They want products arriving at their front door within two business days (or less), and they don’t want to have to pay for shipping costs. 

Research has repeatedly shown that free shipping is one of the top purchase drivers for millennial-aged consumers, closely followed by free returns and same-day shipping. 

If your online business isn’t already offering free-shipping to its customers, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity to reduce cart abandonment and improve conversion rates on your ecommerce site. 

In this Insight we’re focusing on how free shipping can impact your customers’ purchase decisions, and how you can get the most value out of offering free shipping to your audience. 

Why Offer Free Shipping?

As a customer, it’s fairly obvious that the benefit to free shipping is it saves you money – at least it makes you believe you’re saving money – on your order. However, as a business owner you might find it difficult to understand the upfront benefits of offering free shipping.

For retailers, it’s important to consider both the short-term and long-term benefits. In the short-term, offering free shipping will likely lead to an increase in orders and a higher average order value (AOV), especially if you set a minimum order threshold that your customers need to reach before they “unlock” free shipping. 

60 percent of ecommerce businesses report that “free shipping with conditions” is their most successful marketing tool. If adding one more items to the shopping cart results in getting free two-day shipping, most consumers will do it. 

In the long-term, offering free shipping will benefit your business by increasing customer lifetime value, and helping you build a group of loyal repeat purchasers. Additionally, it can be a great way to maintain your competitive edge in the marketplace, especially if you’re operating in an industry that sells commonly available products, or even commodity products that compete heavily on price.

Here’s the thing: before you start running a free shipping promotion on your site right away, it’s crucial that you understand how to offer it in a way that delivers the most value to both you and your customers. 

How to Offer Free Shipping the Right Way

Based on our observations, the most effective free-shipping messaging incorporates a hint of marketing psychology to set the tone for shopping behavior. We’ve identified five key behavioral principles that you can utilize to directly influence purchasing decisions on your site. 

1. Reciprocity

Reciprocity is the social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action. If someone does something for you, then naturally you will feel persuaded to do something for them in return. Using the influence of reciprocity to persuade customers to complete a purchase on your site is a particularly effective method for positioning your free shipping offer. 

Brand Example: In this example, Clevr Blends utilizes reciprocity to encourage customers to complete a purchase by promising to share 10 percent of their proceeds to aid in COVID-19 relief (see screenshot below).

This messaging is impactful because it plants a deep seed of brand resonance in the customer’s mind. Users are taking away a memorable impression. This is a unique purchase that extends beyond the value of the product, but towards a substantial impact in the world. They recommend 2+ bags of coffee to enable free shipping – implementing this minimum order threshold helps to raise their AOV, while also cushioning the revenue impact. 

2. Ingroup Bias

Ingroup bias is the tendency to favor a particular group above others. Businesses will often utilize ingroup bias to connect with their target audience on an issue or topic that pertains to their particular needs. 

Brand Example: In this example, Trade Coffee uses ingroup bias as a purchase motivator by specifically giving back to the independent roasters that sell coffee on their site. The messaging is niche, but attracts all coffee enthusiasts to support their “ingroup” community. 

Trade is taking advantage of the fact that their audience values independent coffee roasters and using specific related messaging to motivate transactions (with every transaction, Trade donates $2 to local roasters nationwide).

3. Framing Effect

The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people make decisions based on whether their options are presented with positive or negative outcomes. The framing effect is a simple but effective way to encourage consumers to take action on your ecommerce site. 

Brand Example 1: In this example, Revive Superfoods structures their messaging to play up the notion of convenience to heighten the likelihood of purchases. The benefit is positioned first, “Skip groceries!”. That benefit is towards the safety and security of the user, a compelling and thoughtful gain in today’s social climate. Additionally, they offer a 60 percent discount on first-time orders, as well as free shipping to further increase purchase motivation. 

Brand Example 2: Goldmine uses simple messaging to convey encouragement and increase purchasing motivation. The simple messaging has an underlying tone of encouragement that resonates with their audience. This exemplifies customer value so users feel more inclined to complete a purchase. Additional messaging on the homepage reinforces this notion of encouragement. 

4. Exclusivity Effect

The exclusivity effect relates to the idea that individuals want what they cannot obtain; if not everyone can have it, then naturally we want it. Businesses will often use the exclusivity effect to increase purchase motivation and attribute added value to their products/services.

Brand Example: In this example, Death Wish Coffee demonstrates a spin on the exclusivity effect to motivate users that have an account to purchase. The benefit is easy to retrieve, all you need to do is sign-up for an account through their site and you’ll “unlock” free shipping. 

