Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you stumble across a feature that makes you think “why didn’t I think of that”?

This time, it’s from antique and vintage marketplace Ruby Lane, which alerts shoppers when an item they are viewing is sitting in someone else’s cart or wishlist – suggesting they may miss out if they don’t act soon.

This tactic makes most sense when products exist in limited quantities, such as clearance and “last one” items…

1. Make it Clear, Make it Quick People are more rushed than usual during the holidays. If you don’t already have the most important features/benefits of your products outlined in bullet points, do it now. This will allow your shoppers to make quick work of gift-giving decisions and let you rack up more sales.

2. Remind Shoppers of Gift Potential While you might be tired of writing the phrase “makes a great gift,” shoppers need to be reminded…

For many online retailers, the holiday email season is already underway. But it’s not to late to check if your holiday emails are naughty or nice. Before you hit send, make sure you’re maximizing your opportunity by answering the following questions:

1. Do all your holiday emails have a clear call to action?

“Seasons Greetings” may give customers the warm fuzzies, but unless there’s some action for your recipient to take, you send your email in vain…

What is the biggest missed opportunity in ecommerce optimization? Is it A/B testing? Performance testing?

How about cart recovery?

We put a lot of focus on optimizing the cart, getting the customer through to conversion, yet still it’s not uncommon to have abandonment rates of 50% or higher. We know a good chunk of abandonment does not occur because the button wasn’t big enough or green enough or our web forms are too long…

New month, new name for our monthly link roundup! Introducing the Ecommerce Link Digest (nee Blogger’s Digest). If you’re new, once a month we highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.

• Perhaps the biggest piece of news for Internet marketers in October was Google’s announcement that it would no longer provide organic search query data for logged-in Google Account users…

Pop quiz: what kind of device are more shoppers planning to purchase through this holiday season – a tablet or a smartphone?

Make a guess before reading on!

According to ThreatMetrix survey of 722 active Internet using consumers, 37% intend to make a purchase using their smartphone, nearly three times as many as those who plan to use their tablet. (View the entire infographic on The High Low)…

According to Forrester’s latest State of Retailing Online report, 38% of web merchants report A/B testing of their site design as “effective.” Does that sound low to you?

While this doesn’t necessarily mean 62% don’t consider site testing an effective tactic (it’s likely the survey included retailers who are not doing any testing at all). For example, if only 50% of respondents were site testing, the actual figure would be 76%…

For a little Friday Funny to kick off your weekend, enjoy this funny short on the Online Checkout in Real Life from the Google Analytics team, reminiscent of our own Crazy Messed Up World of Ecommerce clips.

Perhaps the script at the end should read “find out where customers are abandoning your checkout.” But semantics aside, your checkout funnel is your best friend when determining what step to test first in your checkout optimization efforts…

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

In the early 1900′s, department store merchant John Wanamaker didn’t have access to web analytics to be able to calculate an ROI on various marketing activities like we do today. While data-driven decisions are better than none, data can be dangerous.

At an ecommerce conference last week, one of the speakers gave some data analysis advice that I’ve heard over and over from countless sources…

For some this is already old news but in case you haven’t heard, the Google Page Speed performance testing tool is officially out of Google Labs and in your hands!

Just type in any URL and Google will return a report with an Overview (complete with a percentage score) and high, medium and low priority action items:

Clicking on any item in the menu takes you to more detail:

For example, Piperlime’s home page has a bit of Javascript to minify…

If you’re an international ecommerce business you likely have your eye on the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). What’s happening in ecommerce in India? Check out this infographic for some juicy stats:

Off-topic: Also worth mentioning is the UK Christmas Shopping 2011 infographic I meant to include in our September link list. Did you know that 4pm is the peak time for workplace shopping in the UK? Might be a good time to send those Tweets, Facebook shares and emails…

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath…

We know there are a lot of psychological factors that influence purchase behavior online and offline. Here are just a handful of funny things that influence customers to behave the way they do:

Bigger Buy Button

It’s 2011, and by now you would think web users would be confident that every ecommerce site has an Add to Cart button, right? Why does color, size and even irregular shape have a proven, measurable impact on products added to cart, checkout initiation and checkout completion?

The most likely answer is that big, bold, funky shaped buttons stand out and put the “call” in call-to-action…

We are all saddened by the loss of Steve Jobs this week, a true visionary and leader of an organization who has impacted the way we shop and sell online today and in the future. Here are just some of the ways Apple products have revolutionized electronic selling:

Itunes

The iTunes application made micropayments popular with the masses. Though other mp3 marketplaces existed, the iTunes player and companion devices worked in tandem to grow the marketplace to 80% market share of (legal) mp3 downloads and a library of over 8 million songs…

“Correlation does not imply causation.”

Heard that phrase lately? Or maybe way back in Stats 101?

The topic is so hot it got it’s own panel at Search Marketing Expo and a math-o-graphic on the SEOMoz blog. It’s worth discussing here on Get Elastic as it’s a key truth that applies to data analysis and A/B or multivariate testing.

I’ll give you a minute to look this over…

Created by SEOmoz (Copyright ©2011)…

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.

