Make the most of your summer with this webinar, as Volusion's online experts provide 10 proven ways to help grow your online store's revenue. Our experts will walk you through the invaluable conversion areas of your online store, including navigation, category structure, product details, credibility components, and much more!
Watch this video to for experts tips to increase sales conversion to your online business. - [June] Hello, and welcome to the webinar, 10 Proven Ways to Increase Sales Conversions. We'll now get started. Our agenda today includes meeting the speakers, an introduction to conversions, 10 areas for you to review to increase your conversions, and then we'll close up and finally have a Q&A session at the end. Please feel free to send over any questions through the chat box, and don't forget to tweet your favorite takeaways for a chance to win a Conversion Optimization Report. Make sure to use the hashtag SellMoreOnline. So let's go ahead and get started with meeting your hosts for today. My name is June Clark. I'm a marketing consultant here at Volusion, and I've got six years experience working with sales, marketing, and technology, and I've been working with ecommerce websites, and Volusion specifically, for the past three years. I really love online shopping, and I like using that as focusing on the customer experience to improve sales and conversions. - [Natalie] Hello. My name is Natalie Stambro, and I'm also a marketing consultant here at Volusion. I have over six years experience working with ecommerce and marketing, and I've been at Volusion for about two years now. I have a BFA in Communication Design, so I have a real passion for conversion optimization. We're excited to announce that we have a special guest speaker joining us on today's presentation. We have Corey Snow, who is the VP of Sales at Justuno. He's all the way in San Francisco, and we're here in Austin, so we're relying on technology to connect us today. Corey, tell us a little bit about yourself. - [Corey] Well, it's great to connect with you guys, and thanks for having me as a guest here today. As you mentioned, I'm VP of Sales for Justuno, and we're in on-site promotions company. I've been working with marketers for over a decade now, since 2001, believe it or not, and I've been working with Justuno, in particular, for about three years as the head of sales. Really passionate about sales and marketing technologies. Love working with Volusion, and I'm really addicted to social media, specifically posting photos of my family, of my kid and my dog Mingus. So thanks for having me. - [June] Awesome. So we'll now get started with an introduction and what we mean when we're talking about conversions. So we want to just start off by first establishing a couple of terms. Wikipedia defines a call to action as "an instruction to the audience to provoke an immediate response." This is basically anything that gets your customers to the next step. So for example, buttons that say "Buy Now" or "Click here to learn more" are both examples of a call to action. - [Natalie] So a call to action can instruct you to sign up for a newsletter, for example. - [June] As we speak about different conversion techniques and evaluating your website, it's important to keep your sales funnel in mind. A sales funnel is the ideal process you intend your visitors to experience as they go from awareness to prospects and to engagement, and finally as a customer or a conversion. This process is important to keep in mind as we guide you through evaluating your store for conversions. And our goal for your sales funnel is to increase the percentage of people who move from one level to the next. - [Natalie] So what is a conversion? A conversion is the point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action, basically getting someone to respond to your call to action. There are many types of conversions, such as getting someone to open an email, sign up for a newsletter, or fill out a registration form. And of course, buying your product is the ultimate conversion. Since we are focusing on ecommerce in this webinar, when we talk about a conversion, we are talking about when a customer purchases your products. So for today, a sale equals a conversion. - [June]Our first conversion recommendation is an effective homepage. When a visitor comes to your store, what is their experience? - [Natalie] Your homepage is the standard starting location, and it's the site's foundation. Ensuring it sets a clear brand message will instill trust for visitors to continue further into the sales funnel and encourage conversions. So we identified some sections on the site that you can review on your own. Looking at your site, you can ask yourself the following questions. Does this look like a credible site? Would you trust the site with your own credit card? Where is your eye drawn to, and what products are being sold? Does your homepage appear to your target audience? And what is the first call to action link to go to in the sales funnel? People always say that first impressions are everything, and that's true to the online landscape. It's going to determine if someone's going to stay on your site or click through to the next page. So think about it. If you were to walk into actual store and it was unclean, disorganized, or maybe the staff wasn't helpful, would you leave and never come back? Personally, if I had a bad experience, I wouldn't return. Well, this is even easier to leave an online store, because it's just the click of a button. - [June] The next thing that should be immediately apparent to your customers when they first land on your website is your brand. Make sure to have clear branding standards that are consistent, starting from the homepage, all the way through to a confirmation email. Throughout this webinar we really try to reinforce the importance of taking away any confusion or barriers that could prevent customers from purchasing, and them not understanding your brand and your website is one of those. - [Natalie] Exactly. Clear branding is going to reinforce that your business is trustworthy through the sales funnel. Start by focusing on some basic branding elements, which include the logo, fonts, color palette, tone, or language. - [June] For example, Apple has been consistently rated as one of the most profitable brands. Apple's website and products are both clean, sleek, and intuitive. They use the same font, colors, and naming scheme throughout their website. This helps reinforce what their business is about to customers. Like Apple, your brand should be consistent in every way that you interact with customers. And I know Corey's got some really cool examples of branding and promotions that they do. - [Corey] Absolutely, and speaking of branding, nobody does it better than Apple, but that doesn't mean you can't aspire to have great branding no matter what size your company happens to be. So things you should consider, continuity, flow, as the team mentioned, things like fonts and color palettes, but also don't forget, if you're using tools on your website, those tools should match your site as well. Avoid using generic-looking tools that look the same on any website. You should be able to customize them as in the example here. Maybe you own a rocking website, like Rock.com. This is one of my favorite websites that we work with. Do you really want a generic promotional widget that looks the same on every site, you know, some sort of square coupon thingy that, you know, looks the same? We do want to customize it to match the branding, and, you know, other tools, in addition to the promotion tools, tools like chat and even some of the review tools that you would use on your site, you can match the color and fonts and even use eye catchers and things that really speak to your brand in ways that generic widgets don't. So make sure if you are using tools on your website, that you do so to match your branding. Well, on the next slide you'll see another one of my favorite companies called Hot Dog Collars. So as you see, the widget that has popped up here is in some nice pastel colors, greens and blues, kind of outdoorsy colors with a friendly, familiar design. Now, what makes a dog cuter? Well, turn it into a cute cartoon. So this is kind of the mascot for Hot Dog Collars there. You can see it in the top left. But they use their character in the promotional tool. They have a little overlay pop-up, which we'll discuss later. And again, they're trying to build their community and also generate sales. On the last example, I'd just like to use this example because I think it was a really clean execution of meshing online widgets and widgets that you'd use on