5. Noble Edge Effect

The noble edge effect is when a business demonstrates social responsibility to incentivize purchases; typically seen as being genuine and transparent. The theory behind this principle is that consumers will place a higher value on your products if you demonstrate an obligation to ethical business practices. 

Customers with particularly strong moral aspirations and those with little product knowledge or expertise are shown to be particularly affected by this. 

Brand Example: In this example, YourSuper–an organic superfood company–shows how they value supporting their community by donating 100,000 units of product to health care workers to keep them healthy. Additional savings were also implemented as a part of this campaign to encourage customers to complete a purchase.

Consumers feel good about supporting companies that are committed to a positive ethical agenda, and this is an excellent way of building goodwill with your audience, especially if you have the financial means to do so without negatively impacting your business. 

It’s Time to Amplify Your Free Shipping Incentives

Using these five principles of marketing psychology, you should be able to craft a free shipping message that connects with your audience and motivates them to complete a purchase on your site. If you’re going to invest the resources and time into running a free shipping promotion, make sure you do it in a way that benefits both the customer and your business. 

Now is the best time to start testing different free shipping incentives on your site to determine what approach works the best. The five principles we covered in this article aren’t the only ones to consider or test. Do your research and start looking at how competitors in your marketplace are offering free shipping through their websites.

In the world of ecommerce where your target customers likely have an abundance of options to choose from, the perfectly crafted offer will be what sets you apart from the rest. 

The post How Free Shipping Incentives Can Influence Purchase Decisions appeared first on The Good.

For web designers, the bottom of the page may seem like the last place you’d consider running a test, but you’re missing out on a big opportunity for optimization if you decide to neglect it.

As strategists, we look at the footer as an important extension of the top navigation. The best footers will act as a safety net for your website visitors and help conversion rates by acting as a strong roadmap to the rest of your site. This is true on your desktop experience, but it’s even truer for mobile experiences.

The best footers will act as a safety net for your website visitors and help conversion rates by acting as a strong roadmap to the rest of your site.
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Why optimizing your website footer matters

In our experience, users go to the footer for three key reasons – jobs, trust signifiers, and last-ditch navigation when they are lost. For example, when we’ve watched session recordings from website visitors, we’ll often notice users scrolling to the bottom of your home page multiple times, only to realize that an item they were looking for (careers, for example) was located on the header and not the footer.

Missed opportunities like this and others can lead to users getting lost and then leaving the site. And if users are getting lost on your home page, it’s a glaring sign that it may be time to start testing new footer designs.

Now you may be thinking: Is it really worth my time and energy to run tests on my website footer? Shouldn’t we be focusing on what’s “above the fold”?

The truth is, a great website footer will help your visitors navigate your site and will lead to a greater ecommerce experience.

For example, an A/B test of a luxury handbag website performed by Smart Insights saw a sales conversion increase of 27 percent and a 16 percent improvement in revenue per visitor due to the simple redesign of the website footer. In addition, a study conducted by ChartBeat revealed that 66 percent of user engagement actually occurred “below the fold”.

Here’s the deal: Investing time in creating a “fat footer” may be one of the simplest and most effective methods for boosting conversions, and it won’t even take that much of your time to do.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How to decide if you should optimize your footer
• Eight characteristics of a good website footer (with examples)

Should I optimize my current website footer?

Utilizing tools like heatmaps and user session recordings is a great place to start identifying problem areas with your footer and determining what you’re going to test first. If you see little to no activity in your website’s footer, this typically means that either visitors just aren’t making it to the bottom of your website, or you’re not including anything of value in your footer.

A common mistake that companies make when designing the header and footer of their website it that they include identical information in both places on the site. This redundancy fails to provide any additional information or value for users.

The question is: How should you differentiate these two areas?

The main differentiator between the header and footer is that the header should be a condensed roadmap of the most valuable pages on your site. The footer acts more like a “safety net” where your site visitors end up if they’re experiencing difficulty navigating the site.

As shown in the example below, the header features the key points on the site that visitors may want to access when they first reach your landing page (product offering, about us, contact, etc). The footer is used to offer additional details about the company that you may want to exclude from the header, such as your terms of service or privacy policy.

Header

Footer

Another common mistake made when designing a footer is over-optimizing. While it may be tempting to pack as many keywords in your footer as possible, Google’s SEO ranking algorithm will pick up on this and it may have a negative effect on your site ranking.

So how much is too much?

A good practice when optimizing your footer for SEO is to only include keywords or phrases that will add value to your brand or encourage visitors to take action.

An example of this can be found on the Writers Theatre website, where they’ve clearly integrated two call-to-action buttons prompting visitors to either sign up for their newsletter or donate. This approach adds value to both the user and brand while avoiding keyword stuffing.

