The Annual Polk County SnowBlow Championships are just around the corner, and brothers Dougie and Donny are struggling with unreliable machinery and very limited mechanical skills (and tools). What are they to do? They must keep Grandpa Sparky’s legend alive … but how??
In order to keep the sales charts ticking, Bajaj Auto has relaunched the 125cc Platina. As we unearth the various details, we must frankly tell you that we are a little puzzled as well as slightly skeptic about this bike doing it for Bajaj. When this bike was stopped a few days back, we thought it is over for this bike but Bajaj had different plans in mind. Nonetheless, read on as we try to find out what is it that Bajaj has tried to en cash with this latest offering.
WHAT, WHY & HOW? Talking about the engine bits, it is powered by the same 125cc single spark engine which now produces maximum power output of 8.5Ps and maximum torque of 10Nm which peak at 7k and 4k respectively. It must be noted that the earlier version produced 9.53Ps of power output (@7k) and 10.85Nm of peak torque at 5000 rpm which means both power and torque have gone down by almost 1 unit each which makes the newer model the least powered bike in its segment.
On the better half of things, this new iteration is mated with a 5 speed gearbox in contrast to the 4 speed tyranny of the earlier version. Weight has also gone down by 3 kilograms which makes this bike tip at 110 kilograms (with the Electric starter) at the weighing scale. Now how many of us actually read between the lines here..?
To demystify what ‘lines’ are we hinting at, let us tell you that everything talks only one language now, Mileage! With an extra gear to make relax the engine which goes along with a lower power band to mate the 5 speed gearbox and lower power/ torque figures make it clearly evident that Bajaj wanted to extract as much of an efficiency as possible from this puny mill. We expect this bike to be at least 5-6 kmpl more fuel efficient than its earlier predecessor which is a huge gain considering the fact that it essentially is the same engine.
VITAL STATISTICS: The front suspension of the bike is hydraulic telescopic type with a maximum travel of 125mm whereas the rear is loaded with Bajajs ‘SNS’ suspension which can travel 100mm max. Both the tires come equipped with drum brakes each 110mm in size. One good thing about Bajaj is that they never go low on tire profiles (their bikes need them the most is another story though!).
This bike comes loaded with black colored aluminum alloy die cast magwheels and fatter 3.0 *17 and 2.75 * 17 rubber for rear and front respectively. The fuel tank can hold upto 13 liters of fuel (which is full 5 liters more than Pulsar 135LS!). Bajaj has also kept the wheelbase at 1275mm (which is the best among all commuter 125ccs) to enhance the stability of this bike. Ground clearance stands at the regular 160mm with a reduced saddle height of 785mm (earlier versions was 790mm) to ensure that the rider feels at ease and foot-planted.
ELECTRICALS: Electricals are pretty basic with a 35 watt halogen headlamp upfront which is powered by a healthy 5Ah low maintenance battery (which is a welcome feature) which would also ensure that the battery can take the pressure of cranks even in cold mornings with lesser hassles. Electric start is standard on the bike and the bike also has a provision of kick start in case its one of those bad days for you. Another welcome feature is the ride control switch which informs the rider about the zone he is running in. According to Bajaj, this system is the safest way of keeping the rider informed whether he wants to economically cruise or power cruise as there are no visual or audible distractions involved.
One thing we like about these commuter bikes that they sport wider and comfortable seats in contrast to the hard butt smacking seats of premium bikes. Blinkers are also flexible which do not break away upon lightest of impacts. The bike borrows the same black theme from its predecessor. You can have the option of choosing from four different combo colors: Black with red decals (our choice), Black with blue decals, Black with green decals and finally Red with red decals. Also, Bajaj warrants this product for 2 years or 30k kms which is a decent enough period.
OUR ANALOGY: With the price tag as luring as (approx) Rs.39-40K (on road Delhi), this bike essentially targets the 100cc crowd from other manufacturers (read Hero Hondas). And with power figures more than them, ensures that they get lured! Bajaj has priced (and placed) this bike around the 100cc segment to entice the commuter crowd to move up to 125cc segment which promises more power and similar fuel efficiency figures without shelling out more from their pockets.
Essentially speaking, the entire commuter 125ccs from Bajaj have been targeting the same 100cc cadre but so far, Hero Hondas tight grip on that segment is unbroken and this attempt from Bajaj might, well, be an aggravated extension of the same. Nonetheless, in all this competition the customer stands benefited with better and technically advanced products at lower prices. Overall a sensible move from Bajaj and this bike is for those who want handsome mileage, good looks at lower prices and if power comes free who minds that!