your site with the website. In this example, this was Tower Paddle Boards. I don't know if you watch the television show "Shark Tank," but they were one of the winners on ABC's "Shark Tank" not too long ago. So those were a few examples, and I'd like to hand it back over to your team. - [June] Awesome. Thank you much. So the next thing that you should think about when optimizing your homepage for conversions is your target audience. You want to make sure that you have thought about and understand who you're marketing to. So start by making a list of demographics, including age, gender, location, hobbies and interests. And if you're unsure what you're customer base is actually made of, Facebook gives really great details on demographics. Also, do not be afraid to ask by surveying your past customers, and by defining your target audience, you can then ensure that you're sending the right message and using the right channels to best reach them. Another way of viewing your target audience is to create personas. These should be based on your understanding of actual visitors, so in Corey's example, you know, dog owners who want personalized information for their dogs. And here's another example of, you know, two different women who may be shopping for arts and crafts this summer. One is a stay-at-home mom, and the other's an elementary art teacher. So each of them is going to have different goals and budgets of what they're trying to accomplish. Consider your website through each of these personas, and then look at the sales funnel through their eyes. You may notice different conversion opportunities by seeing their individual shopping experience. - [Natalie] In addition to brand standards, you want to make sure your products are featured on the homepage. You can create a featured product section on your homepage to highlight some popular products so visitors can jump right into the sales funnel. Also, make sure to use a large hero graphic or a slideshow on your homepage so you can show the products in action. You know, think about walking through the mall. Store owners put up mannequins in their windows wearing their new products. They're trying to get you to go from the storefront to the inside and shopping. This is the exact same concept. If you're running promotions, make sure they're featured on the homepage. In this example, the site is showcasing a 20% off promotion on the homepage slideshow, but it's also featuring free shipping in the header of the site. This is a great use of the traditional promotional landscape. - [June] Exactly. So a pro tip is if you're providing free shipping, put the call-out in the header with the promo so customers can see it throughout the sales funnel and throughout the website. In addition to traditional homepage promotions, you may also consider marketing overlays. - [Corey] And we love homepage promotions, but we also love overlays. Now don't forget, these are not pop-ups. These are actually overlays. What's the difference? Well, first of all, pop-ups open up in a separate URL. This actually is against Google policy, so Google actually dings you, from an SEO perspective, if you use a traditional pop-up opening up in a different URL. What we want to do is insert the JavaScript snippet into your homepage and make it show up on your homepage as an overlay. So as we see in a couple of examples that I've laid out here using cute, creative, seasonal, funny, sexy overlays is a great way to capture visitors. And don't forget, the on-site promotion is not just about the promotion itself. Of course, we want to get the sale. But it's also about building an audience, about building the addressable audience aka growing the amount of eyeballs on your products and services. So we don't want a pop-up. We want an overlay. And being likable is another part of this strategy, you know, because we want to capture not only the people that are intending to purchase today, but we also want to capture that 98% of the visitors who bounce without leaving any personally identifiable information. Additionally, the message is kind of, "Let's join the community." So I'll show you some examples later, but in the example to the right was a pet store. You'll notice there's a little scorpion with a 10% off there, and that marketing was for a pet store. And of course, they sell insects and things like that. I thought that was a great one. So by having great promotions on your site and showing that you're trying to build a community, you're building trust, and when you have trust of your audience, you're going to grow sales. And on to the next slide we'll see that this is another company that I really love. This is called Isle Surf and Stand Up Paddle Board. As you can see here, they've got a great looking site. All the elements are branded, and they are appealing to a community. What type of community? Well, people that like adventure, that like outdoor activities. They like travel. Perhaps they like water sports. You'll notice on the right there it says, "Win this Touring Package. Sign Up Today." Well, the sign up today implies that there's some sort of newsletter or community something going on there. So we want to capture those website visitors, turn it into a contest. And on the next slide you'll see the overlay that comes and pops open. It says "Touring the World. Enter to Win." So what we have here is an adventure package. They're appealing to the sensibilities of the people that shop at this type of site. And, you know, me, as someone who likes this type of activity, I might just enter it just so I receive information from them. You know, it's a big part of their strategy. This particular company has already received thousands and thousands of emails for this contest, and of course what they're doing is they're now dripping on them through social channels and email channels after capturing them through this campaign. And now on to Section 2. - [June] So the next area that we want you to review is your navigation. It should be intuitive and useful. The website's navigation is a roadmap to different areas and information within your website. You want to guide and tell your users what they should do next. We know most people are impatient. I know I am on the Internet, and because of this, it's important to give users a very clear process. So when you're mapping out your navigation, first consider some basics. Since we read from left to right and top to bottom, the top navigation is your most important real estate on your website. You want to make sure that your key categories and revenue driving areas are here, and you do not want to waste space with non-revenue-generating information like a login or Contact Us page. - [Natalie] Next, follow industry standards, such as the F layout, which utilizes the top and left navigation, as you can see in our example here, for internal pages. Internal means past the homepage. Following industry standards helps customers quickly understand your website. - [June] When organizing your navigation, you should consider the way that customers may be searching for your products. It's very normal for products to be sorted by style or type, but you may also consider adding by color, function, or occasion, for example. - [Natalie] Yeah. For example, this website here offers customers to shop via color, occasion, or decade. By expanding the way you list your products, you are casting a wider search net for potential buyers and allowing customers to find the product the way you want to shop. This can also help with multiple marketing efforts, like with SEO or perhaps with specific landing pages for PPC. Next, make sure to enable the Site Search bar so that customers can search quickly for anything they can't find. Site Search is a great tool to gain insights about the site design usability and for potential product offerings based on what customers are searching for. A pro tip is to make sure you enable Site Search tracking in Google Analytics so that you can see these insights to better your design. And if you don't know where to start, just look at the leaders within your industry and see what they're doing and model your navigation after those. Just remember that your navigation should be a way to guide the users toward some type of goal. - [June] Speaking of goals, as Natalie mentioned, your navigation should be set up with a specific intent. When evaluating your site navigation, you should ask yourself, what are your site goals, and what are you trying to promote? For example, is it important to sell certain items because they have higher margins? Or maybe upsells are really important to your bottom line. Maybe your customers need a lot of information to make their purchasing