Get Elastic reader and ecommerce blogger Scott Wilson (aka That Software Guy, The Cart Blog and @thatsoftwareguy) informed me today of a new merchandising tactic on Amazon. It appears Amazon has replaced its “Better Together” cross-sells with bundling. Of course, this could be a split test, but Scott and I both can see this technique in action when we visit Amazon.

Before - Better Together

Screenshot credit: Register Hardware

After - Frequently Bought Together

The customer now has the option to add all 3 to the cart, or pick of the 3. Giving the customer some choice but not too much choice is key here. I imagine the uptake would be far lower if the customer was presented 5 or more choices, simply because it requires too much thinking and could cause a “paradox of choice.”

Word choice: Frequently Bought Together vs. Better Together

Though Better Together sounds more smooth, it could be that there is a higher degree of social trust with “Frequently Bought Together” — it’s more clear on why the cross-sell is presented (rather than head scratchers like marmite and .Mac software. Of course, this could be a short-term test.

I also spotted some product pages pitching “Best Value” cross-sells rather than “Better Together” which may be more appropriate in this economy:

Personally I think this is a great idea, and it’s another reason I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the Amazon web analytics war room.

Why cross-sell when you can bundle?

Product bundles are a great way to increase average order size, deliver a value proposition and even creatively sweeten the deal when MAP (minimum advertised price) regulations apply to a product (offering free or discounted bundled items).

Walmart is promoting value bundles this year on everything from computers to toys. Here’s a recent email:

And here’s a close-up of one of the bundles’ product pages:

“Get more, save more and spend less when you buy these items together.” Brilliant. Customers can even choose their options right on the product page and the total updates itself at the bottom.

Gift card sales are desirable for both retailer and consumer for several reasons. As we mentioned last year, gift cards topped consumer wish lists with 53.8% of adults over 18 indicating they’d like to receive one (BIGResearch and the National Retail Foundation), and the average shopper purchasing 5 gift cards for others.

Gift cards are usually free to ship, and often recipients end up spending more or less than the full value of the card.

For online retailers in particular, electronic gift vouchers were a perfect solution for last-minute shopping - especially for out of town recipients!

But recent research by Archstone Consulting predicts the gift card market will shrink by 5% compared to last year.

I found this little chart interesting…it predicts the amount the average person will spend on gift cards this year (Holiday 2008) based on gender and age:

Chart credit: MediaPost. Research credit: Archstone Consulting.

Perhaps this data can be explained this way (please forgive my generalizations, this part of the post is meant to be a bit light-hearted):

• Males under 35 are more likely to be single. As guys, they don’t want to spend hours trolling the mall. It’s convenient to buy gift cards - you can even get them in your grocery store checkout stand along with a TV Guide, AA batteries and a pack of Chiclets.

• Women 35-65 are more likely to be married with children and responsible for gifts for their own family, in-laws, Hubby’s extended family, nieces, nephews, teachers, neighbors and co-workers than their younger female counterparts. Meanwhile, men in the 35-65 age group have relinquished the bulk of their shopping duties to Wifey.

• Once you’re out of the workforce, you actually have time to shop therefore the propensity to spend more on gift cards goes down compared to other age brackets.

Of course, my analysis is just for fun - but this is real research, and here are some other interesting findings from the survey:

Gift Card Predictions 2008

• Overall, consumers will spend about 5% less on gift cards in Holiday 2008 compared to last year
• Consumers will shift spending towards more practical gift cards - gas, groceries and restaurants
• Restaurant cards are expected to outsell other categories
• Most desired by gift recipients will continue to be pre-paid bank cards like Visa, American Express and Master Card, as they were in ‘07
• 24% of consumers plan to increase spending on gift cards over last year, teenage and post-college shoppers are most likely to spend more
• 13-24 year olds will proportionately spend more on gift cards (least discretionary income) and will receive about 40% of all gift cards
• Approximately 50% would consider purchasing a gift card from a retailer if it comes with an additional coupon/discount for them
• Gift card sales through grocery, drug stores, banks and other “outside locations” is expected to grow 30% over last year

Despite the prediction of restaurants, gas and bank cards taking the lion’s share of the gift card spend, we can expect gift cards to again be customer and retailer favorites in retail shops. If you offer gift cards (physical or electronic) through your ecommerce store, make sure you promote them on your home page, your email campaigns and as “no brainer” add-ons on your shopping cart pages. It’s also becoming common practice to include a “Gift Cards” link in your main navigation:

You may also want to play around with “give some, get some” promotions - spend $X on a gift card and receive $X for yourself.