Next, it’s time to start looking at how to begin optimizing the space in your footer. We’ve compiled a list of eight key ingredients of an effective footer that your website will immediately benefit from.

Key Characteristics of Effective Website Footers

Here are eight key characteristics of good website footer design. This is the most important information to include in your footer:

1. Logo
2. Navigation
3. Contact details
4. Support
5. Copyright, terms of service, privacy policy
6. Company info (i.e. Careers)
7. Social media icons
8. Call-to-action

Optional feature: Security and certification logos

Let’s dig into each of these characteristics a little more.

1. Logo and brand imagery

As a general rule, just like your top navigation, you’ll want to use your brand imagery in your footer navigation. This is a great opportunity to associate your logo with the value of your brand once again at the end of the page.

2. Clear and effective site navigation

The footer can be a great place to provide visitors with details about your product offering. On the Recurly website, their footer links act as a robust extension of their main navigation; this helps visitors navigate the site and learn more about each service area that the company specializes in. This tactic supports the idea of the footer being a “safety net” for visitors who may not know exactly what they’re looking for on the site.

3. Highly visible contact information

Including contact details are important for building trust with your target audience and showing evidence that you’re a real business. To build trust, consider including details such as a phone number, physical address, or hours of operation.

4. Easily accessible support in the website footer

Visitors will often use your footer when they have questions before or after a purchase. Beyond your contact information, include links to other supporting resources like a help center or any other online support. If you have a large catalog of helpful content, including an on-site search engine box can help here.

Wayfair’s footer provides simple options for contacting their customer service department without making their customers jump to another page on the site. This approach is especially useful for ecommerce retailers that need a space to highlight their customer service options, such as order tracking, return policies, or a customer service line.

5. The often-overlooked copyright notice, privacy policy, and terms of service

Three easily missed elements of the footer that every website should have are a copyright notice and links to your privacy policy and terms of service. Not only are you legally required to have this information available on your site, but it adds credibility to your brand—and you should seize every opportunity you have to build trust with your customers.

Heap Analytics has a simple and effective approach to including this information in their footer. Providing this information is a clear and effective way to add credibility to your website, and it doesn’t take very much time to add.

6. Highlight important company info

Your footer is also a great place to highlight specific company info like an about us page, careers, events, press, reviews, a full inventory of your product offerings or categories, and any relevant business associations.

7. Clearly positioned website footer social media icons

While some companies may opt to clearly position links to their social media buttons in the header of their landing page, taking this approach may inadvertently increase your bounce rate by encouraging visitors to jump to your social accounts before checking out what your site has to offer.

Seventy-two percent of websites include social icons in their footer, so it’s becoming standard practice for ecommerce website design However the reason to include them isn’t because everyone else is doing it, it’s because they act as social proof that you are an established brand.

Daimler does a great job of this on their website by including social links at the top of their footer. This design ensures that visitors will need to scroll through your entire landing page before jumping to another page.

8. Call-to-action that adds value

Inserting a call-to-action at the bottom of your website is a great way to add value to your landing page without going into too much detail. A clear call-to-action that encourages visitors to take action (email signup form, request a demo, free trial, consultation, etc) is a great way to keep visitors engaged and will have a positive impact on lead generation. It’s also a clever way to drive business since you’re catching the folks who’ve made it all the way to the bottom of your page.

Greetabl employs this simple one-click call-to-action approach on their site to prompt visitors to try out their services.

9. Security and certification logos that establish trust (optional)

Another way to build credibility and trust with customers is to add any certifications or security logos that may be relevant to your business. An example of this can be found on the Sparx IT Solutions website, where they have DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance symbols clearly visible. This is especially relevant to companies that store highly sensitive client information, where additional security is required.

Be careful though. The thing with security logos is that it’s not about technical security, it’s about perceived security. If you include too many, it can sometimes inject doubt and reduce trust. Most visitors can’t tell the difference between security logos except for the big wigs like “BBB”. A good rule of thumb is only to include the logos that would inject trust in this particular stage of the customer journey.

Don’t Overlook the Website Footer

Here’s the bottom line: It’s time for you to invest time in optimizing your website’s footer. Not only will it provide for better customer experiences on your site, but it may generate leads, lift your organic search results ranking, and improve conversions.

It’s easy to put optimizing the footer at the bottom of your to-do list, but don’t overlook the impact that a well-designed footer can have on your overall customer experience. Surprisingly, this narrow space holds a lot of opportunity for improvement and can provide a lot of value for your site.

The post Why Optimizing Your Website Footer is More Important Than You Think appeared first on The Good.