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The bulletproof ecommerce
marketing formula
1. Analyze
Before jumping into any optimization process for an e-commerce website, you
need to STOP, gather all the data you can, and find out what its telling you.
Knowing and understanding the actual facts that have a bad impact on sales, will
help you determine the most efficient solutions.
There are two kinds of approaches in data analyzing - qualitative and quantitative.
The most popular methods are:
user testing: a method that allows you to see your potential clients reactions
to the websites design and navigation. Its a qualitative method, that requires a
strict observation of the users behavior while completing the tasks required by the
expert
heatmaps: used to track the cursor movement on a webpage. Its a qualitative
method and is used to reveal the most appealing elements that attract the users
attention
web analytics: a quantitative method to analyze data. Analytics Software reveal
data on traffic sources, historical results and the basic key performance indicators.
1.1. How to approach data analysis - marketing models and sales funnels
In this phase, I always have one of the most popular models known by marketers in
mind. Its called AIDA, and this is how I use it when analyzing data:
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
A - Awareness. A stands for attracting the visitors attention and making him
aware of your products value. I know for a fact that new visitors are not ready
to buy during their first visit, and therefore changed my focus to attracting their
attention with different tricks.
I - Interest. Once you know that visitors are aware of your products value, you
have to adjust the offers. Look into Analytics and find out which products, or
categories of products, are generating 80% of sales. Do the same for the traffic
segments.
D - Desire. As you know, customer behavior is ever changing, and therefore you
should always adapt your efforts. Make sure you optimize landing pages for the
high converting segments of traffic, because those already have the desire to buy.
A - Action. As you will see in the chapter 3 of this ebook, once you have noticed
how people act on-site, you should try to make their experience as easy as
possible. Support their decision to buy from you, by acting accordingly.
As you see, it is very important to have some basic marketing principles in mind
when working on a campaign or project. To help you connect the dots in this
phase, here is another trick Ive learned; using one single marketing model or tactic
does not give the best results, instead, combine it with complementary tactics. For
example, when creating a sales funnel, I always use AIDAs principles. Let me show
you how:
Subscribers
Shoppers
Buyers
Repetitive Buyers
Raging Fans
Viral traffic
Direct traffic
E-mail traffic
Organic traffic
Affiliate traffic
Paid traffic
Cost
low
low
low
low
medium
low
ROI
very good
best
good
good
good
it depends
Step 3: Persuade
The goal is to make visitors add items to their shopping carts. Besides the benefit
oriented copywriting, personalization, gamification and appealing images, you
should base decisions on hypotheses and test your ideas. I never run an A/B test
without creating a survey first. I do this because I know that its the customers who
buy products, not me or my clients employees. Ill talk about mastering surveys in
the second chapter of this ebook.
In order to grow the business, you should know that you can rely on a cohort of
people that will love your brand and website. In order to detect the people who
could become fans, I use the NPS (Net Promoter Score) methodology. NPS is one
of the most important KPIs that Fred Reichheld came up with in 2003 and which
has been adopted by companies such as Apple, Google, and Adobe. More on the
NPS topic later.
This would be the soft set of knowledge required in data analysis. Now lets move
on to the practical component of this phase.
Last-order
n/a
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25
50
Medium
On-site/on-load
e-mail
On-site/on-exit
On-site/cart-page
Action
Welcome-message
Reactivate message
Special incentive
Free gift
Average Order Value. AOV is an e-commerce metric that reveals the efficiency
of the up-selling and cross-selling marketing efforts. It can easily be monitored by
using Google Analytics
AOV = Generated Revenue/ Number of Orders
Cart Abandonment Rate. If this rate is high, it is clear that either products and/or
prices are not appealing to the customers, or, other aspects discourage people to
place an order. In the second case, the cart page may not be built well: no security
certificates, delivery time not displayed, unclear return policy, etc.
CAR = 1 - (Number of people who start checkout/ Number of add to cart clicks)*
*in terms of percentages
If youre interested to find out more about the right metrics to measure your
websites performance, we have created a list with 12 vital e-commerce key
performance indicators.
Download the 12 Vital Ecommerce KPIs Guide for free.
Next, look visitors behavior on your website and try to spot the pages with the
highest rate of traffic drop off. Any improvements on these pages will have a big
impact on the overall website stats. An easy way to discover the biggest holes in
your traffic net, is to log into your Analytics account and click Users Flow under
Demographics, then choose the Landing Page view from the drop down menu,
and youll be prompted with a view similar to this one:
Pay special attention to the most important landing pages of nearly any
e-commerce website: homepage, category pages, product pages and the
cart page. These are likely to be the spots where even small improvements could
generate big changes to the overall conversion rate.
