Home Page Elements for Ecommerce Retailers to Test

As the saying goes, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” For ecommerce retailers, this is especially true for your store’s home page. The home page is typically the most popular landing page. It’s where visitors get their first impression of your entire retail company. You want to use it to share a lot of information without overwhelming people.

In this video, we help retailers think through key considerations for the home page. You’ll see different merchant approaches that evoke emotion and draw people into the store. By testing the various elements on your company’s home page, you’ll define its optimal strategy – and motivate customers to start browsing and buy.

Transcript: Home Page Elements for Ecommerce Retailers to Test

Hi, I’m Lauren. I’m a conversion specialist here at Command C. And today we are taking a look at the homepage. So, what elements can you test and how can you optimize this page?

What are you going to learn? We’re going to look at why you should be testing on the homepage, what visitors are looking for on your homepage and what your homepage should be answering for your customers.

Why should you test on the homepage? Typically, this is going to be your single most popular landing page. It is also the first impression visitors are going to get out of your store and it’s a way to introduce your brand, value proposition, and you need selling propositions to your customers.

What Customers Want to Learn From Your Company’s Home Page

When visitors land on the homepage, they are looking for who you are as a store, and what makes you different from competitors. What’s in it for them? What’s the benefit of your store and your products over competitors?

They’re also looking for unique selling proposition, so your returns policy, shipping, and guarantees. Those should all be prominent and easy to find on the homepage. They’re also looking for social proof. Have a lot of people bought? Have they had a good experience?  And they’re looking for any awards, press mentions, things like that to show you have some authority in your space. They’re looking for the range of products in your catalog. What types of items do you sell, as well as the prices?

What Retailers Want to Evoke from the Home Page

You want your homepage to evoke a few things. Those range from emotions and feelings. So, if it’s items for kids and babies or maybe for a home, you want to help evoke the emotions associated with the purchase like that. You also want to give them reasons to consider you over a competitor. And you want to help motivate them to buy, so that might be something like a countdown for a sale or discounting.

Test Image and Pricing Options on Your Home Page

When it comes to your catalog, there are a few things we can test. In these next slides, I’m going to go through tests for different parts of the homepage. Here we can test prices, showcasing prices on the homepage versus not showcasing them.

In the case of priority bicycles, they don’t show the prices on the homepage. For Barn and Willow, another idea is to include some lifestyle imagery. You get an idea of how the items look in a home. Customers can kind of get an idea of how that item could look in their own space or in their own life.

Test Social Proof and Press Mentions, Too

As far as social proof, maybe you have reviews on your homepage or maybe you don’t. But you should also test including customer photos to make the reviews more authentic and believable – just add a little extra to those reviews.

Also tests including press quotes. You can do something like away.com, where they showcase one review from Mejuri. You can showcase a few different reviews. Here they have it where you can click on the logos and you can see different reviews. You can also showcase a top seller category or bestseller category. This is also some shoppable social proof. Customers who might not be familiar with your catalog will understand that these are the most bought products and it’ll nudge them to purchase.

Test Different Ways to Promote Your USPs and Motivate Buyers

For motivation, Laird Superfood, in the homepage, showcases this a limited time discount. You can get a free gift with a $60 purchase. This is a good way to test out motivating customers to buy or to increase their average order value.

As far as reasons to buy, [there are] some tests you can run around value proposition. If you don’t have a value proposition, definitely test one out. It might not win right away, but it can take a few tries to get the wording right and to get it to resonate.

Also test out showcasing your unique selling proposition. Show them on the homepage and also the design around them. If you want to include icons to make them stand out more or I’m deciding which unique selling propositions are most relevant and motivating to your customers.

You can also do something like lull.com. There’s a lot of mattress companies and they do something on their homepage where they showcase why they’re different, how their product differentiates from those on the market. It gives more education to the customer. And you can do something like Drink Simple, where they showcase an About section. It has a story about the company and the founders. It gives a little more personality to the brand which can also help motivate customers to purchase.

So these are some tests you can run on your homepage. So give it a try and I’ll see you in the next video. Thanks.