Are you getting enough traffic on your e-commerce stores but are still not able to convert your leads into probable customers? Well, did you track your customers’ behavior? You’ll only be surprised to find out the number of shopping carts that get abandoned for one reason or the other. More than 68 percent of digital shopping carts were abandoned between 2006 and 2016. That undoubtedly is a huge number!

Finding out the shopping cart abandonment reasons and working on the identified loopholes is the only solution to minimize the shopping cart abandonment. We tell you how!

1) High Price

Let’s face it, 71% of the shoppers shop online because they believe they will get a better deal online. And if they are not able to locate a perfect deal on your website or if the product is priced way too high, it is only obvious that they will abandon their shopping cart.

There could be various other reasons behind cart abandonment. Users also tend to leave the shopping carts if the price of the products is not listed in their local currency. As a result of which, shoppers are expected to deal with currency conversions on their own. This might upset a few customers.

Further, various e-commerce stores add tax and vat at the time of checkout. And since a user was not prepared to pay an additional amount as tax and vat, they might simply leave the website.

Suggestions:

It is highly recommended to lure customers, especially if you are a start-up company. We are not suggesting you to cut down your own profits in the mad race of offering the best prices to customers, but to play it smart! How about offering them discount coupons to convince them to shop from you? Keeping a track of their behavior once they are on your website also helps.

You might choose to drop them a recovery mail every time they leave your website without checking out. A simple mail like ‘Your products are waiting for you in the shopping cart’ goes a long way in winning a lost customer. You might also choose to collect their feedback once they abandon the shopping cart asking reasons if they found a better deal elsewhere.

2) Expensive Shipping

Never thought of this, did you? But yes, as many as 74% shoppers abandon their shopping cart just because they found that shipping and delivery charges are way too higher!

Further, a report by ComScore states that around 60% of the consumers are likely to cancel their purchase if they are made to pay for shipping charges too!

Suggestions:

While free shipping on all orders might undoubtedly hurt your bottom line, but rewarding shoppers with free shipping if they pay upfront, or providing free delivery above a certain amount of price can help you win hearts of your customers.

Further, it is always a good practice to make your customers know about the shipping charges involved beforehand rather than at the checkout page.

3) Just Browsing

Admit that, we all tend to browse e-commerce stores in our free time even when we don’t need anything. So, you cannot rule out the possibility that your customer left his shopping cart just because he was never at your site with the intention of buying. He was just there to roam and browse around, have a look at the prices and that’s it.

Suggestions:

It is always better to point out exits to your customers even if they were just there for a random stroll. Drop them a random email and this will make them feel comfortable. This will speak well of your company and brand and would make them happy. It goes without saying, that happy customers are the best customers, and what else do you want?

4) Minimize Your Checkout Flow

Analyze your checkout process and calculate the times it takes for an average customer to complete the checkout process. Multiple processes from cart to checkout can be frustrating for some, and this perhaps could be one of the reasons why more and more customers are abandoning their shopping cart online in between.

Suggestions:

Aim to make the whole checkout process swift and fast, ideally within 4 seconds. Make sure that there are minimum clicks required between adding the items to the shopping cart and finally making the purchase. You should also avoid the unnecessary display of multiple pages with a return policy and so, onto the final checkout page.

However, we would highly recommend conducting a proper A/B testing to achieve on an ideal checkout process. Keeping the checkout process too much precise can confuse your customers if they have provided the correct address or quantity or size, while, a long process can irritate frequent shoppers.

5) Bugging-Up Customers With A Compulsory Sign Up

Undoubtedly, capturing email addresses of every customer can help you in an effective marketing campaign, but gathering their contact information forcibly is not appreciable.

Suggestions:

You should never trap the customer to make him provide his contact details. They will eventually provide all the info that you need once they place an order. But care should be taken that you also have a guest checkout system at a place to facilitate quick checkouts for people in a hurry.

6) No Clear CTA Buttons

Keep yourself in your visitors’ shoes and analyze one thing – How easy the navigation is on your website?

This is where various e-commerce stores lose the game. The site at times is so shabby and confusing with no clear navigation and CTAs, that it becomes difficult for a user to make a purchase through it.

Suggestions:

Keep the structure and layout of your website as simple as possible. Have proper placement of ‘add to cart’, ‘add to wish list’, ‘continue shopping’, ‘back to previous category’ and other buttons. Further, make sure that the website is easy to navigate by displaying related products under each category, clear CTA buttons, proper menu, and the likes.

7) Lack of Payment Options

How many payment options does your website provide? Assuming that net banking as a payment gateway is enough or thinking that the ability to pay via credit cards or via cash on delivery would suffice, is a purely hypothetical statement.

There are cases when a particular user is not able to pay simply because his credit/debit card might be faulty or due to the misplacement of banking credentials from his part. These are perhaps the kind of situations when an array of payment options come to his rescue.

Suggestions:

Make sure that you include all popular debit and credit card options on your website. If you are targeting shoppers from around the globe, make sure you include international payment gateways like PayPal as well. Don’t forget to add popular local payment options like RuPay for India, AliPay for China, iDEAL for the Netherlands and so on.

8) Lack of Customer Support

The biggest advantage of shopping offline is that customers can consult the shop owner or the sales representatives right away in the store in case of any issue. However, this is not the case when you are shopping online.

You don’t have a salesman with you to explain the details of the products. In such cases, a shopper has to only rely on the information provided by the website. And if an e-commerce store fails to explain what the product is all about, what are its dimensions and other details, this is when a customer struggles to achieve satisfaction and might abandon the shopping utility cart on the go.

Suggestions:

Well, having robust customer support is the solution. Better, if you could implement a live chat on your website to help users with their queries in real-time. A recent survey by LivePerson has revealed that as many as 93% of customers admit that having live chat support at a website facilitates easy shopping experience.

9) Lack of Brand Trust

Your e-commerce store should convey proper trustworthiness to your customers, until and unless you are a big brand like ‘Amazon’ which already has its brand value on the market. But if you are a lesser-known brand, what are the parameters you are expecting your customers to trust you on?

Suggestions:

Ensuring your customers about the provided security and that the whole transaction would be safe and secure is the only way to win their trust. Further, switching your domain address from HTTP to HTTPS is an additional step you can adopt, including security icons in green color, speak of the security.

Further, also highlight the contact details of the company including the customer care number, the company’s address, and the Facebook page and so on to show the goodwill of the company. This will help customers build their trust over you.

10) Website crash

Okay, so your customer spent a considerable amount of time on your website. They actively chose the product of their likings and finally made it to the checkout process, but then all of a sudden, your website crashed. In such situations, what do you expect your customers to behave like? It is only likely that they will abandon their shopping carts and won’t think of shopping again from your website.

Suggestions:

Have a robust system at your place with dedicated servers which are capable of handling the load. Keep your website’s coding up-to-date to avoid any crashes.

Further, if you are going to host some mega event or a sale or have a marketing campaign going on and you’re expecting huge traffic at your website, it is better to prepare for it by installing additional servers which can match up with your expected traffic.

Analyze the load which your website would be able to handle, and talk to your service provider beforehand for any additions, if required, rather than to serve poor experience.

11) Not Offering Coupon Codes and Promotional Offers

A consumer is less likely to make a purchase from a website less-known unless he/she is in grave need of a certain product or if he can find the same product on other online stores which he trusts more.

Suggestions:

The best way to achieve an edge over your competitors is by offering your customers promo offers and coupon codes which would motivate them to shop from you. And when they shop for the first time, make sure that you provide them a flawless shopping experience such that they shop from you more often!

12) Lack of Product Information

Suppose a customer of yours likes a certain product from the way it looks and decides to purchase it. The second moment, he wants to know more about the product that he is so willing to purchase, but in vain! There is no such information available. The result – he will surely abandon the product that he has in his cart.

Suggestions:

Display all the product related information along with every product. Give proper insights about the material of the product, its dimensions, guarantee if any, pricing details, size guide, and other details. As an additional luring factor, you can also help your customers by providing an additional styling tip. Simple statements like ‘Pair this dress with high-toed heels’ can help your customers make a smart decision.