This is a guest post by Ayat Shukairy of Invesp Consulting.

Cross-sells and up-sells are popular because they can increase average order size for a single customer. But can they be distracting and hurt conversion? Many online retailers avoid placing cross-sells or up-sells at sensitive buying stages such as the start of the checkout process. …

But let’s go back a bit: Tracking your visitors’ every move on your ecommerce site to understand what they liked, disliked, browsed to, selected, etc. (behavior tracking, personalization) can be considered to be either:

1. Really cool because visitors may feel they have their own personal shopper that will continue to recommend other items they may enjoy
2. Intrusive because every movement the visitor makes on the site is tracked and recorded
3. Annoying because the selling just won’t stop

Retail Examples of Cross-Sells and Up-Sells

Cross-sells and up-sells are used on the majority of ecommerce websites, and are rather successful. In the most primitive cases, an ecommerce store will manually set up cross-sells and up-sells via product catalog administration. In the more complex scenarios, ecommerce companies rely on recommendation software that monitors a customer’s activity on the site from what they are browsing, to what items they select to place inside their cart. Based on that activity the recommendation software suggests cross-sells and up-sells to the site visitor.

Below is a cross-sell on a product page of Lancome.com:

In this case, I was looking at the product page for eyeliner product. Lancome successfully recommended complimentary items.

When I added the eyeliner to my cart, again Lancome successfully displayed cross-sells recommendations under a title “Complete this Product with.”

Amazon.com bases cross-sells and up-sells on information they gather from the activity of other customers who purchased or viewed the same items being viewed or selected:

On the product page of a denim skirt I wanted to purchase, Amazon.com displayed the following recommendations:

After I placed the items in the cart: two types of recommendation displays appear:

1. Recommendations for items across our store…
2. Customers who bought items in your shopping cart also bought…

So when I place a denim skirt in my cart, I am presented with:

• 2 other non-denim skirts
• A whitepaper (which is really random)

Sometimes the recommendations are repeated, but the above screen shots display the standard Amazon response to cross-sells and up-sells.

Where is it most effective place to display cross-sells and up-sells?

Clearly, with every ecommerce company, there are variations to when and where to suggest recommendations for the user.

Common practices of placing cross-sells and up-sells:

• Product page
• Shopping cart view
• Initial stages of the checkout process
• After an order is placed

Many ecommerce companies in general feel that displaying product recommendations during the checkout process can increase cart abandonment rates and lower conversion significantly.

A deeper look at Shopping Cart Cross-Sells:

Studies show that visitors who enter their shopping cart and decide to continue shopping may not return 75% of the time. Offering customers cross-sells could potentially encourage customers to navigate away from the shopping cart to view the items, possibly to never return.

However, a study conducted by MyBuys.com based on the experience of 1,345 ecommerce shoppers indicates that the majority of consumers expect online merchants to make additional recommendations. Additionally, 77% of consumers have made additional purchases when encountered with personalized recommendations.

Let’s examine two e-tailers different approaches to shopping cart cross-sells:

When I was ready to complete my order at Victoria’s Secret, I was directed to my shopping bag, the first step in the checkout process. Victoria’s Secret offers an exclusive sale item pop-up right within my shopping cart. The Cotton Rib Henley Sale item was an attempt at a cross-sell:

I click on the “Buy Now” button on the pop-up, and I am re-directed to the Cotton Rib Henley Shirt Page:

I was navigated away from the shopping cart, and I simply can’t add the Cotton Rib Henley Sweater! I have to scroll down through the other cross-sells in order to add to cart and get back to the shopping cart (and be bombarded once more with additional pop-up cross-sells).

