Ask HN: Why is our eCommerce store converting poorly?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353360

by spontaneus • 15 years ago

5 19 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

www.Morebrownies.com has been live for about a week now and we have been getting great feedback on our concept. We've had a few blogs write about us, generated thousands of unique visitors and taken a number of orders, but our conversion rate is terrible. Far less than 1% of our visitors have placed an order. What in your opinion are we doing wrong? Is there something specific on our site that turns you off from ordering?

leebossio2• 15 years ago

So I'm not quite sure who it's for from the homepage, and further - I am confused as to how brownies equate to buying expensive things at first glance. When I opened the homepage my first instinct was to get home delivered brownies on a regular basis.

spontaneus3• 15 years ago

You've never heard of the term "brownie points"? Are you from outside of the US?

leebossio2• 15 years ago

I'm from the US and know the term. I was merely giving a first glance impression. This is all very relevant to conversion... Even on the homepage.

Perhaps the wording on the submit button is what's throwing me off. Something more explanatory like "View our gifts", etc. that would help drive the point home to the visitor about what clicking that button will actually do.

helen8420002• 15 years ago

Brownie points come from the Girl Scouts (aka Brownies) and are associated with the stamps received for good deeds.

As far as I know brownie points and actual cake brownies have nothing in common.

ericingram4• 15 years ago

I'd guess every single one of the target customers know the term 'brownie points'.

AznHisoka• 15 years ago

I was born in US, and had no clue what brownie points were. You should remove that term, or explain it. It's just very confusing.

Also, the concept seems a bit flawed.... not sure the demand will be there.

I like a site with gift ideas. I recommend changing this to a destination site with gift ideas and ways to buy them

ericingram4• 15 years ago

I'll qualify myself by saying I've done a lot of ecommerce, roughly $1.5M on my own ecommerce stores over the last few years.

Also, I am probably your target customer. Married, 3 kids, gift giver.

At first glance, great idea and great execution. I like the design, and the concept seems to make sense. It gives you a sort of "aha, that is smart" moment. I felt like you need to move your Get Started button under the 1-2-3 steps, where I actually decided I wanted to get started.

In addition, the gift choices look like good ones. Limited choice, high quality, decent value for the price.

Now let me tell you why I probably won't convert, and maybe you can apply this to other customers: I naturally feel inclined to put this decision off until later. The idea of making these choices now and forgetting them in a few weeks is a bit scarry. Will I remember what she's getting on V-day? Birthday? What if I find another great present later and buy it, then this seems like an awkward side gift? Could I get a better deal if I just pick these up at a florist myself? The jewelry seems pretty inexpensive, is it any good? Ahh I think I should just put this off. Too much thinking when the deadline is so far away.

</thoughts>

So, I don't want you to respond to these thoughts, but consider what they mean for the business and your conversion rate. The best way to increase conversion is to understand the target customer.

spontaneus3• 15 years ago

This was very helpful. I agree that there are a lot of decisions to be made that don't seem necessary for something so far in advance. That may be a tough nut to crack. I'm going to dig into this more and see if the feedback is consistent.

ericingram4• 15 years ago

Great response, and good luck! If it helps, I would be interested in getting reminded that you have these products closer to the actual dates I need them.

albahk• 15 years ago

Replying to the OP but with similar to the point above, I cannot plan gift-giving this far out for many reasons. The major one being in 8 months I may have a completely different gift idea in mind.

One suggestion I humbly propose is get me to sign up and purchase one gift first. As part of this process, ask me to input further information on:

- Family members' birthdays; - spouse/partner anniversary date; - parent's wedding anniversary, etc;

And coming up to those dates, send me a personalised email like "Hey, Tara's birthday is coming up in a month, check out these gifts we can gift-wrap and send to her..."

ctb9• 15 years ago

Where are you losing people? If no one is clicking get started, address the homepage first. If people look at products but still don't buy, start with your products page.

1. Are you performing split testing on major components of your landing page?

"Increase your brownie points!" strikes me as awkward and mathematical (makes me think $browniePoints++). Ask a few friends in your target market to help you brainstorm.

2. I almost missed the arrows to see more products per category. Make them more prominent and switch the circles in the top right for page numbers.

spontaneus3• 15 years ago

Ah, forgot to say where the drop-off is. We lose most people on the gift selection page.

- 60% make it from the homepage to the gift selection page (not bad).

