Say you run a fairly successful small niche Web site but notice over and over again that you’re losing a lot of customers just as they get to the checkout page.
Xtremez.com, a Vancouver, WA company that sells paintballs and similar recreational equipment to the 12 to 25-year-old set was having those problems and went through a several-months-long process to correct it.
In so doing, Xtremez (which stands for extreme sports) and its operation www.paintballonline.com has raised its return-on-investment ratio nearly 400% over the past year and a half thanks to a site optimization program.
The gain in ROI began last year after the approximately $2 million firm improved its visitor-to-buyer site conversions by 19.4%, increased total orders by 20.8% — and actually gained a 1.2% increase in traffic.
What did they do?
One of the first things was to rework the checkout process. According to Adam Stites, president of the company, this process had previously been fairly cumbersome and involved, leading some users to just give up. Xtremez was able to cut it down to a simple one-two-three process, enabled by consolidating data fields.
In addition, Xtremez restructured its home and product pages to display products on the tops of the screens. And, products with natural cross-sell potential were placed near each other in such a way that users might be more inclined to buy several products
Network
