Sample Site Analysis Report

I often conduct analyses of sites to help owners get an over-view of where the problems lie. This helps us plan priorities. In some cases I am called upon to help fix these problems, in other cases the client takes the report to their design agency for action.

This page contains a report I recently did for an e-commerce site (I have removed anything which could identify them) which has an online turnover of around $2.5 million. The aim is to give you a feel of how I work and what you can expect if I look at your site for you.

Background

This report has been commissioned because the board believe the site is underperforming. In aprticular there is a concern that the new design has drastically increased the bounce rate and this has adversely affected sales.

Here's an example using the Web's average numbers: You're running Google AdWords and paying 50 cents per visitor, which is the average bid. The percentage of those visitors who engage in your Target Action is 2 percent, the Web's average Conversion Rate. This means it takes 50 visitors (at 50 cents each) to get one Target Action, so your Cost Per Acquisition is $25.00.

Performance Indicators

The primary performance indicators for the sales appeal of any site are the Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate.

The site has an average Bounce Rate at 43%.

• This is divides into 44% for visitors from the Google Ads and 38% for visitors from other sources.
• A bounce rate of 44% for Google Ads is acceptably close to the average of 42%.
• A bounce rate of 38% for non-ad visitors is similarly close to the average of 35%.
• Therefore the site does not have an overall problem with Bounce Rates (though there may be issues with specific market segments, see below)

The site has an overall Conversion Rate of 0.8%.

• This is well below the average of 1.5%. Furthermore, a site which is subject to proper assessment and management, as this site is, should be able to achieve a conversion rate of at least 2%, if not 3% or even 5%.
• Therefore site is under-performing as a sales system.

Site Design

Design is Flat

This is general point for the whole site. Everything is either blue or white and the same font is used for everything. In web design colour and font serve to communicate information about text. Text which is a different colour or font from other text tells the visitor this is a different type of information. Text describing a product should be visually different from navigation text. These patterns should be consistent so that a visitor knows that anything in one font can be clicked and anything in another should be read. Colours can be used to indicate where someone is in a site, or what type of section they are entering (eg: product pages, about us pages, etc.).

Really important text, such as BUY NOW or product price should have a different font and colour from all others. This way such information is instantly grasped.

Analysis of a Conversion Funnel is fairly simple: Look at what percentage of people who see the first page go through to the second one and what percentage of those go through to the next, and so on. It's more important to know the Conversion Rate for each page than for the path as a whole. What I could see was a fairly constant bleeding of visitors throughout the path. The fact that as many dropped out at the beginning as dropped out at the end told me the customers weren't simply getting fatigued, so it had to be something to do with the content of the forms themselves.

If this is done consistently people will pick up such information subconsciously very quickly, usually within the first 20 seconds of arriving or after 2-3 pages.

Best Seller and Exclusive buttons are almost identical. Different colours for each would help them stand out, and neither should be the same colour as the main system (i.e.: not white).

The home page suffers from being flat and crowded.

Having many items on a page is not always bad. However, if all these items are given the same emphasis in terms of visual style and layout, then there is nothing to guide the eye to relevant points. When people first land on the page they will scan it to find the thing they are looking for. There is no aid to this. They are initially confronted with a flat wall of clickable objects, all visually identical except for minor details.

Recommendations

Rearrange the central category items according to their popularity and sales value. The top-right hand corner (currently occupied by Brochure Holders) is the most easy to spot and should contain the category which earns the highest profits.  The top-left corner is the next most valuable, then the middle two top row positions.  The next most valuable positions are the bottom row, especially the bottom corners.

Apply this same logic to the category pages where the products are listed.

It will take time and experimentation to get the items in the right positions.  Analyse click-through patterns with Google Analytics Overlay reports and watch what changes.  Move things around each month until you have the right positioning.

Colour-code each category so that all navigation items leading to it have a unique colour which visually identifies that category.  Use this on all navigation buttons and backgrounds to headings, including the left navigation column.  Apply these colours to the NEXT PAGE bars in the category listings.

