Greg Kelton's Blog

The days of deploying your site changes to production without first testing functionality and cosmetics are long gone. 

So too will the days of deploying website changes that are not conversion tested. 

In an online retail market expected to double in size to £78 billion by 2010* the potential rewards for e-commerce businesses are huge. Equally, so is the pressure to stay ahead of their competition. 

The desire for online businesses to become bigger and better inevitably affects their approach to redesign. There’s a huge temptation to introduce the latest whiz bang functionality and super cool design which will appeal to a whole new generation of customers.

I’ve been talking to clients a lot recently about the problem of heavy mice on websites, i.e., the lack of incentives - or cheese trails if you’ll let me extend the metaphor – to motivate customers to click through to the next page and the next page after that.

Something as simple as telling them what they might find on the next page will help click-through tremendously and we all know that increased click-through ultimately means higher conversion and revenue.

On my way to work the other morning, I noticed that the stylish apothecary Space NK on Westbourne Grove was closed for refurbishment.

Not something likely to inconvenience me enormously, as its beauty products are aimed predominantly at the discerning ladies of Notting Hill.

It did, however, get me thinking about the cost of redesigning a retail outlet and inevitably, considering my line of work, how that compares to the online retailers I talk to day to day.

In the same way as more instruments don’t necessarily make a better tune or more words a better poem; when it comes to creating effective website pages, less is often more.