Source: Statista
Buyers personas: Identify the behavior of your best customers, VIPs, the ones
that spend 5 more per order than average
Website load times: Check this free resource (it includes an infographic) to find
out how the top 15 online retailers score at load time and how you can fix page
speed issues.
Once youve taken a careful look at the data, the websites main issues will start to
pop up one by one. But before you go and start making changes, theres one more
step Id highly advise you to take, which is often ignored by marketers: ask the
visitors for their opinion on your website, so you know what they like or dislike
about it. Which brings me to the second step of the ASAP formula.
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2. Surveys
In chapter 1 weve discussed how to analyze the outcomes of customer actions
on a website, using data gathered by software. Now, lets talk about predicting
behavior.
Marketers have always tried to make predictions about the consumers behavior
by creating models. But its not only marketers who focus on this issue, also
psychologists, sociologists and behavioral economics experts.
Unlike the people whose job it is to understand how man acts, marketers dont
have the time to study behavior in depth. What they can do, though, is combining
technology with knowledge.
Knowledge can be acquired by considering the latest studies in psychology or
subscribing to a channel such as TED talks. By doing this, your area of knowledge
expands and youll notice that, suddenly, you have more alternatives to choose
from when looking for solutions at work.
Technology, on the other hand, helps you to apply the knowledge youve aquired
about behavior. It provides you with the tools to achieve your marketing goals. This
brings me to my favorite tool for analyzing behavior: surveys.
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You may wonder how, exactly, to use surveys on your e-commerce site. You might
be afraid of interrupting the customers journey, right? Ive heard this many times
from my clients. This is what I tell them: Use surveys the smart way. Like any other
innovative approach in marketing, it requires a good understanding of the sales
funnel, segmentation and targeting.
Dont take me wrong: observation is a great method to study behavior, but I find
surveys more useful especially when integrated with your strategy
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3. A/B Testing
Like any other revolutionary discovery in online marketing, A/B testing has become
something that companies with an online presence have to try in order to remain
competitive. Nowadays, the A/B testing technique is the handiest option for
marketers who are working with conversion rate optimization.
A/B Testing is the most efficient method to define the best version of any landing
page. Here are just a few examples of elements that can be tested:
Colours: When it comes to colour, there is no magic recipe for the conversion
rate. There is not one unique colour that can invariably draw more conversions
when used on any website. Test and see which one works best for you.
Copywriting: The messages you send to your audience represent who you are.
You should write simple, clear and benefit-oriented messages in order to persuade.
Images: The smallest detail can make the difference between buying something
from a website or abandoning it. Regardless the size, make sure you use highquality images.
Call-to-action buttons: Change colours, copywriting and the positioning of the
CTA buttons, and test the variations.
Although A/B testing is the key to unlocking converting barriers, you should
know that it will only give conclusive results if you respect the methodology.
So here is a list of traps to avoid when A/B testing:
Testing more than one variable
The alternative to A/B testing is Multivariate testing. It implies changing a
combination of elements on a page. But be warned: modifying too many variables
at once in a single test wont tell you which of the variables has a positive impact
on KPIs. So that you run the risk of seeing a drop in conversions after youve
implemented the winning version.
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There is no rush. Instead of ruining a test by including too many variables at once,
test each variable independently. If youre still not convinced, check number 2 again
and remember that its not about your desire to see your website changed, but
about the customers demands of your website.
Expecting huge outcomes from small changes
Including A/B testing in your strategy should be the main focus. No matter how big
your desire to start running tests on the website, take the time to develop strong
hypotheses. By doing this, you will see that A/B testing is not just about changing
texts and images, but about much more complex actions that will generate greater
results. Previously, weve talked about building landing pages for each buyer
persona. Once youve published your final version of the landing page, you can
start testing the impact of small changes on your sites KPIs, such as Call to Action,
buttons, videos, testimonials. Testing each variable independently will show you
which elements convince people to buy.
Stopping the test too early
If the A/B testing software shows you a statistical significance rate of 95%, it doesnt
mean you have to stop the test right away. Even if you see a confidence rate of
95%, it doesnt mean the variation will continue to have a positive impact on the
websites KPIs. Therefore, one shouldnt stop the test unless it has reached the right
amount of traffic. In order to help you with this sensitive aspect, I recommend
trying this calculator. It helps one to predict how many visitors are needed in order
to get accurate results from your tests.
Testing the impact on the irrelevant KPIs
Measuring the impact from the change in page views and click-through rates just
doesnt make sense. The A/B test is meant to show you the impact from a change
in metrics that matter, such as conversion rate and revenue. Focusing on the wrong
KPIs will only trick you into thinking that youre on the right track because you see
people clicking on a button.
