This is a guest post written by Melissa Sawyer
The internet has revolutionized many aspects of modern life, from the way we work, to the way we shop. E-commerce is an industry built entirely around the internet. Purchases in e-commerce occur solely within an online environment eliminating the elements of physical interaction that using a traditional brick and mortar store brings.
For it to be viable for customers to shop online instead of at a brick and mortar store, the online experience needs to be convenient and practical – more so than using the physical store. In many cases, this will manifest in the form of cheaper products and a wider variety of stock than a small store could offer.
However, the strength of a brick and mortar store will always be that the customer leaves with the stock then and there. The item is theirs immediately, without any further delay. Shoppers are willing to wait for their items only if the online shopping experience is easy and free of complications.
Excellent service and efficient delivery are just as important as a well designed site
Many online shoppers are simply there to browse. They place items in their basket, but ultimately pull out of the transaction at the end. This is what is known as shopping cart ‘abandonment’. Since online shoppers can easily comparison shop, it is important that the experience is of the highest standard. This extends beyond just how a site functions, and is applicable right up until the product has been successfully delivered to the customer.
Internet shoppers will always be influenced by the aesthetics of an online store. If it works well and looks good, customers will be happy to give you their money. Businesses know this and spend large amounts of money on web development. However, a flashy site but poor customer service is a sure fire way to alienate customers and ensure that they won’t return.
One of the biggest criticisms online retailers face is poor delivery of purchased items. Goods arriving late, damaged, or failing to arrive altogether are common issues with online retail. The New York Times recently ran a piece that highlights the some of the issues online retail face, particularly shipping mistakes.
Certain hiccups are bound to happen from time to time, but if those issues are resolved well, then the customer is more likely to return. If missing or damaged items are dealt with professionally, and swiftly, then a customer will be more likely to give their businesses in the future. However, if a customer is left waiting a long time for an inadequate resolution, then you can forget it.
Steps can be taken to prevent delivery mishaps
It seems painfully obvious, but a well placed ‘fragile’ sticker on a package can work wonders. People will tend to be more careful if they know the item will be easily damaged. Packing orders well is another must. If orders from your e-commerce site keep arriving broken, then your packaging may be to blame just as much as an heavy handed courier or delivery staff.
Selecting a reputable company to carry out your deliveries is essential. As always in the world of business, reputation is everything. Choose someone you know has a good track record of quick, safe deliveries. It is even better to use a company that offers recorded delivery, especially if real-time tracking of shipments is offered. This offers peace of mind to online stores who dispatched the order, and customers who eagerly await the goods that they have paid for. After all, if any complications arise, it will be your job to explain this to the customer. This is a small detail that is often overlooked and can be extremely damaging to customer relations.
Many online retailers opt to do as money.co.uk suggest and protect their items during the delivery stage through the use of ‘goods in transit’ insurance. This means if items are lost or damaged while it is being delivered, then they are covered and costs can be recuperated.
If your store operates locally, and runs its own local delivery service, then it may be an idea to fit delivery vehicles with a vehicle tracking system. This allows you to see the driving habits of delivery staff, with some systems being so advanced that they can analyze the sharpness of turns and harshness of braking. These can be valuable tools for stamping out any aggressive driving that may be responsible for damaging products in transit.
Ultimately, e-commerce is built upon trust
Online shoppers put their trust into online stores to a greater extent than in physical shops. There is a massive degree of faith involved. Online shoppers cannot inspect the items themselves, so are trusting online retailers that the products they order bare resemblance to what is presented on screen, but also that they will be delivered within the time frame stated.
People flock to online shopping due to its ease and flexibility. The majority of time, this will prove to be a smooth experience, but even small errors cost businesses money. It is important to remember, just because an order has been placed and the products have been shipped, it does not signify the end of an online retailer’s relationship with a customer.
Sales Revenue Optimization – A Yes Brainer
Ecommerce CROThis is a guest post by Alexander Richter
How to get a new sports car when you run an e-commerce company?
Revenue/Visit – nice Things will happen
In most cases the conversion on an e-commerce website is a sale. The measure of how many people bought is vital since you can not only evaluate the success of your advertising efforts, but the effectiveness of your webshop.
