We share 7 proven strategies to improve your email open rates. Try them out and give your email content a chance to convert.
Email is one of the highest converting marketing channels and few activities drive a higher ROI than building an email list. But having 50,000 email subscribers doesn’t really matter if you can’t get any of them to open your emails.
We’ll show you seven relatively simple (yet criminally underused) strategies that are GUARANTEED to improve your email open rates. By the end of this article, you will have an actionable plan for significantly boosting the ROI of every email you send.
7 Surefire Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates.
1. The Best Way to Improve Your Email Open Rate: Work on Your Subject Lines
Your email is desperately fighting for attention in your prospect’s inbox. Your job is to differentiate yourself within that inbox, and the only way to do that is with your email subject line. But it’s not just about standing out. What is most important to boost those email open rates is that your subject line is relevant to your audience.
Let’s take a look at some examples from my inbox:
Work on your subject lines if you want to improve your email open rates.
Sujan’s email uses a pretty standard article headline. This will really only appeal to me if I want to get more out of my video, and that’s actually a good thing. Using a good blog headline is usually a fine strategy for email subject lines.
Brian’s email will appeal to me if I feel confused or have been searching for some specific answers. That said, this subject line won’t really be enough unless I already have built some trust with the sender. In this case, Brian has already done a great job of establishing himself as my go-to SEO expert, so it works.
Mary’s subject line makes use of an eye-catching emoji, which is good for differentiation. At the same time, the promise is a bit too broad for someone like me to be interested. In all likelihood, however, Mary is targeting a less experienced audience, which might be intrigued by this subject line.
Drew’s subject line is a bit confusing, but it also provokes my curiosity. He is hooking me in with this idea of “9/10 experts DISAGREE”. That’s interesting, and now I’m curious to see what they disagree about.
Remember that the goal of a subject line is not to get just anyone to open the email. You have a specific audience you’ve built, and it’s important to use the types of headlines that will resonate with that audience.
2. Match Your Lead Magnet To Your Content To Your Product
There’s a lot of content out there about how to build an email list. But one of the biggest mistakes I see businesses and bloggers make is thinking too short-term with their lead magnets and other lead acquisition strategies.
Email marketing is a scalable form of relationship marketing. It’s meant to be a long term pursuit, and accordingly, it’s important that what you are talking about remains consistent throughout that process.
If you attract someone to your list via an ebook on increasing web traffic, then start emailing them about how to run an ecommerce store, and then try to sell them a product on increasing productivity, you won’t have much success.
Every part of your sales funnel should be designed to appeal to the same customer profile.
When someone signs up to your list to hear about a given topic, the emails they receive should also be on that topic. By aligning your lead magnets, emails, and products, you can significantly improve your conversion rates across the board.
3. Split Test Until You Find The Optimal Send Time
One of the easiest ways to increase your open rate is to send your emails at the right time.
How do you find the right time? Two words: AB testing
This requires a little bit of intentionality upfront, but it’s so easy to do, and it can have a MASSIVE impact on the reach of your content.
Here’s one way to do it.
Schedule your next 7 emails to go out on different days of the week. For each email, break your subscribers into 4 identical groups and send to each group at a different time of the day.
This will give you a total of 28 different send times to compare against each other. If you have a smaller list, you might need to run this experiment several times in order to get statistically significant results, but what you should start to see is that certain days and times will consistently perform better than others.
By sending at these optimal times, you can significantly boost your open rates.
4. Delete Prospects that Never Open your Emails
Sometimes email subscribers just have to go. It’s hard to part with those emails you spent so much effort collecting but evidently they are not responding to your standard email campaigns. Cleanse your email list regularly as it will also help you improve deliverability. Gmail and Yahoo emails will pick up on this and send your email to their junk folder where nobody can see it, much less open it. And this makes a huge difference to your email open rates!
If you don’t want to get rid of them, split your audience and send them a very different kind of email. A farewell email. Help them move on or open your email to stay.
5. Deliverability is Key to Improve Your Email Open Rates: Resend To Unopens
This is the easiest strategy we’ll discuss today. Even when you do everything right, a lot of your emails will never even be seen.
Thanks to Gmail’s inbox categorization. A lot of emails now fall under the promos tab. There are some things you can do to try and get in the primary inbox, but that’s a bit too complicated for today’s post, so instead, I’m sharing a simple trick that anyone can use to instantly increase opens, often by an additional 25%.
Simply resend the email to anyone who didn’t open it up the first time. I like to wait around 3 days to resend, but you can experiment for yourself and see what happens.
One email is nice, but two could get the job done.
In the example above, the original email performed pretty well, so the resend was a bit less powerful than usual. But even if your list is as small as 5,000 subscribers, that additional 7% in total opens means nearly 400 more people are seeing your message.
6. Be Authentic: The Email Campaign Subscribers Look Forward to Opening
One of the first things people notice when signing up to a new email list is tone.
A lot of marketers and business owners nowadays are just running email marketing because they’ve been told to. They are following a template and trying to sell products. And while there is nothing wrong with that, it’s very, VERY obvious to your readers.
The most successful email marketing campaigns often come from the biggest personalities. When you sign up for their list, you aren’t introduced to a sales pitch. You are introduced to a personality.
You read personal stories about their background and experiences. You read about their fears and failures and ultimately, their successes.
Pretty soon, you feel like you know this person sending you these emails.
That’s the power of being personal.
And while I can’t teach you to have a personality, I can give you some pointers:
Start your emails with brief, relevant anecdotes
Use a conversational tone in your writing
Talk about real failures and successes that you and your customers have experienced
Always be relevant to your audience
Being personal is not hard, but it does require you to get out of “marketer mode” from time to time.
7. Authenticate your Email Sender: SPF, DKIM, DMARC
If your emails are not reaching the inbox of your subscribers then your email will never be opened. If you want to improve your email open rates, prove to the servers – particularly big corporation servers – and subscribers that it is really you who is sending out the emails.
Here’s what you’ll need to do to get your email authentication going.
Technically, a “bounce” is a visitor that looks at only one page, or a visitor that spends an embarrassingly short time on the page. Keep reading to find out how to reduce bounce rates.
A bounce is any visit for which the visitor only looks at one page and does not interact with it. This sounds truly unfair as someone may spend minutes on your blog post or landing page, and still be counted as a bounce.
A visitor bounces when they don’t find anything close to what they were looking for when they visit your site. Either you’re attracting the wrong visitors or you don’t know why they are visiting.
Bounce is the most extreme form of conversion problem. High bounce rates are an indication that you are throwing good marketing dollars down the tubes. Whatever you’re spending to get traffic to your site is being wasted.
How to Reduce Bounce Rates or the heartbreak of “bounce”
Boing!
That’s the sound of someone finding your site, but not finding what they wanted ON your site.
Boing!
That’s the sound of website content that doesn’t match your marketing.
Boing!
That’s the sound of a website that talks about the company instead of the visitors’ problems.
Bounces Aren’t Helpful to Businesses
What are some strategies to reduce bounce rate?
This is a common question, and requires an understanding of the definitions of bounce rate.
The bounce rate is a bit slippery and requires some examination. The intention of measuring the bounce rate is to figure out how many of your visitors are leaving almost immediately after arriving at your site. This metric provides for a lot of error in interpretation.
“A high bounce rate means your site is crappy.”
This is rarely the case. A more accurate explanation is that your site doesn’t look the way your visitors expect it to look. Understanding what your visitors expect is the way to reduce bounce rates.
Instead, there are usually some more valid reasons for your high bounce rate. Here are the things digital marketing and conversion experts examine when confronted with uncomfortably high bounce rates.
1. You’re measuring it wrong
How you measure your bounce rate can give you very different insights. For example, blogs often have high bounce rates. Does this mean that visitors don’t like the blog?
Many analytics packages measure a bounce as a visit, or session, that includes only one page on your site. Visitors who take the time to read an entire article would be considered a “bounce” if they then left, even though they are clearly engaged.
We set a timer for our blog traffic, so that any visitor who sticks around for 15 seconds or more is not considered a bounce. You can set a timer to the amount of time you consider appropriate.
2. How to Reduce Bounce Rates: Diagnose Technical Difficulties
We are fond of saying that you don’t have one website, you have ten or twenty or thirty. Each device, each browser, each screen-size delivers a different experience to the visitor. If your website is broken on one of the devices popular with your visitors, you will see a bump in overall bounce rate.
If your pages load slowly, especially on mobile devices, you can expect a higher bounce rate.
Broken internal links and 404 pages are also cause for bounce.
If your page breaks out in a chorus of Also Sprach Zarathustra when the page loads, you may enjoy a higher bounce rate.
How to diagnose device-related technical problems
Your analytics package will track the kind of device your visitors are coming on.
Is there a problem with this site when viewed with the Safari (in app) browser?
The Google Analytics report Audience > Technology > Browser & OS shows that there may be a technical issue with Safari visitors coming from within an app. This may also reflect visitors coming from mobile ads, and they may simply be lower quality. See below.
With Google Analytics Audience > Mobile > Devices report, we see mobile devices specifically. The Apple iPhone has an above-average bounce rate, and we should probably do some testing there, especially since it’s the bulk of our mobile traffic.
With an above average bounce rate, visitors on an Apple iPhone may be seeing a technical problem.
3. Good Traffic Quality Helps Reduce Bounce Rates
If you are getting the wrong visitors, you will have a high bounce rate.
Remember StumbleUpon? Getting your site featured on the internet discovery site often meant a flood of new visitors to your site… and a crash in your conversion rate. Stumble traffic was not qualified, they were just curious.
Your bounce rate is a great measure of the quality of your traffic. Low quality traffic bounces because:
The search engine showed them the wrong link or a broken link. Do you know how many visitors used to come to our site looking for a “conversion rate” for Russian Rubles to Malaysian Ringletts?!
User intent. The visitors aren’t ready to buy. They were in a different part of the purchase process. Visitors coming from Social Media ads have notoriously low conversion rates. They weren’t looking, they were just surfing your product pages.
We take a closer look at the source of traffic to diagnose a traffic quality problem using Google Analytics Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels report.
Direct is one of our biggest traffic sources and brings in one of the two highest bounce rates.
Here we can see that traffic coming from social media and those visitors coming “Direct-ly” have a high bounce rate.
If you are driving a lot of visitors to your home page, you may want to consider presenting them with links to more relevant content. As Tim Ash says, “The job of the home page is to get people off of the home page.” He didn’t mean by bouncing.
With regard to social media, we may have a problem with broken promises.
4. Broken Promises Lead to Conversion Problems
Do your entry pages consider the source of visits?
If your traffic is clicking on an ad that promises 20% off on a specific propane grill, and they’re directed to your home page, you’ve broken a promise.
You might think that they will search your site for the deal. You might even think they’ll search your home page for the deal. You’re wrong. Many will jump.
Every ad, every email invitation, every referral link is a promise you make to your visitor. If they don’t come to a page that lives up to the promise, they are likely to bounce.
Does the headline on the page match the offer in the ad?
Does the product in the email appear after the click?
Are your calls to action in alignment with the landing page?
Are the colors and design consistent across media?
This Ad takes the visitors to a page that is almost designed to disappoint.
Looking at your ads on a page-by-page basis is necessary to diagnose and correct this kind of bounce rate problem.
5. Vague Value Propositions don’t help reduce bounce rates
Ultimately, if you’re not communicating your value proposition to your visitors clearly, you are going to enjoy a monstrous bounce rate.
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Your value proposition typically does not address your company or your products. It should be targeted at your visitor, why they are there, and why they should stick around.
Each page has its own value proposition. Your business may have a powerful value proposition, but each page should stand on its own.
A contact page should talk about what will happen after you complete the form. Who will contact you? How long will it take? Will they try to sell you something?
A landing page should clearly state that you are in the right place and provide reasons for you to stay and read on.
A home page should help you find your way into the site. Most home pages are treated like highway billboards. No wonder people just drive on by.
6. Finally, Is Your Stubborn Bounce Rate Mocking You? [AUDIO]
Most of us, at one time or another, have not only been frustrated with our bounce rate, but completely puzzled about what to do about it.
In this podcast, I will guide you toward a more accurate bounce rate. I will walk you through the steps to use The Timer Listener to time the visit duration of each of your visitors and get those percentages down where they belong.
Subscribe to Podcast
Ultimately, we don’t want to reduce our bounce rate. We want to improve our conversion rate by bringing the right traffic, to the right page, with the right message, and avoid technical issues that get in the way.
For many new and even established businesses, however, the problem is less about conversion and more about getting people to your website in the first place. You need a consistent means to drive targeted traffic to your store.
To help solve this problem, we’re highlighting the 3 most effective eCommerce marketing strategies to drive traffic to your online store. Of course, to boost sales, you need to convert these visitors into customers. Here are a few articles you might find useful to help you with your conversion rate optimization efforts.
The top 3 components that ultimately sway consumers into purchasing are: Price, Shipping cost and delivery speed, and Discount offers. Statistically, 3 out of every five shoppers are likely to abandon a shopping cart because of shipping costs.
Strategy #1: Content Marketing.
Strategy #2: Search Engine Optimization / SEO.
Strategy #3: Paid Advertising on social media and Google Ads.
Trying to capture your share of holiday shoppers but think it’s too late? Get inspired with these last minute Holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce.
Attention is scarce and many brands are trying to vye for it. Most big brands start thinking about their holiday marketing ideas in March. Yes, you read it right.
But if you haven’t done so, feel free to steal some of these last minute holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce. We also have a chapter on how to prepare holiday marketing campaigns for “March Madness” at the end of the article.
7 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce Stores to Quickly Boost Sales
Retail season is upon us. Surprise!
Come again?! Yes it’s true. Between the months of November and late December, many businesses who generate significant profit online will experience an increase in traffic and (hopefully) sales.
How do you know if your website is fully prepared to take advantage of the holiday rush? Instead of Santa Claus loading up his sleigh with merchandise from your warehouse, you could see an increase in shopping cart abandonment, low sales, and a whole lot of tears in your eggnog.
Most online businesses generate the majority of the year’s profit during the holiday season. And this year, digital spending is set to high with online holiday sales to surge 25-35%. This can make ecommerce sites a little nervous. Business managers get conservative, locking down the site and taking no risks for months before the blessed start of the shopping season.
They seem to be just waiting until the season is over with their eyes closed, praying to the retail gods that things will go well.
Table of Contents
Don’t be that guy this year. Pick the right strategies with the perfect amount of holiday spirit to optimize in time for the retail season. Here’s how some of the top online retailers prepare for the holiday rush. These are high-stakes, low risk Holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce stores that you can put in place at the last minute.
1. Holiday Marketing Idea: Don’t Jump Into A Total Site Redesign
Many medium and small business owners think they have to redesign their website with a holiday theme. The fact of the matter is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” What you think is broken is often perfect to your visitors.
Instead, enhance what’s already been working on your website. A stepwise website redesign can deliver additional revenue quicker and avoid a disastrous site relaunch.
Many business websites have to change for their holiday campaign, but you don’t redesign with each holiday.
Website Redesign is like Holiday Decorations
When you are pretty busy, other parts of our lives suffer. In my case, it was decorating for the Christmas Season.
