E-commerce: Easy Solutions That Make a Major Impact on Your Web Site

Looking for some quick ideas to bolster your Web site or online holiday shopping initiatives? Jay Shaffer, vice president of marketing at home furnishings merchant DirectlyHome.com, offered several of them in a session at the recent Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco.

• Cheap market research is just a coffeehouse away. “Every six weeks or so, I’ll go into a Starbucks and find a soccer mom who hasn’t had an adult conversation in a year and offer her a coffee gift card for 15 minutes of her time,” Shaffer said. He then shows her three pages on the DirectlyHome Web site: the home page, a category page and a product detail page, each for 15 seconds. Afterwards, he asks what she remembers seeing. Does she see text or images? If he has a special offer on couches, does she notice something else instead? Did she see the free shipping offer?