It’s the little things in eCommerce design that can make the difference between profit and loss
What we are talking about here are the finesing items on a website. The little things; Tag lines, click for more, buttons, sub headings, popups, tooltips, calls to action, checkout flow, upselling. These are the items that come under the banner of microcopy.
Microcopy is often overlooked, but it really can affect your bottom line. We often overlook microcopy as the affects are often small in terms of overall conversion. However, the conversion can be relatively high when measured against actual buyers and resulting profit increases.
For example; Peep Laja gives an example of looking for a small 5% increase in cart flow traffic and the projected profit increase.
An Ecommerce site that I analyzed recently had a payment page where 84.71% of the traffic proceeded to buy. I calculated that if we can increase that to 90%, that would result in 461 more orders and additional $87,175/month. That would be 23.94% growth in revenue. So yes – “small” gains here can be very big. (Conversionxlcom, 2016)
As I have told clients before “…stop wasting time chasing dreamers who might buy one day and start focusing on people who are buying today…”. Microcopy is often about maximising results with genuine buyers (long term customers). Genuine buyers have a slightly different mind set than dreamers and web surfers. Microcopy can capitalise on the difference, with not a lot of effort.
Bibliography:
Conversionxlcom, P.L. (2016, no-date). How to Design an eCommerce Checkout Flow That Converts. [Weblog]. Retrieved 15 March 2016, from http://conversionxl.com/how-to-design-an-ecommerce-checkout-flow-that-converts/
Unmatchedstylecom, G.C. (2016, no-date). Microcopy – Why is it so important?. [Weblog]. Retrieved 15 March 2016, from http://unmatchedstyle.com/news/microcopy-why-is-it-so-important.php
Smashingmagazinecom, B.B. (2016, no-date). Five Ways To Prevent Bad Microcopy. [Weblog]. Retrieved 15 March 2016, from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/06/five-ways-prevent-bad-microcopy/
Econsultancycom, B.D. (2016, no-date). Six brilliant bits of micro-copy you can implement today. [Weblog]. Retrieved 15 March 2016, from https://econsultancy.com/blog/64951-six-brilliant-bits-of-micro-copy-you-can-implement-today/
