Some Fashion Conversion Tips

January 25, 2011 Steve

Soooooooooo!

A much belated Happy New Year to everyone! Yes, it’s been a while, and after a few weeks away (quite a few!), the Affiliate Docs are back in the swing again and delving into all your questions, conundrums and sites to unearth some nuggets of advice that we hope will help you to move forward over the course of 2011. On a personal level, the break was intentional as I wanted some time out to recharge and enjoy Xmas after missing it in 2009. Now that the New Year is in full flow, we’ve got lots lined up for the coming months. The Affiliate Chatroom will be relaunching in the next couple of weeks, although the Lingr room is still up and running if you fancy a chat with your fellow affiliates, and as soon as the new platform is sorted, we’ll release the details on Twitter and whack something up on site to let you know. We also have a few interviews lined up, with the first one coming in from Lammo.

So without further ado, our first Surgery review for 2011 comes from Darren who fired over the following question to see if the docs could offer some help with conversion rates on his polo shirt site …

“Hi.

Ok, so I have my site www.menspoloshirts.co.uk on page 1 of google for some decent terms, and the site is getting around 100 uniques a day, but the sales are not flowing in. What can I do to try and make more sales?

Thanks

Darren”

Site Preview [click to enlarge]:

Here’s what Carl and Lammo had to say …

Carl

Hi Darren.

I have taken a look around the site.

It seems your site has some CRO issues. Below are a few suggestions that would help increase clicks and conversions.

1. Increase the size of your images

They are currently too small. When people buy polo shirts they will look for detail and mainly want to see the stitching and logo. Also if you look to other fashion websites you will notice they always have a zoom function. Another trick would be to make your image clickable so that when the image is clicked you are taken to the merchant, it’s a little sneaky but that click may offer the visitor the greater detailed image they require.

2. Cloak all your URL’s

As everyone becomes more web savy, people look at what they are clicking on in the status bar. If a visitor see’s a strange looking URL they are less likely to click on it. If you cloak your URL’s you will have a clean URL e.g. www.menspoloshirts.co.uk/goto/bensherman.

There are various methods that are around for doing this. As your site is on built on WordPress there are plugins freely available to cloak URLs. If you know your way around your server you might want to look into editing the .htaccess file to cloak your affiliate links.

3. Tidy up your product pages

I would try to make your product pages look a little more appealing, as they currently look rather plain. Maybe offer more detail by including size, colours, additional images, but this obviously depends on the feed you are using. Use colour and style to make your product pages look a less formal.

4. Call to action

Your call to action button [Buy Now] maybe be a little aggressive, visitors when clothes shopping like to [add to basket] or want [more information] – changing the text of this button may encourage more clicks (and more cookie drops).

5. Use logos 

As you are offering a comparison service, I would make sure the logos of the retailers appear instead of your text. Visitors are more likely to click images as opposed to text. The current table looks a little plain and a little dated; by making this more appealing, you may reduce the bounce rate and increase CTR. Some of these designs on Patterntap and Six Revisions may help with the comparison tables. Highlighting the best price row will help with CTR.

6. Check your feeds

I noticed that many of the items I clicked on were out of stock which can really affect bounce rate. You may need to update your feeds more often. If you receive a lot of long tail traffic it’s likely that the visitor is looking for that particular shirt, and if it is not available the visitor will go back to Google and search again.

Another issue of course might have nothing to with your site; there maybe conversion issues at some of the merchants you are using which is something else to consider.

Let us know if you implement any of the changes.

Lammo

Hi Darren.

What keywords are you getting traffic for? Are they buyers or browsers?

If they’re searching for “mens polo shirts” then they probably haven’t decided what shirt they want to buy, whereas if they’re searching for “ben sherman romford polo shirt”, then you’re more likely to close the sale.

One thing I spotted looking at Ben Sherman and Quicksilver (and quite a few other categories) is the number of products with “no image”. In the fashion sector, you’re never going to sell items that people can’t see – I’d remove every single product that doesn’t have an image, and on the single product page, such as this one for example , I’d make the image much larger (or at least have the option for the customer to enlarge it).

I’d also try offering up some “related” shirts on these single product pages – that way if customers don’t like that shirt, you’re offering them some relevant alternatives (think similar colour/style/brand – one of each), think of Amazon’s “You might also like” feature.

Hope that helps.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for sending in your site for review Darren and hope you find the advice useful – if you need any more specifics, please fire them into the comments and we’ll get them answered. If anyone else has any suggestions or advice for Darren we’d love to hear them in the comments below …

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