decision. You should really consider these elements as you map out your categories. - [Natalie] So next, let's learn how to increase conversions by strategically organizing your categories to make buying easier. Structuring your categories in a clear, organized fashion is imperative to get visitors to the products they want. Providing a clear path will reduce clicks to the shopping cart and increase the likeliness of them purchasing. So let's review a few areas and action items that you can look into to make sure your categories are appropriate. Let's first start with organization. Make sure you don't have too many categories, because that can overwhelm the customers, making it difficult to find a starting location. Using Google Analytics In-Page Analytics is a great way to see where your customers are clicking on the homepage. Also, subcategories are great way to organize important areas of the site, but aren't appropriate to have featured as a category themselves. This way customers can easily drill down from category to subcategory to products. - [June] Next consider your category structure. Industry standard shows the customer should be able to reach your products in about three to four clicks, meaning that you want to try to avoid any tall or deep architecture structure. A tall website structure features extensive subcategories between the homepage and the products, resulting in more clicks, which then can lead to frustration and confusion. Instead, you should structure your website to use flat architecture. Flat means that category organization is varied and expanded out, and it brings the products closer to the homepage, which then makes them easier and quicker to find, typically within the three to four click standard. - [Natalie] Another thing to consider is if you're running a PPC ad, you want to make sure you have a cohesive experience from ads to site. Make sure your ad copy is consistent with your landing page copy. Your ads should tell them exactly what they will find once they click through to your site. The more of a cohesive relationship this is, the more opportunity you have for conversions. So for example, this past PPC Fourth of July promotion here, actually, when you click on it, it drives the visitors to the Fourth of July page. This is a great example of a cohesive experience. - [June] I also like on the header up there where it says "Fourth of July 72 Hour Sale." Way to get people motivated with that time constraint. - [Natalie] Yeah, a good sense of urgency. - [June] So next we want to discuss how product pages affect your conversions. You should ensure that customers will have all the pertinent information to make an informed purchasing decision. First things first, your product images are what's going to sell. So it is really important to make sure that you're showcasing your products in the best possible light. Using generic stock photos can send the wrong message about your brand. So instead, use professional-quality photos wherever possible. Quality pictures include high-resolution images, so no blurry image or no blurry edges and a clear picture. - [Natalie] You should ideally show the product being used. Products in use tend to have higher conversion rates than just a standalone image. If you have a standalone image of your product, don't worry, you can just use a neutral background, preferably white. - [June] And lastly, include multiple views that show all angles and details of the product. For example, I love how Nine West shows six different views of this one very sassy leopard shoe. And if you're anxious about your image quality and can't afford a professional photographer, just keep in mind that smart phones really do work great. Use natural lighting and photo editing software whenever possible. And if you want more do-it-yourself tips, I would highly recommend checking out this blog article our team recently posted, and it's got a ton of details. And the link is not clickable right now, but it will be available after the webinar when we email you the slides. It's a great resource for you. - [Natalie] A common mistake entrepreneurs make is that they don't provide enough information about the products and services they sell. The best way to sell more is to add as much information as possible. The web is a great place to do research. So give visitors everything they need to research right on your website so they will stay and convert. - [June] So first start by making sure your product names and descriptions are descriptive and unique. So you should include information such as price, material, color, size, product weight, standard use. Also consider if it goes well with another product or service that you can include. And where applicable, include an FAQ to each of your products to help minimize customers' inquiries and complaints. - [Natalie] A pro tip, you could write your product names and descriptions to where they are unique. It will help, actually, your SEO efforts over time. And if you're running any type of shopping feed paid advertising, this is going to help your product show up in the search results better. - [June] Descriptive products and titles or titles and descriptions are not the only areas you should be considering on your product pages when optimizing for conversions. As customers move through the sales funnel, again make sure they have enough information to make an informed decision. One way of doing this is by including reviews on your product pages. It's a great way to help push customers who might be hesitant about buying. Back up your product claims with proof. You know, there still are very many visitors who are skeptical about online shopping, and they want to see the evidence. So let your past customers help sell your products to your new customers. - [Natalie] It's best to place them on individual product pages next to the specific products listed instead of facing old testimonial page, putting reviews alongside the products to help increase credibility and trust. Also, consider offering a coupon or reward for completing the review. - [June] Next, when applicable, use videos to showcase your product in action. There is nothing like a good demo to prove what your product does. And this is especially true if your product is expensive or technical in nature. Here, this video is for a surfboard. It's $900, so that's definitely a pricey product, and actually seeing the experts use it in action, I know would definitely help push me into purchasing. - [Natalie] The last thing we recommend to show on product pages is related products or accessories. Take advantage of easy cross-selling and up-selling opportunities by showing related products. I know, personally, related products gets me every time on websites. There's so many times when I'm shopping for a shoe only to be shown a completely different style, and then now I have both in my cart. - [June] Completely agree. It's a really great tactic. So our next area is establishing credibility. So essentially we're going to be speaking about overcoming objections by establishing trust. Trust and credibility are key pieces to influencing behavior. So if you want to ensure that your website is trustworthy, as Natalie mentioned earlier, you probably would not want to buy from a store that had broken windows and was dirty. Likewise, you need to give customers a reason to trust your store and business. Start by confirming your SSL or secure socket layer badge is up-to-date. This is extremely important to ecommerce sites and is going to be required by any credit card processor. The SSL is what changes the HTTP to HTTPS, and it lets customers know that your site is secure and that credit card information will be correctly encrypted. Another thing is credibility badges are a great way to show your customers that you're a legitimate business. These include Google Trusted Stores and the Better Business Bureau badges. Try saying that four times fast. But however, I would warn against having too many of these, because it can be distracting from a user experience. - [Natalie] And June, I completely agree. A couple of badges are good, but anything, you know, when it gets too many, it can look really spammy. So next, build confidence in your users by showing that you're a real company with real people. Show them that there's a real organization behind your site. The easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address if you have one, email address and phone number. Other features, such as posting a photo of your offices or listing a member with the Chamber of Commerce, help as well. Remember, if you're planning to run Google Shopping feeds, at a Contact Us page with detailed information is required. - [June] Your