- Saad Khan
This is an article from from: BikeAdvice.in - The Indian Bike Blog
Bajaj Relaunches All New Platina 125 at a Lower Price
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After showing you A Showcase of Clean White Web Designs a couple weeks ago, it’s time for us to add some textured designs to our lists. Textures are a great way to give a special touch to a website. They can be used in a specific part of the layout – the header/footer, for example, or they can be used in the whole page as a background. The thing is that textures are versatile, beautiful and stylish. So here are 50 excellent examples of textures in web design to inspire you.
The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional world.
You see, no matter how skilled you are as a designer, unless you are equally prepared in professional matters, your prospects will be limited and your circumstances compromised. This is true whether you work freelance, for an agency or in-house with a company.
Every week I hear from designers who are struggling to come to terms with these realities. Unhappy with their current circumstances, they write to ask for advice on improving their lot. Usually, they either claim not to understand how things got so bad, or they lay the blame somewhere other than at their own feet. In every case, however, the sole cause is their poor choices and lack of professional acumen. It needn’t be so.
[By the way, did you know there is a brand new Smashing Wordpress Book? Push WordPress past its limits!]
Here, I’ll paraphrase a few emails I’ve received from designers seeking advice. For each, I’ll diagnose the situation, explain in no uncertain terms what should have been done to avoid the situation and suggest a strategy the designer can follow to improve their circumstances.
These circumstances are not uncommon. Many of you reading this are likely experiencing similar problems… or may at some point in the future. I hope that the information, advice and strategies presented here will help you avoid these and other problems.
Question: “I recently graduated from design school and have started freelancing, and I’m wondering how you get clients? How do you get your name out there?”
This person may just as well have jumped out of an airplane and then asked, “Now, how do I go about finding parachute? Oh, and should I land somewhere specific? How exactly do I do that?” Even so, this lack of foresight is quite common. The immediate lesson is that you shouldn’t become an independent professional with little to no professional experience, with no prospects and knowing little to nothing about the business.
Fresh out of college or design school, you’re not a professional; you’re a technician (by definition, the opposite of professional). For the next few years you should be acquiring the skills, knowledge and understanding required of a design professional. The place to do this is in the company of peers and under the wings of mentors: at an agency or in house with a company. The successive lessons and built-in support system inherent in these environments are essential to a designer’s professional development.
The way to “get your name out there” is to establish a pattern of excellent work and a reputation for integrity over several years, while you let your agency or company carry the burden of acquiring clients and running the projects. If you are any good, in time you will earn the respect of your peers and superiors, establish a good reputation (spread by word of mouth) and acquire professional acumen. If in that time you make any effort at all to share your work and thoughts with the wider design or business community, your name will become known (through word of mouth and your portfolio or blog), and your reputation will be built on substance rather than on social marketing’s smoke and mirrors. This would be the appropriate time to embark on a freelance career.
As a freelancer, you’ll be running the whole show. So, you’ve got to be an ace at finances and budgeting; at speaking with and converting potential clients; at knowing what to discuss in order to weed out unsuitable potential clients; at preparing all manner of legal and project-specific documents, writing proposals, project management, intra-project client communications (and being the confident, unflinching pro in the face of every client request, question and distasteful situation); at dealing with dozens of types of unforeseen issues without hesitation; at maintaining tax information and constantly preparing various tax and business forms; at marketing, preparing and maintaining your own branding and identity, with its various elements; and at knowing how to begin and conclude all kinds of projects confidently. Oh, and you’ll also need a constant flow of interested potential clients.
If you’re not confident and accomplished in all of these areas, then you’re not ready to be a freelance designer.
Freelancing is only suited to seasoned professionals. Pursuing a freelance career as your first step in the profession is almost always a foolish move. Professionalism is maintained by habit. If your first step is a misstep, you’ve set a poor tone for the work ahead. Unless you immediately correct your mistakes, the habits you’ll develop will be clumsy and unprofessional.
Question: “I’m not very good at the discovery meeting with clients. I’m never really sure what to ask or how to figure out what sort of design they’re looking for. My project manager or C.D. usually ends up asking most of the design questions. What’s the best way to handle this situation?”
This is a common issue for designers at agencies, especially those with little experience. Luckily, an agency is a good place to gain experience and competence. But the question signals a few issues that require attention.
First of all, design questions are not really appropriate during the discovery process. Granted, specific branding constraints may need to be defined and understood, but the design you will craft will come not from the client’s judgment and understanding of design but from yours alone. The design will be your articulation of what they need, based mostly on their business aims, the website’s purpose, their customers’ needs and expectations, the end users’ specifics, etc. In fact, if you ask no design questions at all, you’re probably on the right track.
Imagine for a moment that you’re a physician trying to determine the best course of treatment for your patient. In that situation, you would not ask the patient what he thinks should be prescribed. Instead you would inquire about his symptoms, history, environment, physical needs (e.g. is he a pro athlete, or does he simply need to be able to get around normally?). The answers to these questions will define the constraints and indicate the appropriate course of action. Your patient’s opinion on what prescription would be appropriate is likely irrelevant; he came to you because he lacks the ability to help himself.
Go into the discovery meeting prepared. Before the meeting, learn as much as you can about the company, its history and its past and current activities. Script a list of questions—some specific to this client and some appropriate for any client—to get the ball rolling. These questions will serve as a springboard to more in-depth discussion, which in turn will flesh out what you need to know.
One more thing: you’re the design professional and it’s your responsibility to conduct the project successfully. You (not the PM or CD) should be driving the discovery. Use your time at the agency to improve your discovery skills, taking on more responsibility with each successive client. Reflect on each project’s discovery process, and look for ways to improve the process and your questions. With time and effort, you should become competent in this essential part of the design process.
Question: “Some of my clients expect three or four (or more) comps from me. But that’s a lot of work, and I would prefer to show just a couple. Should I just charge more if they want more comps? How do some designers get away with just one or two for all of their clients?”
These are interesting questions, and they beg a couple more:
Good design is not found by picking from a pack of arbitrary options, but is rather the result of deliberate, contextual choices. Taking a scattershot approach to design is in no way effective. Your clients may not appreciate this, but you certainly should! Your responsibility is to ensure that your clients don’t shoot themselves in the foot.
The only person who knows how many design options are appropriate is you: the designer who is engaged in the process. And in almost every case there is one best design solution. Sometimes another compelling direction is worth considering and presenting to the client, but this cannot be known until you have fully engaged in the process, conscious of the parameters specific to that project.
In most cases, you’ll explore a host of options during the design process. A thorough exploration will cull a majority of the trials, leaving only the most appropriate and compelling candidate(s)—one or two. These and only these design options should be shown to the client. Inferior designs should never be presented, even to fulfill a request for more options (options for what: mediocrity?).
As a freelance design professional, or even as an agency designer, your responsibility is to define how many design options to present in a given situation. If a potential client insists on a less effective and less professional process, do not agree to work with that client. Compromise never brings excellence and has no place in design or professionalism. If you become comfortable making this sort of compromise, other compromises will also become easy for you. Your clients deserve and are paying for more than a compromised design.
Question: “I seldom get to meet my clients before I present design comps to them. By that point, the projects almost always become a tiresome series of re-workings of my original ideas. How can I change this?”
One wonders what these original ideas were based on if the designer has never met the clients. If so, either 1) this person is at the wrong agency, and/or 2) this person lacks the professional understanding or the backbone to insist that she decide how the agency should structure design projects and client-designer interaction.
Relationships are built on trust, and trust is born of experience and understanding. Your client cannot trust someone they have never met and who they know nothing about. So, when designs are presented by someone the client has never met, no wonder the client is a bit reticent and inclined to second-guess the designer’s decisions. These and the ensuing problems are all a result of the designer’s failings. Yes, it’s on you. Always.
As the designer and an aspiring professional, you must insist on driving the design process. This means that you must be the one to meet with the client in the beginning. If a project brief is required, you must be the one to create it, based on your direct conversations with the client and his team.
If your agency has a process in place that prevents you from fulfilling your responsibilities, your options are either to change the process or to find a better agency. Anything less relegates you to an irresponsible practice in an unprofessional environment. Hopefully, this is not acceptable to you, because it would erode the habits you are professionally obliged to cultivate.
Question: “I love to design, and I think I’m pretty good at it. But I’m not comfortable talking to clients. Whenever I’m on the phone or in front of a client, I get very nervous. I think my nervousness makes me seem less capable, and I’m pretty sure I lose some of my client’s confidence. What can I do to correct this? Should someone else do the talking?”
Effective communication is one of a designer’s most important jobs. Every communication, whether by email or phone or in person, is an opportunity to demonstrate value and win confidence. And if you don’t demonstrate value, you’ll seldom win confidence. Like designer #1 above, you may simply not be prepared to be a freelance professional.
