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Thinking of spending big budget dollars on a hot new design for your eCommerce site?

You might want to reconsider.

At the end of the day, eCommerce is still not a "browsing experience"  per se-- most consumers do not go to a retailers site to do some "virtual window shopping".   For the most part, online shoppers know what they want, and god help you if your site makes it difficult for them to find it.

While an esthetically pleasing, well thought-out web design can increase customer loyalty, brand affinity and all that good stuff...if your customers can't find what they are looking for, all the lifestyle shots in the world won't make much of a difference.

A recent study conducted by MarketingSherpa (run, dont walk to get their annual ecommerce marketing benchmark guides -- they are fantastic), indicates that web shoppers pretty much already know what they want before they start looking.

According to Sherpa, the biggest two chunks of eCommerce site activity are using the site search box (43% ) and navigation, such as tabs, menus and sales hotlinks (39%).

Together, that's 82% of consumers surveyed who go directly to navigational elements rather than browsing to see what they like.

Still thinking  about that big "hero shot" for your new homepage?

So what's a retailer to do?  First, get your internal search and navigation in order.  Quick results, spelling correction, synonyms and pluralization should be tops on your list.   Guided navigation is also quickly becoming a standard...give your customers the chance to easily drill down by brand, price, style or any other facet that fits your product line.

Check out the chart below for some more interesting data on this subject, courtesy of MS:

Posted at 10:07 AM in eCommerce Strategy | Permalink