There has been a recent campaign in the UK for nigh on a year now for eCommerce merchants to offer 3D Secure along with their payment gateway settings. One of my clients insisted that 3D Secure should be running against his site as he wanted to capture as many payment possibilities as possible (Maestro being the main target.) I obliged and then we watched, amazed as his payment conversions crashed at such a rapid rate.

What happened? Difficult to put your finger on the exact reason, but a large majority of blame lies at the way the 3D Secure payment pages work.

The above image represents the timeline of when the 3D Secure payment feature was switched on and when it was turned off. On average, day-to-day sales fell by around 60%. The traffic flow was constant during this period, and the flow charts show that the number going through the payment channels remained constant. It was when the customer was in the payment processing page they abondoned the sale. Quite a journey to abandon just at that moment, much like just scarpering at the checkout when your goods are being scanned at the local supermarket.

Sagepay themselves contributed a recent article where they touched on the problems of 3D Secure …

“3D Secure makes online payment safer than simply matching the AVS and CVV/Cv2 mechanism; however, the current system is perceived to be unfriendly to buyers, as it involves an extra step in the payment process which can involve redirecting them to an unfamiliar domain name. Not only can this result in delays, but it has also raised concerns about fraud, as it can be difficult for the consumer to differentiate between legitimate pop-up windows and fraudulent phishing sites.

Similarly, many customers have compained that they weren’t aware when registering with the system that they would need to enter the selected password on every use of the card, meaning that many did not note down the selected password for future use.

All this, however, is just a matter of customer education…”

Sagepay go onto advise that online sellers participating in 3D secure pre-warn their customers in some form of the procedure, thus educating in the process.

At some point I will retry 3D Secure payments once again with this clients site but only when the current economic climate has improved slightly as a repeat of a 60% decline in sales is not an option in the meantime.

A new report released today by The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) focussed on the lack of trust still shown by UK consumers when shopping online. The main factors holding back these potential online shoppers were : lack of trust as the main factor; fears over personal security; consumers did not trust companies that sell online.

Trying to bridge that gap and build consumer confidence is always an ongoing battle. We at NSM, slightly covered this last week in our Protx rebrands as SagePay post. Giving sellers just 3 weeks to inform their customer base that their payment gateway provider is totally having a full overhaul is pushing it in my opinion.

eCommerce sellers can do more to convince shoppers that their details are safe and secure as highlighted in the last 2 points of the report.

*Displaying imagery that you are using a secure payment gateway is always a good starting point.

* Have a well written FAQ page, detailing the most common asked questions regarding payments, delivery and returns.

* Provide a sales hotline number for people who might not want to buy online but are more willing to give their payment details over the phone.

* Create a feedback page where you can post customer testimonials or allow customers to provide reviews on your product pages.

* Sometimes poor design and layout gives off a feeling of insecurity and if consumers don’t like your eCommerce site designwise they probably won’t trust you with their sensitive data.

* eMail marketing is effective way to gain customer loyalty. But don’t abuse this issue of trust by sending out marketing shots every-other-day. Also, if a customer chooses to opt-out of your eMail shot then make sure you comply with their request.

* Track your online reputation. If a consumer starts posting about the lack of service you provided, or late delivery then deal with it. Overlooking disgruntled and unsatisfied customers could seriously harm the future of your eCommerce venture.

Resellers or Dropshippers have it twice as hard in my opinion. They might process the sale online without a hiccup but they are then in the hands of the distributor. In these tough economic times, make sure your supplier/distributor is sending packages on-time and they are not placing their brandname anywhere on the packaged product or invoice. This only leads to confusion with the consumer and they may go elsewhere next time they decide to purchase again online.

Tackling consumer confidence head-on with pro-active measures will see eCommerce blossom in the up-and-coming months ahead. Online sellers have to make sure their site measures up in gaining the all-important trust factor.

A recent eCommerce project brought about the challenge of re-designing the URL involved with the internal pages of the site. Straight away, my internal thoughts said, “Keywords present, dashes seperated, lowercase, nice clean URL’s. Simples!” But this nagging feeling inside, wouldn’t go away. I wanted to make sure what I had read and practiced was actually the best way to proceed in today’s forever changing search environment.

I first want to highlight to those reading what, up till this point, is the difference from a clean URL to a dirty URL.

A Dirty URL real life example :

http://www.xxxx.co.uk/store/cart.php?c=7&p=946

Obviously, I have changed the domain to protect the innocent. But looking at that URL there are a few glazing problems that leap from the page. Nobody, is ever going to remember that URL when retyping into the address bar. There are obvious security issues with the URL, primarily the language used to write the code is available for a hacker to exploit. And anyone picking out that URL and listing it as a link is not passing on any benefit via anchor text back to the site, unless the domain has some rich keywords within it.

Further reading about Dirty URL’s : www.seoconsultants.com/articles/1000/urls.asp

A Clean URL example :

http://www.xxxx.co.uk/dvds/x-men

OK, I cleaned up the offending dirty URL and now we can see the obvious advantages which are present. Gone is the querystring data (all the parameter info found after the ?) We have also removed the .php extension (the big giveaway of our coding source) added keyword friendly category and product descriptions for usability and URL linkage advantages and finally removed any ending file extension from the URL completely.