13) Confusion in Filling Out Mandatory Fields

It goes without saying that your website’s layout and forms should be simple enough to understand and comprehend. Needless to say, your e-commerce store would be visited by both first-time shoppers and regular online shoppers alike.

While the things are easy for people who are in habit of shopping online, but first-time shoppers might find a few things tough to browse and manage. There have been cases when people discarded their shopping carts just because the shipping detail form wasn’t clear enough for them to understand.

Suggestions:

Keep the things as simple and precise as possible. While asking for info from the users in the forms, it is highly recommended to mention every minute detail, no matter, how obvious it is. Have a proper display of error messages if any wrong input is done by the user, and distinctly highlight the field in which the user has missed out on. Also, have a feedback mailing system in place wherein the shop owners can ask the users if they are facing any difficulty in placing the orders.

Wrapping Up

Every industry has its own issues and challenges, and the e-commerce industry is no exception. However, e-commerce problems and solutions can be easily identified and handled through proper analysis and strategic implementation.

Perhaps this is how brand names like ‘Amazon’ and ‘eBay’ were made. If shopping cart abandonment is the issue you are being challenged with, just go ahead and recognize the appropriate customer retention tactics and solutions that are a fit for you and accordingly work in the right direction.

What are your views on this? How far do you think the solutions suggested above are meaningful? Do let us know in the comments!

The post Shopping Cart Abandonment: 13 Extensive Causes & How to Overcome Them appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

You have a gripping website design, swift navigation, eye-catchy imagery, and just perfect content!!! Still, you are not able to convert your customers as per the expectations. Why?

It is not always about the website. But, there are cases when your visitors are not ready to convert. Maybe they have not planned to buy as of now or are busy. Holding on to the interest of the buyers until they make their purchase is extremely essential.

As the competition in the online selling market is pretty high, it is important that you make the right impact and for the right period of time on the prospective buyers more than your peers. There has to be some specialty on your website that will portray your quality of products and the goodwill of your company at once to the customers so that they choose you over your counterparts.

Making an impactful website for your company and reach out to your buyers appropriately is an art as well as a skill. Today, let’s focus on 8 great ways to convert your prospects to buyers. Check out.

1. Proper use of exit-intent tools

Exit intent tools come in very handy when it comes to enhancing the conversions. They provide you with a last opportunity to convert your buyers and make them give a final thought to buying your products from the website.

These tools are merely like last-minute messages whenever a user hits the back button or close button. So, a user landed on your website, browsed through a few pages and then decided to give it up. He pressed the back button, and that’s it – here comes a pop up asking the user if he really wants to exit.

Since these messages are your final call to attract customers, they need to be really impactful and catchy and should be able to draw the attention of the buyers yet again so that they think once again before leaving your website without making a purchase.

These exit-intent tools could be like simple messages to ask why they were leaving or maybe even providing easy and quick sign up instructions for alerts and so on.

Make sure that the message is put forth directly in and interesting way without beating around the bush. Keep it short and simple without consuming much time of your users.

2. Make their emotions your weapon

If you are creative enough, you can easily play around with the emotions of your prospective buyers and make them stay on your website even longer. To be able to revitalize their interests while they are still on your website, just serve them what they want.

For example, if they are on your eCommerce website, providing suggestions about skirts in contrast colors while they are busy buying tops is a sure way to engage them further. Being able to read their minds and be able to play with their emotions by telling them what they want to hear is a good way to impress them.

3. It is not a complete loss when you can go for Post-exit follow-ups

There is absolutely no reason for you to worry if a buyer had visited your website on a particular occasion and they lost interest due to some reason and didn’t return. The post-exit follow-ups will be helpful in letting him stick around for a little longer. Post-exit follow-ups are nothing but a way of remarketing/retargeting.

Have you not faced instances when a product keeps on following you after you abandoned it in the shopping cart? This is nothing but a post-exit follow up! And this is just not the only way where you can take a follow-up from your potential customers. But a simple mail like, ‘your shopping cart is waiting for you!’ can make your customer think of making the purchase!

4. Scroll triggered lightboxes

Let’s understand this by a simple example. You have an engaged reader on your blog. Now, you want to enhance his/her experience further, and so, as soon he/she scrolled down, you thought of presenting before them a pop-up which offers them an opportunity of downloading a related ebook free.

This is how the scroll triggered lightboxes work. Their main aim is to engage the customers further while they are on your website and are activated when a user scrolls the page down.

If someone is intently visiting your page and taking their time to read what you have to say, you can further engage them with a scroll-triggered lightbox. These are a perfect tool to ask your readers for subscribing to your blog or might be for purchasing an ebook and so on.

Beware; the purpose of these lightboxes is to further help your reader spend some more time on your website rather than distracting and diverting him.

5. Keep it short and sweet

Always remember that no one has so much time to read huge pages of written material. Thus you need to be able to portray your information in the most interesting way in a short format.

This is important to kindle the interest of the prospective buyers in a very short time. You need to be creative in working up a method to be able to tell them that you have a lot to offer them that they might be interested in. So, keeping it brief is the key.

6. Choose the right colors

Making the right choices for the colors and making the combination of colors in the perfect way is a very useful tactic of holding on to the interest of the buyers and making them fall for what you have to offer. Highlighting the areas necessary to promote their importance is also essential.

Too dull colors might be boring for the readers if they have to read a whole long page. Whereas on the other hand, too bright colors like bright yellow or something on the same lines might be hurting to the eyes of the readers. Thus stick to soft and soothing colors as per your niche, that is readable and prominent on the page.

7. Value is added

Ensure that you have some added information to provide. Do not mention something to the reader that they already know. This might be boring and monotonous for the readers and they might not find it interesting enough.

Care should be taken that you are not just serving them the obvious info, or something which is easily deducible. Even well-designed websites with flawless content fail to convert people because what they’re serving is too old school.

Keep your visitors serving something new and exciting, and they shall remain loyal to you year after year, thus taking care of your conversions time and again.

8. Mention the importance and urgency

Let the readers know how important and urgent your services and the information are. Make sure they feel that they are on the same page as you. Mentioning the urgency will ensure that they fall for your offers and make purchases from your website immediately.

In this case, as well it is important that you are not too blunt in portraying your interests. Instead, be tactful and engaging by making use of a format that perfectly indicates the urgency to make a purchase.

Catch their attention emotionally by showing them a sign of urgency. A simple ‘sign up now before it’s too late’ can hit the chord right! Make use of appropriate colors and animation to further grip them.

All these things said and done, if you put in a little extra effort and execute the right strategy by making use of the points mentioned above, stay assured, you’ll be surely able to boost your conversion rate. Just play around.

Try exit intent tools if you are facing high bounce rates or make use of scroll triggered lightboxes to further engage your customers. Don’t forget to take post-exit follow-ups and see what works for you and frame your marketing strategy revolving around it.

However, if nothing seems to go as expected, it is probably because you’re not putting in efforts in the right direction. Hiring a professional digital marketer can help you win half of the battle in optimizing the conversion rate by planning appropriate approach.

The post The Art of Conversion Optimization: 8 Awesome Ways to Convert Your Prospects to Buyers appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Every AdWords advertiser’s ulterior motive is to gain relevant prospects via clicks on his ads. If you are an advertiser yourself, this scenario will definitely sound familiar.

Well, this sets our goal – try and achieve as many clicks on your ads as possible. Now, what if we say that you can achieve your motive quickly and efficiently through an innovative tool called Google AdWords extensions? Yes, There are a number of Google AdWords extensions available today that can increase the number of related clicks on your ads drastically.

They help you convert your viewers into potential leads and thereafter, customers.

So what these AdWords extensions are and why should they be used? Let’s find out!

What are AdWords Extensions?

Recognize them by initiating a Google search, for let’s say, shoes online. You will find that some ads take more space when compared to others, all thanks to the AdWords Extensions that help your ad to display more useful information, and therefore the increased length of your ad.

The main idea here is to optimize your PPC campaign in order to communicate maximum information about the product or service to the viewers. You can, of course, opt for Google ads without the extensions. But the ones with extensions have certain advantages and benefits over the other category.

Why Should You Use AdWords Extensions?

