A Recap of Magento's Imagine Conference, Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part series recapping last week's Magento Imagine Conference in Las Vegas. For part one, click here.

Responsive Design: Where, Why and How
Responsive design (RD) is all about designing and coding websites that are visually consistent across a wide range of devices such that all elements of the site adapt to the screen on which the site is being viewed. This means the site essentially looks the same on a smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC, providing a seamless brand experience. RD is fast becoming the standard for mobile, replacing the m.dot platform.

The customer-responsive page result that's served up via RD is excellent for first-time acquisition on mobile because the user doesn't have to download an app to view or navigate the site. RD also uses a single code base and is therefore SEO optimized across devices.

How do you develop a plan to execute RD? Follow these six steps:

1. Analyze traffic by device and click paths.
2. Consider your vertical and buyer behavior.
3. Are your visitors using mobile to search, browse, filter or purchase? You may be fine with a mobile site and a well-designed fixed-width site.
4. Consider all of your selling channels and how customers use devices within those channels (e.g., using an iPad in your store).
5. Multisite environments make RD more complicated.
6. RD is expensive to execute, so you need to consider all of your options. What's the cost of doing nothing?

Some of the newer sites that have implemented RD have seen huge increases in organic traffic and conversions.

The Search Continues: SEO/SEM Trends for 2013
The major takeaway here was that Google ranks authority higher than transactional capabilities, and social factors are a big component of this.

Paid Search
Mix up your ad copy in paid search to better sell your story and provide a point of differentiation in your campaigns, as opposed to just saying "Free Shipping, Lowest Prices, etc."

Another point of emphasis was that the type of device used may signal buyer intent. Merchants must analyze their data to determine a shopper's intent to gather information or purchase when they're on a particular device. If they're on a smartphone, are they browsing, looking for a store or attempting to purchase? The product mix itself will be the main factor in the type of behavior, but the design of merchant's site is also significant.

Once you determine intent, then begin tying keywords to this buyer behavior. Furthermore, with the proliferation of mobile devices, merchants must think about search optimization in the context of mobile

Remember that the keywords you use can also signal intent to prospects — e.g., "compare," "shop," "review," etc. Therefore, tailor your ad copy to the perceived intent.

Finally, take advantage of all of the paid search data available to you to drive SEO efforts. Look at your most successful campaigns in AdWords and expand on that copy in your own website.

"The Conversion Surgeon"
Chris Goward, WiderFunnel Marketing

In this very thought-provoking session, Goward advised merchants to throw away their ideas of "best practice" and use an analytical, sequential process, with controls, to test every assumption thoroughly and design accordingly. Those who follow this process experience a 25 percent conversion lift on average.

Here are some more takeaways from Goward's session:

• Rotating banners on your homepage can be a distraction. Rethink this practice.
• Don't overuse trust symbols (e.g., Authorize.net, BBB, privacy seals, SSL seals), as this can sometimes have a reverse effect on the customer mentality.
• Look at your target market-specific factors to understand what to test. Again, this goes back to the "intent" of your customer and where they are in the conversion funnel. Goward gave this model: landing page: persuasional interior page: informational conversion Pages: transactional pages.
• Goward has tested every element to a well-designed website, from moving columns to changing buttons to rotating banners to promotional language. His conclusion is that you have to test for your specific target market, not based on a general idea of "best practices."

Wednesday, April 10 Breakout Sessions
Act Now: 10 Tips for Boosting Revenues

This was a panel discussion in which I presented with Ed Hoffman of SLI Systems. Here are the takeaways from our discussion:

• Search relevance is crucial; the most important page on your website is the site search page.
• Users often rely on search as their main browsing strategy, with 43 percent of visitors using the search box (that number is higher on CarolinaRustica.com).
• Visitors who use site search convert at a higher rate than nonsearchers.
• Search is a fundamental component of the web user experience and is getting more important every year

We offered four tips for merchants to optimize the site search experience:

1. Search results reflect a uniform user experience. Consumers expect the same search experience they have on Google, Amazon.com, Facebook, etc. You need to present a consistent user experience on your site, the same type of experience visitors get on other leading sites, including instant search results, suggested results, embedded images, etc. Doing so helps increase visitors’ comfort level and trust factor with your website.
2. Remember that it's site search, not just product search. Depending on where the shopper is in the conversion funnel, you want to serve them search results that meet their particular intent. For example, Carolina Rustica serves product search results with a product tab, a video tab and a "community" tab, which focuses on its social media content that's relevant to the product. This allows visitors to choose what they want to explore, whether it's pricing information, product specifications, relevant videos of the product, or discussions concerning a manufacturer or specific product. Intent drives the search pattern.
3. Use every opportunity to present visitors with merchandising and marketing banners. Carolina Rustica uses banners to promote its unique selling proposition (USP) — quality, free shipping, product expertise — as well as to highlight specific manufacturers. These banners are triggered by keywords used in search. For example, a search for "AICO" (a manufacturer) triggers a banner promoting the best-selling collection by that manufacturer. Similarly, it uses the "no results" search result page to again extoll the brand's USP (via a banner). Carolina Rustica serves up results that best match the no results search query. On that same page, however, it also uses the opportunity to show its most popular searches as well as its best-selling items. Carolina Rustica has taken a dead-end search page and made it into a page full of opportunity to explore.
4. Use the connections in your data to create a rich search experience. Carolina Rustica uses a new Magento extension developed by SLI Systems to create a richer and more relevant search experience. Launched two weeks ago, Learning Search Connect allows for near-instantaneous changes in our product and category database to be reflected in search results. We also plan to use SLI data connectivity to bridge search results between CarolinaRustica.com (on Magento) and FurnitureCrate.com (our sister company, on Yahoo's platform).

Uri Foox from Pixafy, a web development company, had a similar presentation in which he identified "hidden" pages on websites that could be used for promotional messaging or other outreach efforts. These pages include the following:

• empty shopping cart page;
• forgot password page;
• my account page;
• order success page;
• log out page; and
• tracking code page.

Richard Sexton is the founder and president of Carolina Rustica, a cross-channel retailer of high-end furniture and lighting. Richard can be reached at richard@carolinarustica.com.