They Say Bigger Is Better

Many conversion optimization cheerleaders who suggest larger buttons convert better, and some tests show even different colors can perform better. Marketing Sherpa credits cart button design as one of 7 tweaks that helped Newegg.com boost online sales by 30%.

#7. Bigger, flashier cart button

“It used to be just a cart with a little arrow. It wasn’t big enough. People’s eyes weren’t going there, so we made it big, bold and very exciting to look at,” said Stuart (Wallock, Marketing Director of NewEgg.com). The team a/b tested several different cart icons before picking the winner, so go check it out.

This is the evolution of NewEgg’s cart icon design:

Wallock mentions several different cart buttons were A/B tested in the last redesign – we’re not sure if they were different colors and different sizes, but the “winning” icon is not a relatively large button compared to other retailers’:

(From our collection of shopping cart buttons)

Testing Different Designs

Back to our decaf coffee product page. I mocked up some alternative pages which hypothetically could be used in split testing.

Here the buttons are bigger – easier to read. But the Continue Shopping button is larger than the Add to Cart. Probably not the best design.

Here’s an alternate version with the button text “Buy.” This would make a good split test to determine which button text converts higher (with the same button design).

Personally I prefer a design like this – a large, easy to read and well-positioned Buy or Add to Cart button, with a less prominent text link back to shopping.

But maybe the white button doesn’t stand out enough? We’ll throw in a sweet jelly bean red button, because some swear that red “stands out more.” Check out a couple lively discussions from people who have actually tested this at Grokdotcom here and here.

Split-Testing Resources

Google Website Optimizer makes it easy for anyone with an AdWords account to run simple split tests. GrokDotCom has compiled Google Website Optimizer – 7 Free Resources To Get Started including a downloadable guide and white paper, podcast and webinar archive on the subject of A/B split testing with Google Website Optimizer. They even developed a WordPress Plug-In for it.

Google also has its own training video here.

This post was originally published in February 2008 and was selected as part of our current “Best Of” series.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Call To Action Buttons – Does Size Matter?
• The Magic Buy Button is Just Smoke and Mirrors
• Shopping Cart Buttons: Who Is Testing?
• You Cant Fix What You Dont Think Is Broken
• Checkout Process Split-Testing Tip from Bryan Eisenberg

Helping shoppers find the right present for everyone on their list is the priority of your holiday email campaign. Sure you need to cover the basics, like gifts by recipient and price. But a little creativity can help you stand out in a sea of uniformity.

Get inspired by the 13 gift finder emails below. Be sure to check out my favorite No.13

1. Home Depot – By Customer Review:

11/20/08 – Top-Rated Products for the Holidays

view email here

Northern tool, Home depot and Norm Thompson are a few of the retailers featuring customer reviews in their email creative.

I would love to see a video, featuring real in-store shoppers. Who are they buying gifts for? What is their budget, and why that particular item?

Edit in some holiday music, and you have a video of holiday customer reviews.

2. Neiman Marcus – By Color:

12/09/06 – Green: Gifts in the season’s hot hue + FREE Shipping & FREE Gift Wrap

view email here

I would have added a color spectrum, to expand the appeal of this email beyond the color green.

3. Urban Outfitters – By Type:

12/14/07 – Neither Naughty Nor Nice…

view email here

Organizing gifts based on the personality of the recipient is intuitive and fun. Urban Outfitters sent another this year on Cyber Monday. Links included, “The starving artist”, ” The party girl” and “The Hibernator”.

4. Neiman Marcus – By Size:

12/20/06 – Final Day: Free TWO-DAY DELIVERY + Stocking stuffers they’ll love

view email here

Like the email states, “Don’t forget the stocking stuffers”. Put together a selection of small gift items, you’ll want to include gift cards in that category.

I love the creative of the above email, if your looking for affordable holiday graphics check out istockphoto. I usually pay $3 – $14 per image.

5. REI – Eco-Friendly:

11/27/07 – Give Green this Year

view email here

Put together a green gift guide this year. Feature an array of products, made from sustainable or recycled materials. If you have none, consider switching over to recycled gift-wrap and gift bags.

6. Forzieri – By the Editor:

12/10/07 – TOP 10 Editor’s Gifts + FREE Two-Day Delivery

view email here

I love the Essentials series on the QG website. Actors, musicians and designers name the 10 things they cannot do without. It’s the human element in both these examples that interest me.

