Sep 22 2009
Information Integrity and Data Overload
Everyone agrees that engaging a customer, providing him or her with interesting, relevant and useful information is virtually a guaranteed way to increase sales (or, the the industry lingo goes - “improve conversion rate”). The question is always, by how much? There are many data points on this subject, the numbers typically vary from 5 to 20%.
Crazy Numbers
Yesterday, Comparison Shopping Engine Strategies published some specific stats pertaining to a specific site. They report that Shopping.com was able to increase conversion rate by some serious numbers.
From CSES website: “Shopping.com rolled out a new shopping experience in their shoe category. The new pages offered larger images, improved navigation, and clearer information on size and color. These changes resulted in some pretty strong stats, including a 55% increase in conversion rate.”
Fifty five percent?! This kind of improvement is bound to catch attention in e-commerce space. But I would venture to say that there is no other way to increase conversion rate, but by improving consumer engagement environment. How else would you increase conversion? Pricing? TV ads? Possibly, but none of these strategies solve main problems consumers are facing today.
Two Main Problems
The main problems that frustrate consumers today are information integrity and data overload. Even if you take either of these problems separately they are not trivial. When you combine the two - it becomes a tangled web of confusing and conflicting messages. These problems affects not only consumers, but product makers as well. What’s more, it virtually breeds information integrity problems, because atomic messages taken out of context are bound to balance on the edge of information integrity.
What Does it Mean?
First of all, at a very basic level, just by organizing product data and creating a simple, consistent and clear message for your market goes a long way towards improving your customer engagement. Information clarity equals better customer interaction.
Secondly, it’s not a rocket science. In the example I used for this article, Shopping.com offered “larger images, improved navigation, and clearer information on size and color”. Does not really get much simpler than that.
The Trend
The underlying trends are simple. One: consumers are shifting their shopping to online venues (The Nielsen Company Report, PDF), and two: whoever can give shoppers information they need when they need it in clear, organized and simple ways will dominate the marketplace. The rest will see their “conversion rates” falling off a cliff and disappearing into the abyss.
