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Strategies for Improving Your E-commerce Conversion Funnel

E-commerce Conversion Funnel Thumbnail

How to Take Your Ecommerce Marketing to the Next Level

So you’ve decided to take your digital marketing to the next level. 

Maybe you’ve had a physical store for years and you’ve decided to take it online.

Maybe you’re already online, but you’re looking to grow your business.

Whether you’re just starting with e-commerce, or already established, thinking of your business in terms of a conversion funnel is one of the best tools for optimising conversions and improving your bottom-line revenue.

What is a conversion funnel, though? 

Marketing as an industry is notorious for creating jargon and models that can complicate even the most basic ideas.

The different “funnels” are a good example of this: marketing funnels, purchase funnels and conversion funnels. 

These may seem like three different things, but they’re all essentially the same idea. 

And that’s not even all the different words for it. 

Which is a real shame, because it is a really valuable model. 

In this guide, we’re going to first go over the basic concepts of what a conversion funnel is, how the conversion funnel differs for e-commerce businesses and then give you an overview of some strategies to improve each stage of it.

Feel free to skip ahead to any of these sections here: 

What is a Conversion Funnel? 

As we said: marketing funnels, purchase funnels and conversion funnels are all essentially the same idea.

We’re going to be using the term “conversion funnel” because it’s the one most relevant to e-commerce

The gist of it is that the “funnel” is a model for visualizing how we acquire customers and turn them into conversion.

Unlike a regular funnel though, ours has leaks in it.

You’re never going to get everybody to buy your product

The best we can do is find ways to patch the leads as much as possible, but more on that later. 

Conversion funnel with a crack in it

When we talk about conversions, we’re talking about “converting” somebody into our target market into a paying customer.

So the conversion funnel encompasses their entire journey, from when they first become aware of our business through to them purchasing a product for the first time. 

It’s hardly a new model.

In fact, it’s tied heavily to the “AIDA” model first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Louis all the way back in 1898! 

The gist of the AIDA model was that it’s a theoretical way of mapping out our customer’s journey. 

St Elmo Louis proposed that in every industry, customers follow roughly these same steps before they become a customer. 

  1. Attention; the consumer first becomes aware of your product or discovers they have a need it can fulfil. 
  2. Interest; the consumer learns more about your product or researches potential solutions to the need they have discovered. 
  3. Desire; the consumer decides they want your product and it could fulfil their need or their research leads them to your product. 
  4. Action; the consumer decides to buy your product or service. 

Many marketers overlay the two frameworks to get the following version of the conversion funnel, which you may have seen before.  

AIDA model overlaid with the conversion funnel

Image Credit: BronHiggs, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

One big shortcoming of the AIDA model is that it doesn’t account for customer retention. 

It’s just focused on acquiring new customers. 

To remedy this, many marketers simply add a final step dedicated to customer retention, giving us the “AIDAR” framework we’ll be using going forward. 

What Does an E-commerce Conversion Funnel Look Like? 

Since it was effectively made in the 1900s, the conversion funnel wasn’t exactly developed with e-commerce consumers in mind.

The good news is that while the technologies we use to do business may change, people stay more or less the same over time.

That’s why it’s still a good model for understanding how to bring in more customers to our business.

We’re going to highlight the differences in the model for e-commerce businesses and give you an overview of what an ideal e-commerce funnel might look like. 

Please note that this won’t apply to every business out there.

There will always be exceptions, and some of the processes do vary quite a lot by industry.

Awareness

The first step in the funnel is creating brand awareness.

This simply means making sure your target market knows what your business does and what roughly what its benefit is. 

Paradoxically, this is both easier and harder than ever to do online.

It’s easier because there are many, many tools and platforms which let us reach people more broadly, precisely and cheaply than ever before.

It’s harder because our competition also has these tools, so it’s harder to stand out. 

Creating brand awareness is all about knowing who your ideal customer is and reaching them as efficiently as possible. 

You want to consider what messages appeal to them, what grabs their attention and where you can best reach them online. 

