Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

Initial comScore data is showing online sales down around 3% for the 08 holiday season – while some sectors are up and others are down the simple fact is that while things aren’t where we want them to be and are unlikely to improve immediately. So what are you to do? With just a bit of conversion optimization there’s no reason you can’t overcome the decline and boost your net profits quickly. So before you put a dime into new marketing campaigns review these 7 conversion optimization tips to get the most out of the money you already spent.

Initial comScore data is showing online sales down around 3% for the 08 holiday season – while some sectors are up and others are down the simple fact is that while things aren’t where we want them to be and are unlikely to improve immediately. So what are you to do? With just a bit of conversion optimization there’s no reason you can’t overcome the decline and boost your net profits quickly. So before you put a dime into new marketing campaigns review these 7 conversion optimization tips to get the most out of the money you already spent.

And of if you’re still thinking about top line spending increases before optimization, let’s review the simple math:

Visitors – 10,000
Cost per visitor – $0.50
Average sale – $120
Average sale value (net) – $40
Conversion Rate- 2.5% (not too shabby)

Cost per conversion = $20

• Up that conversion rate by just 5% (or 2.5 customers) and your cost per sale goes down to $1 or 5% on every order.
• And every 5% you go up from there it decreases by another $1/ sale. Which on a profit of $40/ order isn’t anything to balk at.
• Similar gains can come from increasing the average basket, decreasing visitor cost (more efficient campaigns) or improved net margins.

1 – The campaign offer. It goes without saying that you have to start where the user starts and that’s looking at the creative. Whether you have a search campaign, are buying display media, emailing your subscriber base or investing in social media your creative and offer determines both your traffic level and your quality. So if you’re buying actions (cpc, cpa, cpl) let’s start with tightening things down – just a bit will do the trick to start but really, you don’t need someone looking for a guide to making widgets hitting your site, you need people thinking about or ready to buy them. How do you tighten things down? Drop the generic creative, throw in a price or some sort of quantifier and focus on the value offering. You may see a decline in traffic from losing questionable visitors but you may see a nice bump as well; afterall, more information makes it easier for customers to make a decision.

2 – The landing page. Every campaign needs a landing page and frankly every micro-segment should have one whether it’s truly distinct or just a personalized version. Even if your creative is identical on a few sites the user is coming with different expectations and you want to address that. Of course if you’re dealing with different products or offers it’s even more important to segment landing pages – continue the color scheme, reiterate the offer value, show the product they searched for, tailor the navigation to fit (or remove it) and make call to actions clear and easy to find.

3 – The funnel. Just because your landing page gets the visitor’s attention doesn’t mean the sale is made (or the lead has been gained). As marketers we have the tendency to focus on getting people’s attention and response at the ad or landing page stage and often skip the more technical and “boring” elements of the funnel assuming they work well enough. But with so many sites selling similar (or the same product) the little issues in checkout do matter and not just for conversion, there’s huge upsell potential in the cart process (be it showing extra products or just accessories as someone enters the checkout process). So review the basics of your cart – be sure data is properly saved so customers can return later and make a purchase, insure your error messages are intended for humans and not just programmers, review the flow, the supporting information during checkout pertaining to shipping drop dates and returns and look to improve the areas that are weak. If it’s possible try and get formal testing on your checkout process but if it’s not ask a few friends to go through it and find their pain points… it’s amazing what sort of returns you can see moving around just a few form fields and adding some information.

Ok so that’s 3 steps that make things easier for the customer but that doesn’t end the optimization process, now let’s turn to the product/ value.

4 – Improve Product Information. New descriptions, photos, and general details. This too seems pretty straight forward but as we add more and more products to our system it’s easy to forget to update what was putting into the system previously. Photos and descriptions play a major role in selling your products and as you learn what works (and what doesn’t), going back and changing old product information is essential. Even if your style doesn’t change, there are serious seasonal benefits to updating copy and images – explaining that a product makes a good gift, works well with some other items or simply looks great when shot for a seasonal campaign it’s important to show it. Keeping a log of when a product’s imagery and copy was last reviewed is extremely helpful in updating for the future – looking at every item annually plus during peak seasonal times may be enough.

5 – Make conversion options easier to find. Add to cart, become a member, live chat, phone support, they all need to be a click away from every page. It’s obvious but still a painful reality that many companies assume a linear browsing process – the truth is customers may start at a landing page, revisit the homepage, look at a product then bounce to the about us or shipping FAQs. Every one of those processes should be familiar with easy to return navigation and easy next steps.

6 – Sell your trust. Security seals, privacy icons, user reviews. You can combine these in many ways to get people to believe in you versus the other guy. There’s no end to the research on this one and no reason why you shouldn’t be doing it. No matter how strong your brand is, online customers are comparing and comparing and comparing. Help earn their trust on your store, your brand and your product by showing them that you’re secure and trustworthy by placing some relevant seals. HackerSafe does a simple site audit and takes just minutes to add to most sites but with extremely high adoption rates even this simple icon has huge implications. BBBOnline and other similar business association logos also go a long way in adding a sense of security.

To really excel with customer trust you must have reviews. Reviews help people understand how your products really work, who likes them, who doesn’t and they go beyond marketing product copy to talk in human terms explaining benefits you may have missed or things your legal may not let you touch from a brand perspective. Implementing reviews doesn’t have to be difficult either. Companies like BazaarVoice and PowerReviews offer remotely hosted solutions that integrate right into your website offering you full featured review capabilities with minimal IT work. Reviews are also great for getting people back to your site (think post order follow up email) but that’s an issue for a whole other post.

7 – Personalize. No matter how someone enters your site be it a new prospect from a campaign, a type-in or a repeat user with a cookie they are not the same. Use profile data (what they bought/ did) combined with behavioral data (how they got there, where they’re going) and make an experience that’s relevant. If I’m looking at your music site for guitars but see drums front and center you’re less applicable and rather than surfing in I’m going to move on. Personalization can be very basic or very extensive but now is the time to dive right in… get beyond just offering recommendations on one product and get into tailoring the site top to bottom.