Tools That Help You Monitor and Increase Conversion

Conversion means converting your inactive visitors to involved customers, by convincing them to perform an action like purchasing a product or signing up for a trial. Your conversion rate is the ratio of customers that go from visitors to customers. You can measure conversion rates at various points on your site to create a funnel, e.g. number of visitors -> number that view the pricing page -> number that view the sign up form -> number that sign up -> number that use the product -> number that still use it after a month. Your funnel shows you which points of your sales process need work.

Google Analytics

The most famous analytics tool, it can assess number of visitors, unique hits per page, peak times, geography of visitors and more. Google Analytics also considers the keywords that the visitor used to your website. This will help you understand what keywords are best to use and what pages to improve.

Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg has a ‘heatmap’ feature which shows the information where your visitors clicks even it weren’t on a link. It has the advantage of knowing what part of your website that is mistakenly clickable by the users, which part has the most attention and works well to know if the users are scrolling down your page. This can be used to find parts of the page which aren’t obvious enough, which could be affecting your conversion rates.

“Google Analytics will tell you what links your visitors click on, but Crazy Egg shows you which parts of your page your visitors click on.” –Conversion-rate-experts.com

Other tools worth checking:
ClickTale - http://www.clicktale.com/
Loop11 - http://www.loop11.com/
ClickDensity - http://www.clickdensity.com/
Userfly - http://userfly.com/

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Boost Your Online Shop’s Sales with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a method by which a person promotes a product he/she does not own in return for a commission. This commission is usually per sale. Some are paid for delivering business leads, such as credit card or loan applications.

A popular affiliate program is Amazon’s Associates program, which has popularized the idea and has been running since 1996. Enthusiasts linked their own websites to Amazon’s site and Amazon tracked visitor referrals and paid a commission on any resulting sales.

For a business owner, affiliate marketing can give you an instant access to third party marketers who will help you promote your products through advertising, email, online links and social media networks in return for a commission. Although setting the program can be surprisingly easy, it does need good, critical thinking.

In Forrester Research’s U.S. Affiliate Marketing Forecast for 2009-2014, it estimates that the affiliate marketing industry will grow from $1.9 billion in 2009 to $4 billion by 2014. The growth will presumably be driven by better affiliate site content and increasingly transparent dialog between affiliates and marketers. – from http://www.practicalecommerce.com

Launching an affiliate network program can be done by your own proprietary program, or you can join affiliate networks such as Tradedoubler, Buy.at, Affiliate Window, Commission Junction and more.

Regardless of whether you are working on your own program or using affiliate networks, it is best to fully analyze and review all the policies and regulations of the program. This will save you costly mistakes later on.

What is a Warranty and Why is it Important?

I always look around for the best deals before buying a gadget and that includes warranty. So what is a warranty? A warranty is an assurance by one party to the other party that specific facts or conditions are true or will happen. It’s a statement made by the seller or manufacturer of a product saying that it will perform in the way specified.

Products can have problems either upon purchase or after a certain amount of time. Defects sometimes are not apparent until you are using the product. A warranty is a sign that the company has confidence in its products and that will last longer.

Consumers will be re-assured by a warranty on your products and services, so if you have one make it clear on your website. If you don’t have one, it’s certainly something to consider.

What Your Privacy Page Tells Your Customers

You and your customers are both responsible about private information shared over your website such as credit card number, account number, etc. But customers often look for what your site has to say with regard to privacy. Your privacy page has to be concise but very easy to understand from a customer’s point of view. This is subject to legal matters; therefore, you need to make sure your customers know:

• What customer information is stored and tracked and how it is kept safe, secured and confidential. You need to have a trusted and reliable security vendor, something your customers know to be trustworthy.
• Your customers have to be aware if there are any third parties involved and whether information is shared with them, how much is shared.
• You need to give customers the choice to opt out. Doing so often results to customers having a sense of confidence and may proceed purchasing from you.
  Make it easier for customers to find your Privacy Page by making a link available in the footer on every page.

Provide further assurance by registering your online business with privacy institutions. Displaying the institution’s logo or approval seal, especially from a duly recognized one, is a big trust booster.

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Keeping Website Navigation Clear

Website visitors tend to become fickle when suddenly caught in a jumbled type of website setup. Design and structure make navigation easier, not hinder it. Always keep in mind that visitors want to know where they are within a website so they’d be able to jump to a particular page when something suddenly catches their interest.

Here are some tips to remember:

1. Easy identification: Navigation buttons should always be easy to identify and consistent on every page. Uniformity helps visitors become easily familiar with a website.
2. Contents before designs: Some web designers, even professionals, tend to focus on designing websites first and then adding contents after. It’s essential to settle and organize contents first and depending upon how the contents’ order should be, appropriate design may then be finalized.
3. Keep it simple: Navigation buttons should have simple fonts with plain colors and tabs should be big enough. Avoid too much graphic effects, simplicity is always far more effective.
4. Keep navigation tabs to a minimum: Too many tabs will make the page seemed cluttered to the point of hampering readability. Ideally, tabs should be kept to a maximum of six.
5. Keep action buttons to the right: People read going from left to right. Place all buttons that call for visitors’ action on the right side of the page.