And in an unexpected way, this relates to your website.
I found myself with Christmas getting near and my Halloween decorations were still up. Before you laugh, isn’t this the same way you feel about your website? It’s needed a redesign for a while, but other priorities keep getting in the way.
That’s exactly how I felt.
There is little that can be done with Halloween decorations when preparing for Christmas… or is there?
This is not a traditional Christmas image.
But, since I was short on redecorating resources, I decided to redesign my decorations the way I would redesign a website: a little at a time.
I used small steps in my decoration redesign. I found some Christmas doll sweaters to put on my skeletons. Here’s the result.
This may seem a disturbing choice for Christmas decoration, but what does the data say? The Tim Burton approach worked well for holiday decor.
Rather than taking down the skeletons and spending money on new decorations, I took a more creative approach. I added a special twist of my own to the decor. When my 17-year old daughter and her friends came by the house, I received positive reviews and praise. Remember, the opinion of your visitor matters the most.
It’s unexpected, unique and didn’t require a decoration redesign. This is the same approach we recommend for your website.
You may think your site needs a re-do. You may feel it’s dated, familiar, or too old.
As we like to say in the business, “Your opinion doesn’t matter.”
It’s the opinion of your visitors that matters, and they may not see your site with as critical an eye as you. They may even love it as it is.
What are the Right Reasons to Redesign your Online Store?
There are two really good reasons for a site redesign:
Your brand is changing completely.
Your site is not maintainable and needs a new foundation.
If you aren’t facing one of these two situations, consider a stepwise redesign.
We’ve been able to modify a site completely using testing tools before the business committed to the redesign.
We were able to test a complete redesign for this ecommerce site before committing it to code.
We found with this test that the redesign would not be expected to have a negative effect on revenue. Perfect last minute Holiday marketing idea for your online shop.
Test the navigation design.
Test a revised value proposition on your home page.
Test a new layout for each of your important pages.
Test a new checkout process.
Test a new ecommerce category page layout.
Test a new mobile layout.
Piece by piece, you’ll learn what improves your bottom line and what doesn’t. We call this data-driven creative.
Faster Results than a Full Website Redesign
Doesn’t this testing process take more time than a redesign?
We’ve accompanied several clients through redesign. A website is a complicated piece of software. We’ve rarely seen a redesign finished in less than twice the time predicted.
So, no, our approach is faster.
And, as you find wins, you get to enjoy higher conversion rates, higher revenue and more leads as the ecommerce site is redesigned.
Enjoy Your Holidays and Your Redesign
Don’t take our word for it. Author and optimizer Rich Page cited a Hubspot study that found one third of companies who implemented a redesign were unhappy with the results.
This doesn’t have to be you.
Having the resources to make your website a better place for your visitors is a great advantage over your competition. Let the competition spend months on one big shot.
Meanwhile, you can learn what your visitors want and deliver more of it time after time, until you own a site that the competition will have trouble keeping up with. Merry Christmas!
Our conversion-centered website redesign method guarantees results in weeks, not months. Jump on a call with the Conversion Scientists and get started on the road to website redesign success.
2. Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Idea: Identify Where Your Conversions are Coming From
We work with many ecommerce companies, from high-end jewelry and gloves to furniture sales. Our job is to analyze this behavior and data to best optimize your online business. So, we’ll share a little secret that can be easily implemented to generate last minute holiday marketing ideas for your ecommerce business.
The Channel Report in Google Analytics helps us locate streamlined conversions and where clients see significant sales by traffic source. With the Overview section, you can create an Advanced Segment to locate which are the specific sources of your visitors and how those visitors navigate your online store to become a customer.
Let’s say we want to focus on our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn social efforts. Here’s how we set up one advanced segments:
This is how we traditionally set up segments in Google Analytics to analyze site conversions better.
Now that you know where your conversions originate, you need to understand what components on your site help with these conversions.
If we want to see which landing pages converted best, we would create an Advanced Segment that highlights our goal URL. Perhaps your home page needs to be better optimized. Maybe you could cut back on ads to landing pages that deliver unfavorable results.
We can also gather data on which devices lead to more conversions, whether these are new or returning visitors, and how many sessions each channel produces. It’s important to understand the type of traffic that comes to your site, how visitors navigate through your site, and which features deliver the most conversions. This data will help you better craft your Holiday ecommerce strategy.
3. Boost Holiday Sales: Lay Out Your Conversion Roadmap and Retargeting Ads
One reader sent us this story:
I was once asked to be a groomsman for my best friend’s wedding. Great, I thought. Bachelor parties, booze, and a whole lot of money down the toilet. We recently had a fitting at The Men’s Warehouse. Look at us! Aren’t we a great bunch of guys?
While getting fitted for tuxes for our friend’s wedding, we decided not to rent shoes.
After all was said and done, we decided to not to rent shoes for $20. Think about it: that’s almost the price of half a decent shoe. Since most guys can use a good new pair of shoes, we decided to check out several online shoe stores to find the right style and avoid another brutal trip to the mall. Let’s be real, no one enjoys shopping with six other dudes that have absolutely no sense of style.
We scoured the web and came upon a pair of great looking shoes on Nordstrom.com, but we said no to purchasing. They were just too expensive.
The retail giant, however, was kind enough to fill my Facebook newsfeed with wonderful retargeting ads. Thanks a lot for the added temptation.
After leaving Nordstrom.com without purchasing an item, I was retargeted on Facebook.
Did I mention that we were shopping for a “wingtip” style shoe. This fact wasn’t lost to Nordstrom. They tracked my shopping activity and knew what I was looking for.
Since my initial search on their website just didn’t ring up a sale, they retargeted me with a similar wingtip shoe that was significantly marked down in price. I clicked on the ad that took me directly to a well crafted landing page.
Nordstrom knew I was looking for a wingtip style shoe and have even recommended several pairs that are more affordable.
Had this shoe been in the wedding party’s price range, we would have definitely become customers. Not only did it fit the overall wedding’s motif but it was a killer shoe. It was also discounted, a big plus.
Nordstrom took it one step further.
Nordstrom included a “People Also Viewed” section to the right of this page, listing two additional wingtip style shoes in a more affordable price range.
Well done guys, well done. Unfortunately for Nordstrom we were still too cheap to buy, but it was still a solid effort.
Once you’ve segmented your visitors, analyze their behavior. Did they convert? Which items did they purchase? What was their overall spend?
By knowing these key statistics, you can craft better retargeting ads and email offers that resonate with their buying habits.
Nordstrom.com knows their stuff. What kind of ads will you be showing site visitors, customers, or shoppers who abandoned their cart?
Don’t let sales slip on by. How can you turn lost opportunities into revenue this holiday season?
4. Not so Last Minute Holiday Marketing Idea: High Converting Social Media Giveaway Campaigns
You need some ammunition for the Holiday retail season that brings in new customers and sales. Early fall is a great time for executing high converting lead generating campaigns. We’re talking social media giveaways, contests, and special offers. Those that build nice email lists for future email blasts.
You can still implement these campaigns during the holidays and use the email lists for promotional sales all year round. At the very least, you will get some interested visitors.
Let’s take another look at our friends at Nordstrom.com.
I noticed they were having a special giveaway on their site. It didn’t look obnoxious like some online giveaways, and I was intrigued by the red letters at the top left corner of the site that said “Want a $1,000 Gift Card?” YES. I DO. So I clicked on it.
Click the red letters! Win money.
Once I read the official rules, I was taken to an additional landing page to sign up for the giveaway.
Keep your giveaways simple. Too many rules or procedures turn people away.
This contest has a very particular call-to-action (CTA): write a review for one of their products you’ve purchased. Once entered, I was sent an email with a CTA to continue shopping.
Nordstrom is using a loophole (the purchase was made before the sweepstakes began) to bypass U.S. regulations that state you have to provide a way to enter the giveaway without requiring a purchase. So, be careful when crafting the rules for campaigns like this one. Do not get into legal trouble.
Be creative with your giveaways. Don’t make the contest too complicated, and always offer an incentive to those who enter, like a special coupon filled with holiday cheer. They are not likely to win, but you will, especially since you were able to get their email address for later.
Again, you want your email list to be as fat as possible come next holiday season, especially if you find that your list converts higher than your site traffic.
5. Structure Your Email Blast With Offers that will Increase your Holiday Sales
Dial up the value on your email blasts for the holidays. People who give you their email address are inviting you to their already very full inbox, so make the most of it. The offers below can translate into high converting email marketing campaigns.
Promote a New Arrival
Some shoppers love to splurge on the latest and greatest, especially during the holidays. Let them know about this at the top of your email or include it in the subject line.
Local Austin jeweler Kendra Scott has a unique approach to their email blasts. In this email we see the new arrival promo both on the email preview and the main message.
This is an email promo for Kendra Scott’s new Mystic Bazaar collection.
Suggest a Bestseller as the Perfect Holiday Gift
You know this product will sell with or without a marked down price. You can sell this product with your eyes closed, so why not include it in the email?
CountryOutfitter.com knows their boots sell. Each week they include a different style of boot in their email blasts.
Theme Your Emails to Upsell or Cross Sell
Furniture salesmen increase their commissions by including add-ons that compliment the purchase, from furniture displays to the final sales pitch.
“Would you also like some table lamps, a rug, and perhaps this painting of a naked man to compliment your one-of-a-kind love seat from Romania?”
Someone willing to drop a small (or medium) fortune on a couch is likely to be willing to drop even more to make sure the couch isn’t sitting in an empty living room – or worse, a living room where the other decor doesn’t compliment the couch. That’s where the money comes from.
Here’s a great example of how one online retailer themes their email blasts similarly to furniture store displays. This particular campaign was all about skulls.
Holiday themed emails to cross sell and upsell.
And you can’t buy a skull sweater without getting the matching purse and mug. Do you really want to be the fool with the skull sweater drinking out a cat mug and carrying a hobo bag? Absolutely not.
You must purchase the matching accessories!
Even better, every item in this email is 20% off. HotTopic, eat your heart out.
Offer Incentives to Increase Cart Size: A Coupon Code or Free Shipping
Adding a coupon code or a free shipping incentive (like “get $50 off a purchase of $100 or more” or “free shipping when you spend $50”) will help visitors spend a specific amount of money or help them purchase an item that is designed to be a quick money maker.
CountryOutfitter.com includes a free pair of flip flops with the purchase of $75 or more.
Be Newsworthy: Leverage off of a Current Story
Adding a brand related news story to an email blast can help drive serious traffic. Here’s how a competitor of CountryOutfitter.com’s email blast looked like the day Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton announced their divorce.
The divorce announcement in their email subject line, along with a photo of the couple at the top of the email. A great way to increase open rates and click through rates.
Miranda Lambert & Blake Shelton divorce, but Country Fashion retailers are making money.
This email was more than just the Country Music story of the day. When visitors opened the breaking news email, they noticed this retailer offered free shipping for all orders $75 or more.
Below the breaking news image was a “Shop Now” image directing traffic to a product page. Although this traffic may not be interested in shopping and would much rather read up on Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton, you can still segment this surge in traffic for retargeting ads (remember the Nordstrom.com example?) to country music lovers.
6. Time is of the Essence: Give Shoppers an Incentive to Buy Now
Set an expiration date to your coupons, create limited time offers, or activate that retargeting ad that will make visitors come back and hopefully turn into buyers.
One of the most interesting timed offers was a feature on RebelCircus.com. At the top of the site, there was a ticker that gave shoppers exactly one hour to make a purchase to take advantage of a discount coupon.
You’ve got one hour to make a purchase! The agony.
When I returned to the site less than an hour later, the clock was still ticking. They definitely get a thumbs up for creating a sense of urgency when shopping.
Can a dog lover resist this timed offer as a holiday gift? Truly great holiday marketing campaign.
7. Final Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce: Analyze your Data and Prep For Next Year
This can be the fun part, or the not so fun part, depending on how the season went. Gather your data from Google Analytics. Dissect the info and highlight the pros and cons of your online retail marketing campaigns. Where did you see more conversions, email signups, and social media engagement, and how did this affect your overall strategy?
Your marketing plan should always continue to change and refine itself over the seasons. Your approach this year could be different from next year’s. But when you just can’t get the answers right, or no longer have the time to optimize give Conversion Sciences a call. We’d be happy to bring good tidings of joy to your business this Holiday Season.
Ecommerce March Madness: Get your Holiday Marketing Ideas Ready
Every March, the annual college basketball tournament inspires basketball binge-watching behavior known by most as “March Madness”.
The other kind of March madness is the period of time in which ecommerce companies begin to think about the holiday shopping season again.
“Didn’t we just finish the holidays?” they ask. Yet, they remember the last minute scrambling they had to do the previous year to come up with high converting Holiday marketing ideas.
It’s easy to ignore the holiday shopping season. November seems so far away. But the Holidays are about ecommerce upsets, when the little guy can out-sell the big guy.
Upsets don’t just happen. You have to prepare for them. If you haven’t done so yet, feel free to steal some of these last minute holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce.
Time to Start Thinking About the Holiday Season: Preparation Meets Inspiration
The mental and physical preparation that goes into engineering your own upset takes time. The summer is your off-season. How will you train?
New products
New offers
More traffic
Crank up the Conversion Rate
The products and offers are the picking, shooting and dribbling fundamentals. These require a honed knowledge of game fundamentals.
Driving traffic is like selling tickets. A winning season means more fans. Ultimately, you don’t have control of prices, game times and TV schedules. As an ecommerce site, you invest in traffic knowing that it can change at any time (and probably has). Also, don’t forget to check out these effective eCommerce Marketing Strategies, they might inspire you.
Working on the conversion rate is where it all comes together. This is building strength and endurance for the team.
With website optimization, as the revenue you generate from every visitor goes up, your site improves. You own it. The goal is to generate more sales from the same traffic. Make your ad spend count.
If you increase your conversion rate by 7% a month, you will have doubled your conversion rate within a year. That’s a serious upset to your competitors.
It’s time to work on your fundamentals. We are the drill coaches that get you there. Have a conversation with a Conversion Scientist and let us show you how you can move into brackets you never thought you’d be playing in.
Shopping cart abandonment is the most heartbreaking of conversion killers. it is also a fertile place to increase the performance of your website.
Shopping cart abandonment is like cholesterol: There is a good kind and a bad kind. For each there is a strategy for reducing the impact of abandonment on your business.
Good abandoners leave because they aren’t done with their shopping process.
Bad abandoners leave because you surprised them or didn’t provide the information they were looking for.
But it’s 2020, and the number of smartphone dependent shoppers has grown considerably. Thus, we will add one more layer of complexity to the shopping cart abandonment recovery strategy: desktop vs mobile visitors. Why it happens and what to do about it.
Cart Abandonment Rate Formula
The shopping cart abandonment rate formula is quite an easy Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to calculate. Divide the total number of completed purchases by the number of shopping carts created within the same period. Subtract the resulting number from one and multiply by 100 to get the abandonment rate percentage.
Definitely not a bad shopping cart abandonment rate. Only 33 out of 100 customers are leaving their carts behind. Do you experience high add to cart but low conversion rates? Keep reading.
Top 7 Cart Conversion Optimization Solutions to Eliminate the Causes of Cart Abandonment.
