11/08/2017
Is it possible to increase eCommerce conversion rate and how?
So, you have created your eCommerce website, and it is pretty much it? You now just run the marketing campaigns and everything will be cushty? Well, you can’t be further from the truth! In order to succeed in any business you need to constantly change your approaches and optimize your efforts. The world of digital commerce is one of the most dynamic segments of business today, and it requires faster adaptation and more effort than any other segment of business. That is – if you really want to succeed and don’t want to settle with mediocre results.
So, what is it that you can do in order to push eCommerce optimization in the right direction? How do you stick out from the crowd and make your brand impactful and make yourself rich and successful?
The answer is rather simple – you need to push eCommerce optimization at all levels of your business, and you need to do it constantly and systematically. There are several segments that require constant care and constant effort. It is a process that takes significant resources, involves experts from all runs of eCommerce, but rewards you with increased turnover, increased profitability and improved brand reputation, day on day! These are the basic segments that you will need to take care of in order to improve eCommerce conversion optimization:
• Technical issues
• Design
• Marketing strategies and approaches
Technical issues and design
Technical issues include optimization of eCommerce website design in various segments. There are constant improvements that need to be applied, and the most important ones are connected to 3rd party services such as payment processors, rating and review options, shipping options, and similar. The second segment concerns the optimization of UX design without using 3rd party services.
Once you decide to create an eCommerce website, the eCommerce website designer you hire will already have some idea on best practices and designs that will provide decent conversion rate, but even when it is launched, there will be needs for periodical improvements of the website design.
The reason behind this is simple – there are always new trends that become a hot topic in the niche, and if you wish to apply the best eCommerce website design to your business, you will simply need to improve what you have periodically. The changes can be made rather easily, and they are at the first glance mostly cosmetic, but in fact they will help you optimize your online presence in the way that will help increase converting visitors to customers. In many cases) at least in cases when your digital agency is a good one), the evaluation of changes will be made with the help of advanced tools such as heat maps. These maps show the most common behavior of the visitors on your website, and allow you to see the paths the visitors use to become customers. This will help you improve the graphic outlay of the website, place the fields and action buttons in the spots where they will be easiest to utilize, and organize the website in the way that will allow visitors to buy quickly and with minimal decision times. It is important to remember that desktop and mobile versions of the website need to be optimized separately.
When you are optimizing your website using 3rd party services, the options are almost inexhaustible. First of all, optimizing payment and shipping options is the segment that will increase conversion rates because the potential customers will get the option to carry out purchases in the way they prefer. Adding new options is not too complicated, given that you are using an eCommerce platform that can be easily upgraded with these services.
Secondly, there are improvements that can be made using deep localization of your website. This stands mostly for the merchants who are trading on multiple markets at the same time. Adding proper translation services (machine or human translation) will help reach the customers in their own native tongue and that is always a great idea.
Then, there are various personalization engines that will be able to optimize the customer journey for each and every customer that visits your website. These engines easily come with the right suggestions and put the items that will be most likely purchased through impulsive shopping right under the customer’s nose. When we consider that impulsive purchases made a significant portion of the total trade volume, it becomes clear why this approach is so good.
Finally, there are tools that can improve brand credibility. Many visitors decide not to make a purchase if they don’t trust the retailer enough. The best way to counter this is to provide them with testimonials from the people who actually made purchases. Using generic or made up testimonials can cause more damage than benefits, so this is the approach you should avoid by any means. Instead, there are simple integrations of various rating and review systems which can provide credible feedbacks from previous customers and that will reinforce the trust into you as a retailer or brand.
If you constantly optimize these segments, the conversion rates from all channels will steadily increase. Keep in mind that time also plays a part in this, especially if you are a startup. Simply, the longer your brand exists, the credibility will be higher. People will start knowing about you, and the trust issues will have less impact the longer you are present on the internet (given that the quality of services and products is satisfactory).
Marketing strategies and approaches
The second important segment you need to take care of if you wish to optimize your conversion rates is marketing. This segment can be separated in several segments and each needs different ways of optimization:
• Organic channels
• Paid advertising
• Direct marketing
Organic channels
In this segment, you need to pay attention to two major segments – search engine optimization and social media optimization.