The Right-Navigation Column is not working

Very few people click any of the links in the right navigation column.  Furthermore this draws attention away from your products.  At the end of the day you want people to buy products.  All of the items in the right column are simply there to help close a deal.  In and of themselves they will not get a sale.  Getting a sale means putting the product someone wants in front of them at a price they want.  The right navigation items are there to provide reassurance for those that need it prior to commitment.  Only 1 person in 50 is clicking "24-hour Delivery".  For the other items it is around 1 in 100.  For 100% Secure Ordering, Ethical Standards, Fair-trade Policy and Recycle Options, it is 1 in 200.  The right-hand section is too valuable to be wasted on such features.

The CALL ME BACK, REQUEST CATALOGUE, and DOWNLOAD BROCHURE are important items which are poorly located.  They should be moved up to high positions on the top-right navigation column.

Move two delivery items to the top, add the three items mentioned above, and completely remove the rest.  Reduce the size of the remaining items, change their visual style so they do not resemble product buttons, remove or reduce the associated artwork, and spread them out so there is space between them.  Moving the dropped items to the bottom of the page.  Similarly rework the current bottom items as well, so all these buttons are smaller and look very different from buttons which take you to products. 

It is hard work trying to buy products on this site.

Product Location is Difficult

Firstly it is impossible to get a look at all the products in a range on the same page.  I must click back and forth through multiple pages.  I am forced to look at images of products whether I want to or not, while I am trying to find the one I want.  Product layout is thus flat.  While the categories are broken into subsections, these subsections are not visually differentiated in navigation.  Thus in the "Running Shoes" section, there is nothing in the appearance of the navigation links to tell me that "All Running Shoes" is a different type of subsection from "Men's Running Shoes,""Women's Running Shoes" and "Children's Running Shoes" - it looks like there are four categories of product.  Furthermore, why is it that when using the "All Running Shoes" link, all the titles over the products retain this heading?  "Men's Running Shoes" items should have the heading of "Men's Running Shoes" even if browsing via the "all" category.  Each of these three sub-divisions should have its own colour bar so that it is clear to me visually where I am.

Add a "quick browse" section.  This would enable someone to simply list all the products on one page.  Using simple Ajax technology it is possible to have the image for each item appear when the mouse is moved over that item so visual identification is still present.

The loading of the product images is slow and creates the impression of a clunky site.  If someone looks at page one of a product category, there is a 90% chance they will look at page two.  Therefore preload the images for subsequent pages in the background.  This way when they move to the next page the images will already be there.

Purchase is Difficult

While it is valuable to have the "BUY NOW" button on the product buttons at category level, only 2% of purchases are triggered with that button. Most purchases come via the product detail page.  The "BUY NOW" button is very small and poorly placed, making it difficult to find at first.  In addition, because it is the same colour as all other navigation items it does not stand out.  This button is the single most important item in the entire site and should be large and visually obvious.

There is always blank space in the top -right corner of an individual product page.  Position the button there.  Change its appearance so it is a different shape and colour from anything else on the site.  Red may be a good colour - it works well with white and is exciting and acxtion-oriented.

Moving Around is Difficult

If I look at a particular product details page, there is no way to return to where I was before.  If I click the category link at the top it simply takes me back to the top of that section.  If I was three or four pages deep I will have to navigate all the way through again.  This feature is causing people to drop out of the site.

Create a BACK button which takes me back to the page I was on so my flow is not interrupted as I shop.

The BACK button in the shopping cart is badly designed.  It uses the JavaScript history(-1) function to return to the previous page.  However, because of the way the cart is built, if I change the quantity of the products (eg: I want more than 1), the previous page is just the shopping cart.  This button should take me back to the Category page I was on before I purchased.  If I purchased from a product details page, it should still take me back to the category page.