Unfortunately that’s only half the truth because a conversion as a boolean value does not tell you how profitable the order was or how much value it had for you. As an e-tailer it is primarily not just about the count of the disposal, it is about the profit (or better, the gross profit!). That is what you pay the sports car from. Optimizing the proportion of revenue per visit brings great results to surface. Suddenly you as an e-tailer can spend more money on advertising since a average visit has more value now a conversion can be more expensive. On this point you can clap your heels together three times and wish something: Do you want more profit based on the number of visits you have (who wants that?) or “buy” more conversions (by increasing the number of visitors by SEA/SEO/Affiliate etc. activities) for the same price? Either way a single visit has an higher value for you!
How come Revenue Optimization and Conversion Rate Optimization is not always one Thing?
The conversion rate (CR) and the revenue/visit (RPV) are the two key performance indicators (KPIs) which are not connected fixedly. In many cases an improvement of the CR means an increase of the RPV. But there is optimization that can go wrong without knowing it and just having an eye on the conversion rate.
We are getting a little negative first
An example, starting with a negative view: An ecommerce site implements an overview of the top sellers directly on the homepage. A splittestingtool is setup to quantify the success of this action. Yay! The conversion rate is higher now, likely the customers can find the most bought stuff easier now.
What have not been seen? The actual revenue per customer is regressive. Maybe because of the easier way it was no longer necessary for the customer to have a closer look on the rest of the line of goods in the category listings etc. Cross selling by exploring did not take place any longer.
Nevertheless this action could have a positive effect on both metrics. It is just important to test and keep in mind that your web-shop has one primary mission: Getting as much gain per visitor as possible. That is what makes a website sexy for the etailer.
A positive Example
An example, but no rocket science, how you can increase the revenue/visit is the implementation of a free shippingthreshold. If your customer passes a certain purchase total the shipping is free. Here it is important to choose the threshold wisely. It is not unusual that the CR will not change or will even get worse. Visitors find the article they looked for, but the total is too less for the threshold. This could be frustrating, they got the feeling of getting it cheaper somewhere else and will leave. Here comes the big BUT: Customers with a cart value close to the threshold feel encouraged to crack the threshold by putting some more (mostly peanuts) in their carts. The average order value is rising. As a consequence the CR is maybe going down a little, but the RPV looks better now. Cool one step closer to your (not necessarily imaginary) sports car!
Get real
On the following chart you can see the trend of an A/Bsplit test where two thresholds have been implemented:
Comparing the challenger (here named “before”) and the competitor (here “after”) you can see that there was two (quite flat) accumulations before. With the competitor they were shifted to the right (higher order value) and become more acute (more orders of that order value). In average there was a higher order value per visit.
In Numbers:
Dr. Flint McGlaughlin and the “magnitude of the change”
I like Dr. Flint McGlaughlin especially one very true quote of him: It’s not the magnitude of the change on the page that impacts conversion. It’s the magnitude of the change in the mind.
Takeaways
● The metrics conversion rate and revenue/visit are akin, but not the same
● Don’t just optimize the usability optimize the motivation of the visitor to buy (more)
About the author:
Alexander Richter works for the ReBOOM GmbH in Germany. My everyday work is just one thing: Optimizing commerce sites.
Landing Page Optimization with Tim Ash
Landing Page OptimizationTim Ash and Joel Harvey talk testing screw-ups and “with and without” tests. Find out if there is a lab at Conversion Sciences called the “QA-tion Station” and how many Igloos Joel has built in the latest installment of Landing Page Optimization on Webmaster Radio.
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Marketers’ Helpful Little Monsters-Marketing Automation
Lead GenerationAs marketers, we need some little monsters handling the details or we will drown in the effort. Marketo just launched a Demand Generation Success Center that shows marketers how to become digital Dr. Frankensteins.
From Drip to Drive
The Marketo resource center provides advice on how to automate the many things that marketers must get done. They don’t just toe the party line.
For example, I believe that marketers should move from “drip” campaigns that “nurture” prospects, to high-impact educational campaigns that drive prospects to engage with you. The new resource center has some brilliant recommendations from me.
This is all easier said than done, and exactly that’s why you need to install little monsters like Marketo.
Visit the Demand Generation Success Center. Extend your reach, turn up your frequency, and still have time to develop killer cascading content.