About Us page is another great area to build trust and highlight the expertise in your organization and the quality of products you offer. This is a great place to list credentials as well as any known affiliates, as well as show some personality. As you can see, Volusion likes to showcase a range of activities on their About Us page. Again, you just want to show that it's honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. It's another way that you can convey trust is with social proof. - [Corey] And in addition to building credibility through these best practices, we can't forget social proof, and growing your social audience is more than just about eyeballs on your products and services. It's about proving that people like your business. Now, new companies are going to greatly benefit from 0 to 60 social growth. You're starting with 55 fans. It's basically your circle of friends and family. We want to grow beyond that. So quick question for you. You have three amounts of fans here, 55, 2355 and 167,000. Which one do you think has the best 30-day return guarantee, or which one's going to have the best line of products? Most likely you're going to guess that the one with a lot of fans. So Point B is that, with this type of social proof, we're trying to show people that people shop here and people like us even when they're not shopping here. So when you want to grow at a much greater rate than you naturally could, you do want to use techniques, whether that's contests or tools like Justuno that help you grow your fan base at a much greater rate. It's great for new companies, companies with gadgets or new brands or sub-brands or fashion companies. Some other things about social proof that we can't forget, that you should never, ever, ever buy fans, because, basically, those are fake fans. Those aren't real fans. And in theory, people think that it helps with social proof, but in reality, it's a form of dishonesty. So let's not go there. Go ahead and build your own fan base. You can do it. Now, on top of that, when you buy fans, it ruins your social SEO, and low engagement rates, whether that's a Facebook post. You know, Facebook will ding your fan page for being spammy or unlikable if you keep posting and nobody's liking your posts. On the next slide, you know, people are more likely to follow if those social numbers are solid. This rule applies not only to the fan page itself, but also your postings. With this example here, this rule applies not only to the fan page itself, but to your posting. If people see great engagement rates, they think, "Hey, this company's popular. Let me see what they have to say or post," or "Let me check out their products and services." So when I'm stumbling across Facebook and I see that my friend has liked a certain post from a certain company, I'm a lot more likely to engage with that post or at least check it out. So on top of that, posting regularly with relevant, likable information, that's really essential to growing your social audience. So more importantly, it's essential to keeping that audience. Dropout rates do matter. So try and keep those fans. But let's not forget that the best fans you could possibly capture are the ones that are already on your site, looking at your products and services. So let's use tools that will help us capture those website visitors, because those are the ones that already found us, that already kind of know us and already kind of like us, because they're looking at our products and services. Now, funny postings are great, you know, the dog postings, the cat postings. I can't get enough of them. But don't forget, you can show your products, but you want to do it in a respectful and appropriate way. You don't want to post, "Sale Sale Sale. 20% Off Today," because that doesn't say anything. That's all about the seller. It's not about the experience. It's not about your products. Do say things like, "Hey, check out our most popular line of sunglasses." Or as in the example here, "Check out our five most popular products in this pack." So these are some great ways to keep that engagement rate up and also prove to people that you're a likable company. - [Natalie] And to piggyback off of what Corey was speaking to, you should confirm that any social media links showing on your website are connected to the right profiles. This is an easy step that can often be overlooked by brand-new website owners. - [June] You also want to make it simple for people to share your page, reviews and products with their friends on social networks or via email. So include social media buttons on product pages and throughout your website where they're easily accessible. And lastly, if you're stumped where to begin, I would recommend checking out the social media webinar that our team just completed. It gives a lot of really detailed information. As we mentioned, the links will be clickable after the webinar is complete when we email you over the slides. So let's move on to the checkout process. We want to make it easy for customers to give you their money. First and foremost, tell your customers how they can pay you. Offer multiple payments, and communicate these options to customers throughout your website. - [Natalie] Exactly. It's a best practice to offer your customers multiple payment options, so that way you're casting a wider net on who can purchase your products. It's industry standard to have the payment logos in the footer or left navigation of the site so visitors will know early on that they can check out with their payment method. - [June] And just be aware that some sites come loaded with stock images already implemented. So just make sure those logos match what the customer's actually allowed to check out to when they get there. One of the top factors that can push a visitor to convert or abandon the site is the shipping process. Shoppers want products at a reasonable shipping cost and within reasonable time frame. So make sure you're providing them with multiple shipping options, and this should include everything from time constraints to price-conscious options. The biggest thing that we can recommend to you is consider adding a free shipping threshold as a tool to up-sell customers. You should be making sure that you're looking at your individual data, though, before picking out a generic number. For example, if you know that your average order value is around $33, you might do free shipping on orders at $50 and up. This makes much more sense and will push people to purchase more than if it was just set at a generic $99 or $100. - [Natalie] And you know, June, just to interject real quick, this is one of my favorite tips to tell my clients, and it's a really easy way to boost revenue. So take a look at your own statistics and make an educated decision based off that. - [June] Absolutely, could not stress that enough. And if free shipping is impossible for your site, then consider a low flat rate shipping options, such as $4 or $5 as a flat rate. - [Natalie] Also, make sure to check your shipping cost by testing all types of products to different locations. Make sure the shipping cost is a reasonable percentage of the product price. For example, make sure that you're not charging someone $16 to ship a product that costs $20. That's a sure way to get a high abandonment rate, and actually I see it frequently. I make this recommendation to clients of mine, and then also just as a customer I constantly see that, and I always abandon. - [June] And when she says "test," we mean actually put the products in your shopping cart and walk through the whole, entire shopping cart process just like as if you were a user. - [Natalie] And test different ZIP Codes. - [June] Okay. So also, call to actions can significantly change the time customers spend on your site, how far they get through the sales funnel, and if they're going to purchase or not. If it's not clear where to go next, people will get frustrated and abandon the site. This is especially important in the checkout process, because it puts a hard line in the sand if visitors are just browsing and putting products in their cart, which I can be guilty of. - [June] Me too. - [Natalie] Or just someone who's really serious about purchasing. Regularly check to make sure the Calculate Shipping button is working properly. Also, make sure the Proceed to Checkout button stands out prominently on the page. These two buttons need to be found easily and functioning properly to allow visitors to become customers. Now that you've instilled trust in your visitors, you also want to reduce any barriers to an easy checkout. The more obstacles and actions you make your customers complete, the likeliness of them