The Cycling legend Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France an unprecedented 7 times, has also been in another race ever since beating cancer. For this edition of CelebriteCommerce we decided to look at the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF), which is giving hope to others living with the disease and making large contributions to find a cure, and its online store. LAF’s website Livestrong.org is very well done and has incredible features for people with cancer. One feature that I found particularly notable was the “Survivorship Stories Search” that allows those with cancer to search for stories from survivors who had their type of cancer.

LAF’s mission is clearly displayed on the about us page and site navigation is made easy by the toolbar atop each page. LAF is funded by donations and the sale of Livestrong merchandise. The store is simple and products are categorized. A few simple improvements could be made regarding usability that would improve conversion rates such as adding a color selector on the product page instead of displaying links to other colors on the bottom of the page.

This saves the customer time and increases the probability the customer will look at more colors than the one they originally chose. The front and back of the clothing is displayed and a size selector drop down is used with sizes defined below.

Purchases are completed with Yahoo Store and checkout is a 4 step process. In an age where One Page Checkout is quickly becoming the norm 4 pages isn’t excessive, but it’s definitely not progressive. Error recognition for mailing and billing information is good and clear; however, it is displayed in a bad location. Error reports should either be displayed directly above the input box or next to them. The errors messages on LAF’s website are displayed at the very top of the page and are separated from the input fields by so much text you have to scroll back and forth to read them and fix the problem.

A good feature is the status bar at the top of each checkout page showing you how much farther you have to go.

In addition, a smart design that should be more widely used is the absence of the site navigation bar during checkout, this prevents the customer from being distracted and bailing out of their cart. These simple improvements are proven to increase conversion rates and decrease bail outs, especially on sites that are already doing lots of business and have a solid design.