Ecommerce: How failed visits could very well be your site’s most valuable asset

[mandy]

Some bad news for online retailers and some worse news. E-commerce web sites can fail their visitors on one of seven levels. That’s not even the bad news. The bad news is: All e-commerce sites fail some segment of their visitors on one or more of these levels. The worse news: Not only do visitors who fail in their intended purpose not convert but those failures damage conversion rates into the future and across all the company’s channels.

But there is also good news: Identifying failed visits and understanding where and why the site failed those visitors may be the most important path to conversion improvement and brand protection.

Typically, less than 20% of visitors arriving at an e-commerce site intend to purchase. By the same token, more than 50% arrive with the intent to research specific products, look for sales or specials, or just browse.

The experiences of those who fail in their intent to purchase reveal the most urgent problems and provide a compelling and often alarming picture of opportunity loss. ..

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27286