The difference between mobile and desktop visitors
“A growing share of Americans now use smartphones as their primary means of online access at home. Today roughly one-in-five American adults are “smartphone-only” internet users – meaning they own a smartphone, but do not have traditional home broadband service.”
Source: Surveys conducted 2013-2019. Data for each year based on a pooled analysis of all surveys containing broadband and smartphone questions fielded during that year.
Traditionally, the desktop computer is a research tool and the smartphone is a dopamine delivery system.
These are two very different uses of internet attached computers.
For someone on a desktop, adding your product to their cart is the end of a journey. For the mobile user, the add to cart is to see how it will feel.
For a growing segment of our population, this is changing. For more and more people, the smartphone is their only source for communication, research, and dopamine. Reliance on smartphones for online access is especially common among younger adults, non-whites and lower-income Americans.
For this reason, we are not going to assume that most mobile visitors are “just shopping.” We are going to look at the causes of checkout abandonment and provide a playbook for eliminating them.
There are also consumers who only buy your products on desktop computers. They would not even think to pick up their phone and buy what you sell.
Let’s dive into how to reduce shopping cart abandonment and improve conversions.
Why do Shoppers Abandon the Checkout Process?
Just as science has identified “good cholesterol” and “bad cholesterol,” there are “good” and “bad” abandoners among your website’s visitors.
The Good Abandoners
Good abandoners leave you as part of their process. They are walking all the way to the edge of buying, even though they are not ready to buy. They are imagining purchasing from you. Yet, they fully intend to continue comparing your offering to alternatives when they start the checkout process.
And they may be hoping you’ll hang on to their selections for when they return. Wish lists and persistent shopping carts are a big help to these abandoners. More on that later.
The challenge is to get them to come back and buy when they are done. We cover some of the strategies for retargeting this visitor later on this article.
The Bad Abandoners
Bad abandoners leave you because they didn’t like what they saw after they got started. These abandoners are bad for you because they are lost opportunities. They were going to buy, but you chased them away with your checkout process.
Your purchase process confounded them, introduced new fears, or asked them to do something they weren’t ready to do, like create an account. Many of these abandoners started the process simply because they didn’t have all the information they needed to make their decision.
This kind of abandonment can be treated by improving the checkout process and by using pricing and shipping strategies.
The five primary “drivers” of Desktop cart abandonment
According to Forrester Research’s report “Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment,” the five primary “drivers” of cart abandonment are:
Shipping and handling costs were too high. (Bad abandoners)
The shopper wasn’t ready to purchase the product. (Good abandoners)
The shopper wanted to compare prices on other sites. (Good abandoners)
Product price was higher than the shopper was willing to pay. (Bad abandoners)
The shopper wanted to save products in his cart for later consideration. (Good abandoners).
Let’s look at what causes bad abandons and then talk about encouraging actual purchases.
High shopping cart abandonment rates are conversion killers. But they are also a fertile place to increase your shop’s performance.
Understanding Mobile Abandonment
There are two kinds of abandoners: Those who were never going to buy and those who would have bought if only…
If only they could be sure their discount was applied.
If only they hadn’t been surprised by shipping.
If only the final price hadn’t been too high.
If only the form had been easier to enter their discount code.
If only there was somebody to talk to.
And there are some things that aren’t under your control, but are a particular problem for smartphone users…
If only my table hadn’t become available.
If only the movie hadn’t started.
If only my lunch hour had been longer.
The Impact of Distractions on Mobile Checkout
We have dedicated a whole article to maximizing mobile ecommerce checkout conversions. Take a look.
Top 7 Cart Conversion Optimization Solutions: How to Eliminate the Causes of Cart Abandonment
Consider the following tactics to optimize your online shop cart conversion rate. They may help you reduce or eliminate the causes of shopping cart abandonment.
1. Free Shipping/Free Return Shipping
When a visitor is ready to take action, they instantly begin doubting the sanity of their decision. This is the time to reassure them. Your return policy and shipping offers are great ways to remove their doubts. Getting stuck with a product you don’t want is a real fear, no matter how inexpensive the purchase.
Shipping costs are not usually refunded. Even if you have a generous return policy, buyers can see this as a risk. If your profit margins allow for free shipping both ways, great. Otherwise, adjust your pricing strategy.
In a few words, you should tell them that buying from you is safe if this does not turn out to be a good purchase.
2. Lack of follow up actions after add-to-cart
What do you do when someone adds a product to the cart?
The typical ecommerce site takes the visitor to the Cart page. The problem with this approach is that it takes the visitor out of their shopping experience, maybe before they’ve finished buying.
The answer is typically a “Continue Shopping” button, that takes them to some part of the online retailer site.
By making the cart popup overlay larger, we increased conversions by 13% for TATSoul.
But, when a visitor has reached a product page, they are at the bottom of a rabbit hole. It may have involved a search, several category pages, and several product pages. They don’t want to start over.
To solve this problem, ecommerce sites have begun keeping them on the product page after they click Add to Cart, keeping their rabbit hole intact. However, if no visible acknowledgement is given, the visitor loses some of the satisfaction of their action. Or they may think the site is broken. Or they did something wrong.
Make sure that you give your potential buyers a clear signal that they’ve done something amazing. BJ Fogg recommends that you celebrate their action in some way. This should increase the likelihood that they will complete the purchase. These are two examples that signal to the visitor that they have done something amazing.
After the click to buy, Nike adds an overlay to the product page and shows a timed checkout link.
Nike hovers a Checkout overlay for a few seconds leaving the shopper in the same product page unless they click the “View Bag” or the “Checkout” button.
Or this one from Forever21 that tells their potential buyers they have done something amazing. Complimenting their taste, reiterating their offer to increase cart size (coupon code) and showing them product suggestions.
After showing the same overlay to the potential buyer, Forever 21 goes one step further.
3. Unsaved Carts
If I come back to the site, I expect my cart to still be there. Saving the visitor’s cart is an important part of abandoned cart remarketing strategies, in which an email or an ad brings them back to their selections.
Save the cart – by implementing a perpetual shopping cart – and find ways to encourage visitors to return.
4. Offer Live Support, Loyalty Programs
Your visitors will buy from you if you treat them well. They will buy again and again. Your willingness to be there for them both before and after the sale will determine their long-term value and your success.
The cart is a great place to show them you care. Have someone available on the phone or in a chat to answer their last minute questions. Let them know that this purchase is part of a reward program that shows you appreciate them.
There is an entire segment of your visitors that care about their relationship with you. Be a good relationship partner.
5. Exit Intent Offers
Remind them about the promotion you are currently offering just before they leave. Stop abandonment on its tracks. On Exit intent pop ups could help you with abandoned shopping bag recovery. Check out these 7 Best Practices for Using Exit-Intent Popovers.
7. Ask your customers why they are leaving their cart behind
There are many tools to choose from that enable you to set up a short visitor survey to simply ask why they are leaving without checking out. This is a great use of exit-intent overlays. These can be delivered using Justuno, OptinMonster, Optimonk and other tools.
Cart Abandonment Solutions
Ok. We eliminated the causes but that doesn’t completely get rid of the problem. There will still be abandoners.
The most popular cart abandonment solution is the abandoned cart email or email recovery campaign. A great way to re-engage if you were able to get your prospective customer to give you their email. We promise to bring you a new article with the best abandoned cart emails cart and abandonment email examples soon.
ASOS example of abandoned cart email for their email recovery campaign, the most popular cart abandonment solution.
To help you on your quest to lower your shop’s abandonment rate, we will also include examples of abandoned cart text messages, subject lines and email sequence.
If they don’t respond to your emails, not everything is lost. You can always implement an ad retargeting campaign. There are tools that even offer cross-device and cross-platform compatibility and mobile retargeting.
What is a Good Abandonment Recovery Rate?
According to the Baymard Institute, the average abandonment rate on online shoppers is 69.57%. In plain terms, 695 people out of 1,000 are abandoning their carts. A good abandonment recovery rate will be between 10% and 30% of revenue.
If you’d like to boost your website’s bottom line and gently nudge your customers through the checkout process, book a free site review with us.
Adwords is not converting and you feel like you may be wasting your money. Try these four conversion optimization tricks that are guaranteed to increase your Google ads conversion rates.
If Google Ads (previously “Adwords”) is not converting, you may feel like you are wasting your money. And you are right. One must invest in ad campaigns that convert. Your ad spend paired with a higher conversion rate means more sales, more leads or more subscriptions.
Whether your campaign’s cost-per-lead is too high, or your quality scores are stuck toward the bottom, these four conversion optimization tricks may bring your campaigns back to life. Give them a try.
Google Ads Optimization Trick #1: Take control of your landing page experience and ROI
You put a lot of effort crafting the perfect Google ad. People are clicking through to learn more about your offer. And unfortunately, your conversion rate is stinkingly low.
To avoid this, you must take control of your landing page experience and your ROI. Otherwise, your cost per conversion will skyrocket. And you want more leads, signups and sales, right? Let’s take a look at a few simple and easy ways to see if this could be your problem or barrier to conversion.
Improving your landing page conversion rate will lower your customer acquisition costs.
Make sure your landing page content is in alignment with your offer
This is one of the most common mistakes businesses make when it comes to Google Ad campaigns. You may be missing out on sales if your ad copy advertises a specific item on your ecommerce website, and then send clicks to a category page where the featured item is hard to find.
The visitor or prospective customer has to make an effort to find what they clicked on. Make it EASY for them to get what they came for. Your offer.
The content of your ad tells you what a visitor expects to find after clicking. Give the user what they want right away. You can tell if your landing page isn’t satisfactory to your visitors by looking at click-map and scroll map reports. These conversion tracking reports are available from a number of vendors such as CrazyEgg and Hotjar. The example below belongs to one of our clients, the Turtle Bay Golf Resort in Oahu, Hawaii.
If visitors aren’t scrolling down your landing page, it may not be a good match for your ad.
Why wouldn’t visitors to a golf resort landing page be interested in golf? Maybe their influential spouses don’t play.
Adwords Conversion Trick #2: Improve Click-to-Call Conversions for Mobile Google Ads
Google research states that 70% of mobile searchers use the click to call feature. Moreover, 47% of those searching on mobile say that if a business doesn’t have a phone number associated with their search results, they’re more likely to explore other brands.
There is no need for landing pages when you use Adwords Call extensions. Users see your ad, and click to call immediately. To find success with click-to-call conversions, you’re going to need stellar messaging stuffed into thirty characters or less on your headlines. Try some of these ideas to boost your click-to-call rate:
Set up call reporting and you’ll be able to see call durations, start and end time, area code, and whether the call was connected.
It’s important to know which ads are delivering those calls. Make sure you’re tracking calls on your back end to know what’s working and what’s being wasted.
Google Ads CRO Trick #3: Create More Landing Pages to Match Ad Offers
This advice goes hand in hand with our first recommendation. We cannot emphasize this enough. If you happen to have different offers, creating different landing pages that cater to that searchers’ intent is a must.
You may argue that you have a single offer. And that it’s simple enough a single landing page will do.
When a landing page matches the offer in an ad, we call this “keeping the promise” made in the ad. If your ad promotes the quality of your products, your landing page should be focused on quality. If your ad features a discount, your landing page should talk about discounts and savings.
Here’s an example of a client’s landing page that was changed to focus on a discount-oriented ad with great success.
A one-size-fits-all landing page approach may be driving your cost-per-acquisition through the roof.
Get Google Ads Converting Trick #4: End High Click-rate but Low Conversion-rate Ads. Look beyond the Click.
What’s your most important key performance indicator? Clicks? Conversions? ROAS? ROI?
Look beyond the click. If an ad isn’t converting but it’s getting lots of clicks, the ad may be misleading. Your landing page call to action may be too much of an ask.
Review your conversion strategy. Question every step.
Are you trying to move them down your conversion funnel too soon and too fast? Are you giving them enough reassurances? Information?
Or maybe you are targeting the wrong audience.
Make sure to check out your “Search Terms” report, too. If your ads are triggered by irrelevant search terms, you never had a chance to begin with.
Create ads and ad groups with highly targeted keywords, a solid list of negative keywords to match your relevant search queries.
In this client’s example, an intimidating form was replaced with a step-by-step quiz style form. The results were tremendous: a whooping 61% increase in conversion rate.
Google ads not converting? You can help a visitor get through a form one step at a time.
One Final Recommendation when Adwords is not Converting: Use ad extensions
Even though you don’t get to force Google to show ad extension information, leveraging this Adwords feature is a smart way to boost conversions. If shown, they can help you weed out bad prospects, incentivize relevant searchers to click and even guide them to take the best action or land on a higher converting landing page.
Need help boosting conversions from your advertising efforts?
It takes a team to optimize your ads. You can have a team of experts do the job for you for less than the cost even one employee… if you can find them.
Our clients have seen increases of up to a 40% in leads and appointments from their paid search and social ads campaigns after we optimized their conversion rate.
Concerned with your mobile ecommerce checkout conversion rates? Discover how to maximize these seemingly fickle mobile visitors.
There are approximately 50 million mobile-only users in the US alone. That’s roughly one in five American adults who are “smartphone-only” internet users.
If all they have is a smartphone that’s what they will use to shop from someone. And that someone better be your ecommerce site. How? Maximizing mobile ecommerce checkout conversions. Here are some of the top strategies we use in our eCommerce Optimization Services to convert these mobile visitors into shoppers you may want to test on your online store.
And don’t miss out on our “bonus track” that shows you how to test your mobile checkout flow to boost conversions at the end of this article.
Gauge Mobile Ecommerce Checkout Success: the Add-to-Cart Rate
When we think about mobile ecommerce sites we tend to imagine small versions of our desktop sites. The screen is smaller. The images are smaller. The conversion rate is smaller.
Even as mobile traffic is eclipsing that of desktop and tablet visits, our mobile conversion rates remain low. We typically see mobile ecommerce conversion rates that are one-fourth to one-half that of desktop rates.
Mobile visitors are adding products to their carts. According to research the add-to-cart rate for smartphone users is only 25% lower than it is for desktop users.
When mobile visitors are adding products to their carts at higher rates than they complete checkout, we could say we have an abandonment problem.
Begin the Conversation on Maximizing Mobile Conversions
Just because a mobile buyer isn’t ready to checkout, you shouldn’t assume that you can’t begin a conversation with them. Offer to help them out in exchange for a first name and an email.
This tactic won’t be unfamiliar to most ecommerce sites.
Email me this cart
Save this cart
Get a discount in Facebook Messenger
Get a discount code
REI offers a “Save for Later” button in their cart. Clicking this takes the visitor to the account creation page. Nice save, REI.
REI offers a “Save for Later” option in their cart.
Asking Visitors to Create an Account: Do or Do Not?
Which happens first? A visitor trusts you enough to create an account before they buy, or they buy and that builds the trust they need to create an account?
The truth is that you have a segment of each of these visitors coming to your site. You need to understand which is larger.
For some visitors, asking them to create an account with you to buy is going to be too much. It exacerbates the fact that buying or entering information on a mobile device is more difficult and the buyer is often victim to distractions around them.
Having an account can be a liability. If customers have an account and forget their password, they they are likely to abandon their carts. You need to know the abandonment rate at the account creation step. This will tell you how big your problem is.