- 3% make it to from the gift selection page to the billing page (eeeeh).

It's a huge drop-off and we are trying to pin-point why. It may be a product issue, but most people have given us good feedback on our selection of products. We are going to mix in some other brands to see if it helps at all.

We have split tested the landing page and were able to increase the click-through rate by 20%. No other split tests are running at the moment.

mjs00• 15 years ago

One problem might be you seem "too new" to trust to give money to, and the site doesn't have the following 'signals' that will help someone trust you ... (the site could just be a shell designed to siphon credit card numbers from folks ...) - no customer service page with email address or method for inquiries - generally no contact info that includes legal company name, address, local phone number - No 'login' link on the home page that would indicate an account is set up after the first order, that would allow you to manage orders once placed. - A blurry photo with only twitter IDs for contact - No references or recommendations or affiliations that help me trust you. - No conditions of use, or copyright, or privacy notice which are kind of standard on commerce sites.

I get you are probably in a YC cohort based on the orange Y background in the fuzzy photo. But unless you are only marketing to others in YC, the 800# and lack of all other ways to contact you is not at all confidence inspiring in terms of giving money to you, to the general public.

All that, combined with a business model where you bill it all up front, it could be perceived as a little suspect. So not one specific thing, for me a bundle of indicators. Hope that helps.

davidhansen• 15 years ago

I operate a number of ecommerce sites, so I'll give my perspective. I will preface this by saying I like the concept, and the implementation is clean. Congratulations on your launch - it's nice to see new ideas entering the industry.

First, you should be aware that launch traffic is demographically nothing like customer traffic. If your site has been posted to tech blogs, startup blogs, tweeted amongst your tech friends, etc, then most of that launch traffic is of the "I'm just checking out this cool new site" variety. This does not convert nearly as well as the "I really need to schedule a gift for my wife" variety. Expect your blog links to pay off over time in SEO linkjuice value, not in the one-week short run.

Second, you picked a bad time to launch a gift scheduling service. Well over half of your potential customers have already purchased the items in their gift list. And for those that haven't, they will most assuredly be going to companies with longer-running reputations that they can trust to fulfill delivery timeframes. Expect October of next year to be significantly better.

Third, the UI is probably not intuitive to people accustomed to traditional ecommerce sites. Aunt Millie is probably not going to realize that clicking on the barely-visible arrow icon on the left/right margins will display another product. One unfortunate fact about ecommerce, and one that is likely the driving force behind stagnation in design evolution, is that catering to expectations is usually more valuable to conversions than catering to coolness. I say usually because there are a few exceptions to this rule( think Apple ), with heavy emphasis on a few.

Fourth, impatience. Seriously, it's been a week. It takes time to get to know your customers. As you learn more about them, you'll be able to craft an experience more conducive to giving them what they want, and as a by-product, increase the conversion rate.

pcharles• 15 years ago

I think the most important question is: Do people want it enough to pay for it? You can always get great feedback, but if people do NOT want to pay for it, then it doesn't really matter. Find out if the value proposition is good enough. Maybe you need more to sweeten the deal. I would recommend pushing the product to targeted users for about 1 month and see if the conversions increase.

japhyr• 15 years ago

Is there a plan to make the service appealing to women as well? It seems like you could double your potential market size pretty quickly.

chris_dcosta• 15 years ago

Nice idea, I hope you're going to start sending anniversary reminders for those who do use your site.

I like the shopping cart items appearing in a bar, but honestly, I had no idea it was there... it was below the fold, and it was only because I started fiddling when the "add to cart" button appeared not to work, that I found it lurking. Try putting it somewhere up higher at least people can see the new items dropping in.

helen8420002• 15 years ago

I don't know if this helps but the UI feel of the site felt more like the products were adverts instead of browsing actual products to buy right-now.

Start collecting e-mail addresses en-masse for the purpose of birthday/anniversary reminders. Hit them with a prominent & simple signup form. Just email address, dates & names of occasions, submit. You can play on the forgetfulness, saying one signup and you'll never forget again.

Once you start getting within 15-30 days of those dates you'll start to see conversions growing. That's when a simple order process (4 clicks and you're done!) will boost conversion.

The fact that you are getting sales shows your idea is of interest, that percentage can only grow as you expand your gift selection and gather customer information & feedback.

Ask HN: Why is our eCommerce store converting poorly?

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