Lancome.com does it a bit differently. My shopping bag opens up alongside the product page and indicates that I can “Complete this Product with” a variety of different items. If my cursor scrolls on top of the recommended cross-sell products, a pink icon “Quick Shop” appears.

After clicking on the icon, I haven’t navigated away from the cart nor the product page, but another pop-up with the newly selected product appears.

Each approach is completely different; Victoria’s Secret directed me to their product page ultimately navigating me away from the checkout process. Lancome’s approach, although untraditional, kept me on the first page of the checkout process in the background and I actually completed the order.

What product selection should you recommend within the shopping cart?

a. Complimentary items: Ecommerce companies and recommendation specialists find that listing complimentary items is the most effective way to avoid raising cart abandonment rates and raise average order size. I was interested to see what type of cross-sell recommendations I would receive at an electronics ecommerce site such as BestBuy.com. Not surprisingly, a cross-sell to purchase their service plan pops up:

Best Buy could benefit from including an add to cart option immediately within this pop-up rather than forcing the user to click on the service plan details, get to another pop up page and add the item. I realize Best Buy’s struggle — there are details related to the service plan that must be addressed by the buyer before the actual purchase. When I clicked on the service plan cross-sell, I am presented with another pop-up that describes the service plan and asks me to select my state before I can add it to my cart:

They do not force the user to navigate away from the cart, which is a plus.

After seeing what ecommerce electronic stores do, I moved onto a very different category: pets. Petsmart.com offers complimentary items on the right side of the shopping cart.

By giving consumers complimentary recommendations you are helping them avoid going back out to the online store and locate these items. However, I am forced to navigate away from my cart being directed to the product page to view the selected item.

b. Mismatching items: Offering items that are unrelated to the shopping cart contents can be more challenging. After arriving on the Stacksandstacks website, I added “mini basting brushes” to my cart:

Stacks and Stacks offers unrelated cross-sells within my cart, such as a closet shoe rack, wall tie organizer, etc. The issue from the perspective of the buyer is that when a buyer visits a site with something in particular in mind (a list of what he/she wants to buy), cross-selling with unrelated items may not be an effective approach. MyBuys.com research found only 2% of visitors felt that product recommendations related to them.

If you decide to offer unrelated cross sells within the cart keep a few things in mind:

• Offering sale items is more lucrative and encouraging for the buyer to consider
• Offer items with “Free Shipping” option can also be an incentive to purchase
• In our tests, we noticed that instead of labeling the recommendations as “You May Also Like”, you can do a lot better by using the phrase “Customers who purchased your item also enjoyed.” The second phrase draws more attention the site visitor because you are combining common interests which appeals to the humanistic visitor. Of course there are no set rules, so test both labels and see what works better for your site.

I visited Headsets.com where I added the Plantronics noise-canceling wireless headset to my cart:

Headsets.com recommends a list of items that are mix between mismatches and items that are complementary. They also have the recommendations labeled as: “Customers Who Bought the Above Item Also Bought” which again is a helpful way of creating feelings of commonality and association.

c. Recently Viewed: Amazon sums it up best by offering on the right side of my shopping cart a clear display of all the items I browsed through during my shopping experience. Any reluctance that I may have had in selecting one of the recently viewed items might be rehashed, encouraging me to go back and explore the item once more. Amazon.com has always pushed the fold in ecommerce implementations and design:

Notice that the items are just listed without the images except the “featured item” at the bottom of the list.

d. Matching Items or hybrid: If I’ve recently viewed golf gloves and made a selection, offering me more golf gloves may not be effective since I just placed a pair in my cart.

Golfsmith.com offers a hybrid of choices. I had selected a pair of gloves, and the cross-sells included a different pair of gloves. There are also complementary items that may appeal to a golfer in general: golf balls and a pack of tees. Usually, adding an item such as golf-gloves is because of a need that I have for them, so offering me more gloves may not be useful.

One of the biggest fears of displaying items in the shopping cart is losing the customer to a growing statistic of cart abandonment. However, if you are able to increase average order size by understand what appeals to your site visitor through optimization and testing, cross-selling is a great way to accomplish that.