• Quite possibly my favorite. post. ever. When CTAs Attack – 10 Real World Call to Action Examples (That’s CTA for call-to-action, I didn’t misspell cat). Mix a bit of LOLcats meets FAIL Blog meets photo montage of downtown Vancouver – all in a conversion optimization context of course…

The final frontier in our series on mobile web design and usability for ecommerce — and likely the one you are most concerned about — is the checkout. Visitors that make it to your checkout show the clearest purchase intent, so the conversion is yours to lose if your checkout process is long, confusing, slow to load, broken or otherwise sub-optimal.

Today we’ll examine the factors that influence mobile checkout abandonment and how to craft your first checkout A/B test…

What is the most important element of your checkout sign in page?

Guest checkout

As I’ve blogged many times before, guest checkout is critical to conversion. Forrester Research found that 23% of consumers abandoned the checkout of the last site they shopped on that didn’t have a guest checkout option.

Though creating an account is usually not more daunting than checking out as a guest, it’s all about perception…

Continuing our series on mobile web design for ecommerce, today’s installment focuses on the first step of the conversion funnel – the cart summary page.

The key metrics for the cart summary page are bounce rate (aim to reduce cart abandonment), clicks on the checkout button and successful clicks back to the home, category or product page to continue shopping. Design plays a major role in these metrics, as a usable, easy to understand and persuasive cart page can make your performance, the opposite can break it…

Continuing in our series on mobile design strategy, today’s post focuses on mobile product pages, including product information, calls to action, navigation and merchandising.

Purpose of product pages

Throughout this series, we approach design considering the conversion goal(s) for the page type with the understanding that the conversion goal for most pages is a click through to the next step in the buying process, not a completed sale…

Last post we covered tips for home page design for mobile web sites and, as promised, today’s post will explore category pages. The goal of category pages is ultimately to keep the customer on-track to locating a product for purchase, thus usability and clarity of menu options and product results is key. Page layouts, sort and refine tools and navigation options all work in tandem to support this user goal…

This post launches a 6-part series of mobile website design strategy from home to checkout. You may remember we ran a similar series in 2009 on mobile usability. A lot has happened since — only a brave few retailers had dipped their toes in mobile commerce, and the iPad had yet to make its big splash. Though the principles covered in our first series remain, our current run focuses on design strategy based on goal completion, with some ideas for A/B testing…

Nearly 2 years ago, Get Elastic posted on the topic of tabbed boxes in ecommerce website design, namely, they are so easily overlooked by users.

The post received many fabulous comments, like Christian from the Baymard Institute:

In all usability tests I’ve ever done the users always tend to overlook tabs.
If you are forced to make tabs then at least obey to web conventions and make the links blue and underlined to minimize the “banner blindness” that occur when decorating your tabs…

Last post we looked at Facebook Likes – namely why people Like ecommerce product pages, the influence of Likes on purchase likelihood and the percentage of Facebookers who share Likes from ecommerce product pages – from research by 8thBridge.

And you may remember our mini-series on optimizing Facebook shares waaaay back in May (Edgerank algorithm explained and ideas for getting your Page updates noticed in News Feeds)…

Ever wonder if anyone cares about those little Facebook Likes? Do they drive traffic? Why do people click Like? Do Facebookers appreciate social recommendations? 8thBridge wondered and conducted a survey to find out. Here’s what they found:

What: Interestingly, a customer who owns a product is more likely to “Like” a product than one that just thinks its cool, or who wants to buy it someday…

When planning your mobile commerce project, it’s key to figure out what you want it to do. The following is a round-up of unique mobile commerce website and application functionality to get your creative juices flowing:

Leveraging Unique Properties of Mobile Phones

GPS, baby

Crutchfield offers a shipping cost estimator that leverages GPS. Using HTML5, Crutchfield has baked this app-like feature into its mobile web site…

No matter what the marketing investment, everyone wants to know what kind of ROI to expect. Landing page optimization (or LPO) – just a longer name for conversion testing – is no exception.

For the inaugural Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report, our friends at MarketingSherpa have compiled research from 2,673 online marketers on landing page optimization’s impact on revenue and its ROI, including which pages and page elements they rate most effective…

Get Elastic is taking a very short summer holiday, and will return next Monday with the findings of our latest industry research. Until then, please enjoy an early edition of Blogger’s Digest, and a selection of posts you may have missed on Get Elastic if you’re a new reader (posts from over 12 months ago).

Blogger’s Digest Picks – August 2011

• Website optimisation for SEO – a 12 part guide kicks off with a detailed description of how to ‘use web analytics to benchmark website performance and drive insight through data…

Making a decision on adding a new usability feature or modifying your design for higher conversion? You may be tempted to use case study data to support your decision. But could case studies lead you astray?

The danger in relying on case studies

With A/B testing, there are many variables that affect test results. Every analysis must consider test context. What works for a pureplay may not work for a bricks-and-clicks retailer or manufacturer…

We work in a redesign obsessed industry. I make regular rounds across the Internet Retailer 500, and one thing is constant – change. A 2009 Internet Retailer survey found more than 60% of web retailers redesigned all or part of their websites that year, and 67% planned to redesign in 2010 — and that despite a weakened economy. We know site design plays a major part in ecommerce business performance, but design projects can cost thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars…

You may have heard the advice to avoid A/B and multivariate testing during a traffic spike. This is sound advice for the most part, but I suggest there are times when testing during a traffic spike is exactly what you should do.

Testing at the beginning of a predictable spike can actually help you optimize for sales during the remainder. More traffic means faster test completion, and changes can be applied for the rest of the wave…