The Products Are Undersold

The product information is surrounded by a great deal of other visual talk.  It is like trying to hear a sales pitch in a noisy crowd.  Specifically:
    - The "People who bought this item also bought..." section is too busy and distracts the eye.  This should be reduced to a listing of item names with smaller images so it takes much less space.
    - The additional information icons (refund, delivery, etc) are a very good idea, but the mouseOver text is too long for easy reading.  Reduce this text to its key points.  Use these icons in the navigation to these topics in the main navigation so they become established in the visitor's mind.
    - Core sales pitch is placed in visually obscure positions.  Move the icons to the bottom, they are peripheral to the sale.  Put the Detailed Product Description under that.  Then the sizes, then the prices.  Keep the BUY NOW button next to the price as well as adding a bigger BUY NOW button as mentioned above.
    - The SEE LARGER IMAGE function is poorly executed.  Firstly, you should be able to click the magnifying glass for this to work.  Secondly, the image opens in a complete new window.  This means the visitor is taken away from the existing page completely.  Some people who are older and less web-savvy will not know how to return and risk closing their browser by mistake.  The image should open in a small layer over the page, no larger than the image itself.
    - Everything is either blue or white.  This applies to the whole site but is particularly critical in product pages.  Critical text, such as price, should be visually different from anything else.
    - Headings obscure reading.  We know now that if the heading is larger than the text beneath it, 30% of people will not read the text.  This is worse if there is a large gap between the heading and the text.  Using large headings in the Full Product Description with large gaps between the full product name and the text is probably reducing readership of the description by half.  This will cost sales.

The Shopping Cart Could Improve

The shopping cart is not too bad, but has a couple of minor points. 

The cart is "clunky"

Every time I change something in it, such as quantity or delivery method, the entire page redraws.  This is because the data is being transmitted to the server.  This is unnecessary and disruptive.  With modern web design techniques, such as Ajax, it is possible to send this data to the server without reloading the entire page.

The shopping cart does not sell.

It is critical to keep the sales pitch going in the cart.  This is where doubt about a purchase enters.  This is the time to push delivery and return options.  The amount of space taken by each item in the shopping cart is unnecessarily large.  Reducing this space allows for the addition of this information.

The rest of the sales process appears good.

The design of the purchase process from shopping cart to credit card appears good.  However, tracking of this process has not been set up in Google Analytics so I cannot verify this statistically.  It may be that the requirement to register before purchase turns people off.

As a minor note, it is not allowed under Data Protection to pre-tick a newsletter box.  The customer must "opt-in" by ticking the box themselves.

Other Notes: - Search Engines

It was not part of my brief to look at online marketing, but what I have seen of this causes some concern, so it is mentioned here:

PPC

During the previous month, the Google Ad campaign generated approximately $90,000 in sales.  However, during that same period the spend on these ads was $68,000.  In other words 75% of your sales income is going on advertising.  I am unaware of your profit margins, but I would imagine this means you are making a loss on your Google Ad campaign.  Repeat business is not of sufficient volume to help this calculation measurably.

The cost per click in the Google Ads is very low, so you are unlikely to be able to improve ROI on PPC here.  The site's sales performance needs to improve.

Search Engine Optimization

While you get a significant amount of traffic and income from search engine listings, it is impossible to tell what your search engine position is because the search engine optimization reports are meaningless.  They measure performance in terms of "percentages of the search space."  This is, to be frank, rubbish.  You cannot treat all search engines as equal, Google has 80% of the market.  Different listings are not of proportional value.  Second page listings get 0.5% of the activity of first page listings, so position 11 is will generate around 100^th the traffic of position 10.  Position 1 is not twice the value of position 2 because it only gets 5% more traffic.  What your search engine optimizers should be doing is telling you what phrases are listed in what positions in what search engines, not talking in vague nothings.

Could your site have better sales?

This is how I did it. You can do this work for yourself (I can teach you how) or you can hire someone like me to do it for you.

Improving online performance is a skill every organisation should have. One option is that I do the initial work for you, and at the same time teach your people how to do it for themselves. You end up with a great site and a team which can continue to improve it.

Contact me if you want to improve your online performance.

Brandt Dainow