The full run of 1500 highly-coveted pairs of nerdwear are being auctioned off through ebay, with all of the proceeds going to The Michael J. Fox Foundation.  It’s certainly a worthy cause and that’s a good thing since (as of this posting) the bidding for each pair is hovering in the five-figure region.

… yes.  You are looking at $10,000 sneakers – and as we mentioned: NO power lacing.

We can only imagine the excitement going on at BTTF.net – your Back to the Future headquarters and our Volusion client.  They must be fluxing right out of their capacators.

(… okay.  Let’s see you write a decent BTTF pun, smart guy.)

As most folks know, WeatherBug offers free desktop and mobile apps so you can keep an eye on the weather no matter where you are. What you may not know is that they also offer a premium, ad-free version that allows for customized skins, alerts and locations.  It’s like having a weatherman in your computer (minus the bad toupee, hideous sportscoat and unbearable weather-related puns).

We’re proud to be associated with such a longstanding interweb brand and we offer our congratulations to WeatherBug on their brand-spanking-new Volusion store!

Aaron at Unichip kinda loves us.  Don’t take our word for it.  Let’s see what he has to say about it.

“Brand labs is the king of custom development.

If I won the lottery I would spend half the money on having Brand Labs do all our website development.  Their support is outstanding and staff is always ready to tackle any project no matter what.  They are always willing to work with you even if your budget won’t allow you to do the things you need done right away.

With our company, we require a lot of pages that meet our every day demand for our customers and Brand Labs helps achieve this without any hesitation or refusal of projects or tasks. They are number one in Unichip’s book.”

There you go.  We’re number one – the king – the big daddy poobahs of ecommerce!

(Editor’s note: Aaron didn’t actually say that last one, but it was totally implied.)

Vanilla Food Co. boasts that they’re more than just vanilla beans and they certainly are, but if you are looking for Vanilla, they have at least 12 different ways to provide it.  If, on the other hand, you’d like to introduce some other flavor to your baked goods, they can sell you extracts, whole spices, dried fruit and more!

Congrats on the new Volusion store, Vanilla Food Company!

… is everyone suddenly craving cake or is it just us?

“We’ve been using AutoResponderMax for 5 months now and the results are great! AutoResponderMax is one of best marketing options for your Volusion store! It took us only 15 minutes to set up. Hundreds of highly targeted emails are sent automatically and sales increased at least 5%.“

That sounds like we wrote it, right?  Well, we didn’t.  It was a totally unsolicited testimonial from an AutoResponderMax customer, but we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  If we had our way, every single Volusion customer would sign up for the 30-day trial to see how amazingly easy the setup is and to benefit from the FREE month of automated marketing that comes with it.  We’re completely confident that everyone who tries it will love it just as much as Sergiy does.

… as long as you love completely automatic revenue increases, which we assume you do.

We have a well-established track record as effective online marketers.  Our reputation in this arena is matched only by our reputation as skilled web designers, which is a good thing because you need both skills in order to build and maintain a strong A/B testing program and to react properly to the results.  Oh… speaking of results, it helps if you’re Google Analytics experts like we happen to be.  That way, when you see the results you’ll know what to do with them, which is good because knowledge without action is like Hall without Oates; useless.

After the jump we have some recent examples of A/B successes and some tips if you’d like to follow our example.  Hit the link below to check it out…

What you see here is a landing page for one of our oldest clients, The Shelving Store.  It offers a lot of “best practice” elements.  It has strong lifestyle photography, highly-placed SEO copy (which contributes to  TSS’s number one ranking for the search term “chrome wire shelving”) and a clear & prominent left navigation menu.  By many measures, it’s a very strong landing page, but since we aren’t wild about resting on a top Google rank, we decided to explore additional conversion possibilities for the client.

First, we examined the viewing pattern for the average user and determined that several critical elements fell outside the hot zone.  Knowing full well that you have precious few seconds to capture a shopper’s attention, we began by shifting some of the high-value assets to the hot zone.  In order to do that, we sacrificed the lifestyle photography in favor of some clear buzzword placement and more prominent placement of important products from the category.

The result of our efforts is here.  You’ll see that we’ve removed the left nav, that the entire page has been simplified and the calls to action are far more prominent.

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to simply shuffle page elements with the hope that you’ll see improved results.  The fact is that even if you were to see an uptick in conversions, without proper A/B testing you’d have no way to know whether your changes were effective or if the increase was entirely coincidental.  That’s where our Marketing team takes the reins from the Creative department.

Using identical paid search campaigns, we sent 50% of TSS’s paid traffic to the old page and 50% to the new page.  We tracked the results in Google Analytics over a 30 day period and our findings were dramatic.  Conversions resulting from direct traffic to the new page showed an 86% increase over the same amount of traffic going to the old page.  From a straight-up statistical standpoint, that is a truly ridiculous number, but the analytics don’t lie.

The takeaway from this particular test is that best practices are an excellent starting point (even before the A/B testing, the original landing page was converting very well), but if you’re hoping to increase your conversions, you’ll have to clearly define the goals of your specific business and use that knowledge to inform your decisions about your chosen practices.  The specifics of the approach we’ve taken here, likely wouldn’t work for an apparel dealer, for example.  It’s all about testing and a deep knowledge of the business model in question.  Speaking of unique business models…

The Red Hat Society Store is unique in a couple of ways.  First, it is actually “unique” in the literal sense of the word (it is the only official store of the world’s largest social club – The Red Hat Society).  Second, it happens to be our Volusion store.  We’ve owned and operated the site since it was RedHatsAndMore.com.  In that time, we’ve guided it from its founding, through a truly saturated field of competitors to the top slot in our vertical, eventually partnering with The Red Hat Society and taking over all of their eCommerce operations.  We were able to accomplish this retail feat through a constant re-examination of the market and of the needs of our customers.