The main platforms to consider are: 

  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is a powerful tool for capturing users actively looking for new products and solutions to a problem they have.

  • Display advertising 

Display ads are great for generating brand awareness by targeting interest-based websites we know our target market visits. 

  • Social media 

Social media is a great tool for spreading brand awareness, both through creating an organic presence and using targeted paid ads to spread awareness. 

  • Word of mouth

Word of mouth is still an incredibly powerful tool for getting people to discover your brand. Social sharing strategies are a popular way to generate brand awareness cheaply. 

E.g. 

You’re an analogue watch company. 

John is an avid watch enthusiast browsing Facebook when he sees one of your ads. 

It catches his eye because of the sleek design of the ad and he is intrigued.

He makes a mental note to look into your brand. 

Later that day he’s Googling the “best new watch brands”, and stumbles upon your website again. 

You fully have his attention, and he decides to delve deeper. 

Interest

Once we have a good level of brand awareness in our target market, the next thing to consider is how they learn more about the brand and its specific benefits. 

You’ve captured their attention and now they want more information.

Your job at this stage is simply to give it to them. 

In many cases, it’s just that simple, though many businesses complicate things by refusing to provide key information to consumers. 

The most important part of creating interest in your product online is to be open and straightforward with consumers.

Present your information in a way that’s easily accessible, easy to understand and tells people everything they want to know. 

Don’t go hiding your prices behind a registration or contact form.

When an online consumer wants to know something, they want to know it now.

And if they can’t get the information from you, guess who they go to?

The best platforms for creating interest in your product are:

  • Your website

Having good product pages that are clearly laid out and describe the features and benefits of your product or service is essential. 

Frustrating consumers at this early stage is a terrible idea, especially when it’s so easily avoided.

  • Content marketing

Content marketing is, simply put, creating digital content like blogs, videos or tutorials that your target market would find useful. 

It’s a great way to provide information to consumers about your product in a non-intrusive, or “hard-sell”, way and it has the added benefit of creating brand equity and trustworthiness for your business.

It also benefits your SEM strategy by boosting your organic SEO rankings when done well. 

  • Social media marketing

Closely tied to content marketing, social media marketing can also be used to spread informational content around your brand or industry. 

Social media also allows us to use paid “boosts” to reach new audiences that aren’t following our brand. 

E.g. 

John clicks on a Google search result and begins reading through your website.

He begins looking at products, features and your pricing. 

Everything is laid out clearly and he finds everything he wants to know then and there. 

He reads a few articles from your blog, which is full of informational content about your products and the art of watchmaking. 

Desire

In e-commerce, generally speaking, most of the actual “selling” is done by this point in the funnel. 

If you’ve done your job well with providing the customer with enough information, they’ll already know if they want your product and if it’s for them. 

The main gaps you still have to bridge are trust and reinforcement. 

Trust has, for a long time, been one of the biggest barriers in e-commerce adoption, particularly amongst older demographics. 

It’s certainly not the only gap though, and contrary to what we said some industries do need some more selling at this point (particularly high-ticket items). 

Reinforcement is important for this reason. 

By reinforcing the value of our product to consumers, we give them the final “push” they need to go forward and actually buy our product.

This can be something as simple as offering customer support to answer any questions they still have, or offering them limited time offers to compel them to make that first purchase. 

All of this basically means our job in this stage is to tell the consumer why they should trust us and why they need our product.

The best platforms for creating or reinforcing trust are: 

  • Your Website

Often the most important touch-point, your website is a huge signal for consumers on whether or not they can trust you as a business.

Invest in high-quality design work and make sure every element of the UX is professional. Make sure your branding is consistent and professional across every platform. 

  • Word of mouth

Word of mouth is an incredibly powerful tool. After all, who are you more likely to trust: a business trying to sell you something or a friend?

Social sharing strategies can be incredibly powerful here again, as well as “social proof” like customer reviews and comments on your products. 

  • Social media marketing 

Social media marketing is a great tool for reinforcing our offer and driving consumers to purchase.

