the girls wear while performing in the clips. The release of the UNIQLOCK is helping to increase brand awareness and put a focus on the UT t-shirt range that has just been released. Within the viral there are links through to the products so that anything that catches your eye is easy to buy.
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