(Contributed By : Capturly) The old times of marketing have passed by. Anyone who says “Half the money spent on advertising is wasted – the problem is that we don’t know which part” is stuck in the past. Data based marketing changed the ways marketers and decision-makers operate. We create. We test. We measure. And it has never been this effective.
If you own an Ecommerce site you’ve probably asked questions like
– which message fits my audience better
– which version do they like better
– which call-to-action works best
or
– why visitors do not subscribe
– why visitors leave a filled cart
– why visitors close your site
To get a better understanding of all these questions, you have to collect data, measure Conversions, and Optimize it.
What is Conversion?
A conversion is a general term for a visitor completing a site goal, actions that are important for the website’s operator. Goals come in many shapes and sizes. If you own an Ecommerce website to sell products, the primary goal (known as the macro-conversion) is for the user to make a purchase. But to get there, it’s advised to take smaller steps. There comes the importance of micro-conversions.
Examples of micro-conversions:
– Signing up for e-mail lists
– Creating an account
– Adding a product to the cart
Examples of macro-conversions:
– Purchasing a product from the website
– Requesting a quote
– Subscribing to a service
Conversion Rate
Calculating the conversion rate is not rocket science. Long story short: for each visit, how many conversions were made.
Let’s say you sell a Programming course. Your macro-conversion is to make a sale. 100 users visit your website, and there were 5 purchases made, that’s a conversion of 5%.
But right before we give you a piece of advice on how to get 100% conversion rate (yes, out of 100 visitors 100 will buy), let me tell you a little story about how it works…
The term “Conversion Rate” is kind of misleading. Yes, you want to increase your conversion rate. But it shouldn’t be your #1 goal.
Here’s why
Let’s say that you run an Ecommerce site that sells iPhones for $600. And your conversion rate is 7%. Profit on each sell is 100$.
If you start selling phones for 10 dollars, your conversion rate would probably increase to 100%, BUT we shouldn’t talk about revenue or profit this turn…
Bottom line? Increasing your conversion rate is good. But the main goal is to increase the amount of revenue or profit that your site generates via optimizing. 9 times out of 10, these two goals align. But it’s an important distinction to make.
Industrial conversion rate averages – what to await
The overall world average moves between 2.7% to 3.5%. This means out of 100 visitors about 2-4 will buy on average. On the other hand, there are some other factors to consider. If you are selling houses, making a few deals a month can be more than enough revenue for you and your business. But if you are a wholesaler of chopsticks, you (probably) should have more sales going. Conversion rates also differ in industries. As WordStream’s research state, the industrial conversion rate average equals to Statista’s data, but it heavily spreads amongst businesses, just as average item sale prices.
As seen in the picture below, these are only averages. You can do worse, and you can do much better. We will show you how.
Understanding the FUNNEL
The Critical Point
Although micro-conversions are good to look for, you want to maximize your sales. The best way is to know why users abandon the cart. To descend users leaving before making a purchase, you have to know the reason behind it. Who are they, how they behave, which stage are they in and so on? For this purpose, we use “Sales funnels”. It’s got different names and versions, but the main point is the same.
Sales funnel help us to measure different procedures, and states in which the user stands, that let us know what kind of value proposition we should offer. For example: If a user sees us for the very first time, and is not yet in the state of buying, should visit our blog first rather than being pushed by offers and subscriptions.. After they have made some actions, spent time on your page, visited a few others, you’ve successfully built brand awareness. You can proceed to ask more, and offer an enterprise, demo version of your product, and if they are satisfied, we can give a premium offer. But to catch users at the right time in the right state, we must measure their activities.
Get Traffic
The base of everything. This is the first stage of any type of funnel. The only way to make anyone to buy from you is if they are aware of your business. This is the first job for marketers: to increase awareness of the brand.
In this step, the general assumption is that your audience is not aware of you and what you offer. So, your method of reaching out to them should be about letting them know exactly who you are and how you can add value to their life. By creating a strong brand message for your company, you can go a long way towards achieving this. Hiring a brand messaging agency and developing a strong brand message can help you stand out from your competitors and give the customer a better idea of your business and values. You can also offer free tips, provide checklists, perform audits, etc. In addition, harness the power of social media by posting blog posts regularly and making this SEO friendly, so that search engines can rank you well. Any article or post that aims to give business tips for Canadians (or Americans, or anyone for that matter!) would say that an active social media presence, utilizing lead magnets, and publishing relevant, valuable content can greatly help drive the target audience to your brand.
Get Leads
Next step is to get your audience to willingly give you their contact details. It can happen via submitting a form, subscribing to your company’s e-mail or something equivalent to that. They can voluntarily allow you to contact them, which indicates that they are interested in you. We won’t speak about lead qualification, because – if used the methods above – visitors come from qualified sources.
We differentiate 3 kinds of leads: cold, warm, and hot leads.
Cold leads: they have never seen you, therefore never showed interest in your products or services. In most cases you appeared at the wrong place, and time. Just because a lead is cold, doesn’t mean that they can’t be nurtured into becoming a hot lead.
Warm leads: They are one step closer to you. They have shown interest in your product or service by following your company on social media, signing up to your e-mail newsletter, etc. They are much more valuable than cold leads, but really only consist of someone whose contact information has now been captured.
Hot leads: They are the best types of leads because they are the closest to buying from you. Contains people who are highly interested in your product and need it, have a budget and probably are ready to buy. They are actively seeking for a solution to their problem. This is the reason why Google Ads work so well – they know what problem they are facing, and they also let us know that. Case studies, free webinars, educational videos, reviews, testimonials are great ways to move them towards the final decision. Once they are on your website, you can guide them towards making a purchase by making use of back-end software assistance such as the one offered by Price (https://price.com/enterprise). Providing an optimized price for the product they need can help them choose you over a competitor.
Get Sales
Where your hard work pays off. All the contents you created, all the e-mail sequences made, not to mention the campaigns…
At this stage, the prospect is becoming a customer by finalizing the deal with you. They’re signing the contract and clicking the purchase button.
It’s important to state that this is not the last stage of your sales funnel. If your interaction with a customer ends with one sale made, you are missing a huge opportunity.
Website visitors who are re-targeted with display ads are more likely to convert by 70%.
Retention
At this stage, your customer knows you: made the first purchase, subscribed to your service, went through your consultation. But this doesn’t mean the end of your relationship. This stage requires you to focus on keeping customers happy to convert them into repeat customers and brand advocates. One approach to accomplish this is to ensure that your website is optimized by adding the most recent trends that will attract more customers. You may, for example, hire a magento web development company to assist you in this aspect. If you satisfy your customer, your brand will be spread via word of mouth, giving it free, very strong credits.
To keep customers happy, you need to help with all aspects and problems related to what they bought from you. Starting from complaint management, answering occurring questions to promotions, upsell offers, and feedback about your product and services. Just to name a few solutions:
- E-mails, CRM
- Special Offers
- Surveys/Outreach
- Follow-ups
- Product usage guides
- Technical assistance literature
It’s worth having happy customers: asking for feedback can be a great social proof for others, and if permitted, you can showcase them on your website or social platforms.
Wrapping up
Building your funnel takes time and energy, but after all the results are clear. It will no longer be a mystery why there were items left in cart, or where you should make a change. There is no perfect system, fine-tuning is always advised, but remember: optimizing conversion is not the #1 goal.
