Online Shopping Through Consumers Eyes: A Study of Online Users' Responses to 107 Questions

If you are involved with online marketing you'll love this book. I always wanted to know the answers to these questions... Which types of testimonials work best? Where do most people shop online... home or work? How do you feel about upselling during the buying process? If you love any kind of marketing (not just online) this book will open your eyes and teach you things you didn't even know you needed to learn. Thanks Geno for knowing what we professional online marketers need to know to succeed.

This is a statistically-based, research manual that presents a ton of data on just exactly how online consumers click and why. It's concisely written and the data is easily grasped. The results of the survey question 17 was worth the price of the book alone: Question: If you see a banner advertising a product without a call to action (e.g. "click here") would you attempt to click it? The answer reveals that it's certainly wise to include some magic action words as 53% of the responses indicated they would not click without.

This was a happy accidental find. I was actually looking for another book by Geno Prussakov when I stumbled over his Online Shopping Through Consumer Eyes, and picked it up on a whim. It arrived a few days later and I almost set it aside, but I'm glad I didn't. It opened MY eyes, and gave me many crucial viewpoints that I had not discerned about my own online store. I raced through it in an hour, PostIt notes in hand, and then immediately started to re-read, slowly this time, and taking action at every turn. The changes ranged from the small things - the addition of a toll-free number - to the massive - restructuring the store layout so that it takes no more than three clicks to reach items for sale. The book's approach is logical and straightforward, brief and pointed. Geno has captured the essence of online shopping and boiled it down to a solid foundation. If you sell online, if you are considering selling online, or if you shop online and wonder why things work the way you want them (or don't!), you want this book. If you intend to succeed at selling online, then you NEED this book.

I was fortunate enough to receive this book just before a five-hour flight. Aside from taking with a seat-mate, I was able to skim the entire book during the flight. I dog-eared a couple dozen pages to return to when I had time to better digest the ideas. This book is by no means a "true" scientific study. But that is not a bad thing. Often, heavily-funded studies become too narrowly focused and fail to deliver the goods where it counts for me - in practical insight and applications. Reading "Online Shopping Through Consumers' Eyes" opened "my" eyes to the general habits of today's online shoppers. I have been in affiliate marketing since 1999 and have seen consistent growth year after year. Some of that growth has come from working harder each year. Geno's book helped me to work smarter. I went back through those two dozen dog-eared pages and quickly found two practical applications - where I just knew I had to make two changes in one of my most productive travel sites. I did implement those changes and saw an immediate (next day) increase in click-through rates from one of my display pages to the booking pages of my key merchant. Was it magic? Was it true science? No, and No. What it was, was reading about trends by modern shoppers and what they look for on e-commerce pages; and what they decide, and then do, when it comes to making buying decisions. My "old," yet productive, site had become stale - I had become jaded to what my readers were doing. Those two little changes returned an immediate increase in productivity. For that insight, I sincerely thank Geno and the research he pulled together in the publishing of this book. Sorry, didn't mean to get off on a tangent with one example. But it worked for me and that was an impressive start. In re-reading the book, and concentrating on those dog-eared pages that apply to what it is that I do, I now have more insight into the habits of today's shoppers. I am better equipped to design sites that will provide more value to my readers by helping streamline the path that they follow to find what they are seeking from my Web pages. Providing more value to my readers is what I am all about. Mr. Prussakov has helped me better achieve that goal.

Understanding the preferences, behavior and attitudes of online shoppers is the holy grail of e-business. In Online Shopping Through Consumers' Eyes, Geno Prussakov proves that nearly 3,000 respondents (all of whom are actual consumers) will teach you much more than a handful of industry experts. The term customer-centric is used frequently by marketers, yet how often do businesses really take the time to try to understand the customer experience? This book encompasses the entire online shopping experience from research to purchase to retention. Some of the results will reinforce what you already suspected while other parts will probably raise a few eyebrows. Did you know that fewer than one out of 20 consumers shop at the store first visited? And even when pleased with a store, more than 70 percent would consider other stores the next time they make a purchase? Another interesting finding is that despite the rapid growth of online video, much thanks to YouTube and copycat sites, seven out of ten consumers state that video introductions by company officials do not influence their purchasing behavior. The conclusions from this book can be used when deciding what aspects of your web presence you should be focusing your attention on first. Let the insights from the book guide you when designing your own visitor surveys or when performing tests to find out whether the suggested changes will have the anticipated impact on your particular business.