Website Optimization

Website optimization is when you make changes to your website's look & feel, data, and calls to action to improve the conversion rate

Discovery

This is how customers find your site. SEO, PPC, Email, Social Media, what is the right way to get traffic? The answer is different for different businesses but ultimately, analytics gained from marketing experiments leads to the answers. We can share the secret sauce we've learned from doing marketing for our managed clients. That, plus the analytics we can run on your store will help us tailor fit marketing improvements to your business, saving you from unnecessary trial and error.

Consideration

Visitors come to your site and have to decide if you have what they are looking for. Do your best to show them everything they need to see to know that this is the right website and the right product for them to purchase.

Let's take an in depth look at the sales process a website employs:

Inquiry

People come to your site looking for something. Things like bounce rate, window shopping, poor sales copy, and other metrics are the things that cause your visitors to fall out of your sales funnel - not making a purchase. Having a beautiful website that is mobile friendly, with properly weighted search results, useful search filters, having the most important pages in the menu, and compelling content on the about us page will help you overcome the Consideration factor. If you've passed the consideration phase for your customer, meaning the visitor found that you do have what he wants, the inquiry is likely to become a prospect.

Prospect

A prospect is someone who found what they are looking for but isn't sure this is the right site to buy from. Having compelling content is what will make the difference here. Having great content is what keeps them engaged. Great descriptions, videos, reviews, user manuals… these are the ways to prove to the visitor that this is the right site to make the purchase. Remarketing or sending abandoned cart emails or text messages to bring prospects back to your site for another try is a way to get them back for another shot at a sale.

Lead

A lead is someone who makes contact. Communications methods like chat, email, contact forms, and phone calls are all opportunities to move the customer further down the sales funnel. Making communications easier for customers increases the opportunities to make the sales. Software for help desk and engagement analytics integrated with your customer accounts enable your marketing campaigns to benefit from the insights gained from the data and help you turn a lead into a conversion..

Conversion

Conversions are when the lead makes a purchase. Website optimization is the method to increase the conversion rate. Conversion rate it the ratio between total visitors and people who made a purchase. It's important to have all conversion tracking possible to be enabled to have as much accurate data as possible to help you make the best decisions for future optimizations, improving conversion rate.

Opportunity

An opportunity is when the visitor is at the edge of making the decision and it could go either way. Here is where coupons, specials, auto responders. Quotes, and interactive plugins as well as exceptional sales copy makes the difference. This is how you will get your opportunities to become conversions. For some customers, the only thing that's needed to get them to buy your item is to give them a coupon. Some customers plan to buy it later and just need a reminder which is where autoresponders come into play. Sending quotes by email or SMS can be a way to keep the conversation going, to gather customer feedback, to create a bulk order, to get around MAP pricing, or to give the customer a link that auto-logs them into their account and lets them checkout.

After The Sale

Making the sale is great but then it is time to deliver. Improving operations processes through automation, warehouse logistics and financial automation, and proper follow-ups are key to making existing customers come back to buy more. Keeping the customer coming back to increase the lifetime sales revenue per customer is done through Auto Responders, Remarketing, Email Marketing, and text messaging.

Analytics

Your website is similar to a physical store. You place the checkout in a certain place, your featured items are seen when you walk through the door, signs show new products… Just like a website homepage. Website analytics software is sorta like the security cameras, letting you what's going on in your store.
You can tell if someone is engaged and is likely to buy or if they bounced or faced an issue. On websites, if someone bounces that is like they poked their head through the door for a moment, didn't see anything worth their time and then left. Window shoppers look around but it doesn't seem like they know what they are looking for. If someone takes the item off the shelf to look at it but puts it back that's like abandoning checkout at step 1. If they walk to the line for the register but change their minds, that's like an abandoned checkout at step 2. If they get to the register but change their mind that's abandoned step 3. And if they tried to checkout but don't succeed that's abandonment at step 4.

Conclusion

The placement of items on your site are customizable. What works for one store doesn't work for another so if you use a website template you are unlikely to have the best results for your business. Nothing on your website is set in stone so the best thing to do is a bunch of marketing experiments, like some A/B testing to find out what will make your site perform to its fullest potential.