In this episode I wanted to do a couple of things. First, tell you about the Atarim Web Agency Summit next week and then share a great Woo builder tip from one of the speakers.
In fact, this could be called part 1 of a series of 2 episodes I am putting out today that highlights a total of 4 speakers from the summit.
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As one of this years Media sponsors, let me share with you a few details about he business summit. From April 26 through the 29th, you will have the choice to listen to and pick from over 40 plus expert sessions from WordPress Agency Owners, developer and marketers on how to scan your agency or freelance business.
Episode Transcript
Let’s hear from speaker Anne-Mieke Bovelett
Hey you WooCommerce fans! I’m Anne-Mieke Bovelett, from annebovelett.eu
The tip I’m about to share with you will have a life changing effect on your perspective on E-commerce and the way you develop and sell web shops. And yes, I’m not going to lie, it does involve some investment from you, but if will definitely pay off.
Following my tip is the first step towards you being able to charge higher rates (because you invested!), and your customers accepting those with less resistance than you would expect, maybe even with NO resistance and a lot of enthusiasm. How? Simple. You will be the one with the winning argument for a massive increase in sales for your customer. I mean, do you know anyone who’s going to say no to the argument of a return on investment of 37000%? Yeah, you heard me right. I wasn’t saying 37, I wasn’t saying 370. I’m saying 37000. That is from just one of the Business cases I’m going to share with you. I couldn’t believe it myself at first. The increase in sales? Oh yes, of course. I know that it works that way, and why. As to these very specific numbers, I ran those through the ROI calculator from omnicalculator.com.
I’m aware that this sounds too good to be true, but I promise you that this is not a lot of theoretical blah blah blah. Your investment will have to be to learn how to create an online shopping experience that is inclusive and technically accessible to all. In order to prove my point I’m going to challenge you to navigate a webshop by keyboard. The challenge will only take a couple of minutes, and anyone who knows how to type on a keyboard, can do this.
With the advantage of being able to pause a podcast, you can even take part in this challenge right now. Just follow the steps, and then proceed listening.
But I’m warning you! This experience plants a seed in your mind. Once you’ve tried this, you can never not know this again. This experience is a massive eye-opener to many people I know who design and develop websites. And of course, we’re on Do the Woo today, so I will focus on E-commerce.
Ok, before we begin we need to tackle a practical matter. What I’m about to ask you to do, is best done in Google Chrome. This is because in some other browsers, like Safari, you would have to fiddle around with some settings to be able to do what I’m about to challenge you to do.
So here we go.
Open the most recent webshop you created on your desktop or laptop. Preferably in an incognito window, so the cookie banner and maybe one of those sign up for our newsletter pop-ups in a full page overlay, is triggered.
Now put your cursor at the end of your websites URL in the address bar. Put your mouse away. From here you’re going to navigate through your web shop with your keyboard! Your challenge is to actually select a product, put that in your basket, and check out.
In case you’ve never keyboard tabbed through a website before: You do that using the tab key on the top left of your keyboard. With that key you can jump from menu item to menu item, and to all focusable elements, such as links, buttons, anchors and form fields on the page. To close a popup or a Lightbox, use the Escape key. To tick a checkbox, press the spacebar. Oh, and shift tab moves you back, to the previous focusable element.
OK. Now I have a question for you: When you tab, can you actually clearly see where you’re at? Do menu items, and links change visibly when you reach them?
Do you see something like a border around it? Are you able to open a submenu by hitting enter or spacebar, and can you then navigate through with the arrow key?
As presumptuous as it sounds, I think for the majority of you who tried this, you didn’t even get past simply navigating the menu and homepage by keyboard.
Irritating hurdles like this is something that millions of potential consumers experience every day. Whether they depend on keyboard navigation, or assistive technology, or having to live with any other factor can makes their online experience very challenging. I am one of those. When they run into sites that were not developed with inclusivity in mind, they’re running into a wall.
Consumers are aware that they have a choice in where they shop online. A dizzying majority (about 70%) of them prefer leaving a website to find a more usable one, over trying to navigate through accessibility barriers or call customer service for assistance. Even if it means the article of choice is more expensive in another webshop. Wouldn’t you?
It pays off to ensure that buyers have such a great experience that it is reason to come back and buy from you again. The key to that great and unobstructed experience is inclusive design, of which online accessibility is a grand part. By the way, that doesn’t just go for webshops, that goes for everything created and displayed on the web. Making your products accessible is the right thing to do, always.
Of course, the inclusivity, and there with the accessibility of your web shop depends on more than keyboard navigation. Aspects, such as use of color, typography, text, the use of media such as images and video are also part of that. But the good news is, all of that is not rocket science. And there’s YOUR investment. You need to invest in learning all you can about this.
I hear many people say they find this topic very overwhelming. And then there are the myths around accessibility. Myths such as that you can’t design stunning websites when they have to be accessible. You definitely can, but it requires a different approach, which I like to refer to as inclusive design thinking.
Thank you for listening and I hope you will join my session at the Atarim web summit. It’s called The Web Shop That Generated 350% ROI – Why and How Accessibility Pays Off. Among other things I will talk the case of a british supermarket that saw its revenue from site sales increase by £13 million GBP annually. After they decided to invest £35,000 in an accessible version of their web shop. That is a return on investment of 37000%, that I mentioned in the beginning.