Your Turn

Now it’s your turn to share: How do you make recommendations for products on your website? Is it done via software or is it a manual process? Have you had a negative or positive experience by listing cross sell items in the shopping cart?

About the Guest Blogger: Ayat Shukairy is a Managing Partner at Invesp Consulting, an ecommerce conversion optimization company. She also blogs regularly about landing page optimization, ecommerce, conversion optimization, and web usability for the Invesp Blog.

Spoon Sisters sells quirky gifts like fish-eye cameras and dinner napkins with tie motif - so you can look classy at any potluck.

The retailer also has an interesting approach to merchandising it’s kitchy skus that would make Copyblogger proud - rotating teasers like “To find out who’s on first, click here.”

I think this works well for this kind of retailer. Not to mention I found this site through StumbleUpon, which often sends more traffic than any other referral source, especially for smaller websites. StumbleUpon users like serendipity, and watching the scrolling teasers are a useful way to point new traffic deeper into the site and perhaps reduce bounce rate.

SeenON! is an interactive entertainment-slash-ecommerce site that helps TV buffs buy what they see on their favorite television shows. One feature of the site is called “Shopisodes”, which are short clips from TV programs that link to online retailers that carry the items in the episode. (Click below to play - note, some RSS readers are not displaying the video, you’ll need to click through to the actual post)

Bluefly’s Flypaper blog uses a similar approach in its video podcast. At any point in the vignette, you can click the “Click to Buy” button and it will show a list of items appearing in the video. Click on any thumbnail and you see the product’s description, price and a Buy Now button. Or you can go back to watch the rest of the video. (Don’t click, these are just screenshots)

This is awesome.

Does anyone know of solutions providers for this type of technology? If you do, please let us know in the comments.

If you’re interested in staying in the loop on emerging video trends and retail, there’s the newly launched Video Retailer blog and listserv called Video Commerce Consortium on the topic.

A conversation emerged out of the comments on last week’s post Can Product Images Improve Conversion? Showing Products in Context about how to achieve a “ghost” mannequin effect like these examples, where the body is filled out, you can see through the V-line but the mannequin is invisible.

As the post explained, showing products “in context” can be more persuasive than flat images - models and mannequins give customers an idea of how a garment fits a real person. I recently researched how to achieve the invisible mannequin look and found answers like:

Make a mannequin out of a very open wire mesh, and then edit the mesh out in post. You could even paint the mesh with green or something like that and chroma-key it out.

Make a mannequin out of a thin, cheap material (perhaps even wire mesh again) and put the garment on it, and position the camera. Then, start cutting away the mannequin in all the places where it’s visible to the camera, even with the shirt over it. You’d end up cutting off it’s left arm, part of it’s left ’shoulder blade’ and some stuff around the neck.

-djlemma, from Flickr discussion

and

Looking at a few of the examples I reckon the mannequin is being chopped out. Looking at some of the tops you can see no back to the item even if there is a lower front if you see what I mean.

An ideal solution could be to get a mannequin and a background with a strong colour. Take the photo then in Photoshop make a clear layer below the image layer so you have a transparent background. On the photo layer click the Select main menu item and choose “Color range” and click the mannequin colour on the photo. It should select just this colour, use the sensitivity slider to get the best selection and the just cut it out. Do the same with the background. It is not the quickest but compared to hand tracing each item and mannequin area it would potentially save a lot of time.

-MickeyFinn, from Freelance UK Forums

I noticed a couple photographers left comments on our post, so I tossed out the question, what’s the best way to achieve the ghost mannequin look? Anna Yeaman, professional photographer who specializes in product photography for apparel and accessories shared the following:

Two years ago I tried plastic and wireframe mannequins to achieve the “ghost” effect but I was not happy with the results. Also this limits the types of mannequin you can use.

I sometimes combine two images in Photoshop if its just a small part of the label I’m after.

I never found a simple way to do this in-camera, I decided that there must be custom made mannequins out there but could never find them. I considered taking a saw to one of my own and cutting out the chest area!

