E-commerce Usability and Persuasion Training
Since 2008 I have been delivering training courses in areas of usability, user experience, user-centered design, e-commerce best practice and persuading visitors to buy. Training courses are either delivered for Econsultancy in both public and in-house training sessions, and I also deliver training directly to PRWD clients.
Brands I have trained in 2011 and 2012
I’ve had the pleasure of training people working at brands including Argos, Mothercare, Homebase, Aviva, Vans, The North Face, Waitrose, River Island, Visit Britain, o2, Dyson, Mencap, Sage, Brother, Schuh and many more over the years, and I thought it would be worthwhile providing an overview of the e-commerce persuasion training that I deliver.
Usability & Persuasion in E-commerce Training Overview
This engaging, audience participation course provides attendees with a comprehensive understanding and appreciation of a wide variety of usability and persuasion techniques. The course presents a detailed look at how blue-chip and multi-channel retailers are using a wide range of persuasive design techniques to improve conversion, encourage visitors to spend more and deliver a more engaging and memorable online experience.
Included are a wealth of links to expert articles, case studies and tools to help retailers understand their visitors, prioritise improvement opportunities and begin implementing and testing site changes to increase key performance indicators.
Why do users abandon the shopping process?
During the early part of this training course I ask attendees “what reasons do you feel that cause users to abandon their online shopping process?”
Below is a curated list of some most common reasons that delegates provide across a number of courses I’ve delivered in 2011 and 2012:
- Slow site speed
- Poor navigation
- Ugly site design
- Poor search facility
- Lack of a clear call to action
- Lack of trust with the brand
- Clumsy form validation
- Lack of visibility of error message
- Too busy, lack of white space
- Poor product photography
- Lack of stock availability
- Not optimised for different platforms
- Lack of clear charges i.e. delivery and returns
- Lack of contact information
- Not providing a guest checkout option
- Lengthy registration forms
- Strict security proceedures in checkout
- Distrust in the site, lack of security assurances
What are the benefits for retailers when improving usability and persuasion?
Having established a solid understanding and awareness of the most common reasons why users abandon the shopping journey, my next question to attendees is “What are the benefits for retailers if they choose to improve the usability and persuasiveness of their experience?”.
Below is again a list of the most common responses provided by delegates in 2011 and 2012:
- Increase sales
- Improve repeat purchases
- Improve average order value
- Improving referrals
- Improve business reputation
- Reduce customer service calls
- Reduce returns
- Reducing costs by doing more online
- Improving conversion rates
- Improve ROI on marketing spend – this interestingly is typically missed by quite a few groups
Training course outline
Below is a summary of what delegates learn about through the course of the intensive training day.
Introduction – challenges
- What are your key challenges?
- Industry insights and statistics
- Key principles which encourage visitors to buy
- The benefits & ROI of improving usability & persuasion in e-commerce
Search, Navigation & Browsing
- How can online shopping replicate and improve the offline experience
- How can the search experience deliver an intuitive, engaging experience
- How to present persuasive triggers through the browsing journey
Product Page
- How to keep visitors in browsing and buying mode
- What are the most influential and persuasive elements to include on your product page
- How to focus visitors attention on what is most important for them and you
- How to encourage visitors to buy more than they intended to
Persuasion
- Overview of designing for persuasion, emotion and trust
- Understanding the most influential persuasive techniques through the online journey
- Learn ways to emotionalise your proposition and empathise with visitors
- Understand the importance of trust and ways to build and maintain it through the online journey
Shopping Bag
- What is the objective of the shopping bag?
- How to remove friction and encourage checkout
- Introduce persuasive techniques to nudge visitors towards checkout
- Advanced techniques which provide a more intuitive experience
Checkout
- Understand the most common and damaging causes of checkout abandonment
- Why to enclose checkout and how best to deliver this
- How to encourage more 1st time customers to become loyal account customers
- Why checkout form usability is crucial to the success of your site
- Why testing & optimisation are the next big thing
What do delegates say about the training course?
Kathryn Charles-Wilson, Web Content Executive at Anchor Trust
I attended Paul’s Econsultancy training course last week and found it not only thoroughly interesting but packed full of real-life practical tips that the whole group could instantly benefit from. Paul’s presentation style is engaging and inclusive, he covered a wealth of topics in depth and encouraged discussion at every stage of the day to ensure we could relate the learning’s back to our own websites and user journeys. Paul clearly has extensive knowledge of all aspects of user-centered design and is really passionate about user experience. I would highly recommend his course.
Amy Weaverm Business Analyst at Javelin Group
Paul is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic e-commerce professional who clearly enjoys sharing his experience via his incredibly useful training courses. Paul has a great way of sharing lots of information in an easy to absorb way and is very inclusive and down to earth, encouraging lots of interaction. I think anyone who attends one of his courses will come away feeling they’ve had a very worthwhile day and with lots of ideas to develop.
Paul is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic e-commerce professional who clearly enjoys sharing his experience via his incredibly useful training courses. Paul has a great way of sharing lots of information in an easy to absorb way and is very inclusive and down to earth, encouraging lots of interaction. I think anyone who attends one of his courses will come away feeling they’ve had a very worthwhile day and with lots of ideas to develop.
Nadim Othman, Director Of European Creative Services at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Really appreciated today’s course on e-Commerce run by Paul. Conducted with a great felexibility and fluidity the course was well structured and provided a format that in addition to giving great insight into best practice and principles also acted as a very insightful and completely relevant forum for sharing of experiences. I would thoroughly recommend this course and commend Paul on bringing the learnings to life in such a friendly and well thought out way. Thanks Paul.
Kari Peters, Founder and Director at Factor-e
Paul has the useful ability to personalize his training sessions into practical workshops. Instead of walking out with a notebook full of impractical theory, you walk out equipped with a list of practical plans to apply to your own website. I would attend Paul’s training sessions again, as well as send my staff to keep up-to-date.
Marie Page, Co-Founder & Director at Musicademy
I attended one of Paul’s training days at Econsultancy. Having run an e-commerce company for several years I had already implemented a lot of good practice to our store. However, following the training I made a series of changes to the store, in particular presenting products in “tab” settings and improving the checkout process. Paul was really helpful in recommending changes on a tailored basis to the store and followed up with me after the training – really impressive. The site looks a lot better as a result. Basket abandonment is reduced, and sales are up. There is always more you can do to improve your website, and it was great to access Paul’s tried and tested principles.
Sider Genoveva, PR& Events Manager at Mediafax Group
We were honored to have Paul Rouke as trainer for a Usability workshop we have organized at SEM Days 2012. He is an outstanding professional, with a very good knowledge of e-commerce usability, persuasion and conversion. Paul insights are valuable and his message is essential to those who want make money from online business. The feedback was extremely positive and many participants congratulate us on bringing such a professional for this workshop. Paul is one of the most approachable and collaborative professionals I have ever met. He really took the time to make sure people got what they needed for a positive learning experience”
Further training details
If you are interested in learning what brands like Argos, Mothercare, Homebase, Waitrose, River Island, Visit Britain, o2, Dyson and Mencap have over the last few years, below is how you can come along to one of the training courses:
Option 1 – In-house training for 8-12 people
Call me in the office on 0161 228 0585 or email me at paulrouke at prwd.co.uk.
Option 2 – Public training with Econsultancy
Visit the e-commerce persuasion training page on Econsultancy to see upcoming dates and register with them.
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