Do nothing without a reason! And why should you use AdWords extensions without prior knowledge of how they could be of immense help to you? We here talk about a few of the many advantages that AdWords extensions have to offer.

• Improved Click through rates

First and foremost, adword extensions lead to better click through rates since the viewers are now exposed to more information pertaining to the product or service and also get options to get in touch with the concerned people immediately.

• Visibility

Owing to more precise information and more ad space, the ads with extensions tend to be different from the others and garner more attention.

• More clicks at the same cost

For no additional costs, you get more valuable clicks from the viewers. What else could you ask for?

• Improved user experience

In general, it has been seen that Google ads with extensions tend to provide a better and smoother experience to the viewers when it comes to navigating around the ads.

Now that you are convinced of the importance of AdWords extensions, it is only natural to look for a few of them that can help you achieve the motive. Read on!

AdWords Extensions You Need to Try

Let’s review the top 6 AdWords extensions and see in detail how they can be of help to you and your campaign.

• Review Extension

A review extension, in the simplest terms, makes use of third party interference in order to have a good and unbiased review of the products and contents of your page.

One of the most full-proof ways of verifying the efficiency of the content of a page is through testimonials and reviews. This ensures that the user who is going through the ad on the page has trusted the content. This brings about a sense of validity and authenticity.

This is thus a must-have extension for every online marketer. However, there is one thing to be borne in mind here. It is imperative that you go through and are thorough with the guidelines of Google Review Extensions before you start adding these reviews to your site ad. Third-party sites like G2 Crowd, Trust Pilot, Trust Radius and the likes could come into action here.

• Callout Extension

Callout Extension is one of the most useful extensions to have if your aim is to express everything your service is about in those 2 lines of the advertisement.

It gives you the chance to incorporate more words in order to communicate your message clearly. Basically, breaking it down to the simplest level, a callout is any short phrase that gives the user an idea of the service that you are offering.

It would mean putting together small sentences like the main idea of the service, the number of hours, delivery time, location of stores and many more such pieces of information that might be essential for the viewer or potential customer to know in those few words.

Basically, what this extension does is gives you maximum information in limited words.

• Sitelinks Extension

This particular extension basically works by adding more links to your ad that ensures that you are reaching out to the potential customer base with as much information about the service as you possibly can.

When you add some essential information that surrounds the main service you offer, it increases the credibility of the ad. This also improves on the potential opportunities for the viewer to reach the sites that are most useful to them.

For instance, if it is a particular educational course that you are offering to the viewers in the advertisement, then the links added could be of taking additional exams and equivalent ones.

• Structured Snippets

This type of an extension caters to those businesses that are revolving around many different ideas. For instance, if your business is for food, it could be encompassing a number of different food items and cuisines.

When you advertise your services on the internet, you must make sure that you include all relevant points such that the viewer has access to all the information required. This is where structured snippets come into play.

Thus, this will give you the option to incorporate the different facets of the service information in one single piece of advertisement. In fewer words, all the necessary details and types are included here with the help of this extension.

• Call Extension

When you place an advertisement of the service you offer online, your work doesn’t end just at providing the details regarding the service. When the readers come across this advertisement, they would want to get in touch with the concerned people.

For this reason, it is necessary to include an option that allows the users to give you a call such that they can get all the required information and request for your services if need be. The Call Extension looks after this aspect of the advertisement.

It incorporates the call feature that contains your phone number for orders or inquiries. According to Google records, online advertisements that have phone numbers included have a 6% to 8% higher click through rates.

This extension ensures that the viewers do not have to visit the website to get the contact information since this can be done right from the advertisement.

• Location Extension

The Location extension tries to target businesses that have offices in different areas or multiple locations. In that case, you would need to pinpoint the exact location of the outlet that is going to offer the service mentioned in the advertisement.

A Location extension is basically going to incorporate details like the address, phone number and business hours in order to let the users be aware of the contact details. This feature also helps filter out the customers and get the attention of the people who really want the service or the product.

For instance, if your service revolves delivery of certain items around the city, if you put in the location, only the interested viewers or the potential customers will focus on the content. Also, sometimes putting the location means making the viewers realize how close the business is to them.

So, once you induct these few adwords extensions into your ad, you are likely to get higher conversion rates. The choice of extension basically depends on the type of business you are running.

In order to get the most of the information and PPC campaign, the need of the hour is to hire a Google Adwords Professional who can narrow down your options and get the ideal AdWords to promote our ad, thus, helping you feature your ad with all the relevant directions and information.

The post 6 Google AdWords Extensions To Help Improve Your Conversion Rate appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Ever since their emergence, pop-ups have been seen as nothing more than a nuisance. With time, pop-ups have managed to gather enough hate in the hearts of people that various tools have surfaced in an attempt to get rid of them. This dissatisfaction linked to pop-ups might be because of the fact that they are used to bombard the visitor each time they visit a website.

Many of us fail to realize is that there are specific parameters that can be set to restrict the number of pop-ups to stop them from becoming so annoying. For example, if a pop-up appears just once for each visitor through use of cookies, it is much more likely to yield better results.

The ultimate challenge is to use pop-ups in a certain way that does not compromise on the user experience or causes many complaints. While you cannot please each and everyone, there are methods in which you can use pop-ups to enhance the number of conversions without compromising your website’s user experience.

Let us review four distinct ways in which pop-ups can be used to improve conversion rates without annoying your users.

1. Say No to Entry Pop-Ups

Entry pop-ups are probably the most disturbing type of pop-ups. They appear whenever a visitor first enters a site. The significantly degrade the user experience by interrupting the reading and browsing flow. They spoil your visitors’ experience right from the moment they come to your website.

As an alternate to entry pop-ups, you should consider using exit pop-ups. These appear when your visitor is leaving the website; therefore, they do not hamper the browsing and reading flow.

When it seems that a visitor is about to leave the site, exit pop-ups can show up to encourage the visitors to stay connected with the website. Check the example of Behappy.me:

This exit pop-up appears when a user indicates behavior of leaving the website.

2. Offer Valuable and Relevant Content

Another reason people have nurtured hate for pop-ups is because many of them do not contain any valuable or relevant content. If your pop-up contains content that is valuable for the visitor because it helps them solve their problem, find a solution, or answers their question, it would not be considered as annoying.

As a matter of fact, pop-ups with relevant and valuable information are considered helpful and are liked by visitors.

One way of using pop-ups is to use it as a supplemental navigation tool. In place of using pop-ups to promote a product/offer or a subscription, use a pop-up on your site to redirect traffic to appropriate areas. For instance, you could forward your visitors to the most-sought after content to help increase conversions altogether while enhancing user experience. One good example is as follows:

This pop-up acts as a navigation menu, directing users to relevant sections of the website.

3. Give Your Messages a Personalized Touch

Each of your visitors will come to your website from different sources, and will have varying needs and goals that they want to fulfill. Some might be interested in different types of products or solutions; therefore, each person will respond in a different manner to your marketing messages.

In order to enhance user experience and make your pop-ups more ‘likeable’, you must tailor your marketing messages for different types of audiences and groups of customers.

When the message fits the needs of a specific group, you are more likely to experience better growth with regards to your conversion goals.

At the core of digital marketing, you will find that highly customized messaging has an immensely strong role to play in determining the success of your marketing campaigns and efforts. The same should be applied to your pop-up campaigns to ensure they are as relevant to your customers as possible. Digital Marketer makes excellent use of this.

They display the following to those users who show interest in Facebook marketing:

For those people who show a general interest in social media marketing, the following pop-up is shown:

The result of this personalization would be: improved rate of conversions and enhanced user experience.

4. Perform A/B Testing

It is important to perform A/B testing to determine which pop-ups are useful for your website and which ones are harmful. The same types of improvements as those for traditional A/B testing are now available for website pop-up campaigns. You can increase your conversions with A/B test by as much as 40 percent – that too while improving the overall user experience of the visitors.

This testing will enable you to identify the messages and design elements that work and those which don’t, while telling you what should stay and what must be removed.

