More Ways to Convert Internet Traffic to Sales

As I have mentioned in previous articles, e-commerce websites typically convert only 2% of their visitor traffic into sales. What a waste, for your customers as well as your business! The vast majority came to you knowing what they wanted, and yet they left your website empty-handed, moving on to try your competitors — the last thing either of you wanted.                                                    

Think of your e-commerce website as a sales machine. If you could get 8% sales by running the machine better, you would have four times the profit with only incremental product costs — no additional marketing, administration, commissions, etc.

We assume that your website is already employing the following: keyword analysis (the exercise of figuring out which are the best keywords to use to bring traffic to your website); product search, shopping cart and website directory (designed to present customer-targeted value); and keyword e-marketing (which is search engine optimized, or SEO). If not, make sure to go back and read our e-marketing series at www.nyreport.com/emarketing. To keep your sales machine running strong, you need to continue to improve each step in your customers’ buying process.

Use your Web analytic reports. Virtually all website hosts and/or ISPs provide excellent and inexpensive Web analytic reports to measure every step taken by visitors. Every visitor to your website leaves numbered electronic footprints that are recorded on your Internet service provider’s (ISP) server log. Analytic programs such as WebTrends, NetTracker and Urchin translate your log traffic numbers into visualized charts and graphs for every aspect of your website’s traffic. Most ISPs that host e-commerce websites use one of the Web analytics programs and provide reports free or at a low monthly cost.

More sophisticated Web analytics tools can give you even better information. Google, Yahoo and most search engines that offer pay-per-click advertising give free software that lets you track each keyword ad click-through to see if the person who clicked on your ad actually bought something from your website. This lets you measure the payback on your ads, identify your best keywords and identify those Web pages that are costing you sales. Session identification (SID) programs are tools you can incorporate into your e-commerce website that track each individual customer’s path and actions (rather than the paths used in the aggregate), so you have specific visitor and page ROI information in addition to your critical ratios. If you are really into measurement, ask your website developer for more information on SID systems.

If you are a retailer wanting to offer lower pricing but are constrained by a minimum advertised price (MAP) agreement with your supplier, the Internet offers a way to give lower-than-MAP pricing. MAP agreements generally limit how low a price you can advertise for an item in a publishing vehicle. To offer a price lower than MAP, in place of listing the price on the product’s Web page, put in “Quote.” That will link the customer to an e-mail form that comes up with the product information and a field to enter their e-mail address for a reply e-mail quote. You can then e-mail back their below-MAP quote because e-mail, unlike a website or a print ad, is not an advertising vehicle. MAP agreements can differ, so check this with your suppliers. Make your changes, but one at a time. In the last several articles we have suggested a number of changes to convert more traffic into sales — once you are thinking “measure and improve” you can really take off. Analyzing the choices visitors make on your website will give you the most detailed and objective marketing information. You can tell precisely what pages to change and have a good idea of the changes to make. Test by making just one change at a time, otherwise the effects of each change won’t be clear.

Measuring and improving your customers’ experience and your website sales are the key to keeping your ecommerce machine zooming along. And that is, after all, what e-commerce is all about

This is the 13th article in a series on Internet marketing. To read the entire series and view a glossary of e-marketing terms, visit www.nyreport.com/emarketing.