Actinic Plugins February 28, 2008 14:17 by John Sollars
Actinic Plugins to help you have a life
I have been using Actinic since 2002, and gone through several painful learning curves, but have always looked to improve my website, my customers experience of the site and of course my wealth creation opportunities. Recently we are using V8, and have come up with several ideas that we consider improve life for us and are also positively impacting our customer conversion rates.
The bottom line is that I sell ink for a living!. I don't sell software, but feel that if I were in a different situation i.e. didn't have the level of software expertise in house that I am fortunate to have today then I would want to be able to implement improvements to my business and site so I am giving the code away to anyone who wants to have a go at implementing it. All I ask in return is a link from your site back to ours – and I'll even provide the linking code for you.
Implementing Google E-Commerce in Analytics
We use Google Analytics and think that it is a really powerful piece of software. I used to use Clicktracks and remember spending significant amounts of money on buying it, but Analytics nowadays has taken over. If you use it now and haven't implemented the e-commerce facility then you are missing out big time!. This implementation that Rob Williams has written for us took him some time to get right, but the information that I have now available to me is mind blowing, once you have used it you will wonder how you ever managed without it. Remember this code is free to download, but please give us a link back.
Actinic Checkout Speedup
As a user of Actinic since V5.0 one thing that has remained constant in an ever improving world is the checkout process. As I use Secure Hosting as my PSP my customer has to click 'NEXT' five times before I can take their money off them.
If you look at optimising your website for your customers (rather than Google), one of the key issues is to make your checkout easy for your customer to use. An easy checkout is a good checkout and if you can get it down to 1 page it is perfect!. Key issues at this point are:
- Eliminate unnecessary steps and only ask for information that is completely necessary in completing the transaction.
- Let the visitor know that you value their privacy and you have a secure site.
- Don't keep the visitor in the dark about anything – clearly let them know about shipping costs, returns and tax
- Remind them what they are buying!
We spent the best part of two weeks developing this code which reduces the Actinic (V8) checkout process from 5 to 2 pages. With the information gathered from our Google Analytics we have seen an increase in order conversions of 24% and a significant reduction in trolley abondonment. Developing this code has cost us money in terms of time spent, but it will give us a return quite quickly. All I am asking for is a donation or link back. If you use one of our links then the code is FOC, if you decide that you can't link back a donation of £34.99 would be gratefully received?.