A/B testing can also reveal some valuable analytics, including the following:

• Conversions – The amount of signups generated by pop-ups
• Impressions – The frequency at which your pop-ups appeared
• Conversion Rate – Percentage of pop-ups that lead to conversion
• Time on Popup – The duration a user spent on your pop-up before converting or closing it
• Time on Page – The duration a user stayed on a particular page

Conclusion

To sum it all up:

• Utilize exit-intent pop-ups instead of the distracting entry pop-ups
• Offer content that is valuable
• Add a personalized touch to the pop-ups
• Perform testing before getting it online

A lot of website owners find themselves struggling to reveal sufficient, valuable information without getting to the point when their attempts become distracting to the visitors. Worried about spoiling user experience, many simply quit using pop-ups.

However, it is a proven fact that if you use your pop-ups correctly, you will be able to convert a higher number of visitors into leads, signups, and sales without compromising on your website’s user experience.

The post 4 Tips on Using Pop-Ups in a User-Friendly Way appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

After going through my recent article that covered the complete guide about the A/B testing technique, someone asked me about why I have not discussed about the tools used for implementing the A/B test accurately on the website or if this test will have any impact on the overall SEO of a website? In response to his query, I am going to shed some lights on few key tools that are used for providing simplified A/B testing functionality as an important part of the Google Analytics suite. Besides, I will also discuss about the impact of A/B testing on the SEO of a website.

If you aren’t aware of the basics of A/B testing, I will recommend you to go through my first article to brush up your knowledge about its fundamentals and why it is so important for all marketers and designers? Now, here is the brief information on the best three A/B testing tools, before moving forward with procedure of setting up A/B test with Google Analytics and its affect on SEO.

3 A/B Testing Tools Evaluated

1.Google Website Optimizer

Google website optimizer is a free A/B testing tool that is used for creating experiments for testing of conversion rate. For using this tool, you have to establish content experiments for different elements on your web pages and then Google will randomly serve the varied versions of your web pages to the real number of visitors who come to your website.

You can easily test up to 10 different variations of a single landing page. With Google website optimizer, you already know that the participants in the tests are your target audiences and hence, this tool has great advantage over other A/B testing tools when it comes to focusing on your target market.

Tips for using the full potential of Google website optimizer:

• Concentrate on receiving visitors from one web page of your conversion funnel to the other.
• Try to test things such as navigation, header, or search future to check if they are getting noticeable gains in their conversion rates.
• Always ensure to try out the latest modifications applied by your competitors to see if these changes are resulting in better conversions for your webpage or not.
• Perform the tests simultaneously to keep your web page up and increase the engagement rate of your visitors.

2.Visual Website Optimizer

Visual website optimizer is an effective A/B testing tool that offers you the easiest and quickest way for increasing your website leads and sales. As a leading optimization and testing tool, it allows the product managers, marketers, and analysts to create A/B tests without having any proficiency in HTML or technical knowledge. With this tool, the marketing professionals can easily create different variations of their landing pages and websites and then with the help of a check point editor, they could check which of these versions are able to generate maximum leads and sales. This tool also allows its easy integration with the Google Analytics and hence, you can conveniently perform the analytics of your A/B test in Google Analytics.

Benefits of Visual Website Optimizer:

• It consists of all testing basic tools such as visitor surveying and heat maps.
• It has brilliant “idea factory” that facilitates you in creating effective test ideas.
• It comes with instinctive user interface with excellent test deign wizard to assist you.
• There is no hidden fee for better functionality but all features come integrated in monthly cost.

3.Unbounce

An incredible A/B testing tool, Unbounce helps you in making impressive landing pages and testing new ideas and hypothesis. This tool claims to increase conversion rates up to 20% by implementing new design changes and ideas for A/B testing. It comes with effectual drag and drop landing page builder that assists you in creating responsive web pages without seeking any assistance from the technical team. The “code-free zone” of Unbounce tool creates and publishes a high conversion landing page in a single click.

Benefits of using Unbounce tool:

• It helps in improving the performance of your marketing campaigns by sending the traffic to a particular landing page.
• You can easily sends the conversions from your Unbounce landing pages straight to other tools  that are used by your marketing professionals because it can easily integrate with Email software, CRM’S, and Analytics platform.
• It helps in reducing time required for creating multiple variations of landing pages for A/B testing since; it can publish a live landing page within an hour.
• It does not require HTML knowledge for creating landing pages and it is hosted service that doesn’t require any type of installation.

Once, these 3 important A/B testing tools have been compared, the next step is to set up the A/B test in Google Analytics and for this we will organize the test using Google website Optimizer tool (also known as Google Content Experiments).

Setting up A/B Test with Google Analytics Content Experiments

Google Content experiment is the advanced version of Google website optimizer tool that is used for running A/B test from inside Google Analytics. For creating the test with this tool, there are some important steps that have to be followed and they are listed as follows:

 Creating New Content Experiment

For creation of content experiment, you have to navigate the Behavior section of Google Analytics, where you will find “Experiments” link on the sidebar. If this is a completely new and first experiment for you, then you can begin by clicking on START EXPERIMENTING, however, if you have already existing experiments displayed on the age, then click on the Create Experiments button and a new window will open asking for the given fields:

When you have selected the experiment and finalized the experiment objective, click on Next Step. A New window will open in front of you like this:

You can add the variations and the URL of the webpage that you will like to test and you will see the thumbnails of the web page to ensure that you are entering the right URLs. When you have filled the required details, you can click on “Next” button to proceed with the subsequent step of setting up of A/B testing.

Setting the Experimental Code

For setting up the content experiment code, you have to select either the required code for running your test or you will be given with an option to send an email to concern person who is implementing the code. You can also receive the Experiment ID that will be used in the subsequent step for implementing the experiment. You can get the Experiment ID by clicking on the option “Manually insert the code” button.

Once, the experiment ID is received, you can move forward with the next step of validating and confirming the experiment code.

Substantiation of the Content Experiment Code

This step confirms the substantiation of the content experiment code and if the code is missing, an error message will be displayed. However, you can skip this step if you want to do so, and for this, click on “Start Experiment. A pop up message comes up with the following information, “Experiment validation had errors or did not complete. Are you sure you want to start the experiment? If you are sure that your experiment is properly set up, you may continue.” However, it is advised to check the code for evaluating why the error is displayed and then you can try the substantiation once again

Running and Publishing the Content Experiments

Once the content experiments code is substantiated and you have configured it appropriately, your next vital step will be to run and publish the experiments depending on the results. With its proper execution, the users will be included in the experiments and this will help you in understanding which of these variations are receiving maximum traffic without any redirects. Once, the experiment is executed and you have come across the results, you can easily include the changes such as CSS and HTML of the original page and remove the experiments.

Now, when you have learned about the tools and implementation of A/B testing within Google Analytics, the consequent query that might pop up in your mind is that, “Does the A/B testing impact the SEO of your website”?

Does the A/B testing impact the SEO of your website?

Here are some guidelines of Google that all professional marketers should follow to avoid penalties and ranking affect on their website during A/B testing.

Avoid Cloaking, Says Google

Google has strictly posted the guidelines to the websites performing A/B testing that they should avoid cloaking and display the crawlers what type of changes are happening in your website. Ensure that you can never decide whether you have to serve the test or the content variant depending on user-agent. Always serve the original content to the user-agent and breaching with the guidelines can make your website removed or demoted from the search results of Google.

Google Instructs to Use rel= “canonical”

Google recommends the marketers to use rel=”canonical” method to make sure that the variations of their web pages should be considered by the search engines as closely related with the original URL because if you don’t use the rel=”canonical” then, it could impact the ranking of your web pages in a negative way, which is perhaps not what you are expecting to come out as the testing results.

Use Temporary Redirect 302 as an Alternative to 301

It is wise to use the temporary redirect “302” instead of “301” because it helps the search engines to recognize that the redirect is temporary and it will be there only till the time you are performing the A/B testing on your web page. Hence, they will maintain the ranking of your original web page instead of changing it.

Avoid Running Experiments for Longer Duration

Running experiments for longer duration can initialize penalty from Google. It is necessary to update your website once the test is concluded with the selected variation. Running experiments for longer than Google expectations will be treated as an effort to mislead search engines and hence, it might raise penalty on your site.