The last part was something which I churned over and over in my mind again. What I did previously with eCommerce URL’s was end them as .php. After a bit I then further reworked the .php to rewrite as a .html extension with the following in the .htaccess file :

Options +Indexes
# RewriteBase from .php to .html
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1.php [L]


This way I could continue to use my database calls, include files and keep the page dynamic while displaying it as a flat file .html page. Now, here is where my judgement was being questioned. According to the W3C, you should design your URI’s for longetivity – lasting well into the future:

It is the the duty of a Webmaster to allocate URI‘s which you will be able to stand by in 2 years, in 20 years, in 200 years. This needs thought, and organization, and commitment. (source : www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI)

They (W3C) proclaim that you might not be using .html to display that page in 20 years time but you might want links pointing to that page today to remain.

Of course, to me is where the 301 redirection comes into play. However, according to Google, for optimum experience you should contact the webmaster of the site that is linking to you and tell them that the page url has changed (Source : Google Best Practices).

But what about that .html extension? Well for future eCommerce Web Design projects it will be gone. Its purpose has been served and lets look at the benefits we create without its appearnce in the URL : we shorten the URL without the .html extension; it makes it even more manageable for linking purposes; adheres much more to usability guidelines; if we decide to upgrade the current code to a new technology, we can still do so without worrying about the URL structure in the future. Next time you look at the URL structure of a webpage, think to yourself just how well designed is it to be found in years to come…

Back in 2002 I read an intersting article, of which the main theme was the introducion of usability techniques on web sites to help enhance a persons web browsing experience. The article spoke of designing sites where the end-user could get to the most important information in the fewest clicks and without the website performing all sorts of weird tricks on the browser the user was using to surf the site with i.e. resizing the browser window, links that opened up in a new window and the fact that the majority of ecommerce sites sucked big time.

Fast forward 7 years to 2009 and the truth of the matter is that web designers are still taking control over my browser, either by resizing, performing ad pop-ups, opening up new windows when I click on a link (if I want that to happen then I’ll right-click and choose new tab or new browser window, thank-you very much), throwing me into fully integrated flash sites when I would rather have a choice in the matter : html or flash, and finally the majority of websites that are of an ecommerce nature, do indeed still suck.

One of the most recent, interesting articles surrounding usability I have read came from Good Usability and their article on how to use the back button. Within the article they speak of how AJAX (a popular way of reloading information onto a page) is distorting how a user views a page being reloaded. The other reason we have a concern with AJAX is its dependancy on JavaScript but that is more an accessibility debate than a usability one.

As for the ecommerce niche, then this is where usability should be at the top of the development and design stage. It’s not, I’m afraid! We’ll to be fair there are a large number of ecommerce sites that perfrom well but on my journeys there are an even greater number who just don’t get ‘usability’.

If you feel your site is suffering via bad usability design then one of the first places to check is your analytics. Tell-tale signs will be high bounce rates including a high percentage of users leaving your site after placing goods in the add-to cart/basket page then giving up during the payment channels (this is known as Shopping Cart Abandonment). Sure, every site has ‘digital window shoppers’ that distort the true ratio of buyers fleeing from your site without making a purchase but you have to question why they left in the first place to find your answer! Also, look at products that aren’t even getting a sniff of traffic, why can’t users find them, are they aware you even offer these products?

I’ll be offering up a future post on ecommerce and usability needs but for now let me leave you with this simple question,’Why would you want to destroy any chance of a person buying from your site, make a difference, make your site easy-to-use! ‘

Why is the 8th of December an important date? Well, it is historically the day, in the UK, when consumer spending will peak on the lead-up to Christmas. With the current slowdown hitting the High Street this year, expectation is that online spending will reach a new height. As much as I am delighted for both myself, being involved heavily in ecommerce marketing, I’m also saddened by the current state of affairs within the UK bricks and mortar retail market.

So, for those of you who have forgotten what an analytics page looks like – I urge you to get friendly with your favourite traffic analysis package again. Really, this should be any businesses first port of call when selling online. Add to that sales driven data feeds, copoun codes / discounts, loyalty bonuses, gift certificates and suddenly your beginning to play ball with those wishing to depart with their hard-earned cash.

Today, nobody should take anything for granted, especially those that buy into the build-an-ecommerce-cart-and-they-will-come mentality. That’s an outdated mode of thinking. You need to work with your site, like never before. Competition is just as fierce, if not fiercer, than on the high street. Those that stand still in this environment will eventually be overseeded by those that that are willing to work just that little bit more to gain a sale.

Ecommerce is a special thing to us here at North South Media, we love the feedback we get when our clients tell us that “We’ve done a great job” or “I’m glad we put our trust in you”. That is reputation management that is delivered via rolling up the sleeves and delivering on our promises. To us at North South Media, the 8th of December is just one of many days out of the year when our hard work peaks more than expectations desired.