The conversion rate between the numbers of surfers and purchasers for an e-Commerce website is a statistic that site owners always seek to improve. The ways to improve conversion rate are many and varied.In this brief article, I will examine technically-based methods that are quite simple to implement and integrate with your site management platform to produce a greatly improved conversion rate.
Surfers frequently abandon a site when they cannot operate it simply.For example, they do not understand how to proceed with the checkout process or cannot find what they are looking for, even though the product exists in the database.
A site that operates an online help engine like the LIVEPERSON (www.liveperson.com) platform, that actively offers a service representative to assist at the right time, can deter many site abandonment scenarios.In fact, a site operating such a mechanism can effectively expect the conversion rate to triple.
Your site users are probably the best people to accurately identify the site's failures and weaknesses, including those that affect the conversion rate.Regular feedback from site surfers is an important and effective means to detect its weak points, and can greatly contribute to a better conversion ratio.
Clearly, to constantly obtain valuable and targeted feedback from numerous users over an extended period, it is best not to rely on the occasional response of an interested surfer but to employ tools designed for the purpose, such as those offered by Kampyle (www.kampyle.com). Also, these tools frequently include intelligent analysis features that can support the decision-making process regarding any improvements to be made to the website.
Clearly, the more you succeed in attracting relevant users to your website, the higher the conversion rate will be.
There are many different styles of targeted website marketing, but one of the oldest and most valuable is mailing to a segmented, high-quality distribution list. A mailing related to a specific value proposition sent to a well-categorized list will bring surfers with a very high conversion rate.
Market-leading emailing systems like activetrail (www.activetrail.com), can also generate valuable data on mailing quality and success, and on the connection between hits generated by mailings and site activity.
It is important to point out that the tools described here are simple and quick to implement, and their direct costs are pretty low. Moreover, the regular application of these tools does not have to be highly time consuming.
Analysis of the ROI of such methods is simple. The following example is based on tested data:
- Direct investment in this kind of technology is likely to cost around NIS 5,000 per annum.
- We can assume a growth of 20% in sales as a result of the technology implementation.
- Let's suppose a percentage profitability of the site of 10%.
- Finally, let's take as our sample case a website selling about NIS 50,000 per month (or NIS 600,000 per annum).
The ROI calculation for the first year is simply as follows:
- After implementing the software, the revenue of the site is NIS 720,000 per annum (instead of NIS 600,000).
- ROI for the site will be (12,000-5,000)/5,000=140%.
Clearly, in this simple case, we have not included indirect costs like the system’s operating time on the one hand, and amorphous profits like customer satisfaction on the other.
Definitely worthwhile and not at all complicated.
Good luck!
Omri Tamir, VP Marketing & Business Development
May 2011
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