Don’t try to buy bread in Switzerland unless you know EXACTLY what each bread is called and can pronounce it perfectly.

Just so unforgiving, are many Swedish websites when they ask their visitors to fill in personal ID numbers, zip codes and similar.

Learn how to improve the validation of personal identity numbers and other common, but tricky, form tasks that you ask your visitors to perform.

This is a guest post at the Conversion Conference Blog

Read the full post here >>

Läs den svenska versionen här och bli bättre på att validera personnummer.

André Morys asked me – “What is the online equivalent of the Bumper used in traditional/offline retailing?” I was on stage at ConversionSummit and I was caught off-hand. I didn’t have an answer. I felt really embarrassed so this post is my pathetic versuch to come up with an answer to that question.

Or as a matter of fact, not that question but another one -“What can we learn from how the Bumper is used in physical stores?”

“What can we learn from how the Bumper is used in physical stores?”

When talking with some other Conversion Heroes in the evening we concluded that maybe there is no direct online equivalent to the Bumper. Does that mean that there’s nothing we can  learn from the Bumper? Of course not.

Here are the key traits of the Bumper:

1. You’ll find it right after you enter the store- It’ll be the first thing you see on your “tour” in the shop.
2. It is usually wide  – It is hard to just pass by – You will literally have to walk around it.
3. It is low – It doesn’t obstruct the view on items further into the store.
4. The objects for sale have a wide appeal – Since the objective of the Bumper is to stop movement, not primarily to sell, the items must appeal to as many as possible. Therefore the items  here are usually very “General”, such as plain T-shirts, Plain jans and similar.

So now the question – What can we learn from this?

To begin with – It is a lot harder to put something “in the way” of online shoppers that they will “have to go around”.  Online shoppers are more task-oriented – They will try harder to get around whatever you put in their way.  Secondly, it’s a lot easier to “get around something” online, the user will just look and click somewhere else and “go” there.

So IF you want to experiment with trying to get the visitor to consider something else at the beginning of their visit- This is how you should do it:

1. Make it “low” so that it does not block out the view of the rest of the store (no flash intro – remember?!)
2. Don’t make it “wide” either, people will get around it anyway, if they want to.
3. Use items with general appeal, such thing that most visitors on the entry pages would consider. What those thing are can vary depending on the entry page for various traffic segments and how targeted they are.

So can we use Online Bumpers? The answer to that is – We can test them. And if we do, we should keep the three points above in mind.

This August Conversionista competes in the Unbounce 2011 Conversion Fest Blogging Contest. Our entry is focused on the trade-offs between SEO ranking optimization and Click-Through and Conversion Optimization. Oh! Did we say “trade-offs”?   Actually, we think you can do both.

If you’re designing your tags only to achieve a top SERP position the end result might actually be less traffic to your site. Why? Because when meta tags are optimized for ranking position you often sacrifice an effective call-to-action and your click-through rates will suffer as a result.

Read the full post here ››

And make sure you share it if you like it!

I shot this picture in San Francisco last week.

To the right: the boarded-up windows of the Virgin Megastore.

To the left: The line of people who has spent the night on the pavement in order to be the first to lay their hands on the IPad 2.

I think any further comments are unecessary.

I love this picture since it’s sad, but beautiful in it’s simplicity.

Below is a picture taken three blocks away and it shows the final sale at theBorders Bookstore which is about to close down permanently.

The times they are a-changing. Indeed.

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