abandoning increases. It's great to allow customers to create a profile when they're purchasing a product. That way their information is already saved, making it easier for future sales. Just be sure to also provide a Guest Checkout option to customers too, like this example does on the far right. - [June] I'm almost always check out as a guest because I don't want to spend time filling out a profile, because I'm kind of lazy. Also on my laziness, one of the questions that just came in said, "Should we offer iPay and PayPal in addition to traditional credit cards?" Absolutely. As we were saying on the previous slide, offer multiple options to your customers. That's going to help them increase your conversions. Again, I know sometimes I'm lazy, and my PayPal account I can easily get to, but maybe my credit card's not handy. And so you just want to make sure that you're offering all of those recommendations and make it as smooth a process as possible. - [Natalie] Yeah, and, you know, going back, so I usually, whenever I'm checking out the first time with a website, I almost always check out as a guest, and then if they have PayPal as an option, that means I don't have to walk to the other side of my house and grab my purse and find my credit card. But knowing if I go back again and again and keep purchasing with that website, I'll create a file, a profile, and have my credit card saved because I want to build that relationship. So give customers different commitment options. It allows them to decide what type of relationship they'll have with your site, which increases your sales conversion rate. Another great way to reduce the number of steps a customer has to complete are auto-fill options. As a customer, I love it when they give me the option to auto-fill my shipping information with the billing information I've already filled out with just the click of a button. It's a great way to increase your user experience and speed up the checkout process. - [June] Because again, people are lazy. So also at this stage in the process, you want to be mindful that you're not distracting your customer with bright Continue Shopping buttons that will draw the eye and encourage the customer to leave the shopping cart. You always want them to continue forward, not go backwards. You can see here how the normal navigation disappears, and a clear, step-by-step indication of the checkout process comes up instead. Another area to review in the checkout process is the refund and return policies. You want to think yourself, "How easy is it for your customers to return a product if they do not like it?" If there's too many hoops to jump through, then customers will not purchase. So a couple of things you can do are extend your guarantees or policies. If the industry standard is 30 days, make yours 60 or 90. Don't be afraid to stretch the limits of what's possible to impress your online shoppers. You know, for example, offer different sizes for them to try on and send back. Warby Parker does an awesome job of this with their glasses. They send multiple pairs. You get to try them on, send back the ones you don't like. Also consider the terms that are required and if there's any way to simplify them. You want to take out as much legalese as possible while still protecting yourself. - [Natalie] Yeah, and take off any restocking fees. Again, you want to make the process easier for customers to complete their purchase. Also, keep in mind that a detailed return policy is required by Google to run shopping feeds. - [Corey] And adding onto these points, abandoned shopping carts are the bane of every ecommerce retailer's existence. We want to reduce that rate. I don't know if you know this, but 50% to 70% of all shopping carts go abandoned. So we want to help reduce that rate, and we're going to do so through using smart overlays. So I don't know if you've ever been to a site, guys, when you put something in your cart, you get all the way to the shopping page, just because you want to see how much it costs, and then you attempt to exit, and you move that mouse towards the Exit button, and bam, you're hit with an offer. An offer, an overlay pops open, saying, "Hey, don't go." Well, that's what we believe and we know converts at a better rate. In this example here, we see they're offering free shipping. Now, free shipping, believe it or not, and unexpected cost is the number one reason people abandon shopping carts. So we want to help reduce that rate, and we're going to use an exit offer on the cart page to help reduce that rate. Now, there are some other techniques you can use as well. For example, an offer pops open saying, "Hey, take advantage of this offer," and there's a countdown timer saying that this is available through the rest of the day, jot it down. You can even trigger offers based upon the amount in cart. So for example, if they have over $50 in cart, bam, pop open an offer that says, "Hey, free shipping," or "Hey, 10% off if you check out today." Lots of different things that you can do with this, but the goal is to capture those people that are just window shopping so that you can then remarket to them through your email marketing system, marketing automation system, or maybe even your cart abandonment email system, which are all kind of overlapping, related email systems. Also, you can show a promo code right away, or you can tell them that you're sending them the promo code, which requires them to put in an accurate email address. On the next slide we can see that ... This is another angle that I like. When somebody tried to leave a site, tried to leave the cart page, not so much the hard sale, "Check Out Today," but more of a, "Be a Part of the Community. Stay in the loop." In this example here, the exit offer was "Subscribe & Save. Join Our Mailing List to Receive 5% Off Your Order." And of course, for the people that actually got that far in the process, to where they put something in the cart and actually left and were thinking about purchasing, that's actually a great strategy. We then with our marketing system send them that promo code and cross fingers they check out today or maybe later. So let's go ahead and move on to this next section, guys. - [June] Awesome. So this next one, we're going to be talking about conversion specific tools. So we'll actually hand it right back over to you to talk about some onsite marketing tool options. - [Corey] Thank you. You know, as I mentioned, we kind of exist in this space of onsite marketing tools. Some of you out there might be using chat tools. We like live chat. There's Olark. There's lots of different live chat tools that work great. Of course, they require a person to monitor that. Reviews, that's another great way. There's a company called Yotpo that I think does a really good job. Of course, if you're a little more sophisticated, then you'd like A/B testing where you can test two landing pages against each other. Ultimately, though, we want to capture more of that 98% of the website visitors that don't convert today. With 97% or 98% of the people simply coming to your site and leaving without leaving any identifiable information, why are we driving all that traffic if we're not attempting to capture as much of it as possible? So a little fun fact I always love to throw out, people spend a lot of money driving traffic to the site, and they spend a lot of money on off-site technologies, whether that's affiliate programs, SEO, what have you. For every $10 they spent doing that, only $1 is invested to onsite conversion technologies like those above. So on the next slide we'll see kind a how I like to think about how these slides are broken down, how these subsets of conversion tools are broken down. Of course, we want to attract them with a great website. That's the number one way to generate sales, is to have a great looking website. So we have Volusion that we can generate leads, generate sales and convert more. But once they're on your site and can use those tools, chat tools, A/B testing, the views, live chat. And of course, once we get them in our system, once we're marketing to them, we want to retain them. So you can use your email marketing system. You can also use things like cart abandonment technologies, like SeeWhy. It sends an email to somebody that's half filled out an order of some sort, and that way we're marketing to them with that "hey, don't go" messaging. And then finally, once we get a little more sophisticated, we can do things like retargeting or using detailed analytical tools like KISSmetrics. In all cases, though, our goal is to convert more. So one quick little micro case study on the next slide is one of my favorite companies. I wear these around the