When you will follow these guidelines of Google while executing A/B testing on your website, it promises not to affect the SEO of your site, which in turn will maintain your site’s rank in search results.

Testing More Than One Thing In a Time- Is It Possible?

It is possible to test more than one thing at a time, but then it will become multivariate testing instead of A/B testing, which will also take unusually longer durations. For example, let’s say you want to test three different variations of a particular call-to-action button on your web page. In such cases, if you run a single test by splitting the target visitors on these three variations equally, you will be able to run a more efficient A/B test.

Besides, running more than one thing at a time is also more complicated as it requires more days to run and check the results accurately.

Hopefully, you must have been inspired to run the A/B testing appropriately on your website by going through this post. If you want to share your own thoughts on A/B testing, please write your comments in the section given below.

The post A/B Testing- Learning the Tools and Its Impact On the SEO (Part-II) appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

A/B Testing isn’t a rocket science to understand and implement, yet it is no so common among the digital marketers. Similar to other major subject of Internet marketing like SEO, SMO, PPC Ad campaigns etc, A/B testing also helps in knowing about the insights visitor’s behavior, which is essential for improving the conversion rates of a website, but its benefits are always underestimated.

Similar to its name what it sounds like, A/B testing is performed on two different versions of a website (A and B) on specific set of metrics to define which of these two versions yields better results. Whichever version performs best is selected to be implemented as the final version of the website. If the A/B testing is planned in an appropriate way, it can help in creating buzz about your business in the marketplace.

Here in this article, I am going to present a complete guide about A/B testing that includes it comparison with other scientific optimization techniques, its impact on your website’s conversions and performance and the different ideas for implementing this testing successfully on your website.

Table of content:

Varied Testing Techniques
A/B Testing Vs. Multivariate Testing
A) Measure Website’s Performance

• Getting Actionable Data
• Track the Behavior of Visitors
• Check Your Customer’s Feedback

B) Prioritize What to Test

• Set Priority for Pages Not Performing Well
• Set Priority for Top Exit Page
• Set Priority Depending on Value and Cost
• Set Priority of the Pages of Greater Importance

C) Performing A/B Test- Coming Up with Various Ideas

Varied Testing Techniques by Different Levels of Sophistication

A/B testing belongs to a specific category of Scientific Optimization techniques, however, there are two other categories’ Multivariate testing and Experimental design. The basic functions performed in all these three testing techniques are listed as follows:

• A/B Testing: It involves testing of between two versions of same website to see which version drives better conversions.
• Multivariate Testing: It involves testing several elements of a website to know which of these elements will help in achieving the overall goal of the website.
• Experiment Design: It involves the creation of one’s own research method for performing a profound analysis of specific elements.

A/B Testing Vs. Multivariate Testing- Major Differences

While creating an experiment, Google might ask you to select between the A/B testing and Multivariate testing, but the former is always preferred over the later as it testes 2 varied versions of the same website while in Multivariate, you have to just test few important elements of your website to check the overall performance of the website. If you go from the visitor’s point of view, either of these methods would not make any change for them, but for a simple testing that requires fewer combinations with more changes, A/B testing is a good choice to go for.

Before proceeding with the measures for calculating your website performance while conducting A/B testing, it is vital to know the actual definition of what A/B testing is? According to the standard definition, it is a method for authorizing that all the latest modifications introduced in the webpage to improve its overall conversion. The steps performed during A/B test includes:

• Measurement of Performance
• Prioritizing the test opportunities
• A/B Test
• Repeat

This test confirms which of the two variations yields better conversions and this test usually involves lesser variations with extreme changes like change in headlines, background colors, icons, pictures, and navigation panels.

So, after getting familiar with the basics of A/B testing, the next important steps are to learn the key considerations for measuring your website’s performance.

A.Measure Website’s Performance- Key Considerations

Before deciding and implementing changes in a website for enhancing the conversions, the most essential step is to measure the website’s performance to know what are the actual conversions taking place on your website and reasons behind the low conversions.

1.Getting Actionable Data is Important via Google Analytics

If you want to receive the actionable data via Google Analytics for your website, it is important to set certain mandatory goals and objectives for your business as well as your website along with the adequate selection of key performance indicators (KPI). These are vital for all digital marketers to ensure that their website is generating the leads and sales as per their defined goals.

• Set your Business and Website’s Objectives

Without specific goals and objectives of your business, you cannot decide or evaluate the overall revenue in the right way. For example, if you have an online store for selling garments, then your goals should be to increase the sales of garments through your website and once, this is set, you will be able to focus on the performance of your website to check if it is able to generate the sales as per your expectations or not. For increasing the conversions and sticking with your established business goals, you should have to:

• Add clear and high quality images of garments on your product pages.
• Put efforts for increasing the click through rates on your web pages
• Reduce the shopping cat abandonment rate

Once, your goals have been set up, you have to select the define the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of your website, then only you can perform the A/B testing in an appropriate way.

• Select the Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

KPIs are metrics that are used for evaluating the current performance of your website and to know if it is performing in accordance with the defined goals or not. All metrics cannot be defined as KPIs, but a metric will be called as KPI only if it measures something related to your business’ objectives.

Suppose, your garments online store sells 60 garments in the last month and for defining KPIs for your online store, you need to define target for them. Like if you defined target for the KPIs as 200 garments per month, then you have a proper framework to know if your website is selling as per the defined goals or not.

Note: Typically, KPIs includes the combination of spreadsheets, charts, reports, and dashboards to display the information needed for a business success. Then this information is analyzed to report the results and take action if the results are not as per the established goals of the business.

2.Track the Behavior of Visitors

Once, you have collected the required data for performing the A/B testing on your site, you must track down the behavior of visitors on your website to know the user engagement rate on your site along with the duration of their visitation.

Evaluating the visitor’s behavior helps in devising and finalizing the right strategies for executing the A/B testing perfectly on the website because anything that affects the behavior of visitors on your website needs to be A/B tested that includes:

Headlines

• Sub Headlines
• Links
• Images
• Paragraph text
• Call to Action text
• Testimonials
• Awards and badges

3.Check Your Customer’s Feedback for Understanding What Could Bring Profits

Listen and analyze to the feedback of customers given on your website to know what measures taken during A/B testing could bring significant profits. Also carefully evaluate the latest trends in your customer’s feedback to understand the major or key factors affecting the overall conversions on your website. If something striking pops in your mind, thing profoundly and perform the A/B testing by changing that factor to see if positive results are afoot.

Besides collecting feedback of customers, it is essential to segment your target audiences to get the key insights into what valuable information could you receive that you can use for bringing profits. The segmentation of target audiences can be done in three categories:

• Segmentation by sources: Check for the different sources from where visitors landed on your site. Check which of these sources are redirecting loyal customers and what can be done to minimize the bounce of other sources.
• Segmentation by Outcome: Check out and segment your audiences depending on the types of products they purchase since, all visitors have different requirements when they visit website.
• Segmentation by Behavior: You can also segment the visitors depending on their behavior that includes the number of times they visited your site in a month and their purpose of visiting your site like are they visiting for comparison of prices or are they from different countries or regions?

Once you have analyzed the profitable segments of your targeted audiences, you can devise your A/B testing plan accordingly.

B.Prioritize What to Test

Once, you have chosen the metrics for checking the performance of your website by split testing or A/B testing, the next important step is to set priorities on what to test first, since a proper execution of any process needs a reliable start but try to A/B test those opportunities first that could promise positive outcomes.

1.Set Priority for Pages Not Performing Well

Set priority for the pages that are not performing as per the defined goals. This data can be received through Google Analytics that keeps track of the problematic pages and the pages that has high bounce rate. Suppose, you have a high shopping cart abandonment rate, then you cannot solve this problem merely by changing the shopping cart views, but you also have to check for your product and category pages for fixing this issue.

2.Set Priority for Top Exit Page

These are those pages that you visitors last see before leaving your website. These pages are labeled as “% Exit” pages in Google Analytics and it will display the percentage of visitors that leave your website after looking at the specific page at the last time. These pages help in recognizing the main area of concerns.