The good news is that there are ways to increase conversions for these mobile shoppers. Check out the following example from Victoria’s Secret. A smooth and simple transition from shopping checkout to account creation.
Victoria’s Secret offers a guest checkout.
Victoria’s Secret still asks the visitor to create a password after all information has been entered.
Always test account creation. The negative impact can be substantial, even taking into account future purchases of those who do create an account.
Mobile Ecommerce Checkout: Change the Order of Entry
When working with human beings, it is often surprising how changes that seem inconsequential can have a big impact. Changing the order of your cart is one of those things.
For example, look at Lowe’s mobile checkout. They ask for the credit card information before they ask for the buyer’s billing address.
Why on earth might this be better than asking for the billing or shipping address first like (almost) everyone else?
Who knows. It may require the buyer to dig out their credit card. That increases the sunk cost perception. At this point, they might as well finish entering the address — and anything else you ask.
Lowe’s asks for the credit card number before the billing address in their mobile checkout.
I can’t tell you that this will work for your audience, but it is certainly part of our playbook for maximizing mobile conversions.
Automatically applying discounts not only eliminates one more step on the mobile ecommerce checkout, but it will entice your customers to keep moving forward.
How to Offer Third-party Payment Options and Boost Mobile Conversions
If entering your name, address, credit card number is a pain on a mobile device, you would think that using third-party payment systems might be a boon for mobile ecommerce checkout. After all, these services have your address and multiple purchase options on file, options that include direct deductions from your bank account.
Nonetheless, we find that simply offering Paypal and Amazon often won’t improve mobile checkout completion rates as much as we would expect.
Part of the reason may be when these options are offered. If the option to pay with Paypal is made after the visitor has entered their billing address, then a big part of the reason to use Paypal — to avoid entering the address — is lost.
Etsy offers a Paypal payment option, but they do it after the billing address has been entered on the smartphone device.
Etsy offers the Paypal option only after the mobile visitor has entered the payment details.
REI, on the other hand, offers both Paypal and Venmo payment options, and does so early in the mobile checkout process. Note that this also removes the requirement that the visitor create an account.
REI offers PayPal and Venmo at sign-in.
You can explicitly position these payment methods as “Express Checkout”, “Fast Mobile Checkout”, or “Fastest on your phone”.
Magic Spoon leads with “Express Checkout” options on their mobile shopping cart.
Use Trust and Proof in your Mobile Ecommerce Checkout to Boost Sales
This is true for both big-screen checkout as well as mobile. Remind your customers that this transaction is safe and secure.
Yes, you have less screen space to deal with on a mobile device. Nonetheless, you should test the following elements in your checkout.
These elements should generally be non-clickable. Don’t take your visitor out of the buying process. If you need more space to express something like your return policy, use a modal dialog box that opens over the mobile checkout screens.
Return policy
Summarize your risk reversal strategy. This can include anti-spam policies.
Warby Parker reminds visitors of free shipping and returns near the “Place order” button.
Your value proposition
Offer a bulleted list of your key differentiators, such as free shipping, free training, free installation, fast service, years in business, etc.
Galeton reiterates their guarantee and return policy right below the Checkout button.
Galeton spells out their generous return policy right below the Checkout button on mobile phones.
Testimonials
Yes, you can use testimonials in mobile checkout to reinforce the sale.
Customer support rating
If you have high marks on your net promoter score, brag a little.
Certifications. Make sure your certifications are there in the checkout. An example includes Google Trusted Store.
Security badges. Remind them that this is a secure transaction.
REI uses a Norton security badge to express the security of their site.
Phone number. You can build trust by putting a phone number in your checkout and avoid losing a sale. Use the right call to action and you may save sales with phone calls. Even if few buyers use the phone number, it can add credibility. It says, “Yes, we’re here for you.”
REI may lose some of the benefit as they bury their phone number in the footer. Warby Parker, on the other hand, offers a variety of contact methods throughout their cart.
REI buries their phone number way down in the footer.
Warby Parker offers a number of ways to complete the transaction if the customer has doubts or prefers them. Discover how to increase mobile ecommerce checkout conversions.
Live Chat. Test this. We don’t yet have evidence that it can improve mobile ecommerce checkout completions, but it could save some abandoners.
Be careful how these kinds of tools render on smartphones.
Even a small Chat badge can get in the way of key information on a mobile device.
Optimize Mobile Checkout Element Placement: Experience a Lift in Conversions
With limited space, it’s important to decide where to test these elements on your shop’s mobile checkout. Here are some placement options for highest impact to experience a conversion boost.
Near call-to-action buttons
Test security badges, customer support ratings, and your return policy above or below buttons such as “Continue”, “Preview”, and “Complete Purchase”.
When a customer decides to buy, there is a natural desire to delay the decision before thumbing the button. We always want to “think about” our decisions involving money. You can counter this with an affirmation of the transaction.
When a mobile visitor is about to submit personal information to you, there is a natural hesitation. Giving you their email address, physical address, credit card number, or CVV number can feel intrusive.
This is another great place to inject risk reversal messages, testimonials, and a reminder of your value proposition.
In a “sticky” header or footer
Sticky elements are very important in a mobile interaction. One of the first things we address on a mobile site is the contents of the sticky elements.
The header or footer that is always on screen should probably change when the visitor enters the mobile shop checkout process. This is a great place to test trust builders.
Almost any of these elements can be placed in a header or footer. Don’t underestimate the number of things you can place in a sticky header or footer.
As a stand-alone sticky element
Elements such as security badges, certifications, and ratings can be individual elements that stay on screen. These are typically at the bottom. Be careful that these elements do not take the visitor away from the checkout process.
Can I Increase my Mobile Store Checkouts with Apps?
We see apps as a retention and loyalty tool. Apps do have advantages. Apps can provide a more controlled environment, such as making the phone vibrate when you purchase.
If your app provides a feature that can’t be duplicated online, you may consider promoting it on your site.
Warby Parker offers their app in a sticky footer featuring their “Virtual try-on” feature.
Word of Caution: In case you were wondering about an app effectiveness in acquiring new customers, we don’t have any experience that indicates this, even if the shoppers are familiar with the brand. Besides, an app requires two high-commitment conversions: one to install that app, and then one to buy.
In essence, an app becomes part of your offering, a part of a beloved product line. If you have a rabid tribe of enthusiastic customers, the app may be your best retention and repurchase strategy.
Bonus Track: How to Test and Develop your Mobile Checkout
Imagine that your website’s mobile version is strictly targeted at aliens, beings from another world. These beings have oversized thumbs. They live on a world near black hole, so time changes much more slowly. And their world is covered in volcanoes, so there are always distractions around them.
This pretty much sums up your mobile shoppers. They are VERY different from your desktop and tablet visitors.
As such, you should test your mobile ecommerce checkout separately. Letting it evolve independently from your desktop checkout as you learn more about your smartphone visitors.
You can create a different mobile checkout experience in several ways.
Modify your Responsive Web Template for small screens
Your developers will be able to add, remove, and modify elements based on the size of the screen being reported by your visitors’ browsers.
Use third party add-ons that target mobile
Ecommerce sites like Shopify offer plugins that can implement elements such as exit-overlays and sticky headers and footers.
Use Javascript and change things in the browser
There are a number of testing and personalization tools that will allow you to change mobile checkout elements in your visitors’ browsers. You can shape the mobile checkout experience in this way to maximize mobile conversions.
Live User Testing
Would you like to see just how difficult your mobile checkout process is for visitors? If so, we recommend virtually looking over your visitors shoulders.
We are fortunate to live in a golden age of marketing tools. Services like Validately and UserTesting will bring people to purchase something from your website on their smartphone, while recording and talking through their experience.
You will have at least one “palm-to-forehead” moment watching these videos.
And then you can make it easier for your mobile customers to go through your ecommerce checkout process.
In simple terms, conversion marketing is a group of tactics to encourage visitors to take a certain desired action. Let’s understand this concept a bit better and you will see why you need it NOW.
You’ve probably heard “conversion marketing” tossed around a lot , especially if you sell online via an ecommerce, subscription or a lead generation site. But, what is conversion marketing? How is it different or relates to conversion rates, conversion rate optimization, or cost-per-conversion — maybe even to the famous “content that converts” offered by many copywriters?
If only a single visitor converts, you don’t need more visitors. You need more conversions.
For many business owners and even for experienced digital marketers, it can be easy for all these terms to blur together. Let’s take a closer look at conversion marketing and how it can positively impact your online revenue?
What Is Conversion Marketing
Most online marketing strategies have the same goal: generating revenue. This revenue could be derived from sales, subscriptions or leads, depending on your product or service.
Whereas many marketers focus on gaining website traffic to increase revenues, conversion marketing works to make your existing traffic more valuable.
Why? Because conversion marketing is designed to draw value from each visit.
Conversion marketing aims to increase leads and sales by focusing on the visitor’s experience to persuade them to convert. This “conversion” could be any action or actions that you want a user to perform on your website. From making a purchase, to signing up for an email list, completing a form, subscribing or clicking a “call now” button. Every time a user takes that action, you’ve made a conversion.
Same traffic. More revenue.
Since the goal is to increase your conversion rate by moving a visitor closer to becoming a paying customer, you can see why conversion marketing or conversion rate optimization is crucial.
If you’re struggling to convert, you don’t need more visitors. You need more conversions.
This approach uses behavioral research, persuasion science, and data to determine how best to make your website a vehicle for success.
Understanding what your current and potential customers need is important in all aspects of marketing. But understanding how we can change the behavior of site visitors is of vital importance to conversion marketing. Whether it’s designing, writing, or developing creative website content, the focus is on getting more leads, increasing the number of transactions, increasing order value, etc.
The Key Reasons Why you Need Conversion Marketing right NOW
We just saw how conversion marketing, when properly implemented, can improve conversions and positively impact your profits. And if you are not focused on conversions and profits, what is the goal of your website?
If increasing conversions is not enough, then consider these reasons:
Looking for a conversion optimization marketing partner? We’ll help you build, measure and earn. Image via Unsplash.
Improve the Quality of your Conversions: Bigger shopping carts, returning customers, better quality leads, lower cart abandonment rates.
Don’t let your hard earned (or paid for) traffic go to waste. Make every visitor count. You vested time and money on your social media channels, paid ad campaigns and organic efforts. Convert each and every one of these prospects/opportunities.
Increase Profit Margins by lowering cost per acquisition.
Let Conversion Marketing Metrics be your alarm system. Quickly identify issues to discover and implement a solution.
Identify the low hanging fruit (where you will get the most bang for your buck) by measuring conversions or truly know your customer and leverage personalization strategies that convert.
Looking For a Conversion Marketing Partner?
Did this article get your juices flowing? Are you anxious to start boosting your online profits? We are just a phone call away.
Hiring your very own team of conversion optimization experts guarantees that you hit the ground running. Faster. Bigger. Better. And 100% unbiased.
How Conversion Marketing Drives Sales and Revenue Growth
One could argue that “impacting the bottom line” is the whole point of conversion optimization. The approach is powerful for ecommerce shops, and is used by subscription business models and lead generation sites to bring in more and better leads.
There are four major ways conversion marketing drives sales and revenue growth:
Let the data guide you
Your visitors are speaking to you, but you may not hear them. They are speaking with their visits, their clicks, their scrolls and other actions. They speak to you through web analytics.
Through research and analysis, you have a higher chance of creating effective online experiences. This means launching fewer duds and having a website that delivers what your visitors want. You’ll reduce your lead acquisition cost and increase the value of every visitor.
Get another chance to convert: Lead Nurturing & Repeat Customers
Studies show that nurturing existing subscribers, leads, and customers is five times more cost-effective than going after new ones. Whether your goal is to cross-sell, upsell, or bring leads back to the pipeline through remarketing, conversion marketing provides strategies to do just that.
Optimize for Your Audience(s)
Every customer is different — paid search versus organic visitors, new visitors, returning site visitors, desktop visitors, mobile — and these groups should not be treated the same. You can improve the conversion path for one group, only to annoy another. They can cancel each other out. With a conversion marketing approach, you gain detailed understanding of the specific users that come to your site and can optimize your marketing for each of them.
Quickly Fix What’s Not Working
The faster you learn where your marketing process falls short, the faster you can change it. Conversion marketing uses a variety of strategies to help you pinpoint barriers to conversion, whether it’s a confusing message, a clunky form or some other friction point.
Conversion Marketing Tactics
Lead generation and ecommerce businesses benefit from a range of optimization tactics. Here are some of our favorites.
Are you tired of arbitrary changes being suggested for your designs — ads, copy, layout — based solely on opinion. We talk about defending your design in part two of my conversation with Tom Niemeyer.
Tom Niemeyer and Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences
Let’s face it. Your design work is going to be evaluated by neophytes. Whether you work as part of an in-house team or in an agency, your best work is going to be judged by company executives who’ve never spent a day studying design, done any UX research, or even own a box of crayons.
The best of them will defer to your judgment. Until they don’t.
But these are the neophytes who write checks. They have not earned their red pen, but they paid for it.
Does it pay to stand as the Captain America for their prospects and customers? Or is it smarter to give them what they want?
Do data-driven designers get fired more often than designers with a good story?
Defending Your Designs
I’ve been in many meetings when our data clearly contradicts the decisions of a designer. I’m going to tell you the truth. We usually lose. That’s right, the whims of a designer override the science-driven, lab-coat wearing data of a Conversion Scientist.
I’ll also say this: most designers welcome the data, so this scenario is rare.
Basically, it boils down to the culture of the business.
“Once an organization becomes comfortable with risk, they almost immediately snap into reducing that risk.”
Can data help you defend your designs?
In part 2 of my conversation with designer Tom Niemeyer, we explore this question. And others.
“Design is really a negotiation,” says Tom. Let’s see what this means for you.
“The process we go through allows them to take more risks while reducing the potential cost, the potential downsides.”
We’d like to hear from you
At the time of this recording, most of us are not working from the office, not commuting. We’d like to hear from you.
What is your situation. How is the coronavirus and its financial fall out impacting your company, your work and your customers?
Shoot us an email at podcast@conversionsciences.com. We’ll discuss it in another episode.
How do you do performance-based web design without putting your creatives in a straight jacket? We asked a designer that has been put in that very situation.
Tom Niemeyer and Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences
A group of kids goes to visit a ranch. Behind the ranch house the land stretches uninterrupted to the horizon. The rancher suggests that the kids go out and play. If you tracked the paths of these naturally curious children, you’d find that they stayed close to the ranch house, not venturing far out onto the land. They would tend to remain in safe groups as they played.
The next summer, the kids visit the ranch again. This time, the rancher has built a fence to create a large back yard. Again, the rancher sends the children out to play. This time, their paths would be quite different. You would see them venturing out to the very edges of the yard, exploring in this smaller-but-manageable space. They would move more freely and play more independently.
Now, this parable is based on studies of rats. I’ve turned the data into a more relatable story.
Like the wide open land, the web offers an open expanse of design possibilities. If you believe the research and my parable of the ranch kids, you’ll agree that this may be a bad thing. The study of rats indicated that open spaces elevated anxiety in the rats, while the enclosed space reduced anxiety.
