More Specific Recommendations
1. Your web
analytics should help you determine what product/service attributes are
important to your visitor. While details for some products seem trivial,
those same details could be vital to the visitor's decision-making
process.
For example,
if we're selling wine gift baskets, the dimensions of the basket may not
be that important to our visitor, and we may benefit from a cleaner
product page by placing that information on a drill down page.
However, if
we're selling wine racks, the dimensions are most likely important and should be listed on the product's main page.
2. Whenever
you list your privacy policy link, test displaying text similar to "We
value your privacy, and will never sell or share your information" next
to the privacy policy link. Usually that one sentence is all your visitor
wants to know. By getting them not to visit your privacy policy page,
you've removed another distraction that could increase the distance to a
sale.
3. Test your modifications to product pages where the
"grass isn't walked on much". You
don't want to risk losing a significant amount of sales on your most
popular items while you fine-tune your site.
The Bottom Line
When it
comes to optimizing your distance to a sale, remember that not only are
you testing your visitor's level of patience, but you're also
competing with any offline distractions that could take your potential
buyer's attention away. The longer it takes for the sale to be
completed, the better the chance that any interruption, even a phone call,
can foil the sale.
On the other hand, one less
click for every potential purchase could improve your conversion rate,
resulting in more profits and revenue from your existing traffic without
any further ad investment.
