Increase
Customer
Conversion
Customer conversion is the most critical function of any e-commerce website. It is by no means the only important consideration in e-commerce, but it is the foundation on which online success is built. It is the difference between life and death for your online business.
The Customer Conversion Rate – the most important statistic in e-commerce – is the number of orders you receive over any given period, divided by the number of unique visitors to your website over the same period. For example, if last month you received 720 orders from 60,000 unique visitors, your conversion rate for that month would be:
720 / 60,000 * 100 = 1.2%
According to research carried out by shop.org, the average conversion rate is 1.8%, although we often see much lower rates when we first meet our clients.
The problem with this is that conventional wisdom has taken over, and many businesses assume that this is a constraint of e-commerce itself. Nothing could be further from the truth – but the truth is hard to come by. So here is a simple truth:
When a visitor does not convert, it is because your website has a service defect. It is a cold, hard fact.
So raising your marketing spend to increase site traffic is not the answer. More effort is usually spent trying to attract more visitors to a website, than on how to convert the visitors you already do attract.
The key is to learn how to convert prospects, and then increase your traffic.
The Ability to Persuade
The ultimate goal of your website is to turn prospects into customers. Few succeed at an acceptable rate. Visitors are attracted to your website because they thought you had what they wanted. Yet the vast majority of them click away disappointed.
We call it the "Persuasion Arc" – the journey between first landing on your website and completing the checkout page.
The checkout page is your website's main function, its macro-conversion. The journey getting there is filled with micro-conversions – every button, every click on every page is a micro-conversion on the macro-conversion path. And like links in a chain, if one breaks then the entire chain breaks. Each micro-conversion is critical and therefore represents a critical point of failure.
This journey is only ever successful if your visitors feel credibility, confidence and trust in what you are doing. Visitors' satisfaction with each micro-conversion increases their confidence that they will get what they came for – the macro-conversion, the sale itself.
Where Rocket Salad Comes In
You are in the retail business. You are not in the e-commerce business (neither are your web developers, for that matter – they are programmers). E-commerce is purely a sales channel, and one you need to succeed for you.
We are in the e-commerce business, and we understand how this particular market operates. How credibility, confidence and trust are built in the minds of consumers. In short, the power to persuade.
There are many 'styles' of conversion: sales, marketing, community and membership, or research prior to consumers' visits to physical stores. Whatever your particular style, we will increase your customer conversions online. Please contact us to discuss your issues and how we may help.
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