If you’re designing for the web, you are in an open space of possibility. This, according to the research, results in an anxiety response. There’s a whole lot more unknown out there, and every place feels dangerous.
Alternatively, if you fence yourself in, you actually increase the area of consideration. Anxiety is reduced, exploration is increased. But you also quickly find the boundaries.
I keep this study in mind, because I see data as a fence. It creates an enclosed space, a space that can encourage exploration, but it can also create the sense of limitation. Designers are a tough bunch. They want guidelines, but they hate the idea of limits.
This makes them seem like divas, difficult to please in any situation. So what is a data-driven marketer to do?
I decided to put a web designer on the spot.
How do you deal with designers who want guidance, but hate limitations? In other words, how do you introduce data into the design process without putting your creatives in a straight jacket?
I asked a designer. In fact, I asked a designer who we’ve been doing this to for over a year now.
Tom Niemeyer has been the designer-among-nerds here at Conversion Sciences. If there is any doubt that conversion optimization can be improved by a good sense of design, Tom has put it to rest for us.
For me the question is this: How close to the ranch house do you put the fence? This topic required two episodes. Listen to what he says in part one..
“Sometimes we’re running from our old Website more than running toward the new Website”
The three D’s of Web Design
The three “D”s that Tom talks about are fences.
Deadlines. Decision-makers. Desire paths. What are the primary limiters of your design process?
This is going to require some honesty on your part.
On a scale of one to five rate your current project.
One to five: The deadline is King.
One to five: The decision maker is the Queen.
One to five: The end-user is the one-eyed Jack.
How did you score? Most likely there are two that dominate. And this pattern shows up in all of your projects.
Would your teammates agree? Maybe you should ask.
In Part 2 of my conversation with Tom we talk about defending your design with data. Subscribe to get that next episode. And, don’t forget to send us your questions – podcast@conversionsciences.com.
7 Simple & Effective Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates
Conversion OptimizationEmail is one of the highest converting marketing channels and few activities drive a higher ROI than building an email list. But having 50,000 email subscribers doesn’t really matter if you can’t get any of them to open your emails.
We’ll show you seven relatively simple (yet criminally underused) strategies that are GUARANTEED to improve your email open rates. By the end of this article, you will have an actionable plan for significantly boosting the ROI of every email you send.
7 Surefire Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates.
1. The Best Way to Improve Your Email Open Rate: Work on Your Subject Lines
Your email is desperately fighting for attention in your prospect’s inbox. Your job is to differentiate yourself within that inbox, and the only way to do that is with your email subject line. But it’s not just about standing out. What is most important to boost those email open rates is that your subject line is relevant to your audience.
Let’s take a look at some examples from my inbox:
Work on your subject lines if you want to improve your email open rates.
Remember that the goal of a subject line is not to get just anyone to open the email. You have a specific audience you’ve built, and it’s important to use the types of headlines that will resonate with that audience.
Want more examples? Get inspired by these 165 great email subject lines.
2. Match Your Lead Magnet To Your Content To Your Product
There’s a lot of content out there about how to build an email list. But one of the biggest mistakes I see businesses and bloggers make is thinking too short-term with their lead magnets and other lead acquisition strategies.
Email marketing is a scalable form of relationship marketing. It’s meant to be a long term pursuit, and accordingly, it’s important that what you are talking about remains consistent throughout that process.
If you attract someone to your list via an ebook on increasing web traffic, then start emailing them about how to run an ecommerce store, and then try to sell them a product on increasing productivity, you won’t have much success.
Every part of your sales funnel should be designed to appeal to the same customer profile.
When someone signs up to your list to hear about a given topic, the emails they receive should also be on that topic. By aligning your lead magnets, emails, and products, you can significantly improve your conversion rates across the board.
3. Split Test Until You Find The Optimal Send Time
One of the easiest ways to increase your open rate is to send your emails at the right time.
How do you find the right time? Two words: AB testing
This requires a little bit of intentionality upfront, but it’s so easy to do, and it can have a MASSIVE impact on the reach of your content.
Here’s one way to do it.
Schedule your next 7 emails to go out on different days of the week. For each email, break your subscribers into 4 identical groups and send to each group at a different time of the day.
This will give you a total of 28 different send times to compare against each other. If you have a smaller list, you might need to run this experiment several times in order to get statistically significant results, but what you should start to see is that certain days and times will consistently perform better than others.
By sending at these optimal times, you can significantly boost your open rates.
4. Delete Prospects that Never Open your Emails
Sometimes email subscribers just have to go. It’s hard to part with those emails you spent so much effort collecting but evidently they are not responding to your standard email campaigns. Cleanse your email list regularly as it will also help you improve deliverability. Gmail and Yahoo emails will pick up on this and send your email to their junk folder where nobody can see it, much less open it. And this makes a huge difference to your email open rates!
If you don’t want to get rid of them, split your audience and send them a very different kind of email. A farewell email. Help them move on or open your email to stay.
5. Deliverability is Key to Improve Your Email Open Rates: Resend To Unopens
This is the easiest strategy we’ll discuss today. Even when you do everything right, a lot of your emails will never even be seen.
Thanks to Gmail’s inbox categorization. A lot of emails now fall under the promos tab. There are some things you can do to try and get in the primary inbox, but that’s a bit too complicated for today’s post, so instead, I’m sharing a simple trick that anyone can use to instantly increase opens, often by an additional 25%.
Simply resend the email to anyone who didn’t open it up the first time. I like to wait around 3 days to resend, but you can experiment for yourself and see what happens.
One email is nice, but two could get the job done.
In the example above, the original email performed pretty well, so the resend was a bit less powerful than usual. But even if your list is as small as 5,000 subscribers, that additional 7% in total opens means nearly 400 more people are seeing your message.
6. Be Authentic: The Email Campaign Subscribers Look Forward to Opening
One of the first things people notice when signing up to a new email list is tone.
A lot of marketers and business owners nowadays are just running email marketing because they’ve been told to. They are following a template and trying to sell products. And while there is nothing wrong with that, it’s very, VERY obvious to your readers.
The most successful email marketing campaigns often come from the biggest personalities. When you sign up for their list, you aren’t introduced to a sales pitch. You are introduced to a personality.
You read personal stories about their background and experiences. You read about their fears and failures and ultimately, their successes.
Pretty soon, you feel like you know this person sending you these emails.
That’s the power of being personal.
And while I can’t teach you to have a personality, I can give you some pointers:
Being personal is not hard, but it does require you to get out of “marketer mode” from time to time.
7. Authenticate your Email Sender: SPF, DKIM, DMARC
If your emails are not reaching the inbox of your subscribers then your email will never be opened. If you want to improve your email open rates, prove to the servers – particularly big corporation servers – and subscribers that it is really you who is sending out the emails.
Here’s what you’ll need to do to get your email authentication going.
Setup Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Authentication.
Setup DKIM Authentication (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to help detect forged addresses in an email.
Enable DMARC protocol to protect your email from spoofing.
Conclusion: Increase Your Email Open Rates
Let’s review:
By implementing these strategies, you can immediately increase the open rates of your email campaigns.
Easy.
Before you go, we’d love to hear from you. Have you tried any of these strategies or do you have any tips of your own to add?
Let us know in the comments!
Reduce Bounce Rates: Ready to Fix Your Conversion Problem?
Conversion Optimization, Landing Page Optimization, Web AnalyticsA bounce is any visit for which the visitor only looks at one page and does not interact with it. This sounds truly unfair as someone may spend minutes on your blog post or landing page, and still be counted as a bounce.
A visitor bounces when they don’t find anything close to what they were looking for when they visit your site. Either you’re attracting the wrong visitors or you don’t know why they are visiting.
Bounce is the most extreme form of conversion problem. High bounce rates are an indication that you are throwing good marketing dollars down the tubes. Whatever you’re spending to get traffic to your site is being wasted.
How to Reduce Bounce Rates or the heartbreak of “bounce”
Boing!
That’s the sound of someone finding your site, but not finding what they wanted ON your site.
Boing!
That’s the sound of website content that doesn’t match your marketing.
Boing!
That’s the sound of a website that talks about the company instead of the visitors’ problems.
Bounces Aren’t Helpful to Businesses
What are some strategies to reduce bounce rate?
This is a common question, and requires an understanding of the definitions of bounce rate.
The bounce rate is a bit slippery and requires some examination. The intention of measuring the bounce rate is to figure out how many of your visitors are leaving almost immediately after arriving at your site. This metric provides for a lot of error in interpretation.
This is rarely the case. A more accurate explanation is that your site doesn’t look the way your visitors expect it to look. Understanding what your visitors expect is the way to reduce bounce rates.
Instead, there are usually some more valid reasons for your high bounce rate. Here are the things digital marketing and conversion experts examine when confronted with uncomfortably high bounce rates.
1. You’re measuring it wrong
How you measure your bounce rate can give you very different insights. For example, blogs often have high bounce rates. Does this mean that visitors don’t like the blog?
Many analytics packages measure a bounce as a visit, or session, that includes only one page on your site. Visitors who take the time to read an entire article would be considered a “bounce” if they then left, even though they are clearly engaged.
We set a timer for our blog traffic, so that any visitor who sticks around for 15 seconds or more is not considered a bounce. You can set a timer to the amount of time you consider appropriate.
2. How to Reduce Bounce Rates: Diagnose Technical Difficulties
We are fond of saying that you don’t have one website, you have ten or twenty or thirty. Each device, each browser, each screen-size delivers a different experience to the visitor. If your website is broken on one of the devices popular with your visitors, you will see a bump in overall bounce rate.
If your pages load slowly, especially on mobile devices, you can expect a higher bounce rate.
Broken internal links and 404 pages are also cause for bounce.
If your page breaks out in a chorus of Also Sprach Zarathustra when the page loads, you may enjoy a higher bounce rate.
How to diagnose device-related technical problems
Your analytics package will track the kind of device your visitors are coming on.
Is there a problem with this site when viewed with the Safari (in app) browser?
The Google Analytics report Audience > Technology > Browser & OS shows that there may be a technical issue with Safari visitors coming from within an app. This may also reflect visitors coming from mobile ads, and they may simply be lower quality. See below.
With Google Analytics Audience > Mobile > Devices report, we see mobile devices specifically. The Apple iPhone has an above-average bounce rate, and we should probably do some testing there, especially since it’s the bulk of our mobile traffic.
With an above average bounce rate, visitors on an Apple iPhone may be seeing a technical problem.
3. Good Traffic Quality Helps Reduce Bounce Rates
If you are getting the wrong visitors, you will have a high bounce rate.
Remember StumbleUpon? Getting your site featured on the internet discovery site often meant a flood of new visitors to your site… and a crash in your conversion rate. Stumble traffic was not qualified, they were just curious.
Your bounce rate is a great measure of the quality of your traffic. Low quality traffic bounces because:
We take a closer look at the source of traffic to diagnose a traffic quality problem using Google Analytics Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels report.
Direct is one of our biggest traffic sources and brings in one of the two highest bounce rates.
Here we can see that traffic coming from social media and those visitors coming “Direct-ly” have a high bounce rate.
If you are driving a lot of visitors to your home page, you may want to consider presenting them with links to more relevant content. As Tim Ash says, “The job of the home page is to get people off of the home page.” He didn’t mean by bouncing.
With regard to social media, we may have a problem with broken promises.
4. Broken Promises Lead to Conversion Problems
Do your entry pages consider the source of visits?
If your traffic is clicking on an ad that promises 20% off on a specific propane grill, and they’re directed to your home page, you’ve broken a promise.
You might think that they will search your site for the deal. You might even think they’ll search your home page for the deal. You’re wrong. Many will jump.
Every ad, every email invitation, every referral link is a promise you make to your visitor. If they don’t come to a page that lives up to the promise, they are likely to bounce.
This Ad takes the visitors to a page that is almost designed to disappoint.
Looking at your ads on a page-by-page basis is necessary to diagnose and correct this kind of bounce rate problem.
5. Vague Value Propositions don’t help reduce bounce rates
Ultimately, if you’re not communicating your value proposition to your visitors clearly, you are going to enjoy a monstrous bounce rate.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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Your value proposition typically does not address your company or your products. It should be targeted at your visitor, why they are there, and why they should stick around.
Each page has its own value proposition. Your business may have a powerful value proposition, but each page should stand on its own.
A contact page should talk about what will happen after you complete the form. Who will contact you? How long will it take? Will they try to sell you something?
A landing page should clearly state that you are in the right place and provide reasons for you to stay and read on.
This landing page delivered a strong value proposition in above the fold. See the full case study and video.
A home page should help you find your way into the site. Most home pages are treated like highway billboards. No wonder people just drive on by.
6. Finally, Is Your Stubborn Bounce Rate Mocking You? [AUDIO]
Most of us, at one time or another, have not only been frustrated with our bounce rate, but completely puzzled about what to do about it.
In this podcast, I will guide you toward a more accurate bounce rate. I will walk you through the steps to use The Timer Listener to time the visit duration of each of your visitors and get those percentages down where they belong.
Subscribe to Podcast
Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Brian Massey Marketing Land article, Using A Google Tag Manager Listener To Get Your Real Bounce Rate
The 3 Most Effective Marketing Strategies For Ecommerce Businesses
Ecommerce CROIt’s big. It’s getting bigger. And it’s why we’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years talking about ecommerce optimization.
For many new and even established businesses, however, the problem is less about conversion and more about getting people to your website in the first place. You need a consistent means to drive targeted traffic to your store.
To help solve this problem, we’re highlighting the 3 most effective eCommerce marketing strategies to drive traffic to your online store. Of course, to boost sales, you need to convert these visitors into customers. Here are a few articles you might find useful to help you with your conversion rate optimization efforts.
The Best Definition of Conversion Rate Optimization Ever Written
Google Ads not Converting? Try These 4 Optimization Tricks
48 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks
Need a Conversion Rate Optimization Audit?
3 Most Effective eCommerce Marketing Strategies
The top 3 components that ultimately sway consumers into purchasing are: Price, Shipping cost and delivery speed, and Discount offers. Statistically, 3 out of every five shoppers are likely to abandon a shopping cart because of shipping costs.
Strategy #1: Content Marketing.
Strategy #2: Search Engine Optimization / SEO.
Strategy #3: Paid Advertising on social media and Google Ads.
Infographic from Visiture
Last Minute Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce
Ecommerce CROAttention is scarce and many brands are trying to vye for it. Most big brands start thinking about their holiday marketing ideas in March. Yes, you read it right.
But if you haven’t done so, feel free to steal some of these last minute holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce. We also have a chapter on how to prepare holiday marketing campaigns for “March Madness” at the end of the article.
7 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce Stores to Quickly Boost Sales
Retail season is upon us. Surprise!
Come again?! Yes it’s true. Between the months of November and late December, many businesses who generate significant profit online will experience an increase in traffic and (hopefully) sales.
How do you know if your website is fully prepared to take advantage of the holiday rush? Instead of Santa Claus loading up his sleigh with merchandise from your warehouse, you could see an increase in shopping cart abandonment, low sales, and a whole lot of tears in your eggnog.