We Are Now in Control of Your Eyes [AUDIO]
Conversion-Centered DesignI did a little experiment using images and copy in my Marketing Land column Take Control of Your Visitors’ Eyes. Instead of using my superior powers of page design to highlight an important piece of information, I used them to hide that information.
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I purposefully did some things you may be doing accidentally, to the detriment of your site and your visitors.
When looking at web and landing page copy, I often find the important information buried, or designed in such a way as to look unimportant.
Value propositions, phone numbers, guarantees, and special offers are some of the things that are important to visitors, but don’t look important.
Images, captions and more
Read the column or listen to the podcast to find out how I obscured an important fact, and how I highlighted another, less relevant fact using:
It’s a show and tell column, Take Control of Your Visitors’ Eyes.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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The Importance of Good Distribution Within E-commerce
Ecommerce CROThis is a guest post written by Melissa Sawyer
The internet has revolutionized many aspects of modern life, from the way we work, to the way we shop. E-commerce is an industry built entirely around the internet. Purchases in e-commerce occur solely within an online environment eliminating the elements of physical interaction that using a traditional brick and mortar store brings.
For it to be viable for customers to shop online instead of at a brick and mortar store, the online experience needs to be convenient and practical – more so than using the physical store. In many cases, this will manifest in the form of cheaper products and a wider variety of stock than a small store could offer.
However, the strength of a brick and mortar store will always be that the customer leaves with the stock then and there. The item is theirs immediately, without any further delay. Shoppers are willing to wait for their items only if the online shopping experience is easy and free of complications.
Excellent service and efficient delivery are just as important as a well designed site
Many online shoppers are simply there to browse. They place items in their basket, but ultimately pull out of the transaction at the end. This is what is known as shopping cart ‘abandonment’. Since online shoppers can easily comparison shop, it is important that the experience is of the highest standard. This extends beyond just how a site functions, and is applicable right up until the product has been successfully delivered to the customer.
Photo credit: quijonido via creative commons
Internet shoppers will always be influenced by the aesthetics of an online store. If it works well and looks good, customers will be happy to give you their money. Businesses know this and spend large amounts of money on web development. However, a flashy site but poor customer service is a sure fire way to alienate customers and ensure that they won’t return.
One of the biggest criticisms online retailers face is poor delivery of purchased items. Goods arriving late, damaged, or failing to arrive altogether are common issues with online retail. The New York Times recently ran a piece that highlights the some of the issues online retail face, particularly shipping mistakes.
Certain hiccups are bound to happen from time to time, but if those issues are resolved well, then the customer is more likely to return. If missing or damaged items are dealt with professionally, and swiftly, then a customer will be more likely to give their businesses in the future. However, if a customer is left waiting a long time for an inadequate resolution, then you can forget it.
Steps can be taken to prevent delivery mishaps
It seems painfully obvious, but a well placed ‘fragile’ sticker on a package can work wonders. People will tend to be more careful if they know the item will be easily damaged. Packing orders well is another must. If orders from your e-commerce site keep arriving broken, then your packaging may be to blame just as much as an heavy handed courier or delivery staff.
Selecting a reputable company to carry out your deliveries is essential. As always in the world of business, reputation is everything. Choose someone you know has a good track record of quick, safe deliveries. It is even better to use a company that offers recorded delivery, especially if real-time tracking of shipments is offered. This offers peace of mind to online stores who dispatched the order, and customers who eagerly await the goods that they have paid for. After all, if any complications arise, it will be your job to explain this to the customer. This is a small detail that is often overlooked and can be extremely damaging to customer relations.
Many online retailers opt to do as money.co.uk suggest and protect their items during the delivery stage through the use of ‘goods in transit’ insurance. This means if items are lost or damaged while it is being delivered, then they are covered and costs can be recuperated.
If your store operates locally, and runs its own local delivery service, then it may be an idea to fit delivery vehicles with a vehicle tracking system. This allows you to see the driving habits of delivery staff, with some systems being so advanced that they can analyze the sharpness of turns and harshness of braking. These can be valuable tools for stamping out any aggressive driving that may be responsible for damaging products in transit.
