

Ask HN: Why is our eCommerce store converting poorly? - spontaneus

www.Morebrownies.com has been live for about a week now and we have been getting great feedback on our concept. We've had a few blogs write about us, generated thousands of unique visitors and taken a number of orders, but our conversion rate is terrible.  Far less than 1% of our visitors have placed an order.  What in your opinion are we doing wrong?  Is there something specific on our site that turns you off from ordering?
======
ericingram
I'll qualify myself by saying I've done a lot of ecommerce, roughly $1.5M on
my own ecommerce stores over the last few years.

Also, I am probably your target customer. Married, 3 kids, gift giver.

At first glance, great idea and great execution. I like the design, and the
concept seems to make sense. It gives you a sort of "aha, that is smart"
moment. I felt like you need to move your Get Started button under the 1-2-3
steps, where I actually decided I wanted to get started.

In addition, the gift choices look like good ones. Limited choice, high
quality, decent value for the price.

Now let me tell you why I probably won't convert, and maybe you can apply this
to other customers: I naturally feel inclined to put this decision off until
later. The idea of making these choices now and forgetting them in a few weeks
is a bit scarry. Will I remember what she's getting on V-day? Birthday? What
if I find another great present later and buy it, then this seems like an
awkward side gift? Could I get a better deal if I just pick these up at a
florist myself? The jewelry seems pretty inexpensive, is it any good? Ahh I
think I should just put this off. Too much thinking when the deadline is so
far away.

</thoughts>

So, I don't want you to respond to these thoughts, but consider what they mean
for the business and your conversion rate. The best way to increase conversion
is to understand the target customer.

~~~
spontaneus
This was very helpful. I agree that there are a lot of decisions to be made
that don't seem necessary for something so far in advance. That may be a tough
nut to crack. I'm going to dig into this more and see if the feedback is
consistent.

~~~
ericingram
Great response, and good luck! If it helps, I would be interested in getting
reminded that you have these products closer to the actual dates I need them.

------
mjs00
One problem might be you seem "too new" to trust to give money to, and the
site doesn't have the following 'signals' that will help someone trust you ...
(the site could just be a shell designed to siphon credit card numbers from
folks ...) \- no customer service page with email address or method for
inquiries \- generally no contact info that includes legal company name,
address, local phone number \- No 'login' link on the home page that would
indicate an account is set up after the first order, that would allow you to
manage orders once placed. \- A blurry photo with only twitter IDs for contact
\- No references or recommendations or affiliations that help me trust you. \-
No conditions of use, or copyright, or privacy notice which are kind of
standard on commerce sites.

I get you are probably in a YC cohort based on the orange Y background in the
fuzzy photo. But unless you are only marketing to others in YC, the 800# and
lack of all other ways to contact you is not at all confidence inspiring in
terms of giving money to you, to the general public.

All that, combined with a business model where you bill it all up front, it
could be perceived as a little suspect. So not one specific thing, for me a
bundle of indicators. Hope that helps.

------
helen842000
I don't know if this helps but the UI feel of the site felt more like the
products were adverts instead of browsing actual products to buy right-now.

Start collecting e-mail addresses en-masse for the purpose of
birthday/anniversary reminders. Hit them with a prominent & simple signup
form. Just email address, dates & names of occasions, submit. You can play on
the forgetfulness, saying one signup and you'll never forget again.

Once you start getting within 15-30 days of those dates you'll start to see
conversions growing. That's when a simple order process (4 clicks and you're
done!) will boost conversion.

The fact that you are getting sales shows your idea is of interest, that
percentage can only grow as you expand your gift selection and gather customer
information & feedback.

------
ctb9
Where are you losing people? If no one is clicking get started, address the
homepage first. If people look at products but still don't buy, start with
your products page.

1\. Are you performing split testing on major components of your landing page?

"Increase your brownie points!" strikes me as awkward and mathematical (makes
me think $browniePoints++). Ask a few friends in your target market to help
you brainstorm.

2\. I almost missed the arrows to see more products per category. Make them
more prominent and switch the circles in the top right for page numbers.

~~~
spontaneus
Ah, forgot to say where the drop-off is. We lose most people on the gift
selection page.

\- 60% make it from the homepage to the gift selection page (not bad).

\- 3% make it to from the gift selection page to the billing page (eeeeh).

It's a huge drop-off and we are trying to pin-point why. It may be a product
issue, but most people have given us good feedback on our selection of
products. We are going to mix in some other brands to see if it helps at all.

We have split tested the landing page and were able to increase the click-
through rate by 20%. No other split tests are running at the moment.

------
chris_dcosta
Nice idea, I hope you're going to start sending anniversary reminders for
those who do use your site.

I like the shopping cart items appearing in a bar, but honestly, I had no idea
it was there... it was below the fold, and it was only because I started
fiddling when the "add to cart" button appeared not to work, that I found it
lurking. Try putting it somewhere up higher at least people can see the new
items dropping in.

------
pcharles
I think the most important question is: Do people want it enough to pay for
it? You can always get great feedback, but if people do NOT want to pay for
it, then it doesn't really matter. Find out if the value proposition is good
enough. Maybe you need more to sweeten the deal. I would recommend pushing the
product to targeted users for about 1 month and see if the conversions
increase.

------
leebossio
So I'm not quite sure who it's for from the homepage, and further - I am
confused as to how brownies equate to buying expensive things at first glance.
When I opened the homepage my first instinct was to get home delivered
brownies on a regular basis.

~~~
spontaneus
You've never heard of the term "brownie points"? Are you from outside of the
US?

~~~
leebossio
I'm from the US and know the term. I was merely giving a first glance
impression. This is all very relevant to conversion... Even on the homepage.

Perhaps the wording on the submit button is what's throwing me off. Something
more explanatory like "View our gifts", etc. that would help drive the point
home to the visitor about what clicking that button will actually do.

~~~
ericingram
I agree with changing text on the button, "View gift selection" makes a lot of
sense.

------
japhyr
Is there a plan to make the service appealing to women as well? It seems like
you could double your potential market size pretty quickly.

------
davidhansen
I operate a number of ecommerce sites, so I'll give my perspective. I will
preface this by saying I like the concept, and the implementation is clean.
Congratulations on your launch - it's nice to see new ideas entering the
industry.

First, you should be aware that launch traffic is demographically _nothing_
like customer traffic. If your site has been posted to tech blogs, startup
blogs, tweeted amongst your tech friends, etc, then most of that launch
traffic is of the "I'm just checking out this cool new site" variety. This
does not convert nearly as well as the "I really need to schedule a gift for
my wife" variety. Expect your blog links to pay off over time in SEO linkjuice
value, not in the one-week short run.

Second, you picked a bad time to launch a gift _scheduling_ service. Well over
half of your potential customers have _already purchased_ the items in their
gift list. And for those that haven't, they will most assuredly be going to
companies with longer-running reputations that they can trust to fulfill
delivery timeframes. Expect October of next year to be significantly better.

Third, the UI is probably not intuitive to people accustomed to traditional
ecommerce sites. Aunt Millie is probably not going to realize that clicking on
the barely-visible arrow icon on the left/right margins will display another
product. One unfortunate fact about ecommerce, and one that is likely the
driving force behind stagnation in design evolution, is that catering to
_expectations_ is usually more valuable to conversions than catering to
coolness. I say usually because there are a few exceptions to this rule( think
Apple ), with heavy emphasis on _a few_.

Fourth, impatience. Seriously, it's been a week. It takes time to get to know
your customers. As you learn more about them, you'll be able to craft an
experience more conducive to giving them what they want, and as a by-product,
increase the conversion rate.