7. Neiman Marcus – Hanukkah and Kwanzaa:

12/11/06 – Free THREE-DAY SHIPPING: Order now for holiday delivery!

view email here

Many of your email subscribers will be celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Be sure to include references to winter celebrations other than Christmas.

Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish holiday, beginning at sundown on Sunday December 21.

Kwanzaa is a week long, African American holiday observance held from December 26 to January 1st.

8. Crate&Barrel – By Price:

11/22/08 – 20 special gifts under $20

view email here

Shoppers are going to be more frugal this year. Most of the gift finder emails I’m receiving focus on price. Include a larger selection of lower price point items, under $25, $50 and $100.

Don’t make gifts by price the center-point of every email. Move it down to your holiday footer, to avoid becoming repetitive.

9. Forzieri – By Recipient:

11/26/08 – What MEN Really Want + Up to 50% Season SAVINGS

view email here

Along with price, shopping by recipient is the most popular way to break down gift categories.

Cashmere sweaters or scarves, is a wealthy persons version of socks and boxers. I could dedicate a whole post to holiday emails featuring cashmere, I’ve received so many. It’s a popular gift, so if you carry any now is the time to feature it in an email.

10. Brooks Brothers – Gift Cards:

12/18/07 – Hurry, Complimentary Shipping Ends Friday

view email here

In mid-December, when people are looking for last-minute gifts send out an email showcasing gift cards.

11. REI – Everything but the kitchen sink:

11/28/08 – REI Gifts to Fit Any Budget + Winter Sale Ends Monday

view email here

This REI email features gifts by price, top rated gifts, gifts for him and her and gift cards! It also features free shipping and their hassle free return policy.

It includes everything you want in a holiday email, along with a clean design and plenty of HTML.

Add a holiday gift footer to your email template like REI’s, and this one one from Land’s End.

12. Barneys – Video Gift Guide:

12/02/08 – Simon Doonan + Julie Gilhart FREAK OUT! + DESIGNER SALE: up to 50% off!

View video landing page here

Barneys is running a fabulous series of video email gift guides this year. Not only is it entertaining, it’s incredibly useful to see items in use, and from multiple angles.

Below is the landing page, you can easily access the products featured on the right-hand side.

Video can double your email click-through rates, and increase online sales. A video gift guide is a no brainer. Place it on your homepage, in emails, YouTube, Facebook and all your other social media sites.

A local video production company can work on a script with you, shoot at your place of business, arrange for a host or a model, edit your video and distribute it online – for around $600.

Speaking of retailers using online video, LK Bennet has a video of a fashion show on their homepage. Click on a product in the video, and it takes you to the landing page seen below.

Here another video of a model wearing the selected outfit does a 360 turn for you! You can click on each item she is wearing, to go to that individual product page. They also have some rather nice product photography…

13. Esquire – Behavior Dictates Price:

view larger image here

Here’s my favorite gift guide. Published in Esquire magazine, “The Big black book” 2007. The more degenerate the guy’s behavior, the more expensive the gift he needs to buy.

The title is, “Worm your way back into her good graces. And quick”. It’s an entertaining way to represent gifts by price. The copy can be adjusted to suit your audience.

Further Holiday Email Reading:

Holiday Email Marketing: 8 Tactics for Retailers
If You Make One Change This Holiday Season…
6 Holiday e-Card Ideas
Santa’s Helper – Animated GIFs in Holiday Emails

You may also like these similar posts:

• Holiday Gift Emails: 13 Ways to Categorize Gifts
• After the Shipping Deadline: Holiday Merchandising Tips
• $8 Billion in Unredeemed Gift Cards a Win-Win for Retailers?
• In-Store Pickup Tips for Multichannel Retailers
• Ecommerce Holiday Web Design Gallery

What does a GPS and a Traffic Jam equal? Detour! I think you will get a kick out of how my GPS saved me hours in my car stuck in a massive traffic jam in I35 in Texas. Find out how Julie wife of long time listener Ronald was able to score days off work by using GotoMyPC. I have a new contest you need to listen to win you have a few short days to act. My 2009 24hr Podcast Charity Announced!