Ultimately, e-commerce is built upon trust
Online shoppers put their trust into online stores to a greater extent than in physical shops. There is a massive degree of faith involved. Online shoppers cannot inspect the items themselves, so are trusting online retailers that the products they order bare resemblance to what is presented on screen, but also that they will be delivered within the time frame stated.
People flock to online shopping due to its ease and flexibility. The majority of time, this will prove to be a smooth experience, but even small errors cost businesses money. It is important to remember, just because an order has been placed and the products have been shipped, it does not signify the end of an online retailer’s relationship with a customer.
Website Optimization Lessons from a Christmas Card
Landing Page OptimizationDon’t toss out those holiday cards you’re getting! There are lessons to be learned in those colorful envelops.
We wanted to pick the right Christmas Card to send to clients and friends, and decided to analyze four different options.
What we learned was often applicable to a successful website.
Website Optimization Lessons from a Christmas Card Video
http://conversionsciences.wistia.com/medias/gcj49vw3jx?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=501
What You Can Learn About Website Optimization from Christmas Cards
We sought to maximize the Open Rate of the card as well as a new metric, Pins (to the office wall) per Recipient, or PPR. Our thinking is that, f the card is effective, it will be displayed for others to enjoy.
Consider it our Christmas card to you.
Playing E-commerce Product Page Roulette [AUDIO]
Ecommerce CROWhat’s the worst and the best thing that could happen to your e-commerce site?
The answer is that a Conversion Scientist tried to buy something from you.
It’s good because, we are very likely to write about our experience. It’s bad because we are going to point out what you’re doing wrong.
We recently tried to buy some stand-up desks for some of the team here at Conversion Sciences. Like so many shoppers, we found ourselves paralyzed by choice.
In true Conversion Scientist form, we decided to collect some data to help us with our choice. We compared desks at National Business Furniture, Rakuten and World Market. However, our decision to buy was based on how their product pages performed, not on price and features.
We invented the game Product Page Roulette.
Find out which site won our dollars (and probably the dollars of many other visitors) in my Marketing Land column An Expensive E-commerce Game: Product Page Roulette.
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Please Click to Tweet one of these
Why the @WorldMarket site is winning the ecommerce game.
Tweet: Roulette is a game of chance. Your product pages shouldn’t be a game of chance. http://ctt.ec/0Kv4R+ @bmassey via @MarketingLand
Tweet: The job of the product page is to provide what the visitor needs to decide to “Add to Cart.” http://ctt.ec/bN7e1+ @bmassey
Tweet: Eye-tracking simulators estimate what an eye-tracking study would tell us without the expense. http://ctt.ec/n5EGO+ @bmassey
Tweet: When your marketplace offers a spectrum of prices and features visitors are paralyzed by choice. http://ctt.ec/96a3c+ @bmassey
Measure Email to the Dollars and Make Yourself Invaluable
Conversion Marketing StrategyIt’s time to stop boring people with how good your open rates and click-through rates are. Tell them what each and every person on your list is worth in dollars by measuring Revenue per Recipient (RPR). When you track the results of your emails down to the dollar, you track your own value down to the dollar.
From Marketing Land: Marketing Power Processes: Tracking Email To The Dollars by Brian Massey
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Tweetables: Click to Tweet
Power Process: Ignore Email Open Rates & Click-Through Rates
Revenue-Per-Recipient (RPR) Ties Marketing to the Money
Like trees in the winter, it’s important to prune and shape your email list.
Most email clients now show the subject line and the beginning of an email in the inbox view.
5 Sure Shot Tips to Help You Convert More Leads
Lead GenerationJessica Davis of Godot Media how to increase lead conversion rates.
Converting leads through your website is an essential objective for any website owner. If your business relies solely on the performance of your website, then this becomes even more important.
For success online, you have to constantly strive toward improving the conversion rate of your website.
Conversion rate basically refers to the frequency of converting casual visitors on your business website into success leads for the business. This list can include customers who buy your services or products, sign-up on email lists, post comments, make inquiries, as well as perform interactions with your website.
Converting visitors into leads is not child’s play. Even when armed with social media and content marketing strategies, companies are still unable to successfully convert visitors to leads. A good conversion strategy requires constant testing and analysis.
Essential tips to improve lead conversion rates
Improving conversion rates should be your primary aim when operating a business website. Below, are a few points to help you boost lead conversion rates.
