Cyber Monday is coming. Is your site ready?

Monday, November 24, 2008 11/24/2008 05:27:00 PM

Cyber Monday is coming! Image: By Your Command by Graham Ballantyne

You may not know it, but the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, is shortly followed by the biggest online shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday. This year Cyber Monday falls on December 1st, just one short week away.

With thousands of eager holiday shoppers coming to your site, credit cards in hand, the question is, "Are you ready for them?"

What can you do? You can start testing on your website today, or as our good friend Avinash puts it, "Experiment or Die."

Here's a short list of things you can start testing right away:

1. If you have a spot for users to enter a coupon code, try moving it towards the end of the checkout process. A coupon box early on in the checkout process is an invitation for the user to go search for coupons rather than completing their purchase.

2. Try in-action images instead of traditional product images.

• Consider titanium spork vs. titanium spork in action.

3. Run different special offers and see which lifts your sales the most.

• Try testing a $10 discount and a 10% discount against free shipping offer.
• Moishe's Moving tested three different promotions: $100 off the move; free moving boxes ($80 value); and 1-hour of professional packing ($130 value). The $100 off promotion moved the most sales for them.

These easy tests could help boost your conversion rate just in time for holiday shoppers. If you're looking for more insight into how visitors see your site, Conversion Rate Experts, one of our authorized consultants, has a great article: 14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website.

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Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team