Ongoing support by these fine sponsors keep the lights on your support is appreciated!
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Listener Links:
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Show Notes:
Top Mobile Apps of 2009.
Crunchpad Dead before Arrival.
Apple Retail down Online Sales Up!
Malware Software Faceoff!
Hadron Collider cranks up the Juice.
ICANN no more Redirecting!
Solar Prices to come down 30%?
Get your wallets out for Hulu.
UK Newspaper puts up Firewall.
Hulu focuses on Search.
Who complains the most about companies and how?
Fix that Scratched DVD or CD.
NASA Prepared to take last Module to ISS.
FCC to go forward on White Space Database good for us!
Google Chrome OS on Macs!
Fake Lab Meat food of the Future?
Is your employer taking advantage of you?
Psystar only sold 768 Computers?
ASUS Motheboard lets you mod with Bluetooth.
Intel Chip Roadmap!
Perfect Band-aid!
Do you really want this in your car?
Small Towns + High Speed Internet = Increased Property Values!
What did you buy on Cyber Monday?
How to pick out the Perfect Domain!
iPhone to go to T-Mobile?

Send in your stories to geeknews@gmail.com and be sure to provide a link to your websites!

I, like a lot of us, had to travel over the Thanksgiving weekend. In my case, I had to travel to Grand Haven Michigan ( about 150 miles south of where I live ). I just got the Motorola Droid with Google Maps Navigation and wanted to compare it with my 1 year old TomTom One.

First, around town.. The TomTom is quite good at finding businesses and not quite as good at finding addresses. The touch screen is easy to manipulate and it doesn’t take too long to get your address entered into the device. Once you get it in there, it will take you to within a block or so of the correct address. It’s not perfect. The Google Maps app on the droid take a bit longer to load the address into then the TomTom ( you will have to pullover to do it on the fly ) but once it’s in there, the Droid is much more accurate. Both do a great job with businesses and the Droid’s Google Maps app works with voice quite well as long as you don’t have to read the whole address to it. For finding a McDonald’s or Starbucks, it’s perfect.

Now for the long trip… There are 2 ways to go out of Traverse City to get to Grand Haven. The slightly longer but faster route though Grand Rapids on US131 and I-96 or the shorter US31 along the lake shore. Knowing that there is a detour around a bridge in the Cadillac Area, it makes it quicker to go the US31 route. With the TomTom, it has no idea about the bridge being out so it wanted to route us via US131 and Grand Rapids. But, thanks to TomTom’s choice of “fastest route” “shortest route” or “avoid freeways” I was able to select “avoid freeways” and it routed me the way I wanted to go. The Google Maps App is supposed to know when there is detours and not route you through them unless it thinks it is the fastest way to go ( no option for shortest or other routing that I found ). It did show the section of closed road but it routed us on it anyway. So I ignored it. I wanted to see how far along TomTom’s route it took the Droid to catch on that we were not going that way and re-route us. The verdict? 15 miles. We were on the road for at least 15 miles and the Google Maps on the Droid wanted us to turn at ever intersection to get us back to the closed road. Once it got the fact we were going the other way, it was right on with the TomTom.

The TomTom One can be had right now for about $90 if you shop around and it a great all around navigator. It has lots of options of routing, voices and what info it displayed on the screen. You can have the time you will arrive at your end point and your speed, the speed limit of the road you are on among other things like that plus a nice 3D display of the road in front of you (map, not video ) The Google Maps Navigation does not have any real options as far as routing, display info or anything like that. Just a nice map, the street names, and how many hours and minutes to your destination. It does, however have Satellite views of the route and when you get where you are going or come to an intersection, it will show you street view of the area which could be nice if you don’t already know where you are.

One thing the Droid does better with Google Maps over the TomTom is that it reads you the street names. The TomTom one doesn’t (although you can get a model that does) Also, on the droid, you can’t change the voice (yet).

All in all, I would say the Droid with Google Maps Navigation is OK for a navigator if you don’t have a stand alone unit. You will want to get a car charger for it as the battery won’t last but a couple of hours running with the display on all the time. The thing that gets me excited about this App and the Android phone is it will improve over time with updates and other 3rd party software. The TomTom is more or less stuck with what it is. They do update the TomTom from time to time, but it can only do what it can do. You won’t go wrong with a TomTom for the price. I’m happy with both and will use both depending on the situation.

