Congrats on making it through the 2014 holiday shopping season. But guess what: we’re already 7 days into 2015 and there is no rest for the small and medium business owner. It’s time to identify your key conversion learnings from 2014 and put them into action for a successful new year.
This post will focus heavily on ecommerce conversion optimization tactics both large and small. To do this, we’ll point you to some great resources that will help you evaluate your online store’s performance for 2014 and note important conversion metrics to monitor in 2015. Plus, we’ll share tips and hacks from some of our expert clients that you can implement right now.
Understanding and Evaluating Past Performance
First, take a step back and examine your store’s current conversion rate, then pinpoint some specific areas for improvement. Along with your ecommerce platform’s analytics, Google Analytics is particularly helpful for doing a deep dive data analysis. Whether you are a beginner or seasoned ecommerce store owner, this Google Analytics Survival Guide from KISSMetrics helps set some healthy expectations for your business in terms of which analytics you should be monitoring, why and how to measure success.
Conversion Metrics that Matter
If you have already been tracking your store’s conversion metrics and metrics that can help to improve your conversion rate, you’ll want to take a step back and assess how you did in 2014. This will help you make educated decisions as to where you should focus your energy to improve your online store’s conversion rate in 2015.
Outside of your ecommerce conversion rate, which will help you to identify the effectiveness of your website’s design and better manage your marketing strategy, among other things, you should also be paying attention to the following:
- Average Order Value: By doing a deep dive on your store’s average order value, you can learn valuable information including whether or not you should re-evaluate your cross-sell campaigns and loyalty programs.
- Purchase-Funnel: You’ll be able to analyze and understand your shopper’s behavior by completing a purchase funnel analysis and identify areas for improvement including product descriptions, pricing or website malfunctions.
- Checkout-Funnel: This type of analysis will let you assess where and when your shoppers abandon ship during the checkout process.
Conversion Tips from Successful Ecommerce Businesses
Every ecommerce site’s goal is to optimize for conversion, and the process itself can be a never ending one. From A/B testing to changing up product copy or bettering product photography, there is a slew of information and techniques out there on how to use data and creative together in order to maximize your revenue. Below, hear from three online store owners who transformed their business with ecommerce optimization, and get a few tips and tricks from those who have turned online best practices into tangible success.
Create a Homepage with Purpose
Most ecommerce beginners focus a great deal on their homepage. However, they forget to ask themselves one defining question: what’s the purpose of my website’s homepage?
There are many different definitions of a conversion online. For example, it can mean someone signing up for an account, downloading a piece of content and/or completing a purchase. Two things to know about your online store’s homepage, however, are that 1) you never get a second chance to make a first impression and 2) in ecommerce, you cannot be passive when it comes to guiding online shoppers to take a desired action on any given webpage. In the video below, online store owners from The Smart Baker break down exactly how to create a homepage with purpose, one that ideally leads your customer down a desired conversion funnel.
How Design Drives Conversion
This next video link has loads of tips from a plethora of online stores including 33-Off, Shop Akira, Dog for Dog, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, Uber Pong, Mason Jars and Protein Co, touching on everything from picking the right colors for your brand and driving conversion, to utilizing the isolation effect to drive your desired goal. These clients will make sure you have the perfect calls to action and website layout for your target audience that will drive your conversion goals throughout not only your product pages, but your entire site.
Transform Digital Window Shoppers into Paying Customers
By optimizing their checkout experience, Orchard Corset boosted their conversion rate from the ecommerce average of 2% to 5%. From setting proper shipping expectations to providing the information their clients seek, Orchard Corset has made a series of small improvements that are specifically tailored to their target customer, resulting in a huge boost to their business’s bottom line.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Conversion Optimization Tips, Tricks and Hacks for 2015
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