With less than 80 days to Black Friday, we've partnered with Inflow to share the high value site optimizations you can make before your freeze. If you're opting to not freeze we also have optimizations you can make through holiday to drive results.

1. eCommerce Site Optimizations to Schedule BEFORE the Holiday Code Freeze

2. About Your Experts
Trevor Legwinski - Chief Retail Officer, SearchSpring
Trevor has broad experience in retail and eCommerce, he has 10+ years
of experience leading marketing, eCommerce, and omni-channel for
retailers including Hallmark, Cycle Gear, Bambeco. He has grown brands
from $0-$40M and from $500M+ in annual revenues. Trevor is a
featured retail speaker and moderator in the marketing, conversion
optimization and personalization space.
Mike - Sr. CRO Advisor, Inflow
With nearly ten years of digital marketing experience, Michael Kuehn
combines analytics-based decision-making with a passion for user
experience. Over the years, he has worked with well-known companies
across the e-tail, airlines, insurance and finance verticals, consulting with
clients such as Allstate, Delta, Metlife, Demand Media and Citi Bank. In
addition to CRO, Kuehn is experienced in both project and product
management, having previously managed five software units for a
leading loyalty website.

3. About The Companies
Inflow is a cross-channel eCommerce marketing agency based in Denver. We provide the
technical and strategic marketing expertise CMOs and eCommerce Directors need by combining
strong technical SEO, Conversion Optimization, PPC and inbound marketing. With our highly
creative team, and innovative marketing technologies, we deliver a clearly measurable return on
your investment.
Since 2007 SearchSpring has been a trusted partner by over 600 B2B and B2C pure-play
and omni-channel retailers across 12 retail categories. Their Relevancy Platform™ drives
conversion, AOV and LTV across search, category, product and landing pages, while their
merchandising and insight suites empower marketers and merchandisers with the tools to
easily merchandise and take action to drive results.

4. Agenda
1.) High Risk / High Reward Projects
2.) To Freeze or Not to Freeze
3.) Optimizing During the Frost
4.) Maybe Next Year
5.) Close Webinar

5. Format
● 45 Min Webinar
● Recording will be emailed to you and available tomorrow
● Please submit questions, they will be answered at the
end
● Stay until the end for a exclusive offer
● Share this webinar with your teammates

6. High Risk / High
Reward Projects

7. Value Proposition Messaging
● Why do it?
○ Most important question to answer for prospective
customers - What can you do for me?
● Where to focus?
○ Identify main value proposition first
○ If you are comfortable with value proposition, look for ways
to improve or streamline

8. Site Speed Optimizations
● Why do it?
○ 40% of users will wait no longer
than 3 seconds for a site to load
○ Holiday volume can exacerbate
existing problems
● Where to focus?
○ Tools below will help you identify areas for improvement
https://www.webpagetest.org/
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

9. Additional Product Info in the Gallery
● Why do it?
○ Prevents “pogo-sticking”
● Where to focus?
○ Most important determining factor for users that can
be cleanly displayed

10. Inventory Tied to Site
● Why do it?
○ No question whether item will be able to ship or not
○ Sense of urgency for low-stock items
● Where to focus?
○ Linking front and back ends may be difficult, especially
for businesses with multiple storefronts
○ Test messaging and display before the holidays

11. Wish List and Abandonment Programs
● Why do it?
○ Encourages users to bring
other people to your site
○ Grows email list at key
time of the year
● Where to focus?
○ Wishlist without login
○ Create an account to save or share list
○ Follow up emails when lists are not shared or visited
within a few days of creation

12. Checkout Flow
● Why do it?
○ Every order on your site
is impacted
● Where to focus?
○ Remove unnecessary
steps
○ Simplify form entry
○ Address verification to
ensure on-time delivery

13. Gift Wrapping
● Why do it?
○ Convenience factor for your customers
○ Can immediately disqualify you if you don’t offer it
● Where to focus?
○ Changes required to checkout flow to include this option
(and charge for it)
○ Need to hire staff?