3.Set Priority Depending on Value and Cost

You should also set priority of testing high values ideas first that has low cost investment. For example, you can test the deviations occurring during checkout process as it shows the maximum abandonment rate than any other steps.

4.Set Priority of the Pages of Greater Importance

Apart from setting priorities for the worst performing pages, it is also necessary to set priority to test those pages first that have highest volume of traffic because these tests finish quicker and also help in fastening of your optimization process.

C.Performing A/B Test- Coming Up with Various Ideas

When it comes to perform A/B testing, you can test any element of your website to check if it’s performing as per the defined goals or not. You can A/B test by changing any of the given elements such as:

• Website Navigation

This is a very major area of a website that could be improved with A/B test. Most of the sites have two sets of navigation menus- primary and secondary. The primary includes the main categories of products, while the secondary includes the FAQs, About Us and Contact Us etc. While primary navigation is integrated well into the website, you can test by changing the secondary navigation for known the important and popular options on the top of your web pages.

• Call-to-Action Buttons

You can perform split testing on call-to-action button by changing their colors, size, and wording.

• Landing Pages

The A/B test can be performed by creating variations of the landing pages by changing their design, background, colors, etc. to evaluate which of the variation yields better conversion.

• Headlines

It is vital to do A/B test on your headlines because headlines are responsible for increasing the user engagement and conversions on your website. If not impressive, they might not convert the potential traffic to sales, which is the core aim of all businesses.

• Images

It is common human nature that people are visually attracted more towards the graphics.  Hence, A/B testing on images is must for understanding if the mere modifications on the images can help in generating leads as per the established goals.

• Social Proofs

Once again customer feedback and their logos have greater impact on the mind of your upcoming visitors because they impact a sale and conversion significantly than any other elements on your site. If they are not impressive, it might drive traffic away from your website. Therefore, make sure to A/B test on social proofs.

• Pricing & Content length on the page

Ask yourself what things on your site motivate your visitors to click on your products and services? Is this an advertisement or an offer that is catching the attention of your target audiences and inspiring them to make a purchase? Or the content length on your site is impacting negatively on the purchasing or clicking decisions of your clients? So, testing pricing and content length is valuable to check which of the given matches up your expectations.

With this, you might be thinking if there are certain tools for doing A/B testing accurately? How you can do A/B testing with Google Analytics? Does it have any impact over the SEO of your site? Read our next article to stay tuned with the information on the above queries.

The post A/B Testing: A Complete Guide to Improve Conversions (Part-I) appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

With the increasing popularity of ecommerce businesses over internet, the customer’s experience with the marketplace is getting more social, visual, and mobile. This phenomenon is improving the customers’ online shopping experiences, whereas it is also complicating the process for retailers and online store owners to maintain and keep up with the hottest developments in the ecommerce domain.

Appealing new customers towards your online store for making a purchase can cost five times more than retaining the existing customers. Here are some important stats that exhibit the significance of maintain the existing customers:

Important Customer Retention Stats

• You will be surprised to know that 41% online revenues are contributed by the returning customers that claim just 8% of all visitors. Isn’t it astonishing?
• Moreover, a mere 5% increase in the customers’ retention can help an ecommerce website to increase its profit by 25% to 125%. These figures reveal the importance of customer retention practices for the ecommerce businesses.
• The probability of making sales through an existing customer is 60%- 70%.
• 71% customers put an end to their relationship with the retailers or store owners with poor customer services.

From the above mentioned stats of customer retention, it is clear that instead of focusing on devising innovative tactics for attracting new customers, it is equally important to maintain the existing customers on your online store for ensuring boost in sales and revenue. For doing so, it becomes vital for the online businesses to remain aware of the key practices to retain the existing customers for assured success.

1. Make use of Customer Accounts Efficiently

Suppose you are a customer and you have already made an account on an online store. Now, whenever you want to make a purchase, you don’t have to put your shipping details and other information again and again because all your mandatory details will be saved in your account once it has been created. You can simply place an order by logging in your account with your login details. On the other hand, as an online store owner, you can keep a check on the loyalty of new customers by checking the number of customer accounts created on your website, since most of the customers prefer to checkout as a guest only if the option is available on the website.

Hence, it becomes important for you to successfully persuade your customers to make customer accounts without encumbering the conversions of new or the first time customers.

Moreover, accounts also make repurchasing very convenient for the returning customers as it provides them the ease to access their previous orders and also saves their time involved in entering their shipping details again.

2. Deliver Your Product Timely

Delivery is yet another important factor that every ecommerce store owner must emphasize to ensure customer retention on their websites. Delivery could become a pain for the customers if it is not done timely. You might sell good products by offering an impressive online shopping experience to your buyers, but all your efforts will go in vain if you have failed to deliver your products timely.

Being the owner of an online store, you must choose a trusted and loyal courier partner for ensuring that your customers will get complete information about the status of their products until they are delivery safely at their doorstep.

Kiddicare’s SMS service is one of the finest example of excellent delivery service to the customers as it keep its customers informed about the status of their products via texts and they can easily rearrange their delivery if they want because an option for doing so is also available.

Other important points that should be taken care while successfully delivering the product to your customer are listed as follows:

• The packaging of the product should be done appropriately to avoid any damage to it.
• Fast delivery options should also be offered by the ecommerce store owners.
• Set and meet your customer’s expectations

3.Offer Great Customer Service

Great customer services help the customers in avoiding the waiting queues of the call centers and it also helps in adding a more personal touch. Only the design of your ecommerce website and your wide product range is not sufficient to lure the customers but you must offer great customer experience to them for ensuring improved customer retention percentage on your online store.

For example, if a customer ordered a product from your store, and you have provided all the essential details to the customers about the product without any hidden cost, it will help in developing a long term relationship between you and your customer.

Here is an example of Oasis, which opens an online booking service for offering in-store advice to its shoppers:

Other significant ways of offering great customer services for ensuring customer retention are:

• Enhance your email customer service
• Enhance your website with effective ecommerce conversion optimization strategy
• Satisfy your customers with their queries
• Offer them easy and free returns
• Offer them refundable schemes

4. Execute Customer Loyalty Program

It seems to be one of the perfect ideas for retaining the existing customers on your online store. Rewards are always considered as one of the most effective way of improving online marketing experience. You can offer rewards to your customers based on their loyalty and for implementing this strategy, you can develop a loyalty membership option on your online store. This is a very successful way of guaranteeing improved conversion rates and revenues through repeat purchases.

Here is an example of an online Pizza store that offer a Free 2Z pizza to its customers on purchase of any two items listed on its website:

You can reward your customers for their second purchase from your website or you can also present them rewards on a set dollar figure spent while purchasing from your website. It will encourage the existing customers to make purchases from your online store again in future.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a successful way of boosting return shopping on your ecommerce store. Email is measured as the perfect medium for contacting your existing customers and reminding them of your ongoing offers. If you have a customer retention focused email marketing tactic, you can send emails to your target customers about the ongoing discount and offers on your website to encourage them to generate leads and sales on your online store.

If a customer has not made a purchase from your website for long, you can use this strategy to generate tempt within them to return back to your store.

Ebay.co.uk sends an email to one of its customers reminding the winter offers running on its store. This is one of the perfect examples of implementing the email marketing strategy effectively by an online store:

6. Improve Social Engagement

Social media platforms not only help in improving the traffic on your online store, but it is also an ideal way of enhancing your customer retention.

There are two reasons as to how social media engagement helps in retaining your existing customers for ensuring repeat purchases:

It offers a platform where you can interact with your customers on daily or weekly basis, which is important for reminding the customers about your brand and offers.

It helps in revealing your loyal customers as the people who have liked or followed your Facebook business page have chosen to connect with your brand in personal way.

Now, you can use both these points to encourage your customers to make repeat purchases from your store by telling them about your latest and ongoing discounts and offers.

7. Keep Record of All Customer Interactions

Keeping a record of your customer interactions is important because it helps in evaluating the channels that contribute leads to your websites. Now, you can focus on these channels for bringing back the existing customers by reminding them of their purchases through emails and offers. You can understand what customers have purchased from your website and you can suggest them similar products or can also send offers and other lucrative appeals to drive them back to your online store. If you were successful in offering great experience to your customers with their first purchase, your offers and appeals will definitely bring them back to your site.

