This week, I thought we would take a look at action buttons and how they can actually influence the number of sales coming in the door. Here are my 3 main factors for add to cart buttons.
1. Make It Visible
Nothing drives me crazy more than Add to Cart buttons being set to display after your product description. Action buttons should always be right in your face when you visit the page and should, under no circumstances, be below the fold. Make sure the button is big, high up on the screen and has a nice contrast from the background or other items on the page. Click the image below to see a screenshot from the Amazon Kindle product page. They have isolated the button in a nice contrasting box with a bright yellow finish to the button. Amazon is usually running up to 200 tests on various elements of the website at any given time which means that this button style and placement were no accident!
2. Make Them Want It
Sometimes the title, price and product description aren’t enough to encourage customers to buy. Sometimes there are more psychological factors involved like the fear of NOT having it. One little idea, which I detailed in a previous blog about optimizing eCommerce product pages, is to display key metrics next to the button. In this case, I recommended building a simple tool within your buttons to display how many are left in stock and how many people are currently browsing the website. Take a look at the example below to see the real power of this.
3. Make It Quick
Finally, make sure you take a look at the shopping process to ensure that visitors are getting every opportunity to buy. To do this, I like to follow one simple rule: Never display a product without the opportunity to buy it. Avoid making visitors have to click through to the product page in order to buy the item. Present the options to view additional details or buy now any time the product appears on the website. This will help to decrease the number of steps it takes to get the item into their cart.
To Sum Up
One of the most important things you can pay attention to when working with your website is your actions. Make sure it’s easy to find and easy to understand. Try Optimizer testing different variations and placements to see how differences can influence your visitors in different ways. And again, please please do not make a text only Add to Cart link at the bottom of the page.
on
Its not just to make the "Cart" buttons look good but make it "Actionable". Its more like showing the carrot to the rabbit and enticing it to get into the trap.
Well articulated Chris – The illustrations are amazing.
on
Thanks Chris for letting us know the importance of Cart buttons and how it can lead to more conversions. Another interesting scenario about cart buttons is using ajax to add products to the cart without refreshing the page and changing the title of cart button to something like "Added Successfully".
on
Well said chris! Its true that we have to Add to Cart buttons should stand out from other elements so as to catch the viewers attention. A simple color change change in the background of the Add to cart button stands out and compel the customers to buy the product…