Using tools like retargeted ads we’re able to reach consumers far enough down the funnel and emphasise our product’s benefit and why they need it or give them a time-bound offer that compels them to act. 

E.g. 

John is now interested in your brand, he’s starting to like it but he’s still a bit sceptical about buying from an unknown business. 

He decides to carry on researching, looking at reviews and product comparisons of your watches against the existing offerings.

He thinks long and hard about the design and functional elements of your products and if they match what he looks for in a watch. 

He reaches out to enquire about your returns policy, in case he isn’t satisfied. 

Your answer satisfies him, and he decides he absolutely needs one of your watches in his collection.

Action

You’ve done all the work to convince your consumer that your product is worth buying and your business is trustworthy.

All that’s left to do now is to make it as easy as possible for them to transact with you. 

Too often we see people complicating the process, and losing out on all the hard work they’ve put into their funnel at the very last stage. 

You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy your product. 

That means avoiding unnecessary signups, optimising your UX to avoid “friction” points and not ambushing customers with added fees at the last minute. 

You don’t want to force your customers to take any more steps than necessary, such as signing up for an account, unless you have a very purposeful reason for why you’re doing it and how you’re going to make it worth their while.

Ideally, you want the shortest possible pathway between them adding their product to the cart and them finalising the purchase.

There is also a lot of potential value in “hacking” the funnel by targeting consumers near the end of it. 

If you’re selling established brands, either because you’re a distributor for a third party or because you have an established retail footprint, you can often bypass the rest of the funnel and focus on capturing customers ready to convert. 

The key platforms to consider for driving direct sales are: 

  • Your website

The final touchpoint. Your website must be optimised for conversions. Install analytics and tracking to see what’s holding you back. 

  • Search engine marketing 

Targeted search engine marketing using high buying intent keywords or shopping ads is amazing for boosting sales. 

Combining these with branded search terms is how we use SEM to capitalise on all our effort further up the funnel. 

Buying intent is a measure of how far along the funnel consumers are by the keywords they’re using, e.g. “2015 Toyota Corolla dealer” has higher buying intent than just “car dealer”. 

  • Social media marketing

Remarketing to “warm” audiences down the funnel is a great way to create direct sales over social media. 

It can also be used to push shopping ads or offers to consumers who are low in the funnel. 

E.g. 

John goes back to your website to purchase the watch that stood out to him.

He proceeds through the checkout seamlessly.

He’s still a little nervous until your product arrives a few days later. 

He tries it on and compares it to what he had built up in his head.

In the end, he’s satisfied with his purchase and glad to have added another great watch to his collection. 

Retention 

You have a (hopefully) happy customer. Now what?

Retaining a previous customer is almost always cheaper than earning a new one because you don’t have to go through the entire funnel to get to them.

You’ve done the hard work, now you just need to keep your brand top of mind and remind them why they found your product value in the first place. 

E-commerce retention strategies focus on just that. 

To keep your brand top of mind you now want to encourage them to get involved with your business as much as possible.

Strategies like newsletter, social media groups or account signups make the most sense here. 

To remind them of your offers, and encourage repeat buying, you can use remarketing over social media or SEM to cross-sell other products they may be interested in. 

The main platforms you want to consider are: 

  • Search engine marketing

SEM remarketing is, as we mentioned, a great tool for reminding customers of your product’s value or cross-selling related products to them. 

  • Social media marketing

Social media marketing is great for keeping your brand top of mind, through publishing social content or remarketing similar products to consumers. 

  • Email marketing

Email can be a powerful tool at this stage of the funnel, for keeping consumers engaged or showing them special offers to encourage repeat business. 

E.g. 

John follows your brand on Facebook to keep up with all your new products and releases. 

He also subscribes to your mailing list to be made aware of any exclusive offers your brand has. 

Over time you remarket to him over Google and social media, showing him watches with a similar design to the one he bought from you. 

He becomes a dedicated customer for years to come. 

Top Strategies for Each Stage of the Conversion Funnel 

E-commerce “Awareness” Strategies

Customers at this stage of the funnel are either unaware of your brand or they don’t know enough about its benefits.

