Personalization is a hypothesis that needs to be tested
Ben Combe, Data Director, Optimization & Personalization APAC at Monks
Hosted by Julia Simon, VP APAC at AB Tasty
Featuring Ben Combe, Data Director, Optimization & Personalization APAC atMonks
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a user-centric approach that emphasizes long-term benefits over just leading customers to click on certain elements or CTAs. To achieve this, understanding your data through the use of experimental and scientific methods is key. In this episode, Ben Combe, Data Director, Optimization & Personalization APAC at Monks joins Julia Simon, VP APAC at AB Tasty to discuss CRO techniques and best practices. They find answers to where companies should start, what to prioritize, which methodologies to use, and how to execute a compelling optimization roadmap.
Whether you’re just starting your CRO journey, or you’re already a CRO expert, this session is for you!
Episode #2:
Where do you start?
Ideas flow from everywhere in the business as data collection happens perpetually. Knowing what your top priorities are is where you should start. You don’t just change the color of your CTA from blue to red because it’s Valentine’s Day and you have a gut feeling.
Ben points out to first take a look at how the business is doing and where you can focus on for the most impact. Should you focus on acquisition, retention, or loyalty? Identify what and where are the pain points that need solving. Secondly, dive into your customer data by looking at your conversion points. Draw a parallel to where your customers are dropping off and mix them with your qualitative insights. Thirdly, brainstorm with your team to come up with ideas.
Prioritization Frameworks: PIE or ICE?
In CRO, time and resources are finite, therefore every experiment counts. You need clear guidelines to choose what ideas to test and what to leave behind. So it’s essential to prioritize – but should you use PIE or ICE?
If you’re just starting your experimentation journey, Ben recommends taking a look at traffic, value and ease. It’s basically like answering how many people are visiting a webpage, what is it worth in dollars, and what are your development resources. If you’re mature in CRO, a bespoke checklist tailored towards your business needs is recommended.
The importance of UX
Running A/B tests is a great way of conducting UX research while your product is live. It helps you decide on what works and what doesn’t work for your customers. By testing different design options, designers are able to gather valuable user feedback. This can then be used for design improvement that is more user-centric, and that leads to increased user engagement and satisfaction. Keeping the UX Team in the loop is essential for continuous learning and improvement.
The Quick Wins
Looking into easy, quick wins in the beginning of your experimentation strategy will bring you good results. Once you pick all the low-hanging fruit, Ben encourages you to shift your mindset towards a more innovative approach. Think outside the box, analyze your segments deeper, and iterate.
Synchronizing AB Testing and Personalization
AB testing allows you to understand the effectiveness of your personalization strategies by comparing various content, design elements, and offers. This insight allows you to deliver an experience that resonates best with customers, leading to higher engagement. It’s important to take note that no personalization goes live without being tested. Behaviors change and it’s necessary to continuously experiment in order to validate that your personalization is still relevant.
This may not come as a surprise for experienced e-marketers, but the truth is that 7 people out of 10 will actually abandon their cart and end their shopping journey without making a purchase.
This is clearly a lot of lost revenue. So, how can you bring that percentage down?
This article aims to answer that question. We will cover best practices to help you diminish the abandonment rate and optimize your e-commerce shopping cart page for conversions.
Adopt clear UX parameters for shopping cart optimization
First of all, let’s start with a firm foundation. Your shopping cart page should adopt a clear, simple, and fast UX. This simple 3-step formula (CSF) is the cornerstone of any successful cart page:
Clear – There should be nothing messy, concerning, or misleading about your cart page. It should ideally display all the important information on a single page without the need to scroll too far or visit any other page.
Simple – Your cart page should display all the information using comprehensible, crystal-clear language and a design that leaves no room for misunderstanding.
Fast – The more time visitors spend on your cart page, the more likely they will leave it. If you apply the first two critical elements (simple+clear) to your page, the resulting cart page experience should also be fast.
As there are many elements on your page that you can optimize and run tests on to find the best solution, it’s important to follow this CSF framework for harmony.
Want to get started on A/B testing for your shopping cart page?AB Tasty is a great example of an A/B testing tool that allows you to quickly set up tests with low code implementation of front-end or UX changes on your web pages, gather insights via an ROI dashboard and determine which route will increase your revenue.
Knowing these 3 crucial elements, it’s high time we dive into our 10 best practices for e-commerce shopping cart pages.
10 best practices for your shopping cart pages
1. Create a detailed product summary
Just moments before your visitors proceed to checkout, they’ll land on your cart page which has one sole mission: lead your visitors to actually pay.