A clear and concise navigation is very important to keep visitors from exiting your website. What they need to research may be complicated enough and the least they need is further complication because of a badly designed site.

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Increase Your Conversions with Same Day Shipping at a Price

With competition so tough, many online retailers find ways to stay afloat . A popular tactic is to include free shipping of orders. This actually offers another revenue avenue:

Offer same day shipping at a price.

There are online shoppers who opt for expedited delivery and are willing to pay for it. If you are able to offer this service, they are likely to shop and buy from your site because this is instant gratification to them. They are usually willing to pay a premium for this.

To ensure that you set the right customer expectation with regard to this offer, ensure clarity on the following:

• One day shipping may include one day processing, depending on what is purchased.
• For items that are instantly available, same day delivery may only be possible provided order is placed before cut-off time. Be clear about this. You may need a disclaimer that says orders placed beyond cut-off time are bound to arrive the next day.

Managing your capacity to deliver within the same day can be quite challenging but considering the rewards, it can work to your advantage. There will be no backlogs to manage because it is a more efficient way to process orders that prompt people to work quickly thereby potentially boosting productivity.

While there are some drawbacks on your part since you have to take care of getting all same-day orders out every day, the benefits more than offset the challenges. Above all, your customers will appreciate it. Keep in mind that satisfied customers tend to be loyal and could help boost your sales through referrals.

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Increase Customer Trust with Logos

In any business transaction, trust is a huge factor. You cannot expect to build customers without establishing trust, but how do you do this if they won’t try first your website?

Catch your website visitors’ attention with logos. Show logos of your supplier and the logos of the credit cards you accept.

How can this help increase trust?

You are not the only one doing business online, there are many competitors that offer the same service, the same product and perceived trust plays a major part in making you stand out. Customers wantsites that they can feel comfortable sharing vital information with such as personal and credit card details

Web Security Logo

Seeing SSL or McAfee logos on your site for instance assures them that what they share will remain secured and safe.

Shipper Logo

Reliable shipper logos such as FedEx, UPS also help increase trust that you are trying to establish with your customers. These logos increase their perception that what they order will arrive on time and intact.

Credit Card Logo

Your competitors probably accept major credit cards and you should if you don’t already. Doing so will increase your sales given the convenience it gives your customers. This form of payment legitimizes your business further giving your customers a sense of trust. Because most online shoppers own credit cards, a simple site visit (especially if you have a well-thought of line of products and services, not to mention remarkable web design) can turn on impulse in to a purchase.

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Revisited eConsultancy.com: Why Product Reviews are Important for your e-Commerce website?

According to eConsultancy.com, 61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision, and they becoming essential for e-commerce sites.

High user reviews will surely drive a consumer to buy the product/service. This will help the consumer to understand more about the product and can help to decide whether to purchase the product/service or not.

In short: User reviews increase conversions.

eConsultancy’s stats:

• According to Reevoo stats, 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews. (iPerceptions, 2011).
• Site visitors who interact with both reviews and customer questions and answers are 105% more likely to purchase while visiting, and spend 11% more than visitors who don’t interact with UGC. (Bazaarvoice, Conversation Index, Q2 2011).
• Consumer reviews are significantly more trusted (nearly 12 times more) than descriptions that come from manufacturers, according to a survey of US internet users by online video review site EXPO. (eMarketer, February 2010).
• According to Reevoo, reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales.

Read the full post here

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eCommerce Best Practice: Show Item Stock and Availability

Nothing frustrates a shopper than spending time reviewing products on your site, only to find out that the product is out of stock. Don’t let your likely customer go through the checkout process before letting him know about the current stock of the item. The best place to put the stock level is as early as possible, certainly before the customer adds the item to their cart and before the checkout process.

This best practice will help avoid abandoned carts and busy customer service calls inquiring about stock availability.

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Videos for Better Product Promotion

Survey say that 71% of online shoppers find videos helpful in the decision making process. Videos are definitely a great way to promote a product, giving shoppers a better understanding of what they are buying. Nothing can be more frustrating after dealing with research, price comparisons and finally making a purchase than receiving a product that is not what one imagined.

Product videos are informative short films designed for customers to:

• Show features and benefits of a product and how it functions.
• Highlight the unique selling proposition of a product or service.
• Establish the existence of the product and that it works as advertised thereby building customer trust.

Showing a product demonstration video is a way to boost sales and revenue because it increases the chances of customers buying the product. Videos are more persuasive than text and work better for customers who do not have the patience to read product information.

When using a product video to promote and demonstrate a product make sure it is engaging. Online shoppers tend to have short attention span so keep your video short but helpful and instructive. Length may depend on the product but a 30-second video, when done creatively, can already convey a lot. More than 5 minutes will usually bore shoppers. Remember that what you want is better product display, visual appeal, shopper engagement that should result in better sales generation.

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