house actually. They've been really good to us and have been using Justuno for years now. It's a company called Okabashi. You might have seen them in CVS or Walgreens, kind of near the checkout counter or the As Seen On TV products, but they were able to increase their coupon redemption rate. They used to have their coupon directly on the website, and it was just listed on the homepage for everyone to see. They found that when gating that promo code, they were able to actually increase the amount of people redeeming that promo code by 47%. They were also able to increase the amount of Facebook fans and email sign-ups, again, growing the addressable audience. And how did they do it? With a simple little overlay that said,"Claim Your Rewards Now." So I thought that was a great little case study that I wanted to share with you. Most importantly, those promo codes had an impact on the overall value of the sale of 15%. So you increase the amount of eyeballs, increase the amount of sales, and increase the average sale size, average cart order. - [Natalie] That's actually some really impressive metrics on the micro case study, Corey. Speaking of metrics, let's dive into some Google Analytics data to identify issues and make improvements. Volusion completed a webinar called "Welcome to the Metrics," that I actually helped cohost last year, and it's an overview of Google Analytics. It's here again. Like June said, this link isn't clickable, but we'll be sending out the webinar slides, and so it'll be available at that point. However, we did want to go over some key metrics that we've mentioned in this webinar. Let's first start with bounce rate. A bounce rate is any visit to the website where a customer immediately leaves. Use this metric to see if there is a disconnect in your marketing channels to the landing page, or perhaps you're grabbing the wrong customer base, so they're leaving immediately. Also, make sure that you're looking at pages with a call to action. If it's an informational page, like About Us, where there's no way for them to click forward, a high bounce rate is appropriate, because that's not the goal of that page. Typically, an ecommerce site with a bounce rate from about 35% to 65% is great. In this example, the site-wide bounce rate is about 44%, which is excellent. A pro tip is if a bounce rate is 5% or lower, it probably means something is broken. That is a very, very low metric and typically doesn't happen. So just take a look at your tracking codes and make sure that they're installed properly. - [June] And we're huge fans of data with conversions. All of this information is great to see the data being backed up. In-Page Analytics is a really cool metric. It shows where people are clicking around most on the page. And by using In-Page Analytics, you can see visually what the most popular clicked links are in your site. This is one area that I really like to look at, and I feel like my store owners that I work with really enjoy as well, because it provides quickly consumable data about how your users are interfacing with your store. In this example, we would probably recommend that the store owner move the Sale Items category to the bottom left navigation instead of being at the top. The first reason is only 0.6% of users have clicked on this link, so it's taking up valuable real estate on the navigation. Like we mentioned earlier, people are reading from left to right and top to bottom. And just like a brick-and-mortar store, you want to put the sale items at either the far left or the very bottom, where the eye will go last. That way it's passing over all of the new items first. - [Natalie] Yeah. Most brick-and-mortar stores put their sale items in the very back of the store so you have to walk all the way through all the new stuff. So it's the same with an online store. - [June] The next area that we want to encourage you to look at is landing pages. A landing page is where a customer enters the site, and it can show what pages are performing best. This is important because landing pages can help you identify areas for conversion opportunities. For example, you can view what pages customers are coming to most often and how they're interacting with each page through the bounce rate and time spent on page. I would then recommend using this information to determine if the messaging is hitting home with your customers or if it needs to be revamped. - [Natalie] Exit pages are where customers are abandoning the site. This is another great metric because you can see what pages are encouraging customers to leave and not continue into the sales funnel. These are areas of opportunity that you can drill into and evaluate why you're opening the door for visitors to leave. So it can be a really great blind spot to identify issues. - [June] I know it's been said for years, but it's official, mobile friendliness is no longer an option. So it is something that is here to stay. It's going to be normal process to purchase on phones and tablets moving forward. And if you're really questioning if mobile is important, keep in mind that millennials now outnumber baby boomers. So if your website is not mobile-friendly or responsive, it's really important to update your site. - [Natalie] And you may still be questioning what is responsive design. Responsive means easily reading and navigation with minimum amount of resizing, panning or scrolling, from a user perspective. It's a different way that the websites are coded and makes for a much better user experience. It's going to be standard for sites moving forward. So if you have not updated your site to responsive, keep in mind that Volusion offers free and paid responsive options. So Corey, can you tell us a little bit more about mobile options on your end. - [Corey] Sure. Of course, we focus on the mobile promotions. A fun fact, mobile comprises almost 50% of all onsite interactions. So we have to have our mobile promotions mobile-ready as well. So I know that there are certain considerations that we don't really think about, such as geo-targeting. If you happen to have a physical store, for example, that's a great way to target local mobile visitors and to show them specific offers to either encourage them to check out online, or perhaps you can swing by the store. Other things we don't think about, like exit offers. On a daily basis, people ask me, "Hey, I want to do an exit offer via mobile." And then I explain to them, "Well, there's no scrolling, so you can't really expect somebody who's trying to leave to just hit the X button. So there's no mouse involved." But some things that do work are time on site, number of page loads and mobile-specific offers. - [June] And if you're still questioning how important mobile usability is to your site, which I know one of the questions that people had typed in earlier was about responsiveness and its effectiveness. It is very important. But if you're still questioning it, consider that Google rolled out a whole algorithm update just based on mobile friendliness this past spring. And if you're unsure how your website is being affected, I would recommend reviewing the data in Google Analytics to see where your customers and conversions are coming from. You can look up to see if they're coming from mobile or not. For example, any drops in traffics or conversions via mobile or an increase in a bounce rate can indicate that you need to update your settings. And lastly, if you haven't visited your website from a phone, do this ASAP. You should review your website and the checkout processes on different devices, so Androids, iPhones and tablets. You may be surprised at what you see and experience. - [Natalie] So once you've converted them, let's keep them coming back. One of the greatest efforts you can do is build an online community through social media. Utilizing this marketing channel allows you to capture new customers, retain previous customers, and build yourself as an industry authority. You can feature blog articles, new products, promotions, industry news and just fun stuff that you know your target audience will enjoy, leaving a memorable impression. Email marketing is a great way to stay top-of-mind with your customer base. You can reach out to them when you're running promotions, launch new products and just say "Hi." I know I love it when there's a personal touch and a company reaches out to me when it's my birthday or anniversary. - [June] Completely feel you. Kendra Scott Jewelry. I'm obviously very girly-girl with my shoes and earrings examples, but Kendra Scott gives you 50% off your birthday month each year, and so I love to take advantage of these, and it specifically gets me in the store shopping more than