October 26th, 2011 by Mike Batko
E-commerce professionals like to talk about methods for increasing their sales. Much of this discussion focuses on investing in affiliate programs, marketing, PPC, SEO, and landing pages; which tends to drive new visitors to your website. But what about the visitors you already receive? Are they having the best experience possible?
Understanding the following high-level data points about your visitors will assist sellers in the digital product space increase their shopping cart conversion rate and drive ROI for paid search campaigns.
Data Point #1 – Where Are My Visitors Coming From?
It is important to present product offerings in your customers’ native languages. Looking at traffic by territory may only give you part of the picture, so another important metric to consider is browser language. Users in territories like Canada, may primarily speak one of two languages (French and English) and it’s important to know who is looking at your site.
Once you know what language your customers speak, ask yourself the question, “Have I localized for my top visited languages and if so, have I used local translators?”
A poor translation may be just as bad as no translation at all. Below is a screen-shot of a video game named Zero Wing, which was released in 1989 and did not sell many copies.
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Filed under cart optimization, conversion optimization, increasing sales, localised shopping carts, paid search campaigns
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns have quickly become a preferred advertising strategy for companies across the world. Since you are paying for directed traffic, you need to carefully consider the content of the landing page linked to your PPC campaign. As providers of digital content, you can increase your PPC conversion rates by avoiding the following pitfalls when designing your landing pages:
Pitfall #1: Using Your Home Page As The Landing Page
Many new marketers simply send paid search traffic straight to the home page of their website. The problem with this practice is that it assumes your visitors will automatically know where to go to get what they are searching for. But when a searcher types a keyword or phrase into a search engine, they are looking for an immediate solution and people will bounce out of your site if they do not see that solution in less than three seconds. By directing them to your home page, you are wasting precious time in successfully converting a searcher into a buyer.
If you would like your prospects to remain on the landing page, the content needs to closely resemble the ad they clicked on. Not only will this increase the likelihood that the visitor will convert, but it will also increase your Google Quality Score. Google values relevance between the keyword, the ad and the landing page, and they will reward you with a lower cost-per-click (CPC).
Pitfall #2: Giving Your Visitor Too Many Choices
Minimize main navigation, footer links and other distractions on your landing page. Based on the keywords used in your PPC, you know exactly what the user is seeking; additional navigation can distract the visitor from your message.
In most cases, a PPC landing page shouldn’t have a link to your Facebook page. This is a great way to get visitors to login to Facebook to ‘like’ a video of kittens, but it will likely distract them from buying your product. After all, conversions are the ultimate goal of the PPC campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under conversion optimization, landing page, PPC, sem
There are two types of customers in the world of e-commerce: first time buyers and returning customers. When talking about digital product sales, the vast majority of transactions involve either first time buyers or returning customers who last purchased over a year ago. In either case, is it a good idea to require a customer to “create an account” during the time of buying?
Take a look at the following example from Nuance Communication’s checkout process for PDF Converter Professional:
Requiring a password in the shopping cart
The customer wants to buy the product and completes all the personal information, then reaches this point where he must pause to ask, “What password is this?” followed by, “Why should I have to?” At least the last sentence of the explanation identifies why the customer is asked to do this. But, by this time, how many customers have left the order process confused, resulting in lost sales? Don’t forget that passwords are a very personal thing and asking for a password does not result in the same comfort level as asking for name, address or email address.
Similarly, we all know that there are plenty of customers who don’t read the instructions on the screen, which also results in potential customers abandoning the cart because they start trying to remember their password or look through their older emails. At best, this results in potential customers taking longer to complete their purchase and at worst cart abandonment occurs.
Now let’s think about a couple of common reasons that you might want to require customers to create an account for every transaction.
In the example above, the benefit is that the customer can look up their order at a later time. From the instructions in the cart, it’s not clear what data appears from “look(ing) up your completed orders.” Let’s assume that a receipt, download link and order history are available behind the magic wall. Aren’t there other pieces of information that can be used rather than creating another password? How about the order reference number, which is uniquely available to the customer, or last four digits of the credit card number used or a zip/postal code?
In online communities where virtual products are sold, the user has already logged in with their global account and the e-commerce system does not need to ask the user to create a new password. If you are using a different e-commerce system than your main credential engine, ensure that your e-commerce system supports single sign-on to facilitate tying the transaction information to the master customer account.
Keystone: Avoid creating customer confusion and declining conversion rates by following a few simple rules:
- Avoid requiring a customer to “create” an account by providing a password before purchasing. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the user account, there are alternatives.
- If you already have an extensive customer account section, be sure that your e-commerce system is tied tightly via single sign-on technology.
What do you think about requiring your potential customers to create an account during the order process? Have you seen any other login examples that you think work well?
Filed under Account Creation, cart abandonment, conversion optimization, Conversion Rates, login passwords, Nuance, Required Login, shopping cart