… and, testing, testing, testing.

What you see here is the original category page for “hats”.  You’ll notice that it’s a pretty straightforward design that relies on clear, vibrant product photography to instantly communicate the contents of each sub-category, and while the site was selling a helluva lot of hats, analytics told us the bounce rate from this particular page was surprisingly high.

This is where our deep knowledge of our personal vertical comes in.  While we have a full understanding that being 50+ doesn’t make you computer illiterate, it must be said that we handle a disproportionately large number of calls that have solely to do with the basic aspects of completing an online purchase.  Knowing that a good number of our clients are eCommerce virgins, it pays for us to over-explain the process whenever possible.

With all of that in mind, we speculated that the high bounce rate had to do with the possibility that an inexperienced eConsumer might land on the category page and, seeing only individual hats, they might easily believe that we only carried a single style in each color.  If they didn’t like one of the three hats on the page, they’d bounce.  Our solution was simple:  we created sub-category graphics that each showed two hats and added a “View All” call to action (indicating there was more to be seen).  In our two-month testing period, the new page yeilded a 48.7% increase in clickthroughs to the sub-categories and the average time on the site increased by 57%.

The takeaway here is that the “best practice” for your site may not exist in the giant spectrum of “best practices” that are floating around out there.  In this case, as in most, it’s about knowing your customer, tracking their onsite behaviors and creative speculation based on that information.  Now if you don’t happen to have a team of experienced eCommerce pros on your staff, the creative speculation may be a little more challenging, but that’s the beauty of A/B testing.  It allows you to make educated guesses and then determine whether or not your instincts were correct.  After that, you simply proceed with the most successful option… and then you repeat the process indefinitely for the entire time that you operate your store.

That last bit is the part that often stops eMerchants in their tracks.  No one enjoys the prospect of a never-ending process of any kind.  People like definable, achievable goals, which is why we suggest that you see A/B testing as a series of small goals as opposed to a daunting and ceaseless task.  We even have a suggestion for a simple starting point for you.

This client (who prefers to remain anonymous) was showing a high bounce rate on their cart page.  As every eMerchant knows, abandoned carts are among the most costly stumbling blocks for any business, and there are excellent ways to reclaim that revenue, but the shortest route to conversion is always the best route.  Knowing that, we decided to experiment with the over-explanation method.  We worked with the client to determine their greatest value propositions for cutomers who have already identified what they intend to buy.  We decided that their expedited shipping and liberal return policies were a clear standout in their vertical, so we simply added a graphic that called out those policies and placed it on the cart page.  In the month-long test the client saw a 12.77% increase in conversions originating from the cart page with the additional callout.

Even though every market is different, there are some things that are pretty universal.  One of those things is the fact that anyone reaching the shopping cart page of your site is probably looking for one really good reason to complete their purchase… a little push to convince them to convert.  If you can isolate your greatest value proposition and place it in the shopper’s line of sight as they make their final decision, it simply makes sense that they’re a bit more likely to finish what they started.  At the very least, it’s an excellent jumping-off point for your entry into the world of A/B testing.

Of course, we understand that a lot of the things that we covered in an offhanded fashion here aren’t always that easy to achieve on your own.  Some of the alterations we’ve referred to here involve a lot of creative and development hours, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t attempt some version of the methods we’ve discussed, even if it’s a scaled-down effort or you have to enlist outside help…

… hey!  It totally just occurred to us that we could certainly help you with your effort.  If you’d like to embark on an online marketing adventure that’s designed to increase conversions and revenue, you should give us a call.  We’re ready to add your company to our ever-growing list of success stories.

Now we’re going to be really up front and say that we know a heck of a lot less about compressors than the fine folks at Compressor world, but to our untrained eyes it sure seems like they carry every single thing that you could ever want or need related to the world of air compression and control.

… seriously EVERYTHING.  Like if you happen to need a 220P 70 CFM Rotary Screw Gas Air Compressor,  Compressor World can totally hook you up.  We have no idea what it does, but the combination of the words “screw” and “gas” make us laugh harder than it should since we’re supposed to be grownups, but whatchagonnado?

Congratulations on the new site Compressor World!

The show gives entrepreneurs like Andy the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of investors in the hope of getting their backing.  It’s a great concept and makes for some damn fine TV.

Andy won’t tell us what the outcome of his appearance was, so we’ll have to find out along with the rest of the world next Friday.  Our money’s on Andy coming out on top.  Be sure to watch and see!

Since 2004, Austin Bazaar has been providing musical instruments of every type: string, wind, electronic, percussion… no matter what you’re into, they’ve got you covered.  So whether your personal musical fantasies involve standing on stage in spandex or in formal wear, Austin Bazaar is your one-stop-instrument shop.

Congratulations on your new Volusion store, Austin Bazaar!  At the risk of sounding terribly uncool whilst simultaneously trying very hard to sound cool, we offer a hearty: ROCK ON!

With dolls, dresses, furniture and accessories, Laurent Doll is like a magical wish, wrapped in glittery pixie wings and served up Volusion-style.  If you have some sort of doll-related need that Laurent can’t fulfill for you, it’s time to reexamine your dreams.

Welcome to the Brand Labs family, Laurent Doll.  You say the word and we’ll break out our finest doilies for a tea party you’ll never forget.