These practices are considered as just the beginning to the efficient customer retention for an online shopping store. Customer services are very vital to the success of your ecommerce business. Therefore, thinking out of box and implementing these strategies will surely help in retaining your existing customers to your online store.

The post Best Customer Retention Practices for Improving Ecommerce Sales appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

I changed the landing page of my Ecommerce site and guess what? Suddenly I noticed a drastic boost in the conversion rate of my site. Do you think that a mere change in the landing page of your website could yield sufficient revenue for your website? Well, it might seem factual to some of us because most of the times, we go through posts over the internet with heading or subheading as “change your landing page and increase your sales automatically”.

It’s true that internet is the store of unlimited information from where you can learn strategies for keeping your ecommerce sales high all through the year, however, yet there are some common myths about the conversion rate optimization for ecommerce sites that should be deflated for accomplishing assured success.

If these myths are not debunked on time, it might affect the overall revenue of your website. Conversion rate optimization is not all about following some standard tactics for driving leads to your website, but it is also about digging some real facts that should not be ignored by all ecommerce entrepreneurs. However, before doing so, it is important to know the causes behind the low conversion rate of websites.

Why Low Conversion Rate- Important Stats to Know

We might think that if we change the look of our website or the product organization, it will enhance the conversion rate. However, when you will check some vital stats related to conversion rates of all online stores, you will be surprised to know that the conversion rate of most of the ecommerce websites is around or less that 5%. It means that out of 20 visitors on your site, only 1 or no one can make a buy from your site.

Here are some important stats, which will help you in understanding that it is harder even for established businesses to achieve higher conversion:

• Majority of ecommerce websites have sufficient traffic on their sites but still the conversion rate range typically from 1% to 3%.
• Only 22% companies are contented with their conversion rates and most of companies are showing a decline in their contentment with their conversion rates.
• In fourth quarter of 2013, the average conversion rate of US ecommerce websites across different devices was only 3.06%.
• Smartphones reported for even lower conversion rate of mere 1.01%.
• Lack of budget (35%) and resources (54%) are major hurdles in increasing significant conversion rates for the ecommerce websites.

These stats show the frequency of successful conversion rates in the past few years, but the scenario is not much different in 2014 as well.

According the VWO survey conducted on online shoppers of US in the year 2014 to check what motivates them to “buy”, the increasing maturity of online buyers have made it difficult for the ecommerce retailers to maintain balance between the marketing efforts and leads to conversions.

Myths related to Conversion Optimizations

Now, when you have come across the stats that represents the truth of the actual conversion rates of ecommerce websites, it is equally vital to know some common myths about the conversion rate optimization that should be avoided to ensure successful sales.

Myth 1.All Visitors Have Same Perception for Your Website

Do you have sufficient amount of visitors on your online store? Do the people visit your website with similar purpose of making a purchase or they just visit your website for checking some information about a product or so? It is not simple for us to interpret the real intentions of our forthcoming visitors unless they have left our site after their visit. However, before implementing any conversion rate optimization strategy, it is important to bring sufficient traffic on your website.

Once you are successful in driving traffic to your website, you cannot simply presume that all visitors visit or use your website in the same way. This is one of the biggest myths held by most of the ecommerce entrepreneurs. Intuition cannot help you in achieving success in this highly competitive ecommerce industry, but you must follow certain criteria to categorize your visitors, which are listed as follows:

Once you have applied these criteria for segmenting your visitors, you can personalize your services as per the segmentation to improve chances of sales on your website.

Myth 2.Adhere with the Standard Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics

My competitor follows standard optimization rate tactics and it has seen 200% boost in its sales. Most of the times we read or heard it from ecommerce retailers, but it’s mistakenly interpreted contemplation about the conversion rate optimization, which we often read on internet. There is no such perfect rule that can guarantee 100% enhancement in your sales with its implementation. Don’t try to stick with the standard tactics.\

It is true that are some standard tactics that helps in improving your ecommerce sales drastically, but you should be aware, which of these tactics will definitely give positive results according to your expectations. Therefore, synchronize your business strategic approach with these standard tactics as your conversion rate success depends on the achievement of your business goals.

Myth 3.A/B Testing Gives the Best Outcomes

Is A/B testing the real factor in deciding the improvement of conversion rate of your ecommerce site?

It is important but it cannot be defined as the sole factor for affecting the overall conversion rate of your online store positively.

Most of the times, I have come across many online store owners, who like to put the color of the “buy now” button on their site to A/B testing without knowing the fact that increasing the visibility of this button might affect the visibility of sizing options thus leading affecting the conversion rate of website negatively. Therefore, implementing A/B testing to improve the conversion rate is one of the most common myths among the ecommerce store owners, but they should know that the success of conversion rate optimization can only be ensured by understanding the actions that help in improving the purchasing behavior of their visitors

Myth 4.Replicating a Website of Successful Competitor Ensures Success

You might think that having a clean and modern looking website similar to your successful competitor’s website will definitely bring higher conversion rates. This myth is same as the first one where the ecommerce owners hold the general perception about their visitor’s intentions

You might gain significantly higher conversions if you will copy a successful website or you might face a significant drop as well. There is no assurance that you will get the positive results only because merely changing the outlook of your website by copying your rival’s website might not addresses all problems that are actually hurdling your conversion rate.

Hence, instead of putting your efforts in copying the look of some other website, it is better to check the statistics of your website performance to implement the effective conversion rate optimization tactics.

Myth 5.Conversion Rate Services Are Heavy on You Pockets

Most of us hold the opinion that the conversion rate optimizations services might pay heavy on our pockets, but this is again a falsehood that majority of store owners had. In fact, the conversion rate optimization services are more efficient than the paid advertising services and it also lessens the cost of customer acquisition. Therefore, it is wise if you choose to invest in conversion rate optimization because it helps in bringing new visitors via your existing customers thus strengthening your customer relationship appreciably.

You will be astonished to know that a little increase in conversion rate can improve your company’s profit significantly. Hence, you can promote your brand among your target audience through discounts and offers, which are best way of changing your visitors into raging fans of yours.

It is wise if you select your conversion optimization tactics carefully by keeping in mind these general misconceptions that often cause a negative impact on the overall revenue of your online store. I have listed here those myths, which are certainly regarded as vital contributors of putting any ecommerce website’s performance down, however, if you have more ideas, please let us know through your comments

The post Don’t Waste Time! 5 Conversion Rate Optimization Myths Debunked appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Is your ecommerce website not generating sales as per your expectations? Are you noticing high shopping cart abandonment rate? Do your customers leave without paying?   If the answer is yes, you’re not alone.According to an independent UK based research company Baymard Institute, on an average, 67.75% online shopping carts are abandoned by the shoppers. What’s more depressing to know is 99% visitors don’t take the buying decision on their first visit (as per a report from SeeWhy). On top of all, a recent research report put forth by Econsultancy reveals that the estimated loss of revenue to global online retailers due to abandoned shopping carts touches around $3 Trillion dollars every year. However, the good news is – according to BI Intelligence estimates, about 63% of these abandoned shopping carts are potentially recoverable if online retailers hire online marketers who adopt rigorous marketing strategies to cash the huge opportunity and recover lost sales with intelligent tactics.

So, in this article, we’ll first peep into some of the biggest reasons due to which online shoppers abandon shopping carts. And next, we’ll look at 5 excellent strategies that can help you recover lost sales quickly.

Why customers drop out their shopping carts?

When a potential buyer visits your online store, browses products for a considerable amount of time, puts one or more items to his shopping cart but ends up leaving the store without making a purchase; it is called shopping cart abandonment. In the whole buying cycle, this is probably the biggest problem for the global online retailers to tackle. But did anyone wonder why does this happen? What is the reason that shoppers come on the site with the intent of buying but leave without paying?  Let’s have a look at this infographic from Seewhy.

Clearly, the study from Forrester Research shows that 36% consumers don’t buy from an ecommerce website that adds shipping charges to deliver products while 47% buyers expect a promotional offer when they arrive on an online store. Overall the biggest reasons were – high shipping and handling cost(44%), customers not ready to purchase the product(41%), customers wanted to compare prices(27%), Prices higher than budget(25%) and buyers wanted to save for later(24%).

