Trust is such an important concept. This may be why, according to GetElastic.com, multiple pages in the checkout process converts better than a single page. Their data suggests that three pages or steps are optimal, converting at 6.2 percent.

Even seven pages or more (which is unbelievable to me, impatient jerk that I am) converts better than a one-step checkout process. Only one of the top 100 retailers use a one page checkout, and they convert the least at just 2.5 percent.

But why? Maybe it’s because one step seems too easy, just like a scam would seem too easy. Maybe it takes more steps to reassure a buyer, who is dealing with an invisible seller, that this deal is legit.

It would make sense, then, that providing the opportunity to actually converse with a human before a purchase could boost the chances of the purchase actually taking place. Conversations build trust and conversations look like they build conversions, too.

GetElastic has its own numbers on live chat in a nifty 46-page whitepaper on the entire checkout process, which can be downloaded in PDF or viewed in HTML, and includes data on shipping offers, coupons, security, et cetera.

"Live chat has the potential to bridge the customer service gap that exists between online shoppers and retailers," the authors say. "It can be the extra little push a shopper needs to get over any conversion hurdles that may exist such as purchase uncertainty, product questions, or technical and policy assistance."

But they’re still unsure about its actual efficacy, only slightly outperforming in the Apparel and High Ticket categories, and underperforming in every other. The authors attribute this "counter-intuitive" result to a potential annoyance factor, which can turn any would-be customer off.

Coremetrics and CompUSA have a different tale to tell on live chat, though. Coremetrics followed CompUSA’s implementation of InstantService’s live chat technology to make a case study of it. They found that website conversion rates went up by a factor of ten.

“By adding InstantService live chat to Compusa.com, we’ve given our customers the ability to communicate with a live agent who can help answer their questions,” said Al Hurlebaus, managing director of marketing and advertising at CompUSA. “This added value mirrors the in-store experience where customers rely on our knowledgeable salespeople to obtain assistance when they need it. "

Coremetrics’ analysis showed that 60 percent of visitors who chatted and added an item to the cart, did so from the most recently viewed category before initiating a chat session.

A keyword there might be "initiated," as in the customer initiated the chat session, cutting down on the annoyance factor mentioned by GetElastic. Nearly 54 percent of CompUSA customers ended up purchasing from the category they most recently viewed before chatting.

It is still unclear, though, whether CompUSA’s recent change in customer focus, from business-to-consumer to business-to-business had an impact on the results.

Jane Paolucci, VP of marketing for Coremetrics, shares some more numbers in an interview with WebProNews. She said that 68.5 percent of CompUSA customers chatted while browsing the site and that 32 percent chatted while in the shopping cart during the late stages of the buying process.

"Out of that," she said, "over 10 percent of those sessions convert to a sale, 10 times the average website conversion rate." Paolucci says that only 28 percent of ecommerce sites are currently offering live chat.

But they are "increasingly spending more money on technologies that are bringing them closer to their clients."   

Not to endorse one chat product over the other, here’s a Google search for "live chat widgets for ecommerce" to speed you along the chat discovery process should you think that’s right for your site.

This new study from Enquiro not only answers that question but attempts to explain some of the differences in search behaviors noticed on Yahoo! and MSN search results pages.

Click Here to read a sample of this new whitepaper!

The Yahoo/MSN whitepaper covers:

• How We Scan a Listing
• Semantic Mapping
• Information Scent
• Thin Slicing
• Banner Blindness
• Growth of Navigational Search
• Impact of Bolded Search Queries and Icons
• Perceived Relevancy
• Golden Section Theory
• Portal Entry Success
• Interactions with Top Sponsored
• Interactions with Side Sponsored
• Interactions with Top Organic
• Interactions with Bottom Organic
• Interactions with Vertical Results

http://www.enquiro.com/eyetrackingreport.asp

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Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

Fellow e-Book author David Meerman Scott just wrote an article for MarketingProfs.com that’s really helpful. Titled E-books: A Hip and Stylish Younger Sibling to the Nerdy Whitepaper, it’s an interesting and educational read about the nature of the phenomenon, its purpose, style and definition. He gives some great advice on how to create your own eBooks too. BTW – I’m using the spelling of e-books and eBooks interchangeably until we all agree on how to spell it.

Just like blogs and podcasts, e-books are a terrific way to spread ideas, engage conversations and generate demand. David not only compares them to the older whitepapers, but also discusses their use as a valuable marketing and lead generation tool. So “get hip” and read this article. I’m humbled to see that David put my e-book at the top of his list of successful examples of the genre.

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Brian Carroll is the CEO of InTouch Inc. InTouch is a 50-person company focused on delivering effective lead generation solutions for “the complex sale.”

Brian authors the very interesting B2B Lead Generation Blog which focuses on B2B lead generation, sales leads, and marketing for the complex sale.

President of SEMPhonic, Gary Angel gave me a sneak preview of this white paper and I was very fascinated by the new ideas presented before me.

KPIs at times, are way too high level and totally site oriented but by drilling down deeper by going to the page level will give Analysts that much more insight on how to make educated business decisions. What they present in the paper will really make good Analysts begin to use this approach in order to establish the importance of each page.