Most online businesses generate the majority of the year’s profit during the holiday season. And this year, digital spending is set to high with online holiday sales to surge 25-35%. This can make ecommerce sites a little nervous. Business managers get conservative, locking down the site and taking no risks for months before the blessed start of the shopping season.
They seem to be just waiting until the season is over with their eyes closed, praying to the retail gods that things will go well.
Table of Contents
Don’t be that guy this year. Pick the right strategies with the perfect amount of holiday spirit to optimize in time for the retail season. Here’s how some of the top online retailers prepare for the holiday rush. These are high-stakes, low risk Holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce stores that you can put in place at the last minute.
1. Holiday Marketing Idea: Don’t Jump Into A Total Site Redesign
Many medium and small business owners think they have to redesign their website with a holiday theme. The fact of the matter is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” What you think is broken is often perfect to your visitors.
Instead, enhance what’s already been working on your website. A stepwise website redesign can deliver additional revenue quicker and avoid a disastrous site relaunch.
Website Redesign is like Holiday Decorations
When you are pretty busy, other parts of our lives suffer. In my case, it was decorating for the Christmas Season.
And in an unexpected way, this relates to your website.
I found myself with Christmas getting near and my Halloween decorations were still up. Before you laugh, isn’t this the same way you feel about your website? It’s needed a redesign for a while, but other priorities keep getting in the way.
That’s exactly how I felt.
There is little that can be done with Halloween decorations when preparing for Christmas… or is there?
This is not a traditional Christmas image.
But, since I was short on redecorating resources, I decided to redesign my decorations the way I would redesign a website: a little at a time.
I used small steps in my decoration redesign. I found some Christmas doll sweaters to put on my skeletons. Here’s the result.
This may seem a disturbing choice for Christmas decoration, but what does the data say? The Tim Burton approach worked well for holiday decor.
Rather than taking down the skeletons and spending money on new decorations, I took a more creative approach. I added a special twist of my own to the decor. When my 17-year old daughter and her friends came by the house, I received positive reviews and praise. Remember, the opinion of your visitor matters the most.
It’s unexpected, unique and didn’t require a decoration redesign. This is the same approach we recommend for your website.
You may think your site needs a re-do. You may feel it’s dated, familiar, or too old.
As we like to say in the business, “Your opinion doesn’t matter.”
It’s the opinion of your visitors that matters, and they may not see your site with as critical an eye as you. They may even love it as it is.
What are the Right Reasons to Redesign your Online Store?
There are two really good reasons for a site redesign:
If you aren’t facing one of these two situations, consider a stepwise redesign.
We’ve been able to modify a site completely using testing tools before the business committed to the redesign.
We were able to test a complete redesign for this ecommerce site before committing it to code.
We found with this test that the redesign would not be expected to have a negative effect on revenue. Perfect last minute Holiday marketing idea for your online shop.
Piece by piece, you’ll learn what improves your bottom line and what doesn’t. We call this data-driven creative.
Faster Results than a Full Website Redesign
Doesn’t this testing process take more time than a redesign?
We’ve accompanied several clients through redesign. A website is a complicated piece of software. We’ve rarely seen a redesign finished in less than twice the time predicted.
So, no, our approach is faster.
And, as you find wins, you get to enjoy higher conversion rates, higher revenue and more leads as the ecommerce site is redesigned.
Enjoy Your Holidays and Your Redesign
Don’t take our word for it. Author and optimizer Rich Page cited a Hubspot study that found one third of companies who implemented a redesign were unhappy with the results.
This doesn’t have to be you.
Having the resources to make your website a better place for your visitors is a great advantage over your competition. Let the competition spend months on one big shot.
Meanwhile, you can learn what your visitors want and deliver more of it time after time, until you own a site that the competition will have trouble keeping up with. Merry Christmas!
2. Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Idea: Identify Where Your Conversions are Coming From
We work with many ecommerce companies, from high-end jewelry and gloves to furniture sales. Our job is to analyze this behavior and data to best optimize your online business. So, we’ll share a little secret that can be easily implemented to generate last minute holiday marketing ideas for your ecommerce business.
The Channel Report in Google Analytics helps us locate streamlined conversions and where clients see significant sales by traffic source. With the Overview section, you can create an Advanced Segment to locate which are the specific sources of your visitors and how those visitors navigate your online store to become a customer.
Let’s say we want to focus on our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn social efforts. Here’s how we set up one advanced segments:
This is how we traditionally set up segments in Google Analytics to analyze site conversions better.
Now that you know where your conversions originate, you need to understand what components on your site help with these conversions.
If we want to see which landing pages converted best, we would create an Advanced Segment that highlights our goal URL. Perhaps your home page needs to be better optimized. Maybe you could cut back on ads to landing pages that deliver unfavorable results.
We can also gather data on which devices lead to more conversions, whether these are new or returning visitors, and how many sessions each channel produces. It’s important to understand the type of traffic that comes to your site, how visitors navigate through your site, and which features deliver the most conversions. This data will help you better craft your Holiday ecommerce strategy.
3. Boost Holiday Sales: Lay Out Your Conversion Roadmap and Retargeting Ads
One reader sent us this story:
I was once asked to be a groomsman for my best friend’s wedding. Great, I thought. Bachelor parties, booze, and a whole lot of money down the toilet.
We recently had a fitting at The Men’s Warehouse. Look at us! Aren’t we a great bunch of guys?
While getting fitted for tuxes for our friend’s wedding, we decided not to rent shoes.
After all was said and done, we decided to not to rent shoes for $20. Think about it: that’s almost the price of half a decent shoe. Since most guys can use a good new pair of shoes, we decided to check out several online shoe stores to find the right style and avoid another brutal trip to the mall. Let’s be real, no one enjoys shopping with six other dudes that have absolutely no sense of style.
We scoured the web and came upon a pair of great looking shoes on Nordstrom.com, but we said no to purchasing. They were just too expensive.
The retail giant, however, was kind enough to fill my Facebook newsfeed with wonderful retargeting ads. Thanks a lot for the added temptation.
After leaving Nordstrom.com without purchasing an item, I was retargeted on Facebook.
Did I mention that we were shopping for a “wingtip” style shoe. This fact wasn’t lost to Nordstrom. They tracked my shopping activity and knew what I was looking for.
Since my initial search on their website just didn’t ring up a sale, they retargeted me with a similar wingtip shoe that was significantly marked down in price. I clicked on the ad that took me directly to a well crafted landing page.
Nordstrom knew I was looking for a wingtip style shoe and have even recommended several pairs that are more affordable.
Had this shoe been in the wedding party’s price range, we would have definitely become customers. Not only did it fit the overall wedding’s motif but it was a killer shoe. It was also discounted, a big plus.
Nordstrom took it one step further.
Nordstrom included a “People Also Viewed” section to the right of this page, listing two additional wingtip style shoes in a more affordable price range.
Well done guys, well done. Unfortunately for Nordstrom we were still too cheap to buy, but it was still a solid effort.
Remember to lay out exactly how you will navigate a variety of customers through your funnel. Think of your email subscribers, returning visitors, new visitors, and don’t forget your impulse buyers. Read this article if you need help creating a funnel.
Once you’ve segmented your visitors, analyze their behavior. Did they convert? Which items did they purchase? What was their overall spend?
By knowing these key statistics, you can craft better retargeting ads and email offers that resonate with their buying habits.
Nordstrom.com knows their stuff. What kind of ads will you be showing site visitors, customers, or shoppers who abandoned their cart?
Don’t let sales slip on by. How can you turn lost opportunities into revenue this holiday season?
4. Not so Last Minute Holiday Marketing Idea: High Converting Social Media Giveaway Campaigns
You need some ammunition for the Holiday retail season that brings in new customers and sales. Early fall is a great time for executing high converting lead generating campaigns. We’re talking social media giveaways, contests, and special offers. Those that build nice email lists for future email blasts.
You can still implement these campaigns during the holidays and use the email lists for promotional sales all year round. At the very least, you will get some interested visitors.
Let’s take another look at our friends at Nordstrom.com.
I noticed they were having a special giveaway on their site. It didn’t look obnoxious like some online giveaways, and I was intrigued by the red letters at the top left corner of the site that said “Want a $1,000 Gift Card?” YES. I DO. So I clicked on it.
Click the red letters! Win money.
Once I read the official rules, I was taken to an additional landing page to sign up for the giveaway.
Keep your giveaways simple. Too many rules or procedures turn people away.
This contest has a very particular call-to-action (CTA): write a review for one of their products you’ve purchased. Once entered, I was sent an email with a CTA to continue shopping.
Nordstrom is using a loophole (the purchase was made before the sweepstakes began) to bypass U.S. regulations that state you have to provide a way to enter the giveaway without requiring a purchase. So, be careful when crafting the rules for campaigns like this one. Do not get into legal trouble.
Be creative with your giveaways. Don’t make the contest too complicated, and always offer an incentive to those who enter, like a special coupon filled with holiday cheer. They are not likely to win, but you will, especially since you were able to get their email address for later.
Again, you want your email list to be as fat as possible come next holiday season, especially if you find that your list converts higher than your site traffic.
5. Structure Your Email Blast With Offers that will Increase your Holiday Sales
Dial up the value on your email blasts for the holidays. People who give you their email address are inviting you to their already very full inbox, so make the most of it. The offers below can translate into high converting email marketing campaigns.
Promote a New Arrival
Some shoppers love to splurge on the latest and greatest, especially during the holidays. Let them know about this at the top of your email or include it in the subject line.
Local Austin jeweler Kendra Scott has a unique approach to their email blasts. In this email we see the new arrival promo both on the email preview and the main message.
This is an email promo for Kendra Scott’s new Mystic Bazaar collection.
Suggest a Bestseller as the Perfect Holiday Gift
You know this product will sell with or without a marked down price. You can sell this product with your eyes closed, so why not include it in the email?
CountryOutfitter.com knows their boots sell. Each week they include a different style of boot in their email blasts.
Theme Your Emails to Upsell or Cross Sell
Furniture salesmen increase their commissions by including add-ons that compliment the purchase, from furniture displays to the final sales pitch.
“Would you also like some table lamps, a rug, and perhaps this painting of a naked man to compliment your one-of-a-kind love seat from Romania?”
Someone willing to drop a small (or medium) fortune on a couch is likely to be willing to drop even more to make sure the couch isn’t sitting in an empty living room – or worse, a living room where the other decor doesn’t compliment the couch. That’s where the money comes from.
Here’s a great example of how one online retailer themes their email blasts similarly to furniture store displays. This particular campaign was all about skulls.
Holiday themed emails to cross sell and upsell.
And you can’t buy a skull sweater without getting the matching purse and mug. Do you really want to be the fool with the skull sweater drinking out a cat mug and carrying a hobo bag? Absolutely not.
You must purchase the matching accessories!
Even better, every item in this email is 20% off. HotTopic, eat your heart out.
Offer Incentives to Increase Cart Size: A Coupon Code or Free Shipping
Adding a coupon code or a free shipping incentive (like “get $50 off a purchase of $100 or more” or “free shipping when you spend $50”) will help visitors spend a specific amount of money or help them purchase an item that is designed to be a quick money maker.
CountryOutfitter.com includes a free pair of flip flops with the purchase of $75 or more.
Be Newsworthy: Leverage off of a Current Story
Adding a brand related news story to an email blast can help drive serious traffic. Here’s how a competitor of CountryOutfitter.com’s email blast looked like the day Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton announced their divorce.
The divorce announcement in their email subject line, along with a photo of the couple at the top of the email. A great way to increase open rates and click through rates.
Miranda Lambert & Blake Shelton divorce, but Country Fashion retailers are making money.
This email was more than just the Country Music story of the day. When visitors opened the breaking news email, they noticed this retailer offered free shipping for all orders $75 or more.
Below the breaking news image was a “Shop Now” image directing traffic to a product page. Although this traffic may not be interested in shopping and would much rather read up on Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton, you can still segment this surge in traffic for retargeting ads (remember the Nordstrom.com example?) to country music lovers.
6. Time is of the Essence: Give Shoppers an Incentive to Buy Now
Set an expiration date to your coupons, create limited time offers, or activate that retargeting ad that will make visitors come back and hopefully turn into buyers.
One of the most interesting timed offers was a feature on RebelCircus.com. At the top of the site, there was a ticker that gave shoppers exactly one hour to make a purchase to take advantage of a discount coupon.
You’ve got one hour to make a purchase! The agony.
When I returned to the site less than an hour later, the clock was still ticking. They definitely get a thumbs up for creating a sense of urgency when shopping.
Can a dog lover resist this timed offer as a holiday gift? Truly great holiday marketing campaign.
7. Final Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce: Analyze your Data and Prep For Next Year
This can be the fun part, or the not so fun part, depending on how the season went. Gather your data from Google Analytics. Dissect the info and highlight the pros and cons of your online retail marketing campaigns. Where did you see more conversions, email signups, and social media engagement, and how did this affect your overall strategy?
Your marketing plan should always continue to change and refine itself over the seasons. Your approach this year could be different from next year’s. But when you just can’t get the answers right, or no longer have the time to optimize give Conversion Sciences a call. We’d be happy to bring good tidings of joy to your business this Holiday Season.
Ecommerce March Madness: Get your Holiday Marketing Ideas Ready
Every March, the annual college basketball tournament inspires basketball binge-watching behavior known by most as “March Madness”.
The other kind of March madness is the period of time in which ecommerce companies begin to think about the holiday shopping season again.
“Didn’t we just finish the holidays?” they ask. Yet, they remember the last minute scrambling they had to do the previous year to come up with high converting Holiday marketing ideas.
It’s easy to ignore the holiday shopping season. November seems so far away. But the Holidays are about ecommerce upsets, when the little guy can out-sell the big guy.
Upsets don’t just happen. You have to prepare for them. If you haven’t done so yet, feel free to steal some of these last minute holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce.
Time to Start Thinking About the Holiday Season: Preparation Meets Inspiration
The mental and physical preparation that goes into engineering your own upset takes time. The summer is your off-season. How will you train?
The products and offers are the picking, shooting and dribbling fundamentals. These require a honed knowledge of game fundamentals.
Driving traffic is like selling tickets. A winning season means more fans. Ultimately, you don’t have control of prices, game times and TV schedules. As an ecommerce site, you invest in traffic knowing that it can change at any time (and probably has). Also, don’t forget to check out these effective eCommerce Marketing Strategies, they might inspire you.
Working on the conversion rate is where it all comes together. This is building strength and endurance for the team.
With website optimization, as the revenue you generate from every visitor goes up, your site improves. You own it. The goal is to generate more sales from the same traffic. Make your ad spend count.
If you increase your conversion rate by 7% a month, you will have doubled your conversion rate within a year. That’s a serious upset to your competitors.
7+ Facts About Shopping Cart Abandonment & Recovery
Ecommerce CROShopping cart abandonment is like cholesterol: There is a good kind and a bad kind. For each there is a strategy for reducing the impact of abandonment on your business.
Good abandoners leave because they aren’t done with their shopping process.
Bad abandoners leave because you surprised them or didn’t provide the information they were looking for.
But it’s 2020, and the number of smartphone dependent shoppers has grown considerably. Thus, we will add one more layer of complexity to the shopping cart abandonment recovery strategy: desktop vs mobile visitors. Why it happens and what to do about it.