For most e-commerce buyers, the cart is a page used to review their order.
In order to help them do so, your mission is to clearly display all the relevant information regarding the product.
Below is a great example of a check-out page from ASOS that includes all the necessary details for a clear and easy review. Users know exactly which product they will purchase as well as the color, size, and quantity.
When crafting your cart page, be sure to follow this example and include these elements:
Having all these elements shown to your customers allows them to quickly review their order and have confidence in their purchase.
Including all relevant details will decrease the percentage of cart abandonment that is typically caused by the lack of precise information.
2. Choose a clear, user-friendly color code
There have been many studies about the psychology behind colors. However, there’s no single answer on which color will fit all websites and solve all abandonment rate problems.
One thing that we do know for sure is that visitors love harmony and clear designs when it comes to UX.
Let’s look at the luxury shoe brand Jimmy Choo. For their check-out page, they kept a simple design by using a black button that clearly stands out, making it straightforward to click.
Famous shoe-maker Jimmy Choo uses an elegant yet efficient black and white color code in order to clearly display the information on the cart page.
Notice that the checkout button efficiently stands out as the only black button on the page, making it extremely straightforward to click it.
3. Display explicit and detailed information about shipping and returns
What is the number one reason behind shopping cart abandonment in the US? Hidden shipping costs.
Online buyers despise hidden and last-minute shipping costs. As you can see in the image below from Baymard’s study, it’s by far the most popular reason for cart abandonment compared to others.
Displaying transparent shipping and return policies is a key factor in enhancing conversion and gaining customers’ trust.
4. Craft clever information hierarchy and non-competing CTAs
Information hierarchy is the structure used to display and rank information according to its importance.
While designing cart pages, pay attention to the logic behind buttons, columns and titles as they will heavily influence the users’ perception.
You can use various colors in your CTAs (preferably matching your brand) although we recommend a maximum of 3-4 colors at a time.
Colors do help you gain visitors’ attention, so use them wisely:
Highlight important information
Use a distinct color to distinguish the CTA
Use lines or columns to structure your page
In the image below, Zappos, a USA-based shoe marketplace, does a great job of providing an efficient and clean shopping experience.
The shopping cart page skillfully guides customers through the buying journey; we appreciate the neat layout emphasized by a simple 3-step color code (orange=very important; blue=important; grey=secondary).
5. Deploy payment options that your users love
Having different payment options is a necessity in today’s ultra-competitive e-commerce environment.
If you run an international e-commerce store, bear in mind that payment methods differ from one country to another: what’s used in North America isn’t necessarily the same as in Europe or in Asia.
To combat this, try to redirect customers based on their IP location to offer them a personalized experience based on the local currency and their preferred payment methods.
In the image above, Adidas provides 6 different payment methods including Paypal, VISA and Apple Pay. This is an absolute necessity for large and global stores.
6. Show security seals and reassuring elements
In the same report from Baymard, the lack of trust in the payment accounted for 18% of abandoned cart rates. Trust seals, or trust badges, are very important to show your users that your site is legitimate.
In fact, they actually matter more than peer recommendations or trustworthy design. According to Baymard, here are the badges that give visitors the highest perception of a safe and secure site:
7. Offer phone, chat or email assistance
Displaying a clear contact number and address details can impact your user’s level of trust. Shoppers want to make sure that your business is legitimate and not an online scam.
Furthermore, your visitors want to feel that there are actual humans behind your website.
Offering a live chat or phone assistance service right on the cart page is a great option to gain customers’ trust, legitimize your business and humanize your brand identity.
Wondering how to design your chatbox? Take a look at Victoria’s Secret’s page in the image below. They have chosen their most vibrant color, pink, to increase their call-to-action visibility.
8. Add a “continue shopping” option
A “continue shopping” option is a smart way to offer your visitors a way to abandon their cart without leaving your website. They’ll have the freedom to continue browsing after they’ve already added items to their cart.
As some online shoppers actually use carts as “wishlists,” they can store items that they intend on purchasing later on.
9. Display legible thumbnail images
There’s nothing more annoying than a tiny thumbnail that barely helps to identify a product.
When customers review a product, you should give them the opportunity to see it correctly in a convenient size and resolution on both mobile and desktop.
In the image above, Apple makes it very easy to distinguish the chosen product. The image used is bright and clear. Their customers will be absolutely certain that they’ve got the right item in their bag.