#1 – Employ different strategies for for different leads
You have to treat your leads individually. Your customer base will likely be comprised of different groups who have different interests and triggers. For instance, there may be some customers who like reading exhaustive content describing your business, yet others, may lack such patience and would rather take part in a webinar. As you can see, each group would have a different trigger so you need to approach each category with material that appeals to them.
Offering incentives is a great way of converting leads. This method has been used in the online business scenario for a long time now. The longevity of this method proves its success in lead conversion. An example of this method can be seen in several blogs where casual visitors are asked to give their emails in exchange for an exclusive link to a free resource such as an eBook. This principle is applicable in any online business for lead capturing purposes. You can increase you email list very quickly if this is done correctly.
#3 – Get to know your leads better
Every business has its ideal customer. You should ask yourself how well you know yours before creating your content marketing strategy. If you don’t know them very well, then it’s time to get to know them. Check out their demographics. You should know their location, income, occupation, buying habits, lifestyle, and similar data pertaining to financial situations. This data is called as Central Demographic Model or CDM. Apart from this, you will also want to know customers’ Central Psychographic Model or CPM. This defines the preferences, behaviors, and other factors affecting buying decisions of customers. CDM and CPM collectively can help you in converting leads better.
#4 – Understand successful conversion processes
Conversion processes are not an exact science. You may be surprised at how something mundane has contributed toward lead generation in the past. Hit and trial also works in online business lead generation. As such, you should always look at what has lead to successful conversions in the past. Proper attention should be paid to your website’s history in converting leads. Once you realize what has impacted your visitor’s decision in buying your product or service, that should be properly incorporated into your content marketing model, and should be duly communicated to everyone in the sales and marketing teams.
#5 – Always customize follow-up communication
Customizing follow up according to client preferences is also a must for lead generation. Whether you are using batch signs or whether the sales team is directly following up with specific leads, you have to ensure that you have proper understanding of the follow up campaign. Doing this will assist in customizing campaigns and avoid any clashes between the different follow up campaigns. As with the process of tailoring lead generation campaigns and content marketing according to client preferences, follow up measures should also be done for best results.
About the author: Jessica Davis is a Content Strategist at Godot Media – a leading copywriting company. She is an expert in article writing category, and has helped several businesses succeed through effective use of content. Other areas that interest her are technology, social media and fashion.
Cascading Content is Content Marketing Made Easier
Conversion Marketing StrategyIt was a few paragraphs from my book in a Chapter entitled “How Content Fuels Conversion.”
It started off pretty well, but it ended in a lie.
Amid my discussions of video and images; of draftsmen and imagemakers and storytellers appeared a few lines. They’re there on page 92.
I go on to describe how this transcription turns into blog posts, social media posts and more. I then go on to tell the lie.
The truth is, that they are not as time-intensive as creating the content from scratch. But these transformations do take time.
My idea has been stolen
Since the publication of the book, I’ve tried to get someone to steal my idea so that I would have a resource to turn to. I’ve had conversations with a number of agencies and freelancers about why content is like champagne. Businesses are creating the champagne every day. They just need glasses, stacked just so to turn it their content into an online party.
Dust off one of your presentations
How many people saw that webinar you recorded last quarter? Most webinars draw less than 100 viewers. There are a lot more people out there who won’t watch a webinar, but who are qualified prospects. I invite you to dust off your webinar or presentation and turn it into a Slideshare presentation, blog posts, a report, an eBook – you choose the package.
Most importantly, create the content landing pages and social media posts that generate sales and leads. After all, this content is only valuable if it grows your business.
Every so often, your CEO is asked to speak about some aspect of the market. Every now and then, your tech guru is asked to talk about how brilliant your technology is. And how many times is your sales team pitching to audiences about your fantastic offering? Each of these moments is an opportunity for a cascade of content for your marketing efforts.
Is your presentation cascadeable?
Here’s how you can tell if your content is a good match for the cascade:
Other than that, there’s no risk in uploading your presentation for us to look at. We don’t ask for a credit card.
The Audience is Bigger Than The Room
The audience that initially heard the presentation is tiny compared to the audience for the cascade of content it will generate.
Photo courtesy paulodonnel on Flickr under the creative commons.