Cart Abandonment Rate Formula
The shopping cart abandonment rate formula is quite an easy Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to calculate. Divide the total number of completed purchases by the number of shopping carts created within the same period. Subtract the resulting number from one and multiply by 100 to get the abandonment rate percentage.
Abandonment Rate Calculation Example
Definitely not a bad shopping cart abandonment rate. Only 33 out of 100 customers are leaving their carts behind. Do you experience high add to cart but low conversion rates? Keep reading.
Top 7 Cart Conversion Optimization Solutions to Eliminate the Causes of Cart Abandonment.
The difference between mobile and desktop visitors
“A growing share of Americans now use smartphones as their primary means of online access at home. Today roughly one-in-five American adults are “smartphone-only” internet users – meaning they own a smartphone, but do not have traditional home broadband service.”
Source: Surveys conducted 2013-2019. Data for each year based on a pooled analysis of all surveys containing broadband and smartphone questions fielded during that year.
Traditionally, the desktop computer is a research tool and the smartphone is a dopamine delivery system.
These are two very different uses of internet attached computers.
For someone on a desktop, adding your product to their cart is the end of a journey. For the mobile user, the add to cart is to see how it will feel.
For a growing segment of our population, this is changing. For more and more people, the smartphone is their only source for communication, research, and dopamine. Reliance on smartphones for online access is especially common among younger adults, non-whites and lower-income Americans.
For this reason, we are not going to assume that most mobile visitors are “just shopping.” We are going to look at the causes of checkout abandonment and provide a playbook for eliminating them.
There are also consumers who only buy your products on desktop computers. They would not even think to pick up their phone and buy what you sell.
Why do Shoppers Abandon the Checkout Process?
Just as science has identified “good cholesterol” and “bad cholesterol,” there are “good” and “bad” abandoners among your website’s visitors.
The Good Abandoners
Good abandoners leave you as part of their process. They are walking all the way to the edge of buying, even though they are not ready to buy. They are imagining purchasing from you. Yet, they fully intend to continue comparing your offering to alternatives when they start the checkout process.
And they may be hoping you’ll hang on to their selections for when they return. Wish lists and persistent shopping carts are a big help to these abandoners. More on that later.
The Bad Abandoners
Bad abandoners leave you because they didn’t like what they saw after they got started. These abandoners are bad for you because they are lost opportunities. They were going to buy, but you chased them away with your checkout process.
Your purchase process confounded them, introduced new fears, or asked them to do something they weren’t ready to do, like create an account. Many of these abandoners started the process simply because they didn’t have all the information they needed to make their decision.
The five primary “drivers” of Desktop cart abandonment
According to Forrester Research’s report “Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment,” the five primary “drivers” of cart abandonment are:
Let’s look at what causes bad abandons and then talk about encouraging actual purchases.
High shopping cart abandonment rates are conversion killers. But they are also a fertile place to increase your shop’s performance.
Understanding Mobile Abandonment
There are two kinds of abandoners: Those who were never going to buy and those who would have bought if only…
And there are some things that aren’t under your control, but are a particular problem for smartphone users…
The Impact of Distractions on Mobile Checkout
We have dedicated a whole article to maximizing mobile ecommerce checkout conversions. Take a look.
Top 7 Cart Conversion Optimization Solutions: How to Eliminate the Causes of Cart Abandonment
Consider the following tactics to optimize your online shop cart conversion rate. They may help you reduce or eliminate the causes of shopping cart abandonment.
1. Free Shipping/Free Return Shipping
When a visitor is ready to take action, they instantly begin doubting the sanity of their decision. This is the time to reassure them. Your return policy and shipping offers are great ways to remove their doubts. Getting stuck with a product you don’t want is a real fear, no matter how inexpensive the purchase.
Shipping costs are not usually refunded. Even if you have a generous return policy, buyers can see this as a risk. If your profit margins allow for free shipping both ways, great. Otherwise, adjust your pricing strategy.
In a few words, you should tell them that buying from you is safe if this does not turn out to be a good purchase.
2. Lack of follow up actions after add-to-cart
What do you do when someone adds a product to the cart?
The typical ecommerce site takes the visitor to the Cart page. The problem with this approach is that it takes the visitor out of their shopping experience, maybe before they’ve finished buying.
The answer is typically a “Continue Shopping” button, that takes them to some part of the online retailer site.
By making the cart popup overlay larger, we increased conversions by 13% for TATSoul.
But, when a visitor has reached a product page, they are at the bottom of a rabbit hole. It may have involved a search, several category pages, and several product pages. They don’t want to start over.
To solve this problem, ecommerce sites have begun keeping them on the product page after they click Add to Cart, keeping their rabbit hole intact. However, if no visible acknowledgement is given, the visitor loses some of the satisfaction of their action. Or they may think the site is broken. Or they did something wrong.
Make sure that you give your potential buyers a clear signal that they’ve done something amazing. BJ Fogg recommends that you celebrate their action in some way. This should increase the likelihood that they will complete the purchase. These are two examples that signal to the visitor that they have done something amazing.
After the click to buy, Nike adds an overlay to the product page and shows a timed checkout link.
Nike hovers a Checkout overlay for a few seconds leaving the shopper in the same product page unless they click the “View Bag” or the “Checkout” button.
Or this one from Forever21 that tells their potential buyers they have done something amazing. Complimenting their taste, reiterating their offer to increase cart size (coupon code) and showing them product suggestions.
After showing the same overlay to the potential buyer, Forever 21 goes one step further.
3. Unsaved Carts
If I come back to the site, I expect my cart to still be there. Saving the visitor’s cart is an important part of abandoned cart remarketing strategies, in which an email or an ad brings them back to their selections.
Save the cart – by implementing a perpetual shopping cart – and find ways to encourage visitors to return.
4. Offer Live Support, Loyalty Programs
Your visitors will buy from you if you treat them well. They will buy again and again. Your willingness to be there for them both before and after the sale will determine their long-term value and your success.
The cart is a great place to show them you care. Have someone available on the phone or in a chat to answer their last minute questions. Let them know that this purchase is part of a reward program that shows you appreciate them.
There is an entire segment of your visitors that care about their relationship with you. Be a good relationship partner.
5. Exit Intent Offers
Remind them about the promotion you are currently offering just before they leave. Stop abandonment on its tracks. On Exit intent pop ups could help you with abandoned shopping bag recovery. Check out these 7 Best Practices for Using Exit-Intent Popovers.
6. Enable Guest Checkout
Maybe your customer doesn’t want to commit to you, yet. Offering guest checkout could make a difference in your cart optimization efforts. Instead of asking them to create an account, test and implement these Guest Checkout Tactics to Grow Ecommerce Sales (with Examples and Ideas)
7. Ask your customers why they are leaving their cart behind
There are many tools to choose from that enable you to set up a short visitor survey to simply ask why they are leaving without checking out. This is a great use of exit-intent overlays. These can be delivered using Justuno, OptinMonster, Optimonk and other tools.
Cart Abandonment Solutions
Ok. We eliminated the causes but that doesn’t completely get rid of the problem. There will still be abandoners.
The most popular cart abandonment solution is the abandoned cart email or email recovery campaign. A great way to re-engage if you were able to get your prospective customer to give you their email. We promise to bring you a new article with the best abandoned cart emails cart and abandonment email examples soon.
ASOS example of abandoned cart email for their email recovery campaign, the most popular cart abandonment solution.
To help you on your quest to lower your shop’s abandonment rate, we will also include examples of abandoned cart text messages, subject lines and email sequence.
If they don’t respond to your emails, not everything is lost. You can always implement an ad retargeting campaign. There are tools that even offer cross-device and cross-platform compatibility and mobile retargeting.
What is a Good Abandonment Recovery Rate?
According to the Baymard Institute, the average abandonment rate on online shoppers is 69.57%. In plain terms, 695 people out of 1,000 are abandoning their carts. A good abandonment recovery rate will be between 10% and 30% of revenue.
We’ll take a look at your site free of charge.
Google Ads not Converting? Try These 4 Optimization Tricks
Advertising CROIf Google Ads (previously “Adwords”) is not converting, you may feel like you are wasting your money. And you are right. One must invest in ad campaigns that convert. Your ad spend paired with a higher conversion rate means more sales, more leads or more subscriptions.
Whether your campaign’s cost-per-lead is too high, or your quality scores are stuck toward the bottom, these four conversion optimization tricks may bring your campaigns back to life. Give them a try.
Google Ads Optimization Trick #1: Take control of your landing page experience and ROI
You put a lot of effort crafting the perfect Google ad. People are clicking through to learn more about your offer. And unfortunately, your conversion rate is stinkingly low.
To avoid this, you must take control of your landing page experience and your ROI. Otherwise, your cost per conversion will skyrocket. And you want more leads, signups and sales, right? Let’s take a look at a few simple and easy ways to see if this could be your problem or barrier to conversion.
Improving your landing page conversion rate will lower your customer acquisition costs.
Make sure your landing page content is in alignment with your offer
This is one of the most common mistakes businesses make when it comes to Google Ad campaigns. You may be missing out on sales if your ad copy advertises a specific item on your ecommerce website, and then send clicks to a category page where the featured item is hard to find.
The visitor or prospective customer has to make an effort to find what they clicked on. Make it EASY for them to get what they came for. Your offer.
Check out these 20 Landing Page Best Practices to Kickstart Your Conversion Lift, where we explain how to do this in more detail.
The content of your ad tells you what a visitor expects to find after clicking. Give the user what they want right away. You can tell if your landing page isn’t satisfactory to your visitors by looking at click-map and scroll map reports. These conversion tracking reports are available from a number of vendors such as CrazyEgg and Hotjar. The example below belongs to one of our clients, the Turtle Bay Golf Resort in Oahu, Hawaii.
If visitors aren’t scrolling down your landing page, it may not be a good match for your ad.
Why wouldn’t visitors to a golf resort landing page be interested in golf? Maybe their influential spouses don’t play.
Adwords Conversion Trick #2: Improve Click-to-Call Conversions for Mobile Google Ads
Google research states that 70% of mobile searchers use the click to call feature. Moreover, 47% of those searching on mobile say that if a business doesn’t have a phone number associated with their search results, they’re more likely to explore other brands.
There is no need for landing pages when you use Adwords Call extensions. Users see your ad, and click to call immediately. To find success with click-to-call conversions, you’re going to need stellar messaging stuffed into thirty characters or less on your headlines. Try some of these ideas to boost your click-to-call rate:
AB Test Copy to Increase Your Conversion Rate
Troubleshoot the whole conversion funnel:
Listen to this PodCast: Why Marketing Leads Don’t Turn into Sales and What to do About It
Google Ads CRO Trick #3: Create More Landing Pages to Match Ad Offers
This advice goes hand in hand with our first recommendation. We cannot emphasize this enough. If you happen to have different offers, creating different landing pages that cater to that searchers’ intent is a must.
You may argue that you have a single offer. And that it’s simple enough a single landing page will do.
When a landing page matches the offer in an ad, we call this “keeping the promise” made in the ad. If your ad promotes the quality of your products, your landing page should be focused on quality. If your ad features a discount, your landing page should talk about discounts and savings.
Here’s an example of a client’s landing page that was changed to focus on a discount-oriented ad with great success.
A one-size-fits-all landing page approach may be driving your cost-per-acquisition through the roof.
Get Google Ads Converting Trick #4: End High Click-rate but Low Conversion-rate Ads. Look beyond the Click.
Look beyond the click. If an ad isn’t converting but it’s getting lots of clicks, the ad may be misleading. Your landing page call to action may be too much of an ask.
Review your conversion strategy. Question every step.
Are you trying to move them down your conversion funnel too soon and too fast? Are you giving them enough reassurances? Information?
Or maybe you are targeting the wrong audience.
Make sure to check out your “Search Terms” report, too. If your ads are triggered by irrelevant search terms, you never had a chance to begin with.
Create ads and ad groups with highly targeted keywords, a solid list of negative keywords to match your relevant search queries.
In this client’s example, an intimidating form was replaced with a step-by-step quiz style form. The results were tremendous: a whooping 61% increase in conversion rate.
Google ads not converting? You can help a visitor get through a form one step at a time.
One Final Recommendation when Adwords is not Converting: Use ad extensions
Even though you don’t get to force Google to show ad extension information, leveraging this Adwords feature is a smart way to boost conversions. If shown, they can help you weed out bad prospects, incentivize relevant searchers to click and even guide them to take the best action or land on a higher converting landing page.
Read more about which ad extensions you should be using to improve your customer acquisition efforts
Need help boosting conversions from your advertising efforts?
It takes a team to optimize your ads. You can have a team of experts do the job for you for less than the cost even one employee… if you can find them.
or Call us to discuss how we can help increase your advertising ROI.
Mobile Ecommerce Checkout: Maximizing Conversions
Ecommerce CROThere are approximately 50 million mobile-only users in the US alone. That’s roughly one in five American adults who are “smartphone-only” internet users.
If all they have is a smartphone that’s what they will use to shop from someone. And that someone better be your ecommerce site. How? Maximizing mobile ecommerce checkout conversions. Here are some of the top strategies we use in our eCommerce Optimization Services to convert these mobile visitors into shoppers you may want to test on your online store.
And don’t miss out on our “bonus track” that shows you how to test your mobile checkout flow to boost conversions at the end of this article.
Gauge Mobile Ecommerce Checkout Success: the Add-to-Cart Rate
When we think about mobile ecommerce sites we tend to imagine small versions of our desktop sites. The screen is smaller. The images are smaller. The conversion rate is smaller.
You could just say that people don’t buy your products on mobile devices, but there is a metric that says this isn’t so. It’s the Add-to-Cart Rate.
Mobile visitors are adding products to their carts. According to research the add-to-cart rate for smartphone users is only 25% lower than it is for desktop users.
When mobile visitors are adding products to their carts at higher rates than they complete checkout, we could say we have an abandonment problem.
Begin the Conversation on Maximizing Mobile Conversions
Just because a mobile buyer isn’t ready to checkout, you shouldn’t assume that you can’t begin a conversation with them. Offer to help them out in exchange for a first name and an email.
This tactic won’t be unfamiliar to most ecommerce sites.
REI offers a “Save for Later” button in their cart. Clicking this takes the visitor to the account creation page. Nice save, REI.
REI offers a “Save for Later” option in their cart.
Asking Visitors to Create an Account: Do or Do Not?
The truth is that you have a segment of each of these visitors coming to your site. You need to understand which is larger.
For some visitors, asking them to create an account with you to buy is going to be too much. It exacerbates the fact that buying or entering information on a mobile device is more difficult and the buyer is often victim to distractions around them.
Having an account can be a liability. If customers have an account and forget their password, they they are likely to abandon their carts. You need to know the abandonment rate at the account creation step. This will tell you how big your problem is.
The good news is that there are ways to increase conversions for these mobile shoppers. Check out the following example from Victoria’s Secret. A smooth and simple transition from shopping checkout to account creation.
Victoria’s Secret offers a guest checkout.
Victoria’s Secret still asks the visitor to create a password after all information has been entered.
Always test account creation. The negative impact can be substantial, even taking into account future purchases of those who do create an account.
