Cleaning products brand Bissell is enhancing its customer experience and increasing its conversion rate through constant testing on its ecommerce site, said Stacey Howe, senior ecommerce optimization specialist at Bissell Homecare at ContentSquare’s CX Circle event in New York City this fall.   

Bissell uses heat mapping, scroll maps and a customer feedback survey at checkout to continually improve its website and conversion rate. Howe’s team of SEO experts, data analysts and copy writers use these tools to dig into its website and customer journey to discover where and why shoppers are dropping off. Her team meets biweekly to brainstorm hypotheses it can test. 

Bissell shared four examples of small changes it made after a testing period to improve conversion at the event.  

Better Call-to-Action Words

After a team meeting brainstorm, Bissell decided to test different call-to-action words for when a shopper is ready to buy. It had “Order Now” on the button, but the verbiage didn’t convey the safety Bissell aims for when a shopper is buying a premium vacuum. 

“It feels impulsive, like something you would maybe buy on TikTok,” she said. “We want to change it to something as simple as ‘checkout’ or ‘secure checkout’ so that you know that when you’re making a purchase with us, it’s with a reputable company.” 

After testing “Checkout” and “Secure Checkout” against its current button, “Checkout” was the winner after a double-digit percent increase in consumers making it to the cart from checkout.  

Shoppers Don’t Want to Read Sentences

On the product detail page, Bissell’s aim is to give shoppers all the information they need as quickly as possible. Consumers don’t want to scan the page, they want to immediately know the product’s benefits, Howe said.  

“Consumers have a shorter attention span,” she said.  

Bissell tested displaying the information that was in paragraph form next to the product into bullet points. Add-to-cart and conversion both increased after this change. It was the same exact copy, it just added bullet points to make it easier to read.  

Easier Mobile Web Navigation

While 85% of Bissell’s website traffic is from consumers on mobile devices, it is mostly to do research and not to purchase. From shopper feedback, the brand knew it could make the research experience better for shoppers to compare products side by side. And if this experience is easier and faster, more shoppers may even buy on mobile. Shoppers had to navigate to each category page, then the product listing page and then the product detail to learn about the item. This is a lot of navigation on a small screen. 

“We need to make it a lot easier for consumers to do that research,” she said.  

Bissell created a test with optimization vendor AB Tasty to find a more intuitive mobile navigation. Now, on one page, each category is listed with an accordion menu so shoppers can click on it to find more information. If the shopper wants to hop to a new category, she can scroll down the page and click into it, instead of having to navigate to a new page.  

This easier navigation achieved a triple digit increase in clicks to its product listing pages, which was is main key performance indicator to improve. However, it did have a decrease in secondary links.  

“What we are going to do is take the winner of this test, make it the control and keep iterating,” Howe said. The brand will keep testing until it achieves the conversion it is looking for.  

Bissell Boosts Donations to Pet Charity with Puppy Pic

Part of Bissell’s brand identity is to end pet homelessness. The company founders also operate the Bissell Pet Foundation which is an animal welfare organization.

On the checkout page, the brand allows consumers to donate to this charity. While opting to donate to a charity is not an uncommon practice at retailers, shoppers left Bissell feedback that they wanted to know more information about where the donation was going.  

And so Bissell added a picture of a puppy to the page — which is an actual image of a puppy it saved, Howe said — plus copy that says 100% of the donation goes to help the pets.  

This increased donations, she said, and led to positive feedback in its consumer survey about how shoppers felt good about buying products from a brand that helped pets.