14. To Freeze or Not to
Freeze

15. Consider a code “frost” instead
● Main goal is to mitigate risk
● Previous projects are all risky during busy season, try to
complete before November
● Plan ahead and begin work on initiatives you couldn’t get
done in time for this holiday

16. Optimizing During
the Frost

17. Correct Misspellings In Your Product Data
1. Install a spelling or grammar checker and train
data entry team to correct misspellings.
Can cause findability issues - both on site and from a
SEO / advertising perspective (misspellings are often
corrected automatically and misspelled matches are
either not found, or pushed to the bottom of results).
Retailers misspell 35% of words on average

18. Optimize Product Titles
1. Move the Brand or Manufacturer's name into its own field, don't replicate it in the product name. (You can always
piece it together in your site's templates so they display together.)
2. Less is more - put just enough information in the title for the customer to make an informed decision to click/explore,
but no more.
3. If it's a Women's or Men's specific product, mention that in the title (think clothing, bicycles, supplements, etc)
4. Make it obvious - be sure the product name describes the product (if it’s a shoe, make sure it has shoe in the name)

19. Product Tile Optimization Examples
Don't: Canada Goose 'Montebello' Slim Fit
Down Parka with Genuine Coyote Fur Trim
Do: Women's Montebello Down Parka
Don't: Double Duty Beauty The Lip Sculptor
Double Ended Lipstick & Gloss
Do: 2-in-1 Lipstick & Gloss

20. Leverage UGC to Improve Product Ranking
● Leveraging review can
increase results for
long tail searches
● Ensure that your
ratings & reviews are
being indexed.

21. 21
“Breathable Jerseys for Long Rides”
Product Reviews + Search: Longtail Example

22. Site Search Bar Placement + Sizing
● Prominence determined by current site search behavior
● Users expect this in the upper right (generally)

23. Focus on Usability: Icons vs. Bar
Search bars receive nearly 3x as much usage from visitors vs. icons.

24. Focus on Usability: Button
● Use of a button more than doubles search usage.
● Using text such as “search” instead of an icon in the button further increases usage by 20%.

25. Focus on Usability: Placement
● Center search bar placement receives twice the usage of left placement nearly 20% great
usage then right placement.

26. Facet Optimization
● Prioritize based on usage / popularity
● Limit number of sub-categories per category
● Always indicate what is already selected
● Design for the device

27. Optimize Optimize Facets to Reduce Bounce Rates
1.) Display a max of 5-7 facet
groups
2.) Offering too many facets
will confuse users and
can lead to higher bounce
rates
3.) Make sure facets are
ordered by most used
first

28. Watch out for facet creep
1.) Make sure your facets do
not take up the whole
page
2.) Show up to 10 attributes
within a facet group
3.) If you have more than 10
attributes offer a scroll
bar or “more options
available (# of options)

29. Leverage Dynamic Faceting
1.) Manually Optimizing
Facets can be tedious
and time consuming
2.) Look to dynamic facets to
automatically display the
most relevant facets
based on the
category/subcategory

30. Leverage Color Swatches and Icons For Increased Conversion Rates
1.) Hard to understand
faceting adds friction and
reduces conversion
2.) Optimizing your layout
and icons has shown
between 5-12%
conversion improvements
from facets

31. Other Cosmetic Changes to Test
● Call to Action language and display
● Gallery layout / items per page
● Trust Elements
● Price Display, particularly for Sale items

32. Maybe Next Year...

33. What Projects Should Wait?
● Adding Product Reviews
● Adding 3rd party tools that
need to “seed”

34. ● Plan major projects well ahead of holidays to mitigate risk
● Don’t overcommit! Pick the right project load based on
team capacity
● Focus on pain points before new features
● Don’t be afraid to make changes during the holidays, just
be smart about your projects
● Start planning now for next year
Summary

35. Questions?

36. We’d love to hear from you to help maximize holiday conversions
Name: Mike Kuehn
Url: www.goinflow.com
Email: kuehn@goinflow.com
Trevor Legwinski:
www.searchspring.com
trevor@searchspring.com