SEO for eCommerce is a very important part and can generate a lot of traffic with minimal investments that provide results during extended period of time. Even better, the results are cumulative, in case you do it in a right way, and as the time passes they become more and more significant. The key areas that need to be covered include product descriptions, main pages content, and blog posts. Each of the mentioned segments needs to be properly optimized both by adding relevant high converting keywords to the content and through on site optimization (the code needs to be impeccable). It is next to impossible to cover these areas with internal resources, and the best way to deal with it is to outsource SEO to the experts.
Social media optimization is the second segment that needs your attention. This is increasingly important channel for generating visits to your website, and including all relevant social media and especially managing them in a proper way can do wonders for your business. You need to identify which channels are the most important for your business and create relevant pages on social media which are later on used both to reach new customers, and to present the new offers to the old ones. Also, a very important moment is that Facebook page followers will determine the reach of your Facebook ads. Mismanagement of a FB page is a pretty common mistake that can create significant losses in paid campaigns and numerous internal marketing teams and marketing agencies simply forget about this fact. They often use content that is not industry and website related in order to expand the Facebook page community, and that results in a reach that often makes more problems that benefits in paid advertising through this channel.
Paid advertising
Optimizing paid advertising is simply a must for any retailer. This is a risky area where you can make a lot of investments in order to reach the customers quickly, but these investments can prove to be a total disaster even when a single detail is disregarded.
We already mentioned issues with the Facebook advertising reach which can be compromised by pursuing its expansion through non-related posts, but that is far from the only mistake that can be made. Media buying in general is extremely sensitive, and no matter if you focus on Google Ad Words, Facebook advertising, or any other channel – you should pay close attention to details and optimize these campaigns on all levels.
This should include test campaigns with limited daily budgets, testing that includes segmentation by demographic and geographic parameters, optimization of campaigns in relation to times of the year, month, or day, and many other elements.
It means that you should really thread carefully in this segment, and if you don’t have a top notch internal resources, you should turn to experts who will know how to conduct these operations and get the most out of your paid advertising efforts.
Direct marketing
Optimizing direct marketing is the final part that needs your attention. When it comes to digital marketing, it mostly falls to the newsletter campaigns that are carried out periodically or with a special purpose (sales, seasonal discounts, limited time discounts, etc…).
In this segment, the optimization includes both graphic and written elements. Naturally, once you start these campaigns for the first time, the open, click through, and conversion rates will not be at the maximum values. This is where you will need to test different approaches and different designs and figure out the outlays that will allow maximum conversions in every single segment. It will not be too hard to move things in a positive direction as each campaign you send out will provide you with the feedback and you will be able to experiment and see what works and what does not work with your audience. Once you collect the basic data, it will be simple to improve design of your newsletters, put calls to action in the places where they will provide maximum click through rate, and learn how to develop newsletter content that will engage your audience.
Now that all has been said, it is clear that the optimization of eCommerce presence is something you simply have to do constantly, the main question is – how to do it. The options are rather limited in this case: you can either do it on your own, or you can outsource the entire project or some of its segments to the digital marketing agencies.
The “do on your own” approach is a good move only if you have necessary resources and expertise, but in most cases – this is not something that is available. Big retailers and brands can afford to go down this path, but startups, smaller and medium sized companies don’t really have much incentive to create big internal teams to cover both marketing and web design and development upgrades. There is much more sense in outsourcing these things to the expert agencies.
We at Studioworx are there to help you with this. Our team consists of experts from all segments you might require. As we are a platform agnostic web agency, we can provide substantial portfolio based on any of the most commonly used platforms. This means that it is of little relevance which eCommerce platform your work is based on – we will be able to help you with integration, design, and development. We have a lot of experience with Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, Volo Commerce, and numerous other platforms, and we know exactly how to help you optimize your website and make it competitive.
We also have a marketing team that can help with your marketing efforts on all levels. We can cover your marketing campaigns both through consulting you on the necessary improvements, or by applying the mentioned improvements on our own.
All of this is aiming a single direction – reinforcement of your online presence, establishing your brand as a significant player on the market, and bringing your operations to a new, more profitable level with higher sales volumes.
If you wish a consultation on your business, feel free to contract us via our website or by the phone. We will be happy to hear you out and propose the improvements that can be just what you are looking for!