You can test many scenarios with the “add-to-cart” button:

  • The location of the button

  • Different designs for the button

  • The wording on the button

Cross-sells and upsells can help you sell more to customers by providing them with items that complement the products they already selected. But cross-sells and upsells can also distract visitors. So, test the placement of cross-sells and upsells on your product pages as well as other pages of the site.

Most website visitors will do some sort of comparison shopping. Testing different prices will determine their impact on conversion rates. In 2007, one of our clients reported a 135% increase in conversion rate by lowering product prices by 10%. Price testing is more complex compared to other forms of testing. Yet during a recession, when visitors are price-sensitive, price testing can produce the most impact on conversion rates.

Customers do not like to add an item to their cart only to discover when they’re ready to pay that the item is out of stock. Linking ecommerce stores with an inventory system will help you avoid such hassles. Here are some general rules of thumb to follow:

Bad

There is no mention of product availability on your site.

Good

You always display product availability on your site.

Excellent

You display messages to encourage customers to buy a product if you have limited stock available. Example: “Only 5 left in stock—order soon!”

Figure 9-13 shows the product page from Ecost.com. Although the page design is crowded with information and is not well designed, the site displays product availability information and shows a message to encourage visitors to place an order within a certain time frame.

Ecost.com’s use of product availability information
Figure 9-13. Ecost.com’s use of product availability information

Tell visitors when the product will be in their hands. Being vague and telling them their order will arrive sometime in the next few weeks will simply kill your conversion rate, or at least irritate customers.

Consider bundling shipping costs with products so that visitors will not have to worry about paying for shipping. We highly recommend bundling shipping costs if they are too complicated to understand, or if they are expensive.

Where do you direct visitors after they click on the add-to-cart button? Are you forcing them to view the cart page? If this is the case, you are polluting the cart page analytics with the number of visitors who are forced to be there. Test different locations to redirect visitors after they add an item to their cart: