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Ever had one of those “aha” moments with your website? You know, that instant when you suddenly realize you’ve been doing something wrong for a long time?

What is your site’s stumbling block? Confusing navigation? Broken links? A tedious checkout? Odds are, there’s something hindering the performance of your website. Since it’s usually challenging to catch our own mistakes, here’s 6 ideas for how to discover them with the help of others.

1. Use Screen Recording Software: One of the most powerful research tools I use for companies is in-house usability testing. Here’s how it works: First, we obtain a small number of users willing to be part of the research, ideally people who are unfamiliar with the company’s website. Then we sit them down on a computer and ask them to perform actions on the site. Common actions include making a purchase, contacting customer service, or looking up order tracking info. We record their on-screen actions using free screen capture software by CamStudio. Then we review the recordings, noticing how long it takes for visitors to complete an action. Using this method, it’s easy to observe when customers are lost or confused. On each and every occasion we’ve used this method, we’ve discovered a problematic issue needing attention.
2. Use Visual Web Analytics: Traditional analytics are great, but alternative web analytics solutions offering a more visual approach are becoming increasingly useful. Google Analytics offers a sometimes overlooked Site Overlay feature that does a decent job of showing site owners just how people travel through their site. Visual analytics allows you to see where people go and under what conditions. This approach creates big picture perspective of how customers are interacting with your site.
3. Ask Your Customer Service Team: Don’t forget that your customer service team usually has the best read on the pulse of your customers. They hear day-in and day-out what people complain about. Make sure there always exists a feedback loop from the customer, to customer service, to the management of your operation.
4. See What Others See: Not everyone who visits your site is using Internet Explorer, a Windows machine, and 1024 x 768 resolution. BrowserShots.org offers a free, innovative way to see your site in dozens of different configurations, including different browsers, OS’s, and with or without Flash and JavaScript. You might be unpleasantly surprised by the differences in the way browsers render your site. Users with smaller screen resolutions will often not notice site features that are below the page fold. Seeing your site in a variety of perspectives will help you cast a wide net, optimizing for as many user configurations as reasonably possible.
5. Setup Error Notifications: The larger your site, the more likely you are to experience errors resulting from broken hyperlinks or programming issues. Talk with your web developer and ask him to setup a system that notifies you every time a 404 (page not found) or 500 (internal server error) occurs on your site. You might be surprised how often errors occur. When we set this up for one of my clients, they discovered the disconcerting fact that they were receiving hundreds of errors per day.
6. Ask an Expert: Lastly, it never hurts to get the opinion of another professional. While many small businesses can’t necessarily afford a full or even part time web usability consultant, hiring an expert for a few hours to review your website can be eye-opening. Many of my customers who purchase MySitePlan do so in order to get a second opinion in preparation for a site redesign, or they’re just looking for ways to improve that they haven’t considered before.

No one loves a shocking revelation about a dysfunctional website feature. To make matters worse, it’s usually someone else, a customer or a collegue that discovers these issues and informs us. Hopefully, the suggestions above will help you discover any existing problems with your website and resolve them quickly.

Microsoft continues to improve deliverability for legitimate senders by improving IP and volume based reputation data. At Hotmail, the Sender ID verdict result is combined with pre-existing reputation data to determine an enhanced e-mail “trustworthy score”. Offering a safe and secure unsubscribe option has helped reduce the number of user complaints, providing senders enhanced data for list management, while not adversely impacting their overall reputation.

Looking ahead, Microsoft will continue to research and invest in reputation and authentication technologies. Conceptually servers, services and clients will share central reputation data. Multiple levels of reputation will be tracked including IP, URL, domain and use. The Sender ID Framework and the Outlook Postmark will help authenticate users and create identities. Finally, user personalization elements will be integrated as we continue to learn from user to better distinguish good e-mail from bad e-mail.

Summary of Deliverability Best Practices

Specific to Windows Live Hotmail, we highly recommending following these steps to ensure the highest deliverability rates: Step 1 - Ensure Compliance -With Windows Live Policies and Technical Requirements
• http://postmaster.live.com/Guidelines.aspx
Step 2 - Follow best practices and FAQ’s
• http://postmaster.live.com/Troubleshooting.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/postmaster
Step 3 - Adopt Sender ID and Keep Your Record Current
• http://www.microsoft.com/safety
• http://www.microsoft.com/SenderID
Step 4 – Join the Junk e-Mail Reporting Program
• http://support.msn.com/default.aspx?productkey=edfsJMRp&mkt=en-us
Step 5 – Leverage Smart Network Data Services (SNDS)
• https://postmaster.live.com/snds/index.aspx
Step 6 – Contact Deliverability Support - If you‟re still having issues: http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts

Consistent and reliable e-mail deliverability generally comes down being consistent, monitoring your reputation proactively and following best practices. The following tenets and their impact to deliverability should be considered by all senders and online marketers:

1. Complaints - This occurs automatically when a user clicks “block and delete”, “report spam” or similar reporting options including escalations and user complaints. This might be the complaint rate or just the total number of complaints depending on the receiver.

2. High unknown user rates - How clean is your list? Are you sending mail to users that have moved on and changed address? Do you have a lot of dead addresses on your list? This is an indicator by many receivers that you may be a spammer and indicator of harvested address lists.

3. Spam trap addresses - These are addresses (in some cases a domain) that have never been signed up to receive any kind of message or have been deactivated after prolonged inactivity by the ISP. Typically ISPs and law enforcement agencies create these and post them on web sites to be “harvested”.

4. Sending infrastructure - Spammers steal resources and have difficulty setting up “industrial strength” infrastructure. Many receivers look for well set up infrastructure as another indicator.

5. Sending “permanence” (Consistency) – Sending from the same IP address with consistent volumes and frequencies month over month is ideal. Spammers tend to “pop up” on an IP and disappear. Infrequent senders who send large volumes once a month or quarterly can be an indicator of a spammer or a compromised server.

6. Content – Senders be focused on e-mail content, as well as the URLs and HTML elements embedded in their e-mail. Anti-spam systems and heuristics continue to incorporate content filtering with authentication and reputation for a combined “trustworthy” score. Reputation scoring can compensate for content which may appear “spammy”, resulting in improved deliverability and a reduction in false positives.

The following sender best practices may help increase your chances for successful deliverability:
Complaints
• Add “list unsubscribe” header to e-mails offering subscribers a clean way to opt out
• Honor unsubscribes requests. Opting out should be just as simple as opting in
• Add text reminding subscribers where they opted-in to receive your e-mail
• Monitor your complaint rates. Most major services or e-mail service providers offer monitoring tools for free or as part of their service.
• Validate you are adhering to applicable anti-spam and privacy laws and policies
• Ensure your marketing communications are timely, relevant, have been requested and that you have permission to send them to the user.
• Consider the frequency of your mailings. What are the user‟s expectations?
High unknown user rates
• Maintain your mailing lists. This includes purging old, bad or inactive addresses from your mailing lists. Also, this means acquiring names responsibly and sending mail only to users that “opt-in” to receiving your e-mail.
Spam trap addresses
• Monitor and manage both hard and soft bounces. Bounce notices can provide invaluable information regarding the ISP‟s treatment of your e-mail.
Sending infrastructure
• Choose content wisely and verify URLs look normal and point to valid domains
• Format a reply header to ensure subscribers see your “friendly” e-mail address
• Use a reputable e-mail service provider who has relationships with ISPs, such as AOL, Yahoo and Windows Live Hotmail
• Implement outbound e-mail authentication using the Sender ID Framework, with a valid “-all” record. This helps protect from spoofing and ensure your MTA is authorized to send mail, while protecting the brand and domain from threats to their brand and misrepresentation.
• Segment or separate traffic by brand or type of mail. Corporate e-mail, customer acquisition, customer retention and transactional e-mails should be segmented. Senders who wish to maintain separate reputations for each should consider segment mail streams by IP address and publishing separate SPF records.
• Set up, monitor and proactively manage your user feedback data. Feedback loops contain valuable spam complaint information
Sending “permanence”
• Be consistent – Send e-mail from the same IP‟s
• Less is more. Send less mail more often vs. lots of mail for short periods of time
The bottom line to remember is: if as little as 1% of your customers complain, the inability to communicate with your entire customer base may be the end result.

Finally, before launching any campaign, thorough testing is recommended. This means frequent testing with recipient accounts using various clients and major e-mail service providers to ensure that communications are being received in a desired fashion.

You know the scenario…everytime you open your email you have at least one piece of unsolicited email in your inbox. Those of us who use free email accounts may have dozens of these very emails. Why do you get these emails? How did the spammers get your email address? In this post I will show you how spammers successfully deliver emails to your inbox.

Fake email addresses & forged email headers

Spammers use fake email addresses. They hide behind forged mail headers and other people’s mail servers. They hide outside the continental U.S. where it’s harder to track you down.

Open relays

Spammers sign up for free or very cheap internet accounts (quite often overseas). Then they find mail servers that permit open relaying. A relay is when a message originates from outside a network, and is given to a mail server for delivery to an address that is also outside the network. For instance, someone connected to AOL tries to send a message using Earthlink’s mail server to an email address at hotmail.com. That’s a relay.

Website form submissions

If an email address is not required in a form, don’t enter it or use a throw away email address. Look for a box you can check to opt out of any mailing offers. Some mail considered “spam” is actually mail from vendors you failed to opt out of in the beginning.

Public records

If you’ve ever registered a domain website, published a website with your contact information, posted to an internet newsgroup, participated in an online discussion, posted your personal information at a high-school alumni site, etc.,. chances are your email address will be placed on spam lists. Spammers frequent internet chat rooms, USENet discussion groups, public domain registration WHOIS databases, and basic websites to cull information for their lists. This is the easiest–and the most popular–way of obtaining your information.

Bogus unsubscribe links

You’ll notice that a lot of spam contains something like “to unsubscribe reply to this message with REMOVE in the subject line”, which you do NOT want to do. In most cases, this address has been set up to collect information to see which spam recipients are actually valid email addresses.

Purchased lists

Spammers will pay top dollar for confirmed email addresses. If you were sending advertisements out via postal mail, you wouldn’t waste your time on addresses that don’t exist, or addresses where the person never checks their mailbox. So they purchase lists of so-called “confirmed” addresses and send spam to them.

Spammers may pose as an ISP

Some bulk e-mailers, also known as spammers, have gone so far as founding their own Internet service providers (ISPs) to make themselves less vulnerable to interruption of service. This makes stopping spam a kind of cat-and-mouse game.

Spammers now reserve blocks of hundreds of IP addresses. When consumers complain that a particular address is spamming them, a spammer-owned ISP can truthfully report that the address has been “terminated,” while easily switching to another.

Spam fighters, in turn, track down the telecommunications company that provides “backbone” service to the entire address block. Telecom officials can sometimes be jawboned into shutting off the flow. “We’ve even considered creating our own backbone,” thereby eliminating any reliance on telecoms, says one well known spammer.

By analyzing the technical strengths and weaknesses of various spam filters and constantly changing their techniques, they stay ahead of efforts by other ISPs to intercept e-mails.

BOTNETS

Recently, Symantec said in its February 2008 “State of Spam” report (PDF) that 78.5 percent of all e-mail is spam; they also said most of that is now coming from Europe. That’s a change from previous reports that suggested North America was responsible.

But what the Symantec report doesn’t explicitly state is that much of the European spam doesn’t come from individuals sitting at their desks pumping out lists. Europe is one of the hotbeds for the Storm worm botnet, which is notorious for automatically co-opting its hosts into spam relays.

With the release of a Valentine’s Day-themed spam barrage, Nazario says Storm has grown by as much as 50 percent in new infections within the last two weeks. “The fact that (Storm) is generating lots of money means that it’s in (the creator’s) interests to keep grooming it, keep growing it,” he said.

Trick naming

Each trick has a friendly name (which is meant to be humourous), and also a SPUTR name. The SPUTR (Spam/Phish Uniform Trick Repository) is a naming scheme that I proposed in the Virus Bulletin article SPUTR: a proposal for the uniform naming of spammer and phisher content tricks.

Each name consists of three ‘!’-separated parts: a purpose, a name, and a technology. The purpose is the reason for the trick (for example, the trick is used to obscure a URL, or to insert innocent words). The name is derived from the current pejorative name. The technology identifies the way in which the trick is coded (for example, with HTML or MIME).

The following table contains a list of ‘purposes’ that can be used to categorize tricks.

For a single name there could be multiple tricks using different technologies (e.g. some tricks might be implemented using HTML or CSS), or tricks intended for different purposes (words might be inserted to fool a Bayesian filter or break a hash).

Add some real random words before HTML

3398782801 macabre macabro9986649111 5484352062 2242352281 1466161152
2146781542 Annex (verb) take possession of, seize, capture 2594269869

Add an email header packed with keywords no one sees

X-Mime-Key: search words: suspensoryobscure aristocraticalmeningorachidian
unafearedbrahmachari

Write white text on a white background

<font color="white" size="-1">search words: suspensoryobscure aristocratical
meningorachidianunafearedbrahmachari</font>

Insert a bogus HTML tags containing large amount of text

<Despite statements last week from chief U.N. inspector Hans Blixthat full
cooperation was expected from Iraq, Iraqi Foreign Minister NajiSabrilashed out at
the United Nations in a 19-page letter to Secretary-General KofiAnnanwritten in
Arabic. In it, Sabrirepeated previous claims that Iraq has no weapons of mass
destruction and that the inspections are just a false pretense for the United States
and Britain to attack his country. Sabriassailed U.N. Security Council resolution
1441, adopted November 8, that called for Iraq to give immediate, unfettered access to
weapons inspectors. Iraq "is being subjected to terrorism for more than 30 years from
international and regional powers," he wrote. "And Iraq's under a daily aggression
represented in the terrorism of the U.S. and Britain through theimposition of the no-
fly zones." Iraq has shot at U.S. and British aircraft repeatedly in the no-fly zones
since they were established after the Persian Gulf War, and coalition aircraft have
fired on Iraqi bases in response. In the most recent action, coalition aircraft struck
a mobile radar system Saturday in the southern no-fly zone, according to the U.S.
Central Command. The Iraqi News Agency said the aircraft fired on civilian and service
facilities. After Iraq fired on U.S. and British planes last week, U.S. officials said
the attacks constituted a "material breach" of Resolution 1441, which could trigger a
meeting of the U.N. Security Council at which the United States could call for
military action against Iraq>

Split words using HTML comments

milli<!--xe64 -->onaire

A two part MIME document with the spam message in the HTML section and bogus
text in plain text section

------=_NextPart_001_2D3DF_01C29D73.26716240
Content-Type: text/plain;
The modes of letting vacant farms, the duty of supplying buildings and permanent improvements, and the form in which rent is to be received, haveall been carefully discussed in the older financial treatises. Most of these questions belong to practical administration, and are, moreover, not of great interest in modern times. Certain plain rules, may, however, be stated. The claims of successors to the late tenant should not be overlooked; it is better for the tenure to be continued without break, and therefore the questionof new letting ought rarely to
occur.
------=_NextPart_001_2D3DF_01C29D73.26716240
Content-Type: text/html;
<p><b><font face=Arial>Now is the perfect time to get a mortgage, and we have a
simple and free way for you to get started.</font></b></td>

Word spacing

M O R T G A G E

Other characters can be used instead

F*R*E*E V’I’A’G’R’A O*N*L*I*N*E

To hide URLs spammers use various encoding techniques: decimal, hex and octal

http://7763631671/obscure.htm
http://0xCeBF9e37/obscure.htm
http://0316.0277.0236.067/obscure.htm
http://3468664375@3468664375/o%62s%63ur%65%2e%68t%6D

Placing entire spam in a Javascript that changes the email contents on load

<HTML><HEAD><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="Javascript"><!--varWords="%3CHTML%3E%0D%0A%3CHEAD%3E%0D%0A%3CTITLE%3E%3C/TITLE%3E%0D%0A%3CMETA%20HTTP-EQUIV%3D%22Content-Type%22%20CONTENT%3D%22text/html%3B%20charset%3DBig5%22%3E%0D%0A%3CMETA%20HTTP-EQUIV%3D%22Expires%22%20CONTENT%3D%22Sat%2C%201%20Jan%202000%2000%3A00%3A00%20GMT%22%3E%0D%0A%3CMETA%20HTTP-EQUIV%3D%22Pragma%22%20CONTENT%3D%22no-cache%22%3E%0D%0A%3C/HEAD%3E%0D%0A%3CFRAMESET%20ROWS%3D%22100%25%2C0%22%20FRAMEBORDER%3DNO%20BORDER%3D%220%22%20FRAMESPACING%3D0%3E%0D%0A%3CFRAME%20SRC%3D%22http%3A//203.204.53.231/a1_K_2/e12w_k2/a_w_a_0__2k-1_second%22%20NAME%3D%22AMENU%22%20SCROLLING%3DAUTO%20MARGINHEIGHT%3D0%20MARGINWIDTH%3D0%3E%0D%0A%3CFRAME%20SRC%3D%22%22%20SCROLLING%3DNO%20noresize%3E%0D%0A%3C/FRAMESET%3E%0D%0A%3CNOFRAMES%3E%0D%0A%3C/NOFRAMES%3E%0D%0A%3C/HTML%3E%0D%0A“ function SetNewWords() { varNewWords; NewWords= unescape(Words); document.write(NewWords); } SetNewWords(); // --> </SCRIPT> </HEAD> <BODY> </BODY> </HTML>

Split filtered words with zero-width images

No more imp<IMG SRC="congratulate.gif" height="2" width="0" border="0">otence bullet

MSIE HEX bug

Microsoft Internet Explorer contains a bug which means that it is very liberal in its interpretation of hexadecimal values in colors. Missing digits are treated as 0 also. An incorrect digit is simply interpreted as 0. For example the values #F0F0F0, F0F0F0, F0F0F, #FxFxFx and FxFxFx are all the same.

<font size="1" style="font-size: 1px" color="#FqFeFm">b</font>

In the right corner

Adding a legitimate but odd word at the far right of the subject line (typically preceded with lots of spaces and tabs). The word is design to poison a Bayesian filter and alter the spam’s hash value.
Subject: FEATURED IN MAJOR MAGAZINES algorithmic

Hide text in the title tag

<title>dinosaur reptile ghueej egrjerijg gerrg</title>

The Rake

Splitting a suspicious word with random characters and use a <DIV> with float: right to move the characters to the right raking then away so that the suspicious word is revealed.

The Small Picture

Replacing individual letters with embedded images of letters.

Sticky Fingers

Hiding words by spelling them incorrectly by simulating a keyboard with an incorrect repeat delay or sticky keys.

Split URLs

Splitting a URL inside an HREF using \r or \n characters.

Spell Breaker

Permuting the letters inside a word; the word is still readable by humans.

example: I finlaly was able to lsoe the wieght I have been sturggling to lose for years! And I couldn't bileeve how simple it was! Amizang pacth makes you shed the ponuds! It's Guanarteed to work or your menoy back!

l33t sp3@k

Replace letters that look like numbers with numbers: V1DE0 T4PE M0RTG4GE

Use accented characters in English

Fántástìç–eárn mõnéy thrôugh unçõlleçted judgments

Adding nonsense words to break Bayesian Filters

crecrephaswukutugucrovazichonuprixisluwephimajoq

Verticle

Hiding a word by writing it vertically, while writing other text horizontally in the same space.

<body bgcolor="#FFFFF9" text="#000009">
<p>
<b><font size="3" color="#FF0007">R</font></b><br>
<b><font size="3" color="#FF0005">O</font></b><br>
<b><font size="3" color="#FF0009">L </font></b>Full 18K Gold
Daytona - $269.00<br>
<b><font size="3" color="#FF0008">E</font></b></font><br>
<b><font size="3" color="#FF0005">X</font></b><br>
</p>

R
O
L Full 18K Gold
Daytona - $269.00
E
X

No whitespace

Save<FONT color=#C0C0C0>U</FONT>time<FONT color=#C0C0C0>P
</FONT>and<FONT color=#C0C0C0>Y</FONT>money<FONT color=#C0C0C0>2
</FONT>on<FONT color=#C0C0C0>B</FONT>your<FONT color=#C0C0C0>J
</FONT>monthly<FONT color=#C0C0C0>A</FONT>meds<FONT color=#C0C0C0>f
</FONT>

SaveUtimeP
andYmoney2
onByourJ
monthlyAmedsf

Black Holes

Use of font size 0 to break up words with zero width spaces.

V<font size=0>&nbsp;</font>i<font size=0>&nbsp;</font>a<font size=0>&nbsp; </font>g<font size=0>&nbsp;</font>r<font size=0>&nbsp;</font>a

V i a  g r a

Thesauraus

Use uncommon words to get your message accross

Setup your own email server with Bayesian filters

Send your test emails through your own email server with Bayesian filters in place and see what gets rejected and fine tune your emails before you make a drop.

Collect first and last name data on your signup forms

Merging that data into your email campaigns (the To: field) could help you avoid some spam filters, because it shows you have a relationship with that recipient.

Double Opt-Out

Your email address xxxx@xxxxxxx.com has been submitted to be unsubscribed from the webnetlist mailing list. That unsubscribe command requires debt helpline confirmation that you want to be unsubscribed.

To confirm that you do want to unsubscribe, reply to that message so that the words “ok 4885157″ appear somewhere on the subject line.

Make sure that your reply message is addressed to unsubscribe-confirm@yourmembership.net

You will receive notification that your confirmation has been received, and that you have been unsubscribed.

If you do not want to unsubscribe, do nothing. You will be kept on the mailing list.
—-END—-
Q: What effect can this have on you as a massmailer?

A: All you will get (in addition to spam complaints) is:

Lower open rates.
Lower click-through rates.
Lower conversion rates.
Loss of trust and credibility.

Dont fall for the trap and get on the double opt-out bandwagon. In the quest for a short-term retention of subscribers, you will simply destroy your long-term credibility, trust and response rates.

Heather goes onto write about the differences between the user bases.

• Bloglines users are also more inclined toward Photography websites, while Google Reader users are more inclined to visit Television websites.
• ...Bloglines users are 24% more likely to continue on to a retail (Shopping & Classifieds) website.

It would be interesting to hear from Blogliners on your blogs to see if you really do track more photography websites. We launched a Flickr feed module in Bloglines Beta for our photography enthusiasts. We hope you liked the feature and also like Bloglines Beta.

Enjoy!

- Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team

CDATA - (Unparsed) Character Data
The term CDATA is used about text data that should not be parsed by the XML parser.

Characters like “<" and "&" are illegal in XML elements.

"<" will generate an error because the parser interprets it as the start of a new element.

"&" will generate an error because the parser interprets it as the start of an character entity.

Some text, like JavaScript code, contains a lot of "<" or "&" characters. To avoid errors script code can be defined as CDATA.

Everything inside a CDATA section is ignored by the parser.

A CDATA section starts with "<![CDATA[" and ends with "]]>“:

<script>
<![CDATA[
function matchwo(a,b)
{
if (a < b && a < 0) then
   {
   return 1;
   }
else
   {
   return 0;
   }
}
]]>
</script>

In the example above, everything inside the CDATA section is ignored by the parser.

Notes on CDATA sections:
A CDATA section cannot contain the string “]]>”. Nested CDATA sections are not allowed.

The “]]>” that marks the end of the CDATA section cannot contain spaces or line breaks.

This afternoon, I was busy preparing for my panel at this week's MediaPost Email Insider Summit. Travel was confirmed, conference calls were rescheduled, and I took a look at the event agenda to plan my attendance at a variety of rock solid sessions to learn the latest developments in the email channel. I did not get very far. I stopped at the first morning’s keynote: "Next Generation: Does Email Have a Future?"

Come on. Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit over dramatic? I know that at the end of the day this session is going to be an excellent opportunity for all of us to get a view into the new media channels that are redefining integrated marketing programs online, but do we need to go as far as to suggest that email is dying?

In recent weeks, I have been fortunate enough to see some exciting new programs that leverage social networks and experiential marketing to drive compelling brand experiences. Of particular interest was Tim Collins’ presentation at the Canadian Marketing Association event in Toronto entitled "Navigating Toward Marketing Mastery; Guideposts for a New Marketing Era." Mr. Collins is Senior Vice President, Experiential Marketing and Social Media at Wells Fargo. Tim walked the audience through a variety of unique and exciting programs at Wells Fargo, from the online community StageCoach Island to blogs like The Student LoanDown. Instead of killing email, these innovative programs are actually creating additional mail streams that need to be designed, deployed and managed.

Sure, the role of email will change as it becomes less isolated and more integrated with the rest of the direct marketing mix, but I am confident that email has a real future. So please, enough with the death email. The channel is alive and well, albeit a tad less sexy than a decade ago!

For this 3 Things entry, let’s take examine creative sales boosting tips retailers are using on their product pages to squeak out more conversions.

Multiple Add to Cart Buttons

If there’s one thing I learned as a salesperson after working 5 years in retail, it’s that you should ask for the sale early and often. On a product page, I suppose the Add to Cart button would be roughly equivalent to asking for the sale. Most product pages contain an add to cart button in a prominent location at the top right corner of the page.

However, what happens if a visitor scrolls down to read a product description, view more images, or to read customer reviews? There is now no longer a call to action in sight. Lately, I ‘ve been seeing quite a few product pages with multiple Add to Cart buttons. Checkout TigerDirect’s product page for an example of multiple add buttons.

Low-Stock Indicators

In a retail environment, it’s not difficult to ascertain how many of a given item is in-stock, you simply look on the shelf or ask a sales associate. But how many eCommerce stores take advantage of consumers fear of stockouts? In other words, if there’s only a few left in stock, why doesn’t the site encourage you to order NOW!?

T-shirt seller Glarkware drives urgency with their Stock Level indicator available on every product page. After the customer clicks their size, they are shown an estimate of how many are available in that size. I don’t know for certain, but I’m guessing that a low stock indicator discourages customers from abandoning that item in the shopping cart.

Future Gift Reminders

The next best thing to selling a product today is selling it tomorrow. Delightful Deliveries, an online gift oriented store, boasts an innovative Gift Reminder tool on every product page, allowing customers to setup email notifications reminding them to purchase an item on a future date. Customers can choose the occasion (birthday, anniversary, etc), the date, and how many days in advance to be notified.

What 3 Things does your site need? Get 3 recommendations from Palmer Web Marketing.

With all the modern gadgetry of eCommerce, it’s easy to overlook basics such as site navigation. In this post, the first in the 3 Things series, covering 3 innovative ways e-tailers are differentiating themselves, I’ll review some creative navigation strategies.
Solution Oriented Navigation

Traditionally, both retailers and e-tailers have organized their stores based on product categories. There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact it’s very effective. However, what happens when your site or in-store visitor doesn’t have a product in mind, but rather a problem? For example:

• “I don’t know what I’m looking for, I just need a gift for mom!”
• “I’m sick, and I need something to sooth a sore throat”
• “I’m disorganized, I need something to get me on track”

In addition to offering product based navigation, Seabear, a seller of fine seafood, offers a solution oriented navigation offering three choices: Give a Gift, Entertain Family & Friends, and Healthy Dining. For customers unfamiliar with fine seafood (like me), this is a great starting point that helps visitors select a product that meets their needs.

Filter Based Navigation

Many customers are accustomed to navigating to a product category page, then filtering down or sorting by various criteria. Some retailers are shortcutting this process by allowing customers to navigate directly to a product category with pre-filtered criteria.

For example, makeup retailer Lancome allows customers to browse by the color of the product.

Shoeline.com allows visitors to view pre-filtered product listings, narrowing down the selection by color or size. This greatly eliminates the frustration of having to sift through endless product listing pages of irrelevant merchandise.

Image Based Navigation

I hadn’t visited Overstock.com lately, and was surprised to see their untraditional homepage. In addition to placing a heavy emphasis on search, your eyes are effectively drawn to the image based categories. For department style stores with a wide variety of products such as Overstock, the pictures serve well to help visitors quickly scan and make a selection.

What do these 3 strategies have in common? Nothing, except these companies all sought to understand how their customers want to shop, and fulfilled these needs. Sometimes, going back to the basics of navigation can pay huge dividends.

What 3 Things does your site need? Get 3 recommendations from Palmer Web Marketing.