10. Push complementary products
Offering complementary product recommendations, or cross-selling, is nothing new in the e-commerce world.
However, displaying complementary products inside the shopping cart page is something worth testing if it could bring you a higher AOV.
An optimized shopping cart page is crucial to sales.
The shopping cart page is the last step your visitors take before their purchase. In this step of their digital user journey, it’s important to ease customer concerns in any way possible and promote a seamless checkout flow.
Every online e-commerce should be testing different elements of its cart page to find what works best for converting passive visitors into active customers.
The conversion rate on e-commerce homepages is around 2-2.5% on average, according to a study from Adobe Business, while the conversion rate for visitors who land directly on a product page is around 7%.
Can you see the difference between these two types of pages?
Product pages are one of the most essential pages to continually optimize if you want to focus on boosting your e-commerce conversions.
In this article, we will be touching on what a successful e-commerce page looks like, five elements to focus on while optimizing your pages, and ten examples of effective product pages in action.
Let’s dive in.
What does a successful e-commerce product page look like?
Across all industries, the average user spends less than 54 seconds on any given page, according to a digital report from Contentsquare.
You have less than one minute to create a memorable experience and clearly display your information. For product pages, it’s clear to see why they need to be captivating.
The truth is that every second matters in the conversion journey.
So in order to capture your visitors’ attention, you’ll have to capitalize on five elements. Perfecting these elements will require testing and patience.
Want to get started on A/B testing for your product pages?AB Tasty is a great example of an A/B testing tool that allows you to quickly set up tests with low code implementation of front-end or UX changes on your web pages, gather insights via an ROI dashboard, and determine which route will increase your revenue.
The 5 mandatory elements of an effective e-commerce product page.
1. Eye-catching, engaging visuals
It’s no secret that our brains love visuals since they process images much easier and faster than text. Images give us more context.
In fact, visuals are so deeply entrenched in our decision-making mechanisms that they should be a priority for any e-commerce website.
In order to provide your visitors with some eye-catching visuals for your products, here are a few tips:
Humanize the product
People love to envision themselves wearing or using a product. It gives them an idea of whether or not the product is a good fit for them. Thus, it’s important to remember to humanize the product to allow visitors to see themselves as potential customers.
Use whitespace
Whitespace has many uses in graphic design, but most importantly, it helps the eye focus on what matters the most.
Adding whitespace strategically around your picture will help reduce noise and increase clarity when it comes to showcasing a complex product.
Less can be more.
Only use HD
It goes without saying that high-definition visuals are incredibly important.
Your potential customers should be able to fall in love with your product on any screen resolution. Give them your best!
Allow for zoom-in and zoom-out features
Many people are interested in details, especially when it comes to complex or expensive products.
Whether they’re looking for a closer glance at that little button on the side of the jacket, the texture, or the matte finish – allow your potential customers to zoom in and out on your products.
Add videos
More engaging than photos, videos also help you tell your customers a story.
Videos can help depict why your product is superior and what they get for $200. With that being said, video-making can be costly and time-consuming, so focus your efforts on your best-sellers.
An astounding average of 56% of web traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices.
Mobile optimization has shifted from just an idea to a top priority. It’s essential to make sure that your product images and descriptions are responsive on all mobile devices.
2. A unique, awesome product description
A study led by Shotfarm showed that “detailed descriptions” ranked first in the top 3 factors that influence a customer’s decision to buy, higher than “reviews” (in the 2nd position) and “price” (in the 3rd position).
Simply put, your product descriptions should focus on their unique value proposition, i.e. their main benefit.
As you already know, an average visitor doesn’t spend too long on one page, so it’s important to be impactful.
As Neil Patel puts it, you have to sell benefits, not just features. This means that you have to emphasize the result, not the product.
Clearly, buyers are expecting to gain something from your product, and it’s your task to convince them that they will.
Let’s look at an example from Innocent:
In their product descriptions, Innocent emphasizes the few elements that make their smoothies “great” and “healthy.”
In the image above, you can see that they even highlighted in green that their smoothie is, “a source of vitamins C, B2, B3 and B6 which can help reduce tiredness and fatigue…”
3. Viral social proof
Social proof comes in many forms: reviews, customer testimonials, videos, ratings, etc.
It doesn’t matter what type of social proof you use, as long as it’s relevant to your audience.
Reviews and classic star ratings typically work well for most e-commerce websites as long as they are real and genuine, as most internet buyers are able to spot fake reviews.