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Bookmark WebProNews:

Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

After coding begins in mid-2006, NetAlter expects to have a beta version of its Service Browser available within a year. NetAlter said this browser would be platform-independent and would support most existing protocols and interfaces. There would also be support for advanced services, like those listed in a whitepaper:

Rich Client Applications,
On Demand Web Services,
Artificial Intelligent Search Engine,
Supercomputing Grid,
Artificial Intelligent Agents,
Personal Networking,
Peer to Peer File,
Information & Data sharing

Upon loading the Service Browser, users will be able to use its built-in search function instead of bringing in an external search engine.

NetAlter also claims the Service Browser will provide virus and spam protection, and it will help protect intellectual property rights. That seems to indicate some type of built-in DRM checking scheme or other digital media verification process.

However, some users may not care for the proposed grouping of the Service Browser as part of a broader network:

NetAlter said in a whitepaper that navigation through the nodes created by the network could retrieve and submit information in various formats from other nodes. A user could either navigate to the Web and retrieve content, or find it within NetAlter’s grid.

The company believes that even though it would have to overcome a lot of ingrained habits among end users in getting them to switch to using NetAlter. “Yet there is a silver lining here that people today are willing to adapt to new technology instead of being taken for granted using obsolete stuff,” NetAlter said.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Boston University Corporate Education Center announced the availability of a free instructional white paper for project managers titled Eight Powerful Ways Project Management Training Will Boost Your Career.

“As project managers see their jobs become more complex, they need new skills to handle their new responsibilities. Many employers are requiring project managers to develop additional project management skills or be certified,” Boston University said in a statement.

The white paper outlines the necessary steps to develop critical IT project management skills and prepare for PMI(R) certification. To obtain a free copy of this white paper, go to http://www.butrain.com/nl.asp?sid=320667, or call Boston University at 1-800-BU-TRAIN (288-7246).

“Successful executives in fields such as finance, health care and IT are harnessing the power of their careers and updating their project management skills,” said Gina Westcott, Director of Management Development Programs and Product Development at Boston University.

“Additional project management training and certification can often mean a higher salary, better job satisfaction and expanded career opportunities.”

According to The Standish Group International’s CHAOS Chronicles, the lost dollar value for U.S. projects in 2002 is estimated at $38 billion, with another $17 billion in cost overruns for a total project waste of $55 billion against $255 billion in project spending. Thirty-one percent of all projects are canceled before completion. Eighty-eight percent of all projects finish over budget and/or late.

“Corporations have found that training team members in project management best practices increases their overall organizational effectiveness by helping them realize higher profit margins and on-time project delivery.”

Overall, 90% of search users will click on links found in the first three pages of search results.

The findings show the increased importance of first page placement, along with the value of being found in the Top20 and Top30.

They also show that search engine users are becoming more sophisticated.

This is the third iProspect study of search user behaviour. In 2002 and 2004, they commissioned Jupiter Research to conduct similar surveys.

This year, 2,369 survey respondents were asked a series of questions in a Jupiter Research study commissioned by iProspect.

Users are able to find information faster and have learned several ways to refine their search queries rather than conduct a new search on another engine.

Over the three surveys, users are increasingly finding information faster. In 2002, survey respondents said they found relevant information on the first page only 48% of the time and 60% in 2004.

Users are also quicker to alter or abandon unsuccessful keyword queries than in previous years.

41% of respondents would either alter or abandon the keywords used in their queries if they could not find results on the first page.

82% of the time, respondents would alter search queries by adding descriptive words, most often resulting in a successful search session.

Another important note from the survey is that only 12% of respondents would follow a search past the first three pages of results, down from 22% in 2002.

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Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

Paul Beelen has written a whitepaper on Advertising 2.0. It looks at the influence of technology in advertising, marketing and media, and the threats and opportunities triggered by the revolution of the new, social internet. Hmmm, sounds familliar!

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

“Search personalization is likely to waste the talents of top computer scientists,” wrote Raul Valdes-Perez in a whitepaper pointed out by John Battelle. Valdes-Perez lists five reasons why the quest for more users of personalized search, one that has Google and Yahoo promoting search personalization heavily, is a waste of time. We’ll summarize those reason here:

1) People’s interests change frequently.
2) Search engines use weak data to personalize search.
3) Using data from the whole page visited from a search may be misleading because people visit sites based on a title and a short snippet of text in the search engine result.
4) In households, frequently shared computers among family members could skew results.
5) Short queries don’t give the search engines enough to determine one’s interests.

Point number three could be the strongest point Valdes-Perez makes, due to the proliferation of spam blogs and scraper sites in search engine results. Someone clicking on one based on its entry in a search result page and finding it’s a useless site will exit it quickly. Will personalization take those quick visits into account?

The argument for point one, where interests change, makes sense from a short-term perspective. “Seasonal phenomena like elections, the Olympics, sports leagues, etc. also lead to variable interests: I’ll follow the Olympics for the next month or so, but will pay no attention for another four years,” Valdes-Perez wrote.

But the ongoing use of personalization over a long-term should build a more accurate search experience. That of course depends on the skill of the engineers who create that experience.

Points two and five are essentially the same. Short one or two word queries make for weak data. Again, that could be mitigated over long-term use. The fourth point doesn’t apply to personalization schemes like Google’s Personalized Home or Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 because both of them require a user to login. Users might forget to logout from time to time, though, but probably not enough to mess up the results.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.