If you fail in communicating, no matter how skilled a designer you are, you won’t get the chance to ply your skills very often, and seldom for the best clients. The best clients are those who invest complete trust in their designers. That trust must be earned before any actual designing happens (see designer #4 above).
And no, someone else should not do the talking. The design professional’s job is to show confidence when dealing with clients. No one else can communicate your value or win trust for you. The reason clients distrust those who do not communicate with confidence is because this trait signals other incompetencies. This may sound harsh, but it’s a fact: if you’re not confident, it is because you lack capability (whether professional competence, design skill or perhaps vocabulary)… and you know it. Address this void, and your confidence will shine through.
If you lack confidence in conversation, start to address this deficiency immediately or find another calling. Otherwise, you may have a bright future as a production artist somewhere, but not much of one as a design professional. Design professionals are experts at every aspect of interacting with people.
Confidence aside, it goes without saying that excellent vocabulary is an important component of effective communication. People judge you by your words, as well they should. Knowing this, your professional responsibility is to work on your vocabulary, just as you work on your design ability: daily.
Skill in design is only part of what defines a competent professional. Professionalism is also measured by integrity, preparedness in handling and interacting with clients, and breadth of understanding in the myriad of issues that will confront you in the course of working with others (whether clients, co-workers, employees or others). Professionalism is also measured by how well you uphold ethical standards in making the difficult decisions in every area of your work.
Talent and skill can make you a technician; and a technician is, as we noted, not a professional. For context, think of traditional professions: lawyers, doctors, architects. The enormous responsibility they are entrusted with, and their ability to carry out that responsibility across the scope of their work, makes these people professionals. Thus, an able professional would not be troubled by the questions posed in this article. Rather, they would know precisely how to proceed or how to circumvent these issues. If you have any of these questions, you may not be prepared to be a design professional.
All of these situations result from designers believing that being a good designer is good enough. This profession has little room for those who lack a professional’s integrity and broad understanding. Designers who are willing to compromise and simply accept the faulty decisions that are handed to them have had their profession stolen from them. These designers have no business working with clients who pay good money for professional service.
Be better than this. Your first step to success is to assume your rightful responsibility for everything that involves you. Dissatisfied with the flawed structure at your agency? You chose to work there; change your circumstances. Frustrated by your perpetual lack of prospects and stalled reputation? Sounds like you’ve got deficiencies to address. Overwhelmed by the challenges and complexities inherent in freelancing? You probably started freelancing without sufficient preparation.
Fix it. You fix it. It’s all on you.
Designers: you get paid to do what you love. How great is that!? But this fortunate and enviable situation leads to fulfillment only if you take full ownership of your profession. Otherwise, you’re carrying a time bomb. When it goes off, your career will either falter or be blown to smithereens. Don’t let this happen to you. Educate yourself. Have the courage and integrity to habitually make good choices so that you enjoy a long and happy career as a design professional.
(al)
© Andy Rutledge for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 67 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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Running an e-commerce website is a never-ending task, from trying to squeeze that extra bit of conversion rate out of the check-out page to figuring out which referrers give you the best traffic. There’s also a plethora of tools out there to help you achieve your goals. But which ones do what, and why should you use some of them? This article introduces some of these tools and offers a tip or two on how to use them.
If you own or operate an e-commerce webs, you’ll find one or two things that you haven’t tried before. If you’re new to e-commerce, this article should give you insight into some of the possibilities available to you as you enter the market. A plethora of merchants out there could benefit from lower-cost e-commerce help and advice. Covered in this article are analytics tips, visualisation tools, product page tips, checkout tips,li>4 testing tools to try right now and a final tip.
This article is only the tip of the iceberg. If you have any tips on usability, the check-out process, product pages, analytics or testing, please add them to the comments, so that this article becomes even more useful to readers.
By the way, have you already subscribed to our brand new Smashing email-newsletter?
Analytics are the key to knowing what’s going on with your website. This section gives five tips for using Google Analytics to get the most out of your stats. If you have a high-traffic e-commerce website or wish to get even more in-depth with analytics, it might also be worth considering some higher-level analytics packages such as Coremetrics, Omniture or Webtrends.
We’ll focus here on more advanced analytics with the Google tool and assume that you know the basics of metrics.
Advanced segments allow you to do everything you normally do with Analytics, but with only on a small subset of data. How is this useful? Say your e-commerce website serves both the UK and US. You could create two advanced segments, one for your US visitors and one for your UK visitors. This allows you to zero in on how your US visitors differ from your UK visitors in terms of purchasing habits, website usage, searches and so on.