I would have beforehand. - [Natalie] Yeah, and so they convinced June to give her more information so they could send her birthday coupons. So you can capture this personalized information by providing your customers an incentive to fill out an additional form by placing it on the Thank You page of the email sign-up form and offering them a freebie for their participation. That small freebie is an easy giveaway when you're going to retain a customer for life. - [June] And these are great ways to get personal with your customers, but not alienating them by being creepy and knowing too much about them. And I know, Corey, you'll have a couple of things about retention as well. - [Corey] Yeah, and just in the interest of time, quickly hit on these points. They're adding to the email marketing. After you've captured them through smart marketing, through onsite promotions, don't drop the ball. You want to market to them. Don't try to do everything. Stick with email, Facebook first, and then grow from there. You don't want to spread yourself too thin. Of course, after the purchase, you can also show them a second offer to encourage return. For example, you can use an overlay that says, "Hey, come back soon," or maybe an overlay that says, "Thanks for the purchase. We just sent you another promo code for 10% off your next order." There are technologies, SeeWhy is the example I used for email marketing from abandoned carts, so you can use something like that. And of course, "Welcome Back" messages, you can set a promotion so that if somebody has visited the site before, when they see that promotion, there's a "Welcome Back" message instead of a general message. So lots of different things that you can get people to come back to your site and keep coming back to your site. So in closing, I'll hand it off to you guys. - [June] Perfect. So we just want to leave you with a couple of resources. So first off, we have the Ultimate Field Guide to Conversions. It's a thorough guide that is specific to ecommerce. You also have availability to a free trial to Justuno through this link, as well as a coupon for their paid service. And if you do want to learn more about working with our marketing experts and conversion consulting from our team, please call the phone number listed on there. I know that we are very short on time, so we're going to be able to answer just one or two questions, and then we will follow up with a blog post to go over any questions that we have not answered. - [Natalie] So let's jump into our first question. "How many products should you have in your categories?" That's a great question. I know we touched on category organization, but it's really important to have a good amount of products within your categories so people know that you have lots of products to offer them, and they don't have the perception that you are maybe going out of business or not enough inventory, that you keep your site up to date and that it's consistent and reliable. You know, whatever makes it ... - [June] The page looks full, as well. - [Natalie] Yeah. It makes sense for your industry, but you also want to have a good amount of stuff in there. - [June] So our next question, "I noticed that no one visits our Returns page. I haven't updated it. Should I be concerned? It's pretty outdated." I know a lot of times, whenever I'm shopping, I actually don't check out the Returns page. So this probably does happen. That being said, I would go back and review it, and I would check for things such as, like we mentioned earlier, like restocking fees or a certain amount of time that people have to send a product back, or the condition. And again, if you don't really know where to start, I would always recommend to pick five or six competitors in your industry, both very large, enterprise level, all the way down to smaller businesses. You know, keep in mind that Nordstrom is going to be able to offer a different return policy than you might be able to as a small business owner. So I would do a mix there. - [Natalie] Corey, there's a bunch of really great questions coming in for you as well. It looks like one of them is, "How long until an overlay should be displayed?" One guy said two to four seconds, but I heard maybe 30 seconds. Do you have a recommendation about when someone lands on the site how quickly that overlay should appear? - [Corey] Great question. So, of course, the sooner you show it, the more likely someone will interact with it. But you don't want to be right in their face and to distract them from navigating through your website. I recommend seven seconds. A lot of people like the five seconds. I like seven seconds. They're on the site. They kind of get a feel for the navigation, and then voila, what slowly fades in is a nice offer that speaks to them, ideally using personalization based upon their behavior. So seven seconds is my recommendation, and of course you can play around with it. Maybe test through our system if you wanted to test promotion versus promotion. - [Natalie] I also like a lot of your recommendations where it's an incentive and then you click to get that option, as well. - [June] I agree. So one of the next questions was ... Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. "How important is social proof if you sell to a non-social media type client, for example construction workers?" We actually worked with a company for a really long time that sells chainsaw parts, and they had a great social media following, still do. Again, I think there's different ways, (a) to spin your products and (b) to still have that presence to, again, show that you're a reliable company, show there's people behind it. So I would still encourage you to have a social media presence and to build that up. And there may be other ways that you might not be thinking about it. For example, I think this one was construction workers. There still may be a way that maybe you can send ... I've seen bumper stickers, for example, on people's hardhats with their brand on a bumper sticker. That's a really cool way to show social proof. And I've seen companies that then send these bumper stickers with every purchase. Almost again goes back to Apple, how their stickers are everywhere. It's another way to show that social proof. - [Natalie] Absolutely, and this is true also if you're doing more B2B, which is business-to-business, and you're selling to other businesses. You can use social media as an HR tool just to show your cool culture and what your company has to offer, but then also post really interesting, engaging information on the products and innovative ways to use them. That way you're engaging with those people and providing them resources so then they can take that and use that to benefit their own business. - [June] I think we've got time for just one more question. That way we don't keep you all too long. So our last one is, "I can't afford free shipping. What should I do?" So as we mentioned, I think setting a free, excuse me, a flat rate works great. That way, at least customers know their shipping, what they're going to be paying going into it. And you still might consider different product levels. - [Natalie] Yeah. So, (a) free shipping is a high converter, so it may really help push some products that you're trying to promote and increase their revenue. And then also, you know, if most of your products are around the $20 mark, but you know that you have some that are up around the $50, for example, only offer free shipping on those higher-priced items, because then you get a good return on the revenue that you're generating. You're also encouraging higher-priced items to be sold, and you're not offering free shipping site-wide. You can just do it on specific things that make sense for your business model. - [June] And that's, I think, all the time we have. Like we said, we will answer these questions in a follow-up blog post, and we will include the ones that are specifically about the layovers and overlays that Corey spoke about. But we thank you for joining us today, and keep posting your favorite takeaways from today's webinar with the hashtag SellMoreOnline for a chance to win a free Conversion Optimization Report. Again, we really appreciate your time and thank you for attending.
Here are some answers to some of the most asked questions during the webinar:
Questions for Volusion
Q: How do you add a promotion to your homepage?
There are many ways to add promotions to your homepage. For example:
Add a slide graphic with promotional text on your homepage slideshow. Be sure to link it to the appropriate page so customers can start shopping quickly. If it’s a generic promotion, you can send them to an “All Products” page.
