So I’m browsing around some of my favorite blogs tonight I’m seeing a lot of the same suggestions from site to site… FutureNow is talking about common shopping cart mistakes, BeRelevant is linking to a post on using analytics to drive email, LunchPail is explaining the basics of using cookies, and Bazaar Blog is hyping up the perks of social media for increasing sales and decreasing returns thanks to relevancy. What’s interesting here isn’t what the suggestions are but that they keep coming up, month after money, year after year. One week I’ll see a topic covered by one blog, a few weeks later by another and I don’t think it’s a result of sites ripping content ideas.
So what gives? Why are marketers having trouble optimizing their campaigns and adding features? Click in to keep reading…
So I’m browsing around some of my favorite blogs tonight I’m seeing a lot of the same suggestions from site to site… FutureNow is talking about common shopping cart mistakes, BeRelevant is linking to a post on using analytics to drive email, LunchPail is explaining the basics of using cookies, and Bazaar Blog is hyping up the perks of social media for increasing sales and decreasing returns thanks to relevancy. What’s interesting here isn’t what the suggestions are but that they keep coming up, month after money, year after year. One week I’ll see a topic covered by one blog, a few weeks later by another and I don’t think it’s a result of sites ripping content ideas.
So what gives? Why are marketers having trouble optimizing their campaigns and adding features?
Working with a lot of companies I use to discount a lack of change to a lack of IT resources but I don’t think that’s the challenge most of us face, even if we’d like to write it off as the big issue. The truth is most sites are adding features and tweaking tools. Most are expanding and while resources may be limited, the IT world isn’t saying no, the marketers are through their priorities.
Acquisition has always been the focus of the marketing world and generally that makes sense… but only to a degree. However online marketing isn’t just about driving people in. Traffic volume only means something if you sell ad views and even then it benefits from focus and relevancy. Brand awareness is a great metric but it doesn’t make profit and in this economy it’s the goal for only a few businesses out there.
What matters is sales and results but still most marketers seem to prioritize based on expanding their campaigns. What I see and hear is an old dilemma — push more money into SEM, build a few new landing pages and improve reporting to drive traffic or improve the checkout process. Spend time emailing customers with discounts or to encourage reviews. For whatever reason growing the top of the funnel seems to win time after time so the optimization experts continue to end up frustrated as marketers ignore the backend and ignore the customer’s experience.
Why not focus on acquisition first and foremost? I’m not suggesting that you don’t focus on it but I would strongly urge every online marketer to focus on optimization just as much. Sure your site may convert an acceptable rate, maybe even above the rate you think your competitors get so adding traffic makes more sales but does it make more profit? With a little optimization and knocking off some of those easy wins you’ll boost your conversation rates and maybe your average order size and repeat buy rates as well. That’s no laughing matter either — a simple 5 or 10% increase in conversions on a decent or large scale site can mean enough revenue to exceed company goals or to add in a better promotion campaign to drive some serious volume.
And face it, its difficult making things grow and work when your conversion rate isn’t going up. Adding more traffic to the pipe to get less revenue makes no sense yet it continues to happen over and over.
It’s not just about doing major initiatives too. Most of the posts I’ve referenced apply so sites that come off as state of the art. Often times best practices are applied — to the big picture. A new shopping cart is rolled out, better product pages or new image tools get added in but the basics are often looked as too simple to matter. The truth of course is that the basics are what make the experience and unlike with branding or interest marketing, when you’re trying to drive sales online, the customer experience is what matters, it’s all that matters.
With a tough holiday season already started I challenge every marketer to spend just a couple of hours reviewing their site for those common issues be it UI hiccups, bad error messages or missed easy wins like sending an email when someone bails in checkout and prioritize just a few resources to address them. If you haven’t don’t this already I assure you, the results can and will astound you and may just make you hit your net rev. numbers for the period.