I’m loving all the other things the Droid does and will update you on my switch from Blackberry in future posts.

Ubuntu Desktop

I have an old Mac Mini that I wasn’t using, so being bored I decided to install Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu is a well know distribution (distro) of Linux. The latest distribution is 9.10 also known as Karmic Koala, (all Ubuntu distribution are named after animals.). The first thing I did was I downloaded the latest distribution of Ubuntu as an ISO. An ISO is simply a single image of all files needed to install an application, in this case Ubuntu. I then burned the ISO to a CD using the burn option available in Disk Utility on the Mac. I did burn it at a lower speed then normal, which is recommended. I then placed the CD in the Macmini and restarted it, while holding down the C key when the chime rang. The first screen that came up asked me if I wanted to run Ubuntu without installing, install Ubuntu, check disk for error, or start from first hard disk. I decided that I wanted to do a full install, so I made that choice. (If you make that choice remember that you are erasing all data on the partition that you install it on.) The next choice I had was whether I wanted to use the full hard drive or a partition. I chose to use the full hard drive, hit the continue button and the installation ran without any problem. Once the installation is finished I set up my login name and password. I removed the CD and restarted the computer, Ubuntu started up without any problem.

I love Ubuntu, it is one of the easier distribution of linux to use. Ubuntu comes with Open Office, Firefox, Pidgin Internet Messanger. already installed. It also has audio, video and image applications already available. The great thing about Linux today especially Ubuntu is you can stick with what it comes with when you download it. However most likely there are going be some programs that you will want to change. Unlike in the past a lot of applications can be downloaded direct from the Internet and installed automatically. However, by learning either Terminal commands or using the Synaptic Package Manager you have a lot more options. If you run into trouble or have a question, there is help available either through IRC, a very active forum or a wiki. Most of the people on the forum are helpful, although they do expect you to do some work on your own behalf.

If you are sick of the Windows vs Mac battle or if you have tried a Linux distro before and decided it wasn’t worth the effort, I recommend giving Ubuntu a chance it is easy to install and use. However, if you want everything done for you and don’t want to do any work, then Ubuntu or any linux distribution is probably not for you. Do you use Ubuntu or another distribution of linux. If you use another distribution of Linux, which one and why

Boxee’s CEO, Avner Ronen, sent an email to users today announcing the Boxee Beta unveiling event Dec. 7 Music Hall of Williamsbur in New York. The event will also be viewable at online at blog.boxee.tv.

The event will mark the beginning of a 4-week early access program, prior to it becoming publicly available Jan. 7 at CES.

The beta release will have a redesigned look and is reported to have incorporated many of the requested and feedback. New features include:

- Improved navigation across the platform to quickly and easily access entertainment.
- Search for TV Shows and Movies on the Internet and on local hard drives/networks.
- Queuing functionality to let you save things for later from the web.
- Shortcuts for your favorite apps, movies, shows, etc.

Users can sign up for early access at http://bit.ly/boxeebetaea.

The third annual 24hr podcast is slated for Saturday Dec 12th starting at 11am EST. It is a charity event to raise money for Ronald McDonald House.  You can follow them on Twitter @rmhc When my father was killed in an Automobile Accident several years ago my niece was with him. Her injuries resulted in long-term Intensive care. Without the Ronald McDonald House in Indianapolis, Indiana my sister and her husband would have incurred huge financial cost to stay in hotels in the local community. Ronald McDonald house was there to help.

My family is grateful to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, and I look forward to sending them a big fat check.  We have raised thousands of dollars in previous years to select charities as part of my annual 24hr podcast.  I encourage you to donate this year as well.

This year during the 24hr Podcast we will have a special event and that will be the 2009 People’s Choice Podcast Awards Ceremony. I figure it’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

If you want to appear on the 24hr Podcast I encourage you to send me an email @ geeknews@gmail.com, topics I cover with a variety of guest during the 24 hr event include. Podcasting, Science, Technology, Social Media and any other topic that I think will be of appeal to my listening base. This event has been well followed in years past and I look forward to another successful event.

Guest will be able to appear live this year on our newly configured video conferencing system, which install was finalized today.  This will make for a much more dynamic event. Audio conferencing will be provided once again by the good folks at TalkShoe.com