Creating a navigation menu promotion
Deal of the Day: enable deal of the day, which is a coupon that typically has a time limit on it. Follow this link to learn more: http://support.volusion.com/article/deal-day
Q: Does Volusion SmarterStats offer site search tracking?
Volusion’s SmarterStats doesn’t have a site search functionality. However, we recommend enabling Site Search tracking in your Google Analytics so you can see more information and make educated decisions based off facts. You can enable Site Search tracking in Google Analytics by going to Admin -> View Settings -> Site Search Settings -> click the button and add the word “search” to the query parameter.
Q: Is offering an incentive for a review considered the same thing as buying a review?
The thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to offer someone an incentive for a POSITIVE review. Providing a gift for providing feedback (good or bad) isn’t considered buying a review. You’re only buying a review if you’re trying to sway someone’s opinion of your business for free gifts and promotions.
Q: Does the Volusion tool have the capability to add Related Products to the product pages?
We sure do! We offer two options:
Q: Where do we find the option to allow "Checkout as Guest"?
In the Volusion system, it’s called “Anonymous Checkout .” To enable this feature, go to Settings > Config Variables in your Administration Area. Next, select "Checkout Variables" from the dropdown filter menu and check the box “Allow Anonymous Checkouts.”
Q: What features are free with Volusion that we can implement now?
There are many free features that you can utilize now to help improve the customer experience and drive more sales conversions. In fact, our free templates come with all of the following capabilities. For example:
Featured products
Homepage slideshow
Related products and accessories
Free shipping options
Social media tools
Navigation options per template
Category and product filters
Google Analytics capabilities
Dashboard reporting tools
Q: How important is Google Analytics, and is it available through Volusion?
Google Analytics is one of the best reporting tools out there. You can set up Google Analytics on your own or have us do it for you !
Q: How do I start getting customers to my site? SEO? Social Media? Paid Search?
We would always recommend a mix of marketing strategies for any new or established business. This can include building a social media presence, paid search such as Shopping Feeds or PPC ads, email marketing, networking on forums such as Reddit or blogging and on-page optimization with SEO best practices. To learn more, we have created many useful webinars that dive deep into most of these topics:
Q: How many products is too many products to showcase on your home page?
The best option is to showcase 4-8 products on your homepage at any one time. Any more products than this can be distracting or overwhelming to customers. Also, please note that having too many featured products on the homepage can slow down the load time, which is likely to increase the bounce rate and decrease conversions.
Additionally, product showcase software will display a random selection of products that you have designated, which will shuffle every time the page is refreshed. So you’re able to pick more products, but only a certain number will be shown on that page.
Q: How do I get my Volusion store to filter by color?
Giving your customers the ease to filter the products is a great way to enhance the user experience and get them to the products they want faster! Volusion allows you to enable this functionality quickly. To get started, click on this link!
Q: How do I enable free shipping on my site?
Free shipping is a great incentive for customers to purchase your products. If it makes sense within your business model, we recommend providing free shipping to your customers. To do this on your Volusion store you will start by going to Settings> Shipping> http://support.volusion.com/video/shipping-how-to-offer-free-shipping . From here, you’ll have the option of assigning shipping settings.
Questions for Justuno
Q: Can you define the difference between pop-ups and overlays? I don’t want to get dinged by Google for using pop-ups.
By definition, a marketing overlay opens within the same window, does not interfere with user experience and does not prevent visitors from entering or exiting sites. A pop up opens in a new browser window and interferes with website navigation and overall user experience. In short, your Google rankings will not be affected by using a marketing overlay on your site. For more information, here is a full description of Google’s policies on pop-ups and overlays .
Q: Aren't people discouraged by first page overlays by now, or is it still an acceptable practice?
This is a fantastic question and in order to answer it, we must look at two key factors: visitor experience and cold, hard data. Yes, presenting overlays to visitors as soon as they arrive on your site can discourage some people from providing you with information. At the same time, experts at Chartbeat found that 55% of visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website. This leaves you with a very small window to engage and convert a large portion of traffic, which is where overlays come in.
To take both website experience and this data into account, We’d recommend implementing a delay of 7 to 15 seconds for the overlay. I’d also engage visitors with an offer of high perceived value. Run a contest in which visitors can enter to win an enticing item. Offer a valuable piece of content or alert them of the current sale that you are running. First page overlays will give your messages the most exposure and provide you with the biggest opportunity to convert visitors into leads and revenue.
Q: Where can I find more info on how to implement overlays for cart abandonment?
Most cart abandonment occurs because of pricing. Price comparisons, coupon hunting and high shipping costs are the main reasons for abandonment, and all have to do with price. Tip the scale in the shopper’s favor with a discount or free shipping promotion. Using segmentation and targeting, you can present these offers to shoppers who are attempting to leave your cart and checkout pages. For more info on how to use exit overlays to prevent cart abandonment, here’s a short article on exit offers .
Q: How important is it to have the "no thanks" or X-out button available in your overlay?
While it’s not required, we recommend including a clear way for visitors to close an overlay. This way, you avoid the chance of visitors feeling trapped by your offers. Navigation is a key component of your website experience and should be a focus with overlays as well.
Q: What happens if the user is already a subscriber?
If you are running promotions with Justuno, you have the choice of allowing visitors to submit the same email multiple times or limiting them to one submission. If you’re running a sales promotion with discount codes, it may make more sense to allow duplicate emails so repeat customers can still access the discount. A sale is more valuable than an email, so if you can drive a purchase with a promo code and end up with a duplicate email in the process, you’ve clearly won.
Q: How do we add this type of overlay? Will I need to write any Javascript?
It’s Simple!
Sign Up for Justuno
Create a promotion in three easy steps
Embed a snippet of code in your website footer (only need to do this once)
You’re all set!
You will not need to write any javascript. Justuno takes care of that for you!
Q: Are these overlays customizable?
Justuno’s new design canvas enables you to create professional overlay designs in just a few minutes. You can even choose a template and customize it to fit your branding. Design isn’t the only thing you can customize. Create smart targeting and segmentation parameters to engage the right shoppers with relevant offers! Take an in-depth look at the design canvas !
Q: Is Justuno compatible with my Volusion store?
Yes, Justuno will work on any website!
Q: How much does Justuno cost? Is there a free version for me to try out?
Justuno offers a free account so you can started in minutes. Paid plans start at $25 per month. Get Started and generate new leads and revenue today!
