How high is your shopping cart conversion rate? Is it 30 or less? 40? 60? One day a client asked me: what exactly makes a conversion rate to be smaller or higher? Is it the number of steps, the security logos, the product images, adding/removing cross selling? Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a secret formula to it. However, we have found that the absence of 3 elements can influence in a negative way your shopping cart conversion rate: trust, confidence and security.

On trust, confidence and security

Trust comes from the experience with the shopping cart itself. Most of the users don’t care about technicalities or 3rd parties and so on, but when they find themselves in a cart that doesn’t look like anything on your website, some of them will hesitate to trust it. A feeling that something might be wrong could take over. It’s common sense after all. In all the tests we’ve done, the better the customized cart was (in terms of look and feel), the higher the conversion rate.

Confidence comes from the feeling that everything is straight forward. No elements that can generate doubt. So, before deciding to offer by default Backup CD or Download Insurance in the cart, test it. Sometimes it works, sometimes doesn’t.

The security element is a little bit more sensitive. To accomplish a sense of security, you will most definitely need the mandatory secured elements in the browser. After that, you can start testing security logos, payment methods logos, revealing information on how the payment goes and so on.

Let’s get something clear: the higher the conversion rate for a client, the more sales they have, the more commission we get :). So it would be plain “not very smart of us” to neglect this aspect. That’s why we have a dedicated team working on shopping cart A/B testing and customizations for our  clients.  Once the test results are validated, we include it as an option for everybody – either as a shopping cart feature or widget.

Today we are proud to let the first widget out into the wild

It’s a widget that tries to assure the security element, and we call it simply: Who is Avangate?

Research into the Avangate shopping carts used by software vendors led us to the discovery of a first pattern.  The more clear it was for customers they were buying through a 3rd party, the bigger their trust, reflected into higher chances of finishing a buying process. So, naturally we had to test it. We have come up with the “Who is Avangate?” widget that everyone can now include in their shopping cart. Here are a couple of examples from our tests (yes, it’s multi-language supported):

The goal of this widget is to let people know they are buying from a secure third party, without having to leave the shopping cart. The information is shown only to users interested in learning about Avangate (they click on the link), while the rest of them are not being disturbed from the buying process.

When users click on the Who is Avangate link, the following overlay is displayed:

Results

The best results we obtained through our testings were of 3% increases in conversion rate for the templates using this widget. However, not all the tests came with the same result. In some, the increase was lower than that. It all depends on the audience of each shopping cart. According to the tests we have conducted,  it’s safe to state that the more visitors trust the website they are buying from, the less impact of the above widget. So far, none of the tests we’ve implemented had a negative impact on the shopping cart.

Therefore, I invite you to take the challenge and start an A/B testing campaign with this widget on your shopping cart as well. The worst that can happen is to see a little bit more cash in your account. :)

For deploying this for your shopping cart just contact your account or write to us directly at info@avangate.com.

When William Gibson said “The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet“, he could have been talking about how Google is reinventing its search results right now and incidentally altering the likelihood your software company will be found in 2010 Q1 by prospective customers worldwide.

There are three big changes confirmed and now being rolled out:

1. Adding real time search results to your Google results,
2. personalizing those results like never before and
3. giving every Google user a sidebar of options controlling the freshness of their results.

And there’s two other changes – Page Preview in results and the Wonder Wheel (no, I didn’t make this up) – that are not confirmed, but are also getting rolled out piecemeal at least in the United States and are strong bets for next quarter worldwide.

So you’ve tried endlessly tweaking your AdWords, starting a blog and even begun Twittering this year, and you’re still on the second or worse page of Google results for the keywords that matter most. How are you going to change this for 2010? Consider creating and maintaining a microsite.

A microsite (at least for the length of this post) isn’t a brochure-like static page about your product, or a shady way to generate inbound links. In fact, it only just touches your product and does everyone in your market a valuable service. A microsite is a way to monetize for reputation/attention a chunk of all that expertise you’ve built up, in the same way your software monetizes that expertise for money.

How would you like to be able to say this?

“Just a week after launching the sites they got to the first page of Google results for the main keywords… the .NET microsite ranks #1 for .NET logging as of today“.

Selling software over the Internet with Google AdWords has a lot of traps that we should learn to avoid as good as possible, so that our ads reach more targeted prospects every day. One of the trickiest aspects we should be in control of is the use of negative keywords, because they are the toughest candidate for wasting our money and for getting on the nerves of Google users, as it was eloquently explained by Linda Bustos on Get Elastic blog.

Negative keywords in your AdWords keyword list are those for which your ads will not show in search queries containing them.  You can get the general information about negative keywords directly from the AdWords blog.

When you’re trying to sell software through PPC campaigns, your goal is to obtain qualified leads to your software selling business, not to get as much and as untargeted traffic as possible. And that’s when negative keywords come in. Or out, actually:).

Don’t Lose Users on the First Screen!

This is part 4 of a 5-part series: How to convert more software trials to purchases.

Nothing’s worse than opening new software and staring at a vast white screen with millions of toolbar buttons.  Now what?

1. Most users don’t care enough to find out.
   They want to solve a problem, not root around in your menus.  They don’t care about your “project” paradigm or your innovative new work flow concepts.
2. Of course you also have to satisfy your power users.
   They probably don’t want paperclips popping up every five minutes distracting them from real work.  Power users are the ones who are going to spread the word about you, tell all their friends to download your software, and Tweet and blog about how awesome you are, so you have to keep them happy too.

Use a “Tips” Newsletter to Follow Up on a Trial

Photo credit: blue out

This is part 3 of a 5-part series: How to convert more software trials to purchases.

What do you do with customer’s email addresses during their trial?

• If the answer is “nothing“, then you’re wasting data.
• If the answer is “follow up with ‘account management‘ stuff and ‘do you need anything‘ questions“, then you’re bothering most users.  Even at best, you’re not thrilling anyone.

You should be using it for a special, 3-emails-only “Tips Newsletter“. There are several goals of the newsletter.