That’s why our main goal is to increase brand awareness and start the process of generating brand equity across a broad, but targeted, group of people. 

What we mean by that is: we want to include as many people as possible, but we want to make sure they’re the right people.

Targeting someone who’s never going to be your customer is just a waste of time and money, after all. 

Strategy 1: Use Search Engine Marketing and Display to Generate Awareness

Summary: 

  1. Optimise your website for organic search.
  2. Begin a broad content strategy focused on creating organic traffic. 
  3. Use paid search ads to indirectly create brand exposure. 
  4. Use display ads to target relevant interest sites. 

Why use SEM? 

The way people discover new businesses has changed dramatically. 

Word of mouth is still a powerful tool, but the number one thing driving new product discovery today is search engine marketing and social media.

According to a study by Google and Ipsos, 86% of people online are actively looking for shopping ideas or inspiration and 3 in 4 people agreed they’re always on the lookout for relevant brands. 

This means targeted search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the best ways to gain exposure for a new business or product and introduce it to potential customers. 

Paid vs. Organic 

When we’re looking at SEM we need to think of the two main components: paid search and organic search. 

A good SEM strategy makes use of both of these. 

Organic SEM

For organic SEM or SEO, you want to optimise all the pages of your website to speak directly to the keyphrases or keywords that best describe your business. 

For instance, if you’re a used Toyota dealer, make sure all the metadata on your site speaks to “used Toyota corollas” instead of just “used cars”. 

For creating awareness, you want to find a balance between keywords long enough that you can feasibly rank for them, but with as much search as possible for generating exposure. 

This is also a great place to start thinking about content marketing. 

A good content marketing strategy incorporating things like blogs, podcasts or videos can do wonders for boosting your SEO by letting you rank on Google for highly specific keywords relating to your business. 

Focus on creating good content that’s optimised for your intended keywords, but provides value to your ideal consumer. 

At this stage, you want to look at broad, industry-focused content, or content that explores the benefits of your product. 

Paid SEM

Paid SEM at this stage of the funnel usually revolves around advertising specific features or aspects of your offering, to generate brand awareness. 

They may be formatted with a sales call to action (CTA) attached, but it’s not the focus if we’re trying to reach people at the top of the funnel. 

Generally speaking, we like to constrain our paid ads to people further down the funnel and try using more cost-effective options to get people there. 

The great thing is, though, that we can often target multiple stages of the funnel at once with our search ads. 

You’re only charged when people click on your ad, so the impressions you receive from people just viewing them are a free bonus. 

Display Ads 

The easiest SEM strategy here is using the Google Display Network (GDN) to run ads across relevant sites they’re already engaging with. 

This is a great way to target people by interests, for instance, if you’re a fishing rod company you can target fishing websites. 

It also has the benefit of being significantly cheaper than Google search ads, so it’s much more economical to use display ads for creating brand awareness. 

Strategy 2: Using Social Media Marketing to Generate Awareness

Summary: 

  1. Use paid social media marketing (SMM) as a cheap platform for creating massive brand exposure. 
  2. (Optional) Use free SMM to create an online community around your brand.

Why Use SMM?
More than half the world, or 4,5 billion people, use some form of social media.

That makes it the place to go if you’re looking to reach the largest amount of consumers. 

On top of this, the top social media platforms have incredibly advanced tools for refining our target markets and targeting them with advertising. 

Paid vs Free SMM 

Just like with SEO, it’s worth differentiating between paid and free SMM but you’re likely going to want to do both. 

Paid SMM refers to paying to run ads on a social media platform like Facebook. 

There are also free ways to use social media for marketing. Though they have declined in popularity and usefulness lately they can still be worthwhile for some businesses. 

Paid SMM

The main draw of paid social media marketing is the fact that you can reach massive numbers of consumers for relatively cheaply if your only goal is exposure.

The costs go up, the farther down the funnel your objective is, but for targeting massive amounts of consumers with an exposure campaign it’s hard to beat social media. 