Also, why not compare two or more different referrer sources by a number of metrics to see which provides better-quality traffic? The list is endless and limited only by your imagination.
Want to find out more with more examples? Read Avinash Kaushik’s advanced segments article.
Let’s face it: the default reports in Google Analytics aren’t superb; they don’t tell you what you really want to know. That’s where custom reports come in.
You can add the metrics that matter to you, on the dimensions you want to see. An example would be a report of referring websites, with their average per-visit value, bounce rates and time spent on site (see graphic above).
This report is so much more useful than your standard referrers report, with better information in one place.
In the example above, the report gave me 392 rows of information. In a world of top 10s and top 25s, humans can’t process that many rows and make sense of that information.
This is where advanced filters come in. If we want to find the best-quality referrers on the list, we can get Google Analytics to filter out what we don’t want. Click “Advanced filter” at the bottom of the page and add this:
This brings our 392 sources down to just 8; knowing what those 8 are is great. The filters above exclude all direct traffic (because we want to identify referring websites) and mail server referrals (we’re looking for websites), and they give us the highest success rates on per-visit value. Quick, valuable data.
This is a newer feature of Google Analytics, one that does some heavy lifting for you. Intelligence allows you to see changing traffic patterns without having to set up reports for everything you want to track. If one day your bounce rate goes up by 10%, you’ll see an alert and won’t have to rely on spotting it.
This is really useful for discovering patterns. The image to the right shows an alert we got for one of our websites for which the bounce rate went through the roof. There was obvious panic until we realized that the last date to submit orders in time for Christmas had just passed. Panic over. The message on the home page was the cause of the spike in the bounce rate. We were notified of the issue quickly and could dig right away for the cause.
We’ve focused here mainly on Google Analytics because it is so widely used. However, that’s not to disrespect the plethora of worthy analytics tools out there:
Data can be pretty overwhelming when you have thousands of entries. Visualization gives you quick insight into your data without overloading.
A genius service from Jonathan Feinburg, Worlde allows you to enter any kind of textual information and get a visual representation of that text on the screen. This is very useful for getting an overall view of your keywords and the structure of what’s going into your website. My blog returns the following visualization.
What does this tell me? Well, given how much I’ve written about e-commerce, that word doesn’t appear! So, I need to pay much closer attention to my keyword selection and usage. I also need to pay attention to why the word “offline” is so big.
If you need to export more than 500 words out of Google Analytics for your keyword report, check out this tutorial.
Heat maps give you an easy way to look at your important pages without having to scour rows of data on your top content. They also provide much-needed information on what people are doing relative to the page size, length and placement of items, which data cannot do alone.
Run heat maps on your most important pages: check-out pages, product pages, search pages. This will give you quick, useful information on whether people seem to be glossing over vital information or ignoring key functionality.
Key questions could be:
Crazy Egg is a decent heat map service. Another good tool is clickdensity.
This feature in Google Analytics overlays percentages, conversion rates and other usable statistics on pages to tell you what people have done and clicked on different pages. Most usable is that when you click on a link you’re taken to that page, with the overlay in place, allowing you to see how people are navigating the website. Did 20% of visitors go to the next most important page after this one? Is that what you were projecting? Gems of information abound.
Learning how users view your website without having to ask them can be very beneficial. Of course, user testing has no true substitute, but a few tools can help:
Scrutinizer shows you slowly how people may be viewing your website. It applies a filter over top the website, spotlighting the area where your mouse is pointing at. I don’t know the science behind it, but it might be useful to get users to perform tasks while the filter is applied; it would really show usability.
Feng GUI allows you to look at any marketing piece (including a website) to see which parts attract attention and in what order. It uses algorithms to simulate eye-tracking and is useful for seeing whether what you thought was prominent really is. Not a substitute for user testing either, though.
One of they keys to e-commerce success is a good product page. Here are a few tips to improve your product pages.
Your “Add to basket” button is obviously key to your e-commerce website’s success. Make sure the button is not hidden, too small or confusing in any way. It should be above the fold and not difficult to click.
Get Elastic has a good article on “Add to cart” buttons; an oldie but a goodie on statistics, even if the buttons are a bit out of date.
Do not withhold delivery information till the last minute when people are checking out. It leads to mass frustration and ill feeling towards your website. Make sure people can see an item’s stock status (”in stock,” “out of stock,” “date expected back in stock”) and the delivery lead time. This will prevent a slew of customers from abandoning their baskets further along the check-out process.