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The final step is to implement the winning variation on your website in order to
see the direct impact of your change. But as time goes by, new trends will emerge,
consumer behavior will change, and you will have to adapt. So you should never
stop testing hypotheses! It will certainly help you to keep up with your customers.
As you test more and more of your hypotheses, you will notice that specific
segments of visitors will react in different ways to the same A/B test. This means
that people have different preferences depending on characteristics such as age,
location, language, adherence to brand, time of day, weather conditions, etc. The
times of one single website version for all users are slowly ending and a new much
more flexible style will take its place: the personalized website.
Nowadays, in the huge and competitive e-commerce market, web personalization
is passing the nice to have benchmark, and is becoming a necessity for survival.
This is why I singled out personalization. Its the one feature that will make or break
your website in the future. Catch the personalization wave early on, and make the
most out of it.
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Result
The conversion rate increased by 27.14%, the revenue by
23,54% and revenue/visitor by 21.29%.
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4. Personalization
Internet is a place where something can be announced as the next big thing, only
to pass unnoticed in a few months or so. Many technologies have been declared
as a must have for any marketer and soon after faded away without anyone even
noticing. Will this be the case with web personalization as a marketing technique?
My answer; certainly not. Amazon, the leading e-commerce company, has been
making money with content personalization for years.
Back in 2012, only 37% of companies surveyed by Econsultancy were able to target
personalized content in real time.
Econsultancy, Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefings
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When you make segments for web personalization, consider the following
segmentation criteria:
Location: The country, city or region where the visitor comes from represents
a great source of personalization. On the landing page, you can deliver local
messages such as Free delivery to Germany or 3 day shipping to the UK.
Weather: Display pop-ups with product recommendation according to the
weather. If its snowing, showcase those ice skates that never seem to sell.
Purchase history: Depending on what actions a customer has made on your
website, you can trigger special discount pop-ups or show him a product related to
his previous order.
Cookie: A very basic, yet clever form of personalization is registering data
through cookies about what a visitor viewed in the previous session, and using it at
the next visit on site.
Previous answers to surveys
Other web personalization segmentation possibilities: traffic source, keywords,
pages seen on current sessions, new vs. returning customers, time on website and
so many others. Ill let you complete this list yourself, since it all depends on you
and how you manage your efforts.
The most important thing when using a tool in order to personalize customers
experience on site, is having a strategy and implementing it properly. Without
knowing the purpose of applying different marketing or conversion optimization
tactics, all efforts will be in vain.
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Case study: adding a size filter within a pop-up increased conversion rate
by 57.87%
Client: Tinar.ro
Opportunity
By analyzing the data from the visitors history, we found a valuable
underperforming segment: engaged users who had not used the price filter
before. Visitors that use filters are generally more likely to convert. If the engaged
visitors dont use the filters, we can remind them to do so, in order to help them
make a decision based on their personal needs or preferences.
The target segment included visitors who:
- had seen pages that contained certain keywords in the URL and were related to
the message on the banner;
- had looked at over 2 pages;
- hadnt used the filter pages yet;
- hadnt seen other pop-ups yet;
Hypothesis
Showing the users, who hadnt used the size filter, an exit intent pop-up that
communicated the available sizes would help them close the sale. The aim of this
personalization experiment was to increase sales for specific product categories
such as dresses and sandals.
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Activation
When a visitor had the intention to leave a product or a category, a pop-up with
a size filter would automatically be triggered. Clicking on any red rectangle would
lead to pages with products that only had the selected size. Additionaly the sizes
were ordered according to popularity.
Result
By adding the search filter for size in a pop-up, conversion rate increased by
57.87%.
The Revenue increased by 42.68% and the revenue/visitor by 28%.
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Conclusion
I hope that Ive managed to convince you of the importance of having a marketing
strategy before jumping into any corrective measures for your e-commerce
website. Keep the ASAP formula in mind and follow the 4 steps in the exact order
presented: Analysis, Surveys, A/B Testing and Personalization.
Start analyzing both quantitive and qualitative data, ask your audience for their
opinion through segmented surveys, formulate hypotheses and validate them
through A/B Testing, and finally, personalize your customers experience on your
website.
Analyze
Survey
A/B
Testing
Personalization
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I really appreciate that youve read this guide till the end, and I hope that it
motivates you to start boosting sales ASAP.
As a reward, Im giving you a National Guru account, to test Marketizator 2 months
for free. This offer is exclusively available to people who have read this ebook.
Congrats! You can now start using the ASAP formula to increase sales for your
e-commerce business.
asapgrowth
If you have any questions about any of the 4 steps, Ill be happy to answer them
for you at valentin@marketizator.com. For questions regarding our conversion rate
optimization tool, our support guys are always ready to assist you.
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