There are plenty of features and options when working in Magento. Unfortunately, that also means the potential for a lot of pages that can be easily missed. The good news is, if you remember about the pages, and what they can offer, you can actually enhance the customer experience. Here are seven commonly forgotten pages in Magento, and how to maximize their potential:
- Empty Shopping Cart. It does happen… a customer will find a way into the shopping cart when there are no products in it. This is a great place to put something interesting or funny and direct customers back to browsing for products. It can make them feel like they discovered something cool about your site rather than feeling like they did something wrong.
- Forgot Password. No one like to use the Forgot Password tool, it’s kind-of embarrassing. There has been a trend where websites try to empathize with this feeling by posting statements like “Oooops!” or “That’s OK, we all do it!” on the Forgot Password workflow… Who likes to be recognized for forgetfulness? With all the news about password security it’s a wonder that this isn’t the top visited page on your website. As an alternative, why not try a more subtle approach. Keep it simple, don’t identify your forgetful user’s misplacement of their password. Instead open up the space for showing your LOYAL customer what they will have access to once they reset or retrieve their password, and be sure to tell them whether they will get an email that has a link to re-set their password or (with a little customization) if they will continue on to an in-browser password reset workflow.
- My Account Dashboard (without any orders or addresses). This is another page that users find themselves landing on from time-to-time. Nothing looks worse than entering a well-designed site after creating an “inside-access account” only to land on the “unfinished basement” that is the Empty My Account Dashboard. It doesn’t take much effort to place targeted marketing content in the space that will soon display the customer’s “Recent Orders”. Or place a banner below the Address Book that tells the customer how fast and easy check-out is when they have saved addresses.
- Order Success Page. This is an exciting moment! A simple blank page that says “Order Success, your order number is 000012345” doesn’t do it justice. This is possibly the MOST anticipated page in the Ecommerce Workflow. It signifies the successful transfer of secure credit card information. If the experience was safe and enjoyable this is probably the best place to build your return customer-base and display targeted marketing content. Outside of your email marketing campaigns this could be your last chance to entice customers to return in the future to purchase cross-selling or other products they looked at.
- Tracking Information pop-up window. YES this does exist in Magento. But it’s not very pretty. If you ship your goods via USPS, UPS or FedEx and offer Package Tracking, this is a great place to earn some extra respect from your returning customers. Display tracking information through Shipping Service APIs so they don’t have to copy & paste the 19 digit tracking number or deal with the non-chic design of the UPS web-site.
- Public Wish-list page. If you encourage your customer’s to “save”, “like” or however you describe adding products to their wish-list, their Wish-list can be shared via email (or social media sharing with a little bit of custom work). Then friends can come to your store viewing only the products their friends “liked” or “wish-for”. This is the perfect page to advertise sales, show off featured product lines or even offer special coupon codes to customers who enter your site this way.
- You Are Now Logged Out. This is a dull page and it only shows up for 5 seconds. This could be the most useless page in all of Magento, or a cool hidden treasure. Post links to hidden pages or advertisements to last-minute-sale products here. “Click here in the next 5 seconds to get 10% off your next purchase!” can certainly catch the eye of someone logging-out. It won’t have the largest audience in the world, but it affords another inexpensive opportunity to stand-out from the crowd and connect with your audience in a unique way.
Do you know of other pages that are forgotten in Magento? How about good tricks to enhance a Magento site? Share them with me in the comments!
