Align eCommerce Touchpoints to Maximize Conversions

Launching an eCommerce website is not necessarily the most challenging thing in the world, but getting people to buy from you is a whole different story.

Before they can buy, they need to be aware of your existence. It is an ongoing battle where you will compete with everyone else online to get the most relevant, converting traffic to your website.

Creating awareness for your eCommerce business, therefore, means to reach out to potential customers and get them to land on your site through banner ads, emails, SEO, and other forms of marketing.

For all of these ecommerce touchpoints to work in harmony, we need to consider some key factors:

• Channels; to be present on the right channels to reach the right audience
• Targeting, to be relevant to the audience
• Messaging, to attract users and make them click
• Experience, to increase conversion
• Content, to be as personalized as possible to increase relevance, and conversion
  

Each one of these factors influences the performance of one another. For example, the messaging that you are putting out on your Facebook ads may not work on your Google banner campaign. Or your newsletter content may not be suitable for Instagram.

You can also see that these factors lined up in a sequence:

Channels -> Targeting -> Messaging -> Experience -> Content

It means that to ensure that you attract the right audience and get the highest conversion rate, you have to adjust each of these carefully, over and over again.

You can do this by measuring each transition from one stage to another using a conversion rate. 

By measuring the conversion rate of each factor, we will know in detail:

• Which channel brings the most significant number of sales
• What audience targeting is most effective
• Which ad (messaging) performs best
• Which landing page has the best experience and 
• What product (content) do people buy (Content, in this case, may refer to your products, but could also be other marketing material you are making available to facilitate the sale)
  

Each of these factors can be adjusted using experimentation and testing. 

The first step would be to improve the individual factors themselves, for example, trying different types of channels, targeting options, or messages, etc. 

You can do this by trying new variations of each and measuring if there is an improvement in your conversion rate.

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Conversion rate is not everything

If you measure conversions, you may also consider measuring the leading KPIs, as these will help you to show if you are on the right track.

Lagging KPIs are KPIs that you measure at a point of time and show you a result while leading KPIs are used to measure progress towards a goal. Example: GROSS sales may be a lagging indicator, while #of leads is a leading indicator.

The leading indicators for your conversion rate could be impressions, clicks, click-through rates, etc. Remember, a click-through rate on a specific advertisement refers to the click-through rate of this particular ad, bound to specific targeting of a particular channel.

Let’s look at an example; you run a Facebook campaign targeted towards fitness enthusiasts, you pick one product, create two ads, each with a different message or creative, and after some time, you will see which of the ads performs better.

That’s simple A/B testing right there!

But here is the crucial part: remember, each of our factors can influence another one. And this means that the most successful message for one target audience could perform terribly for another target audience.

Pro Tip: you can repeat this process over and over, and create new ads where you try and beat the last winner.

By continuously improving your ability to test your advertising campaigns, SEO performance, and email marketing, you can create the right awareness for your eCommerce store.

Get in touch to discuss your next eCommerce project, or how we can help you to get the most out of your existing store.

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Read the rest of the articles from this eCommerce Business Setup Series:

4 Things That Make eCommerce Better than Traditional Retail

4 Approaches to Choosing the Right Technology for Your eCommerce

Keys to an Organized eCommerce Product Architecture and Inventory System  

Crafting a Smooth Operational Plan for Your eCommerce Store

How to Maximize the Potential of eCommerce Analytics & Tracking

3 Proven Techniques to Increase eCommerce Conversion Using Psychology

Top Merchandising Strategies of the Biggest eCommerce Sites

Leveraging Retargeting & Automation to Increase eCommerce Conversions

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