Free SMM

Platforms like Facebook have started taking measures to restrict the organic reach of many businesses, but there is still one strategy worth considering.

Social media allows you to create a community around your brand, sometimes as part of your content strategy and sometimes simply an interest-based community. 

This can be a great way for us to create a remarketing audience, learn more about what our consumers want or simply create exposure by creating “shareable” content that users want to show their friends. 

E-commerce “Interest” Strategies

Strategy 3: Using Content Marketing and SEM to Create Interest

Summary: 

  1. Create evergreen informational content to help persuade and inform your consumers.
  2. Make sure your content speaks to the right keywords to also boost your SEM strategy. 

Why Use Content Marketing?

The obvious benefit of content marketing is that it lets us provide informational resources for our customers that can answer all their questions, or convince them that our product is for them. 

Content marketing is also a great way to create long-term traffic into your funnel. 

As we mentioned previously it lets us target keywords that can either help create brand awareness around our business.

It can also let us target longer tail keywords with high buying intent attached, and use content focused around those to push consumers further down our funnel.

What Types of Content? 

The types of content that appeal to different people is highly subjective, so you want to research what your ideal customer likes. 

Things like videos and galleries are great for visually-driven products, where services or more technical products can benefit a lot from informational blogs. 

You want to focus on creating “evergreen” content around your industry that will be relevant for the near future.

You also want to make sure your content always speaks to SEO, without going overboard and sacrificing quality.

After all, it’s worthless if nobody is actually reading it. 

Using Content to Boost SEM

As we mentioned, targeted content can be an amazing tool for boosting organic SEM. 

You want to identify key phrases with high buying intent and low competition.

What that means are keywords that your competitors aren’t bidding on since paid results will always rank above your organic posts. 

Content marketing also offers a great way to do less intrusive paid SEM.

By providing consumers with a free piece of content, instead of a hard-sell message, we can use reciprocity to make them more likely to become a customer down the line. 

Strategy 4: Optimising Your Website’s Informational Pages

Summary: 

  1. Clearly list the technical details of your product on the website. Be honest about its benefits but also drawbacks. 
  2. Don’t purposefully hide information from your consumers.

Why Should You Optimise For Information? 

Optimising for information sounds strange, granted.

But it’s really the best thing you can do at this stage of the purchase funnel.

Having information that’s clearly laid out, accurate and honest is essential in the customer’s decision-making process. 

We want people to discover as soon as possible if they’re a good fit for our product or not. 

This may seem like a bad thing, but think of it this way: they were never going to be your customer anyway.

Isn’t it better to lose them here, than further down the line when we’ve spent money marketing to them? 

Information and Trust

At this stage, you want to focus on giving the functional and technical details of your product. 

Providing clear, honest, information about your product is a great way to help bridge the trust gap further down the funnel.

This includes being honest about the real cost of your product, as well as its limitations and drawbacks.

Your product is never going to be for everyone, so again it’s better to eliminate the bad fits now. 

You can and should also emphasise the good aspects of your product, and who it is for. 

Why You Shouldn’t Hide Information

Hiding information from the consumer like hidden shipping fees, your prices or known limitations of your product will only hurt you in the long run.

E-commerce shoppers are incredibly fickle and they won’t hesitate to look somewhere else. 

If your competitors have prices on their websites and you don’t, you lose out.

Even if they don’t, now you have the edge over them.

If a consumer wants a piece of information about your product, you should give it to them. It’s as simple as that. 

E-commerce “Desire” Strategies

Strategy 5: Investing in Trust Signals Across Platforms

Summary: 

  1. Make sure your website is optimised for design and performance.
  2. Make sure your site has good customer-centric policies. 
  3. Make sure your branding is professional and consistent across all platforms.

Why Should You Invest in Trust Signals?

As we mentioned before, trust is one of the biggest barriers in getting first-time customers to purchase from your e-commerce store. 

The easiest way around this is to continually reassure them that your business is trustworthy, using “trust signals” across platforms. 

What are Trust Signals?

Trust signals are all the tiny details consumers look for when deciding whether or not they can trust your business. 