Also, when I analysed another shopping cart abandonment report (from Statista), these 14 main reasons came out to be the biggest reasons why online shoppers abandon their carts –

1. Presented with Unexpected Costs – 56%
2. I was just browsing – 37%
3. Found a better price elsewhere – 36%
4. Overall price too expensive – 32%
5. Decided against buying – 26%
6. Website navigation too complicated – 25%
7. Website crashed – 24%
8. Process was taking too long – 21%
9. Excessive Payment security Checks – 18%
10. Concerns about payment Security – 17%
11. Delivery options unsuitable – 16%
12. Website Timeout – 15%
13. Price presented in a foreign currency – 13%
14. My payment was declined – 11%

How to avoid Shopping Cart Abandonment – 4 Do’s for the Online Retailers

Since “Price”, “Timing” & “Website Design Issues” constitute highest percentage amongst the reasons for shopping cart abandonment; online retailers should customize their ecommerce sites while simultaneously implementing a marketing plan to tap all the selling points. Reducing shopping cart abandonment rate is much easier than bringing back the lost customers.

1.Make your checkout as effective as possible – Reduce the “time” & “pain” for customers

Checkout Stage is when the customer is genuinely interested in buying from you. Any mistake here will not only cost you sales but can give your customers a red flag to never come to you again. Make your checkout as simple as possible by split-testing one page checkout vs. multi page checkout on your site. Reduce the no. of steps involved. Offer “guest checkout” as the biggest turnoff for customers is forced registration on site to complete the purchase (45% buyers leave due to this). If possible, show thumbnails (small images) of the actual items in the cart. Also, don’t forget to display security logos to gain trust. This is important because as per the finding from Statista report that I explained above, 17% customers are concerned about security issues when they furnish their credentials online. Also, replace your “Proceed to Checkout” call to action with “Proceed to Secure Checkout”. Display a security badge (lock along with secured payment gateway-SSL encryption) and offer popular payment processing solutions like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Paypal to increase sales by as much as 15% more from your website.

On checkout page, Offer Free Shipping – The biggest reason why customers purchase online. According to Deloitte, 69% shoppers shop with online retailers who offer free shipping. While ComScore says that 61% buyers quit their order if free shipping isn’t offered to them. So, if you don’t want to lose customers, offering “Free Shipping” is a pre-requisite.

Here’s a screengrab of one page checkout from Macy’s online store to tell you the “critical selling points” shoppers look for.

2.Add “Product Reviews”, “Star Ratings” and “Testimonials” on landing pages

Shoppers are likely to leave your ecommerce website if they don’t find positive product reviews, product ratings and customer testimonials. Including these things will not only improve brand credibility but will answer many questions that they have in mind.

3.Tag products with a competitive price and put a “refund policy” in place for easy returns

Price comparison also being the biggest issue in the minds of online shoppers while buying, 36% carts are abandoned. So, before you put a price tag on your product, look around what your competitors are offering and put a decent price to win the confidence of shoppers. Include call to actions like “Best Deal only for you”,”Get 30% off only on our store”, “Sale on selected items” etc on your product landing pages to psychologically prompt your customers to complete the purchase. Also, include clear refund policy to further enhance the shopping experience & remove any qualms about purchasing from your site.

4.Ecommerce Website Optimization- Tweak your ecommerce site for more conversions and remove all the design flaws that obstruct buying cycle

Online retailers must look forward to tuning their websites for a conversion boost by availing ecommerce website customization services. Design flaws like complicated navigation, website crash and quick timeout eat up almost 50% of your online sales.   If you want to tweak your online store for holiday sales (Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Super Saturdays), you can take help from one of our blogs that explains 18 Ecommerce Optimization Tips to boost online sales for Christmas.

5 Excellent Strategies to Recover “Lost” Sales

So, the above points were all about reducing the shopping cart abandonment when customers are already surfing your site and putting items in their cart. But, no matter how hard you try, there will always be considerable no. of buyers who leave without paying. So, what online retailers can do if customers abandon shopping carts? How to recover lost sales? Here are 5 excellent strategies to help you.

1.“Retarget” Lost Customers & “Remarket” to them – Tap all selling points by offering attractive perks to cart abandoners

A Seewhy report says that abandoners spend 55% more when remarketed. Retargeting your customers with attractive perks is a great way to bring back the lost customers. Apart from including common selling points like –  Free Shipping”, Live Technical Support and Easy Returns etc in your sales strategy, you can retarget them via targeted advertisements based on their interests. To put together an effective remarketing campaign, you can consider using some industry popular Retargeting tools like – Google Adwords Remarketing, Adroll, Retargeter, Rocketfuel, Criteo, Ebay Enterprise (A retargeting platform formerly known as Fetchback), Vizury, Chango and Perfect Audience (For Facebook Retargeting).

2.Send “Recovery Emails” for a winning comeback

Research shows that the revenue generated through email retargeting is significantly higher than other email marketing programs. So, if you keep the “timing” object in mind, you’ll surely win sales at this point. Here are some points and examples to keep you going.

• Timing – Send your first recovery email within 24 hours when shoppers abandon their cart. You’ll be surprised to know that 58.7% of Top 500 online retailers are already practicing this to cash on the lost opportunities. If no response comes after your first email, send your second email 23 hours later and a third email after 4 days. For this you can use tools like Salescycle, Vero, Abandonaid and Rejoiner.
• Content – While designing your remarketing email, don’t forget to include the name and images (thumbnails) of the abandon items along with the final price tag that you wish to offer, “free shipping” and “easy return policy” call to actions, customer care number & live support icon on the top and an eye catchy subject line (e.g – “Did you forget something”, “Come Back and Save 20% Off Your Order”) etc. This will ensure 150% higher open rates and 200% higher conversion rates than standard promotional emails.
• Price – Sometimes, price is the ultimate concern of shoppers that avoids them from making a purchase. In your recovery email, include amazing collective discounts & offers like – 30% Off on Your Final Cart just for you or Rs 500 off on your final purchase.

3.Offering Loyalty Programs & Welcome Programs can do the trick

Remember buying from brick and mortar stores where you become a Bluecard member and earn points? This is called a loyalty program. Forrester Research says that loyalty members spend an average of 13% more and also increase annual website visits by 20% more. Here, I’ve included this strategy for returning customers (customers who frequently purchase from your online shop). For this, you can use a pop-up to remind about the points earned by your customers once you see that they’re leaving your site without purchasing. It is likely that a cart abandoner after dropping out cart when gets a reminder from your site in the form of a pop-up, he/she will complete the purchase considering that the points will get him an extra off (may be around Rs 300 or Rs 500 or even more than that).

The other way is to introduce customer welcome programs. Just like the loyalty program this trick also plays well with both cart abandoners and your existing customers. This can increase your chance of getting a second sale by 300% more.

4.Support Buyers during their “Consideration cycle”

Supporting your buyers while they’re still considering can dramatically bring back the lost sales. Since Website Timeout is also one thing that pisses off 15% shopping cart abandoners, a huge opportunity to convert leads lies when customers are either lost as their sessions end or problems while checkout. If you capture customers in their “Consideration cycle”, there is 99% chance of closing sales.

5.Draw a “return revenue path” for your customers

Online retailers are now focusing on conversion optimization to optimize the buying cycles and make way for more sales. Yes, you guessed it right; I’m talking about the return revenue path – the process by which you can prompt new and returning visitors to consider purchasing. A typical path can be the one shown below.

Browse –> Abandon –> Consider –> Research –> Ask Friends -> Browse –> Purchase

Bottom Line

Selling products on an ecommerce site with 0% cart abandonment is ideally impossible. However, if you organize everything the right way even before shoppers abandon their carts, you’re already half way to success. Considering the huge online opportunity that lies in recovering lost sales, don’t give up if buyers drop out despite your best efforts. You can always recover 50% of the ‘lost sales’ with effective remarketing campaigns and a perfectly timed recovery email message. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Please share your thoughts and comments below.

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