Mobile Ecommerce Checkout: Change the Order of Entry
When working with human beings, it is often surprising how changes that seem inconsequential can have a big impact. Changing the order of your cart is one of those things.
For example, look at Lowe’s mobile checkout. They ask for the credit card information before they ask for the buyer’s billing address.
Who knows. It may require the buyer to dig out their credit card. That increases the sunk cost perception. At this point, they might as well finish entering the address — and anything else you ask.
Lowe’s asks for the credit card number before the billing address in their mobile checkout.
I can’t tell you that this will work for your audience, but it is certainly part of our playbook for maximizing mobile conversions.
Proper Use of Discounts
Automatically applying discounts not only eliminates one more step on the mobile ecommerce checkout, but it will entice your customers to keep moving forward.
How to Offer Third-party Payment Options and Boost Mobile Conversions
If entering your name, address, credit card number is a pain on a mobile device, you would think that using third-party payment systems might be a boon for mobile ecommerce checkout. After all, these services have your address and multiple purchase options on file, options that include direct deductions from your bank account.
Part of the reason may be when these options are offered. If the option to pay with Paypal is made after the visitor has entered their billing address, then a big part of the reason to use Paypal — to avoid entering the address — is lost.
Etsy offers a Paypal payment option, but they do it after the billing address has been entered on the smartphone device.
Etsy offers the Paypal option only after the mobile visitor has entered the payment details.
REI, on the other hand, offers both Paypal and Venmo payment options, and does so early in the mobile checkout process. Note that this also removes the requirement that the visitor create an account.
REI offers PayPal and Venmo at sign-in.
You can explicitly position these payment methods as “Express Checkout”, “Fast Mobile Checkout”, or “Fastest on your phone”.
Magic Spoon leads with “Express Checkout” options on their mobile shopping cart.
Use Trust and Proof in your Mobile Ecommerce Checkout to Boost Sales
This is true for both big-screen checkout as well as mobile. Remind your customers that this transaction is safe and secure.
Yes, you have less screen space to deal with on a mobile device. Nonetheless, you should test the following elements in your checkout.
These elements should generally be non-clickable. Don’t take your visitor out of the buying process. If you need more space to express something like your return policy, use a modal dialog box that opens over the mobile checkout screens.
Return policy
Summarize your risk reversal strategy. This can include anti-spam policies.
Warby Parker reminds visitors of free shipping and returns near the “Place order” button.
Your value proposition
Offer a bulleted list of your key differentiators, such as free shipping, free training, free installation, fast service, years in business, etc.
Galeton reiterates their guarantee and return policy right below the Checkout button.
Galeton spells out their generous return policy right below the Checkout button on mobile phones.
Testimonials
Yes, you can use testimonials in mobile checkout to reinforce the sale.
Customer support rating
If you have high marks on your net promoter score, brag a little.
Certifications. Make sure your certifications are there in the checkout. An example includes Google Trusted Store.
Security badges. Remind them that this is a secure transaction.
REI uses a Norton security badge to express the security of their site.
Phone number. You can build trust by putting a phone number in your checkout and avoid losing a sale. Use the right call to action and you may save sales with phone calls. Even if few buyers use the phone number, it can add credibility. It says, “Yes, we’re here for you.”
REI may lose some of the benefit as they bury their phone number in the footer. Warby Parker, on the other hand, offers a variety of contact methods throughout their cart.
REI buries their phone number way down in the footer.
Warby Parker offers a number of ways to complete the transaction if the customer has doubts or prefers them. Discover how to increase mobile ecommerce checkout conversions.
Live Chat. Test this. We don’t yet have evidence that it can improve mobile ecommerce checkout completions, but it could save some abandoners.
Be careful how these kinds of tools render on smartphones.
Even a small Chat badge can get in the way of key information on a mobile device.
Optimize Mobile Checkout Element Placement: Experience a Lift in Conversions
With limited space, it’s important to decide where to test these elements on your shop’s mobile checkout. Here are some placement options for highest impact to experience a conversion boost.
Near call-to-action buttons
Test security badges, customer support ratings, and your return policy above or below buttons such as “Continue”, “Preview”, and “Complete Purchase”.
When a customer decides to buy, there is a natural desire to delay the decision before thumbing the button. We always want to “think about” our decisions involving money. You can counter this with an affirmation of the transaction.
Near requests for personal information
When a mobile visitor is about to submit personal information to you, there is a natural hesitation. Giving you their email address, physical address, credit card number, or CVV number can feel intrusive.
This is another great place to inject risk reversal messages, testimonials, and a reminder of your value proposition.
In a “sticky” header or footer
Sticky elements are very important in a mobile interaction. One of the first things we address on a mobile site is the contents of the sticky elements.
The header or footer that is always on screen should probably change when the visitor enters the mobile shop checkout process. This is a great place to test trust builders.
Almost any of these elements can be placed in a header or footer. Don’t underestimate the number of things you can place in a sticky header or footer.
As a stand-alone sticky element
Elements such as security badges, certifications, and ratings can be individual elements that stay on screen. These are typically at the bottom. Be careful that these elements do not take the visitor away from the checkout process.
Can I Increase my Mobile Store Checkouts with Apps?
We see apps as a retention and loyalty tool. Apps do have advantages. Apps can provide a more controlled environment, such as making the phone vibrate when you purchase.
If your app provides a feature that can’t be duplicated online, you may consider promoting it on your site.
Warby Parker offers their app in a sticky footer featuring their “Virtual try-on” feature.
Word of Caution: In case you were wondering about an app effectiveness in acquiring new customers, we don’t have any experience that indicates this, even if the shoppers are familiar with the brand. Besides, an app requires two high-commitment conversions: one to install that app, and then one to buy.
In essence, an app becomes part of your offering, a part of a beloved product line. If you have a rabid tribe of enthusiastic customers, the app may be your best retention and repurchase strategy.
Bonus Track: How to Test and Develop your Mobile Checkout
Imagine that your website’s mobile version is strictly targeted at aliens, beings from another world. These beings have oversized thumbs. They live on a world near black hole, so time changes much more slowly. And their world is covered in volcanoes, so there are always distractions around them.
This pretty much sums up your mobile shoppers. They are VERY different from your desktop and tablet visitors.
As such, you should test your mobile ecommerce checkout separately. Letting it evolve independently from your desktop checkout as you learn more about your smartphone visitors.
You can create a different mobile checkout experience in several ways.
Modify your Responsive Web Template for small screens
Your developers will be able to add, remove, and modify elements based on the size of the screen being reported by your visitors’ browsers.
Use third party add-ons that target mobile
Ecommerce sites like Shopify offer plugins that can implement elements such as exit-overlays and sticky headers and footers.
Use Javascript and change things in the browser
There are a number of testing and personalization tools that will allow you to change mobile checkout elements in your visitors’ browsers. You can shape the mobile checkout experience in this way to maximize mobile conversions.
Live User Testing
We are fortunate to live in a golden age of marketing tools. Services like Validately and UserTesting will bring people to purchase something from your website on their smartphone, while recording and talking through their experience.
You will have at least one “palm-to-forehead” moment watching these videos.
And then you can make it easier for your mobile customers to go through your ecommerce checkout process.
Conversion Marketing: What It Is and Why You Need It NOW
Conversion Marketing StrategyYou’ve probably heard “conversion marketing” tossed around a lot , especially if you sell online via an ecommerce, subscription or a lead generation site. But, what is conversion marketing? How is it different or relates to conversion rates, conversion rate optimization, or cost-per-conversion — maybe even to the famous “content that converts” offered by many copywriters?
If only a single visitor converts, you don’t need more visitors. You need more conversions.
For many business owners and even for experienced digital marketers, it can be easy for all these terms to blur together. Let’s take a closer look at conversion marketing and how it can positively impact your online revenue?
What Is Conversion Marketing
Most online marketing strategies have the same goal: generating revenue. This revenue could be derived from sales, subscriptions or leads, depending on your product or service.
Why? Because conversion marketing is designed to draw value from each visit.
Conversion marketing aims to increase leads and sales by focusing on the visitor’s experience to persuade them to convert. This “conversion” could be any action or actions that you want a user to perform on your website. From making a purchase, to signing up for an email list, completing a form, subscribing or clicking a “call now” button. Every time a user takes that action, you’ve made a conversion.
Same traffic. More revenue.
Since the goal is to increase your conversion rate by moving a visitor closer to becoming a paying customer, you can see why conversion marketing or conversion rate optimization is crucial.
If you’re struggling to convert, you don’t need more visitors. You need more conversions.
This approach uses behavioral research, persuasion science, and data to determine how best to make your website a vehicle for success.
Understanding what your current and potential customers need is important in all aspects of marketing. But understanding how we can change the behavior of site visitors is of vital importance to conversion marketing. Whether it’s designing, writing, or developing creative website content, the focus is on getting more leads, increasing the number of transactions, increasing order value, etc.
The Key Reasons Why you Need Conversion Marketing right NOW
We just saw how conversion marketing, when properly implemented, can improve conversions and positively impact your profits. And if you are not focused on conversions and profits, what is the goal of your website?
If increasing conversions is not enough, then consider these reasons:
Looking for a conversion optimization marketing partner? We’ll help you build, measure and earn. Image via Unsplash.
Looking For a Conversion Marketing Partner?
Did this article get your juices flowing? Are you anxious to start boosting your online profits? We are just a phone call away.
Hiring your very own team of conversion optimization experts guarantees that you hit the ground running. Faster. Bigger. Better. And 100% unbiased.
How Conversion Marketing Drives Sales and Revenue Growth
One could argue that “impacting the bottom line” is the whole point of conversion optimization. The approach is powerful for ecommerce shops, and is used by subscription business models and lead generation sites to bring in more and better leads.
There are four major ways conversion marketing drives sales and revenue growth:
Let the data guide you
Your visitors are speaking to you, but you may not hear them. They are speaking with their visits, their clicks, their scrolls and other actions. They speak to you through web analytics.
Through research and analysis, you have a higher chance of creating effective online experiences. This means launching fewer duds and having a website that delivers what your visitors want. You’ll reduce your lead acquisition cost and increase the value of every visitor.
Get another chance to convert: Lead Nurturing & Repeat Customers
Studies show that nurturing existing subscribers, leads, and customers is five times more cost-effective than going after new ones. Whether your goal is to cross-sell, upsell, or bring leads back to the pipeline through remarketing, conversion marketing provides strategies to do just that.
Optimize for Your Audience(s)
Every customer is different — paid search versus organic visitors, new visitors, returning site visitors, desktop visitors, mobile — and these groups should not be treated the same. You can improve the conversion path for one group, only to annoy another. They can cancel each other out. With a conversion marketing approach, you gain detailed understanding of the specific users that come to your site and can optimize your marketing for each of them.
Quickly Fix What’s Not Working
The faster you learn where your marketing process falls short, the faster you can change it. Conversion marketing uses a variety of strategies to help you pinpoint barriers to conversion, whether it’s a confusing message, a clunky form or some other friction point.
Conversion Marketing Tactics
Lead generation and ecommerce businesses benefit from a range of optimization tactics. Here are some of our favorites.
Enjoy!
Find out if your website is ready for a full-press conversion optimization.
Defending your design: fight opinion with experimentation
Conversion-Centered DesignTom Niemeyer and Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences
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Defend your design.
Let’s face it. Your design work is going to be evaluated by neophytes. Whether you work as part of an in-house team or in an agency, your best work is going to be judged by company executives who’ve never spent a day studying design, done any UX research, or even own a box of crayons.
The best of them will defer to your judgment. Until they don’t.
But these are the neophytes who write checks. They have not earned their red pen, but they paid for it.
Does it pay to stand as the Captain America for their prospects and customers? Or is it smarter to give them what they want?
Do data-driven designers get fired more often than designers with a good story?
Defending Your Designs
I’ve been in many meetings when our data clearly contradicts the decisions of a designer. I’m going to tell you the truth. We usually lose. That’s right, the whims of a designer override the science-driven, lab-coat wearing data of a Conversion Scientist.
I’ll also say this: most designers welcome the data, so this scenario is rare.
Basically, it boils down to the culture of the business.
Can data help you defend your designs?
In part 2 of my conversation with designer Tom Niemeyer, we explore this question. And others.
“Design is really a negotiation,” says Tom. Let’s see what this means for you.
We’d like to hear from you
At the time of this recording, most of us are not working from the office, not commuting. We’d like to hear from you.
What is your situation. How is the coronavirus and its financial fall out impacting your company, your work and your customers?
Shoot us an email at podcast@conversionsciences.com. We’ll discuss it in another episode.
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Performance-based Web Design Can Be Creative Too
Conversion-Centered DesignTom Niemeyer and Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences
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A group of kids goes to visit a ranch. Behind the ranch house the land stretches uninterrupted to the horizon. The rancher suggests that the kids go out and play. If you tracked the paths of these naturally curious children, you’d find that they stayed close to the ranch house, not venturing far out onto the land. They would tend to remain in safe groups as they played.
The next summer, the kids visit the ranch again. This time, the rancher has built a fence to create a large back yard. Again, the rancher sends the children out to play. This time, their paths would be quite different. You would see them venturing out to the very edges of the yard, exploring in this smaller-but-manageable space. They would move more freely and play more independently.
Now, this parable is based on studies of rats. I’ve turned the data into a more relatable story.
Like the wide open land, the web offers an open expanse of design possibilities. If you believe the research and my parable of the ranch kids, you’ll agree that this may be a bad thing. The study of rats indicated that open spaces elevated anxiety in the rats, while the enclosed space reduced anxiety.
If you’re designing for the web, you are in an open space of possibility. This, according to the research, results in an anxiety response. There’s a whole lot more unknown out there, and every place feels dangerous.
Alternatively, if you fence yourself in, you actually increase the area of consideration. Anxiety is reduced, exploration is increased. But you also quickly find the boundaries.
I keep this study in mind, because I see data as a fence. It creates an enclosed space, a space that can encourage exploration, but it can also create the sense of limitation. Designers are a tough bunch. They want guidelines, but they hate the idea of limits.
This makes them seem like divas, difficult to please in any situation. So what is a data-driven marketer to do?
I decided to put a web designer on the spot.
How do you deal with designers who want guidance, but hate limitations? In other words, how do you introduce data into the design process without putting your creatives in a straight jacket?
I asked a designer. In fact, I asked a designer who we’ve been doing this to for over a year now.
Tom Niemeyer has been the designer-among-nerds here at Conversion Sciences. If there is any doubt that conversion optimization can be improved by a good sense of design, Tom has put it to rest for us.
For me the question is this: How close to the ranch house do you put the fence? This topic required two episodes. Listen to what he says in part one..
The three D’s of Web Design
The three “D”s that Tom talks about are fences.
Deadlines. Decision-makers. Desire paths. What are the primary limiters of your design process?
This is going to require some honesty on your part.
On a scale of one to five rate your current project.
How did you score? Most likely there are two that dominate. And this pattern shows up in all of your projects.
Would your teammates agree? Maybe you should ask.
In Part 2 of my conversation with Tom we talk about defending your design with data. Subscribe to get that next episode. And, don’t forget to send us your questions – podcast@conversionsciences.com.
Now go science something.
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