Tips on optimizing the pages beyond the landing page for ecommerce sites

[mandy]

Landing page optimization is very much in vogue these days. If there were a Billboard chart for hot acronyms, “LPO” would clearly be rising with a bullet, heading near the top of the charts with other Internet marketing hits such as “SEO,” “SEM,” and “RSS.”

And for good reason: The landing page is the all-important first impression a prospect gets when visiting your Website. Figuring out how to make a better first impression can go a long way. For example, Dale and Thomas Popcorn, an Englewood, NJ-based merchant of (surprise) popcorn, was able to increase online sales more than 13% simply by optimizing its landing page.

But it's important to remember that landing pages are just the beginning of the online sales process, and optimizing the pages subsequent to it is just as important. To be concerned only about improving your landing page would be the equivalent of trying to build a great baseball team while being concerned only about getting a great lead-off hitter who can get on base, steal bases, and generally wreak havoc on the basepaths. Such a hitter can make things happen, but a team will have much better success if it can also have equally great support later in the batting order...

full article: http://multichannelmerchant.com/webchann..._09012006/

[BellisimaJ.]

Many people get cold feet right at the point of purchase. Sometimes it's good to remind them of policies that will lessen their fear of commitment. For example, book, music, and video/DVD merchant Time Life was able to increase sales nearly 8% by more prominently showcasing its money-back guarantee policy on its product page. As Brad Sockloff, the vice president of e-commerce at Time Life, observed, “Just having a money-back guarantee was not enough. Making sure it was promoted at the strategically right point in the sales funnel made a major difference.”

Good article, Mandy!

Some good tips to increase conversion rates.