It’s important to have them consistent across all your platforms because one “broken link” can defeat the purpose of the entire chain. 

Website Trust Signals

Your website is the primary contact point for e-commerce, so it must come across as trustworthy and professional.
The main elements you want to consider are design, technical considerations and store policy.

The design of your website is a big signal of trustworthiness. The more professional and sleek it is, the more consumers assume they can trust you. 

Similarly, the technical performance of the site is a big signifier of trustworthiness. Faster sites are better here, and you want to invest in making it as secure as possible.

For instance, by implementing https across your site. 

Lastly having a good store policy is a good signal of trustworthiness. Things like returns and shopping policies are important considerations for some consumers. 

People want to feel like they’ll be covered if they don’t like your product. 

Branding Trust Signals

Branding can also be a big signifier of trust. 

People trust big brand names more readily because they have a history of other people’s transactions to look back on. 

Secondly, inconsistent or unprofessional branding is a signal you can’t be trusted.

Having prominent spelling errors, bad design or inconsistent branding are all warning signs.

Strategy 6: Reinforcing Product Benefits Using Remarketing 

Summary: 

  1. Use remarketing to target warm audiences more likely to convert.
  2. Use Facebook and Google’s amazing tools to remarket to consumers. 
  3. (Optional) Implement cart abandonment and exit intent strategies to improve first-time conversions.

Why Should You Use Remarketing? 

Remarketing is a great way of “skipping” to this latter part of the funnel.

Effectively, the other stages of the funnel exist to prime customers and make them more receptive to our marketing down the line because they’ve heard of our product and know its benefits. 

Remarketing works because it lets us speak to what we call a “warm” audience or somebody who’s engaged with us before either on our website or social media. 

Remarketing this way is a great way to bridge the gap between a potential customer and a first-time buyer. 

The Best Remarketing Platforms: 

Search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM) both work great for remarketing. 

The biggest platforms on both sides (Facebook and Google) both offer some amazing utilities for remarketing to consumers and they’re ideal platforms for it. 

Cart Abandonment and Exit Intent 

Another great remarketing strategy is to implement cart abandonment emails or exit intent messages into our website.

Cart abandonment emails are “reminders” sent to consumers after they exit a cart on our website without completing the transaction. 

Cart abandonment requires users to be signed in, so it’s perhaps less optimal, but it can be a great tool for converting reticent first-time buyers. 

Exit intent messages are pop-ups that appear before a user exits your website, prompting them to do some action. 

They’re great when used at checkout to improve first-time conversion rates, for instance, “Are you sure you want to exit? We can’t reserve your cart for later”.

E-commerce “Action” Strategies

Strategy 7: Using Search Engine Marketing to Drive Sales

Summary: 

  1. If you have an existing business or sell existing brands, you may be able to focus on creating direct sales using SEM.
  2. Reap the rewards of the rest of the funnel by investing more in direct selling SEM over time. 
  3. New businesses can still capitalise on categories to drive sales with SEM. 

Why Should You Use SEM to Drive Sales?

SEM is a great tool not only for product discovery but also for creating direct sales.

By using long-tail keywords with high buying intent, we can use SEM to create direct conversions for our business.

Essentially, every other point in the funnel is designed to drive users to this point (or make them more likely to buy once they’re here). 

“Hacking” the Funnel Using SEM

As we mentioned previously, one of the most cost-effective ways to drive up sales for existing businesses is to “hack” the funnel using SEM. 

If there is already search traffic for the products or types of products you’re selling, you can capitalise on this by using related long-tail keywords to reach consumers right as they’re ready to buy. 

As an established business, or selling established brands, this is a viable way to generate sales while skipping all the previous steps because we can capitalise on existing brand equity. 

This works better for experienced online shoppers but this is a growing demographic. 

SEM for New Businesses 

The strategy for new businesses differs slightly, as you may need to first invest in the higher-funnel activities we described to create search traffic.

Once you’ve done so you can start to focus more on pushing your paid advertising towards creating real sales, reaping the rewards. 