The image above is from Play.com: delivery cost, dispatch estimate and stock levels. Great job.
People are very different in how they want to consume information. Some prefer social information such as reviews, ratings and comments. Others prefer technical specifications. Still others like to read a store’s description of a product (if it’s well written).
The point is to give everyone access to the information they want without cluttering the page. Whether it’s grouping information under different tabs or providing a “More details” link, there are many ways to give progressively more information. Without compromising the layout, this should give 80% of visitors what they need.
The image above is from Currys, an electronics retailer. It has main bullet points for each product and a “More info” link. The link merely takes you further down the page, but it prevents the top of the screen from being cluttered with information that many people may not be interested in.
Make sure your copy is well written and unique. Too many websites use the standard manufacturer’s description. This harms you two-fold. First, the copy is in so many other places on the Internet that your SEO will be harmed. Secondly, you’re not giving the purchaser any reason why they should purchase that product from you. Good copy should inspire confidence in you and the product as well as give your personal slant on the product, thus building your website’s personality.
Hire a copy-writer, or do it yourself. But do it. Even if a product is your top revenue generator, still do something!
Don’t let this last hurdle of purchasing trip you up.
You need to be able to give very good reasons why forcing guests to register to purchase products is essential. Think of offline shopping. Do you have to open an account with a news agent to buy a newspaper? Of course not. Don’t make that mistake online. Allow guests to check out.
But you also need to sell reasons why guests should register. It’s all about making it easy, now and in future.
Once someone wants to check out, the process should be as fast and slick as possible. Remove distractions, including ads, navigation and offers that might distract them from what they are trying to accomplish, which is to pay.
Some will say this stage is a great opportunity to up-sell or feature related products. I disagree. That can be done effectively on the product page or just after the product has been added to the basket. Distracting the visitor or encouraging them to choose something else before giving you their money is an invitation to them to abandon their cart.
Once a visitor has converted, rather than show the standard confirmation page, why not also ask for some feedback on their experience? SurveyMonkey lets you quickly build an online survey, including questions such as:
This qualitative feedback is invaluable to e-commerce website owners. Sure, not everyone will fill out the survey, but several will be more than willing to voice their opinions. If you do this, though, remember to follow up to let people know what you’ve changed and why.
Problems occur during the check-out stage. Cards are declined, people enter invalid email addresses and they forget to specify their preferred delivery method. To cover all eventualities, you should display messages that are:
Luke Wroblewski has a great article on A List Apart about this.
Test, test, test: the mantra of all e-commerce website creators. Only your market knows the answers.
At only $29 a test, UserTesting.com delivers incredible value for the money. For $290, you choose the test to be carried out and the demographics of the audience, and hit “Go.” Not much later, you get 10 pieces of highly detailed video and written feedback. The information contained in those reports will earn you a lot more revenue than $290.
Spend some time thinking about the type of people you want to participate in your testing. If you run a baby clothing website, naturally you would want mothers to participate in the testing. However, it might also be useful to run the tests on fathers as well as aunts and uncles (typical gift purchasers) because their purchasing behavior is very different.
Possible briefs are:
A lot has been written about Google Website Optimizer. It’s easy to use, so give it a run. It’s great for testing different “Add to cart” buttons to see which gets a better conversion rate.
The main advantage of Google Website Optimizer is that you can test things on your actual market (whereas services like UserTesting.com merely attempt to match your target market). This also means that you’re able to choose how large a percentage of your traffic to test and thus achieve statistical relevance.
Bryan Eisenberg has written a great book about it.
This does what its name implies: gives you quick feedback on your website—entirely subjective feedback, of course, but interesting when used in conjunction with analytics to correlate the data.
It can be very useful to testing elements you want to be prominent. What’s the purpose of your website? Where’s the call to action? And exept for some premium features, it’s free. No brainer? Indeed.
SEOmoz, GeoTarget, Linkscape and Trifecta are four among many tools you can use to test your website’s on-page and off-page SEO scores. They can quickly identify problems with your website so that you can fix them and hopefully improve your ranking.
Technologies come and go. Who knows what we’ll be using for analytics in five years’ time or what kind of information we’ll be tracking across devices and channels. The key to a good e-commerce strategy is customer insight and engagement. In other words, find out what people want, and give it to them (in an engaging way). Always be listening, asking questions and monitoring every facet of your website, business, industry and competition, and use whatever technology is appropriate to help you achieve your goals.
(al)
© Rob Smith for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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