Cuttin’ Through the Clutta Like A Knife Through Butta
As the economy slowly pulls itself out of the recession, retailers are trying to connect with consumers in different ways. Reuters reports that Best Buy is scaling back its trademark “big box” stores, focusing instead on “mobile” retail locations and bolstering their online presence. However, The New York Times reported last week that many brick-and-mortar stores are back to embracing size and clutter. While piling up the goods may be great for B&Ms, this strategy usually fails to translate in the expanding ecommerce world.
Online there exist far better strategies for engaging consumers than drowning them in a sea of digital clutter. We advise our clients to embrace simplicity, proven behavioral strategies and technology like dynamic personalization. Few if any brick-and-mortar stores can make quick, store-wide changes like what can be done online. Digital optimization strategies allow our clients to take risks and experiment with their online offering, to adjust quickly based on real-time feedback, and then to experiment some more.
We have empowered many clients with this strategy, and it works. For example, our de-cluttering redesign of PexSupply resulted in a 33% jump in conversions, and 45% increase in total orders. Take a look at the difference after the break.
Before the Redesign:
The original homepage had long, uninviting pages with dense text, few design anchors, and a lack of focus on customer needs.
Product lists were intimidating and unappealing. The dense layout was confusing and gave no graphical guidance.
Product pages were bland and undifferentiated with unappealing text and no cross-linked item listings.
After the Redesign:
On the new homepage , we introduced a compact layout with well organized options for customers, which get the users on their way faster and more efficiently.
The new product list layout adds breathing room and guides the customer’s navigation with images for guidance and tools for sorting.
The redesigned product pages are significantly more enticing with much more relevant item information but without the clutter found on the original design.
For more check out Josh Levine’s February presentation at the 2011 Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability conference. IRWD’s coverage of the presentation is here.
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