You can, however, still target product categories and try to get direct sales this way. 

Strategy 8: Using Social Media Marketing to Drive Sales

Summary: 

  1. Use remarketing to drive sales directly. 
  2. Target interest groups when you have a big enough funnel.
  3. (Optional) Consider social media as a sales platform for creating sales when you’re starting. 

Why Should You Use SMM to Drive Sales?

Social media can be a great way to drive up sales because similarly to SEM it lets us harvest the rewards of investing in the rest of the funnel by targeting consumers who are ready to buy.

What it also allows us to do in some cases is sell directly over their platform, using the trust by the brand association to bypass some of the limitations keeping us from selling over the website. 

SMM For Direct Sales:

Using social media to drive direct sales is a bit more complicated than using SEM because it’s harder to discern buying intent. 

Still, if you’ve invested in higher funnel activities remarketing for direct sales can be a very powerful tool.

You can also target interest groups or other demographics relevant to your business, and if your top of the funnel is large enough, create sales this way. 

SMM as a Sales Platform:

Social media platforms like Facebook have also moved towards letting businesses transact directly over their platform.

This is less ideal long term, because of the benefits of having your own site offers, but for new businesses, it can be a great way to start making sales directly.

Because you’re on their platform, a lot of trust issues and barriers are circumvented.

Strategy 9: Optimising Your Website for Sales

Summary: 

  1. Optimise your UX to make transactions easy.
  2. Leave signups and secondary CTAs until after the transaction if possible. 
  3. Optimise your landing pages for creating sales. 

Why Should You Optimise Your Website for Sales? 

As you can see by now, just getting people to try and purchase something from your site can be tremendously complicated.

The last thing you want is to lose them right before the finishing posts.

What to Consider When Optimising for Direct Sales? 

As we mentioned previously, you want the actual transaction on your site to be as short as possible. 

To do this, we want to optimise our UX so the path consumers are expected to take is intuitive and obvious.

We want all the relevant options for your product laid out clearly, but not too many options. This may overwhelm them with choices.

There are mixed opinions about requiring signups, as we suggested earlier it’s probably best to leave them to after the first transaction if possible.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are another essential consideration when we’re sending people to our site.

The first page people see needs to be optimised for where we want them to go, and what we want them to take away from it.

When we’re using a product as a landing page, the options to add it to your cart or buy it need to be clear.

The pricing should also be upfront and we should avoid hidden charges like shipping fees.  

E-commerce “Retention” Strategies 

Strategy 10: Creating Investment with Your Brand 

Summary: 

  1. Get customers to follow you on the platforms they engage with.
  2. Add value to their lives and keep them “primed” for future sales. 

Why Do We Want to Create Investment? 

Once we’ve converted someone in our target market into a consumer, and they’ve had a good experience, that person becomes a valuable resource for our business.

Why?

Firstly, they’re already as “primed” as you can be for further marketing messages from you. They like your product right now.

Secondly, they can act as word of mouth ambassadors which organically drive up sales in the future. 

The Best Retention Strategies

How do we retain customers then?
The easiest way is to get them to opt into some form of communication, whether it be following you on social media or subscribing to a newsletter. 

This is because it shows they’re willing to hear more from you, and it provides an ideal platform for reaching interested people.

Just be careful not to “spam” them with promotional material.

There needs to be shared value. Always consider what they’re getting out of following you, whether that be tied to your content or special offers. 

Conclusion

We hope this helped you understand the e-commerce conversion funnel, and start thinking about how the model could help your business. 

It’s a great way of taking a holistic view of what your marketing is trying to accomplish, whether you’re considering how to improve on what you’re doing already or taking that retail store online. 

 

If you enjoyed this article or found it helpful, check out more e-commerce marketing content on the inSyte blog or listen to the inSyte Podcast.


This article was brought to you by Syte.

We’re a specialist e-commerce digital marketing agency dedicated to driving up your bottom line.

If you need any help running and optimising your business’ conversion funnel, feel free to reach out with the form below or check out our case studies page to see what we’ve been able to do for our clients. 

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