I’m going to renew my efforts and contact some websites using this effect. I will let you know how it goes. Most of my clients are after the Bluefly.com look and don’t mind the mannequin.

One thing I do a lot is take a photo on a mannequin, in Photoshop I edit out parts of the mannequin that are showing (around the hem, arms ect). You end up with an item with shape and form without a mannequin showing, but you cannot see through to the back…We take multiple angle shots and close ups of every item instead.

I have a hook that I hang bags off, then I edit it out later in Photoshop. For earrings I use clear fishing wire (craft shop), the earrings hang perfectly and the wire is invisible. I also use a clear plastic board for studs (I drilled a small hole) and clip ons (clip onto the bottom).

In a follow-up comment:

I contacted a bunch of product photographers to find out how they achieved the “ghost” effect.

John Gibbens of, G2 Catalog Design sent me this reply,

“We either shoot two images and piece together or we use an inexpensive plastic mannequin supported from below (for shirt/jacket images) whose neck is cut down below the open neckline. We then keep a couple different lengths of removable arms to fill sleeves - long arms with hands cut off for long-sleeve items and shorter arms for short sleeve garments.”

So we can conclude that the invisible mannequin look, though very slick, takes a bit of pre and post production effort. Another alternative would be to shoot a flat image and mannequin shot, so customers can still see the product on a form and see through the V-line. Works for Net-A-Porter…

Shari’s Berries has some really cool Father’s day products, like chocolate tools, tuxedo berries and Boris the Fishing Bear:

There are 3 links in the main navigation that point to Father’s Day gift ideas.

I’m wondering why none of them are featured on the home page?

Ditto for graduation gifts. I Googled “chocolate covered strawberries” and found that 9 out of 10 sites weren’t taking advantage of holiday marketing either.

When a customer lands on a 404 Not Found page, he or she is caught off guard - confused at best and downright frustrated and ready to shop somewhere else at worst. A 404 page is a customer service touchpoint. It’s an opportunity to be helpful, show a business’ personality and even merchandise. Do you treat your 404 page like a landing page?

When checking out how top online retailers do 404 pages, I found many simply redirect users to the home page, which is a perfectly fine way of handling things. For those of you who do use 404 Not Found pages, here are some examples from fellow retailers — the good, the bad and the funny.

404 Page Examples and Tips

1. Have a page

If you don’t automatically redirect, there’s nothing worse than landing people on a generic screen like this:

When you remove all navigation it’s like teleporting a customer out of your store and dropping them into the parking lot blindfolded. This happened on many top retailer sites I tested. What a shame.

2. Don’t blame the user first

I saw lots of cold messages like this that seem to blame the user for typing in the wrong URL. But 404 messages rarely come from type-in errors, they’re usually broken links from external sites or the site itself because the root URL must match the actual URL. Customers rarely type in deep link URLs manually.

Gap’s approach is to assume its own fault first, a humbler approach:

But WetSeal goes a bit too far with “we’re working on this page.” Don’t imply your site is unfinished, it’s not professional. And don’t expect customers to try again later - like when, 3 months from now?

eToys also leads with “you probably screwed up” (paraphrase), and adds if it was a broken link it was “probably from another site ‘cuz we never mess up” (again, paraphrase).

3. Keep it short and sweet

Boden is known for being a personable company, but its 404 page reads like a novel.

4. Add a search box

Golfsmith uses a search box as a call to action to encourage customers to keep shopping on the site and find what they were originally looking for.

But instructions on how to search like “enter a few words into the box” is unnecessary.

5. Remove calls-to-action that don’t make sense

Zappos is king of customer service, but a customer probably doesn’t want to submit a video testimonial for finding a broken link.

I’m surprised Zappos, as helpful as they are, doesn’t chime in with a live help prompt.

6. Think like a customer

If you mention customer service, make sure you link to the customer service page. Don’t make customers have to search it out themselves.

List your hours of customer service (telephone) or an estimated email response time so customers can judge whether it’s worth it to contact you or not.

7. Merchandise

Bravo to Busted Tees for showing product on the 404 page, and linking to the catalog. If a link was from an external site (in other words, the customer may not be familiar with the product offering) this can be a compelling reason to stick around and check out the merch.

8. Be funny

I knew Urban Outfitters would do something edgy, but don’t do this unless it’s consistent with your brand’s culture and target market’s expectations of you.

9. Provide multiple links back into the site

Northern Tool combines humor and usability, offering the most logical actions as links - go back one step, start from scratch, browse categories or talk to someone.

10. Use product finders

I Want One of Those combines humor with search and a useful product finder.

11. Don’t yell or try to sound smart

This is funny, but not because Burberry has a sense of humor - rather it’s yelling big fancy words!

Going the Extra Mile

If something’s broken on your site, why not reward your customers for giving you a heads up? We’re busy people, and may not bother to contact customer service to let you know but an incentive could help you fix a problem that may be costing you far more than $5 in lost revenue. Plus, you could turn a comparison shopper into a buyer - now that person will hunt for something to buy to use the discount or at least visit you at a later date. If you sell higher ticket items, consider sending a higher value gift card to make it worth it.

And do thank people when they take the time to alert you of broken links. I do this often and haven’t been thanked, not that I expect thanks, but an acknowledgment that a link has been fixed, at the very least, would let me know my voice was heard.

Most Creative 404 Pages

This is one of the coolest “Results Not Found” page I’ve ever seen. You really have to see it to believe it - it has an interactive, microsite feel.

http://www.bluedaniel.com/404.shtml

Smashing Magazine has also collected some entertaining 404 pages worth checking out.

Our VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley has a key eye for new ecommerce trends and will be presenting a full hour’s worth of innovations in a webinar 9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next. It’s happening June 19th so mark your calendars.

Jason tipped me off about a new website launched in April for Martin + Osa, a spin-off of American Eagle Outfitters, that has built a full-motion video merchandising area called “Shop by Outfit.”

M+O stylists have put outfits together that customers can buy all at once, and the outfits are shown on real models that move around as you view the page. You can zoom in by rolling over an image, and the model does a 360 degree spin so you get a feel for what the outfit looks like (well, on the perfect model anyway).

If you click to refine your outfit results to just “Moonlight,” “Seashore” or “Sunshine,” (which I don’t see serving much purpose), the girls whose outfits don’t fit your criteria gingerly walk out of the scene.

Shopping by outfit can save a shopper time as traditionally, one would need to navigate to different categories and add items individually. And by choosing from pre-selected sets, the fashionably clueless get some ideas of how to dress.

Shoppers can also build their own outfits using “Layer Your Own Look,” which turns traditional site navigation on its head - essentially you can shop multiple categories without leaving a page, and see how items “work” together. Looks can be saved for a future visit or added to the shopping bag for checkout.

More and more fashion retailers are adding some form of “shop by look” merchandising. Other stores include Rampage, Lacoste and Arden B (a quick search for “shop by look” in Google gives you more examples). When you click on a look, you see all the items listed individually on the same page, so you can check off the items you want. The problem with this is you navigate away from the look unless you’re savvy enough to open a new tab or window to hold your place. Martin + Osa smartly uses AJAX to show detail without navigating away from the page:

Product details can be viewed by switching tabs. The tabs may be too subtle here to notice, but it does help pack more information in a smaller space.

M+O also provides detailed product images that show extreme close-up views of fabrics, pockets and other item details.

For most online merchants, this type of rich media investment simply is too expensive to implement. But as more and more large retailers add video and Flash applications to their e-stores, customers are going to become more spoiled and will expect to see 360 degree product views, products in context (clothing on people) and very detailed product images. This is reasonably easy to implement for any retailer using static images. Though this is also not cheap, it’s far less expensive than what M+O has done.

It’s also important for any retailer who does use a “shop by look” approach to allow customers to see cross-sell detail information without clicking away from the look page.

A side note: as I mentioned in my interview with Rich Page, American Eagle has one of my favorite navigation menus in terms of design, placement and usability. I’m happy to see Martin + Osa doing the same.