4. Addictive product suggestions
Product suggestions are a great way to increase the average order value, cross-sell, upsell, and allow users to explore your products.
Therefore, it’s extremely important to display additional products on your product pages in case your visitors want to see something else.
Otherwise, you may land unqualified visitors on your product pages without giving them the opportunity to discover other products that would fit their needs.
In the image below, you can see that Pandora does a great job of suggesting related products for its customers. The outline is clear and evocative.
Jewelry maker Pandora does a great job at suggesting related products for its customers. The outline is clear and evocative.
5. Resourceful guidance & help
Can you guess the number one source of frustration for online buyers?
Not being able to touch or interact with the product.
To help overcome this lack of physical touch in an online buyer journey, your website should display clear information about:
Size guides
Specific materials
Refund policy
Shipping fees
Prices and VAT
Knowing this stumbling block for many online shoppers, it’s recommended for e-commerce brands to implement a live chat feature, or at least a very detailed Q&A, to help increase conversion rates and decrease abandon cart rates.
Now that you’ve been through the best practices of e-commerce product pages, it’s time to get inspiration by browsing our selection of effective e-commerce product pages.
Note: we’ll cover examples from various industries so that you, as a leader or marketer, can find inspiration for your field.
Let’s dive into our top picks for inspiring successful e-commerce product pages.
10 of the most successful e-commerce product pages
1. Apple – Technology Industry
When it comes to technology, Apple is a world-class example of best practices for e-commerce product pages.
What we love:
Clean and refined design
The use of whitespace and large pictures
Lovely CSS animations
Good emphasis on benefits as you scroll down (not pictured above)
2. Transavia – Travel Industry
Transavia is a Dutch low-cost airline that is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM group.
Their website showcases a lot of best practices to be applied to travel and airline companies.
While they’re many websites on the market, Transavia does a great job of converting visitors into travelers. Their website uses clever paths and UX design to lead you through your buyers’ journey.
What we love:
Engaging “3 parts” structure for clarity’s sake
Simple visual brand identity (green and blue)
Smart information hierarchy
User-friendly simplified search engine
TripAdvisor’s reviews integration
3. Bonnegueule – Fashion / Retail
BonneGueule is a French company specializing in men’s fashion.
While the company is still fairly young, it has rapidly grown into a 1M+ visitors/month e-commerce website, thanks to its amazing content marketing strategy and jaw-dropping e-commerce product pages.
Simply put, they use extremely long product pages where they cleverly use storytelling techniques, photos, and videos to justify the hefty price at which they sell their products.
What we love:
They display in-store availability
The clever size guide
The use of “context” photos
Amazing storytelling and videos
4. Peak Design – Fashion / Travel Accessories
Peak Design is an American e-commerce company that has successfully raised over $14M since 2011 thanks to its clever bags, pouches and travel kits made famous on Kickstarter.
Notice how clear and detailed their photos are, enhanced by the use of white space and a clear color code on the product page (black/red combo).
What we love:
A clear and clever layout
Generous photo gallery
In-depth, 6-minute-long product video
The emphasis put on benefits
What could be improved:
Large text paragraphs
Unclear information hierarchy
5. Luxyhair – Beauty
Luxyhair is an e-commerce website specializing in hair extensions – and it nails it.
The team cleverly uses a 3-step funnel prior to landing on their product page: First, you’ll start by choosing your collection, then your hair thickness, and finally your hair color.
This 3-step mechanism is a brilliant way to increase conversions by offering just the right product for any visitor.
What we love:
Seamlessly integrated product pictures
Useful information about shipping/return policy
Effective use of product video
Smooth integration of additional content (tutorials)
Complete FAQ
Amazon-like customer reviews and Q&A
Live-chat
6. Made.com – Home / Furniture
Made.com is a British home furniture e-commerce website renowned for its bold designs and web-to-store experience.
At first glance, you can tell that their visuals flawlessly blend with the product page. They’ve also added context-related pictures so that you can immerse yourself in the product.
What we love:
Clear shipping/return policy
Stunning visuals
Size comparison
Smart product video
Pictures from customers
What could be improved:
Adding instructions for product maintenance
7. Birchbox – Beauty / Makeup
This famous, subscription-based French-American website sells monthly beauty boxes delivered to your home with personalized products based on your preferences inside.
What we love:
Simple and clean visuals
Attractive layout and colors
Free gift offered with subscription
Complete FAQ
Instagram integration: good social proof
8. Asos – Fashion / Apparel
Asos is a UK-based company that also operates in the US and in Europe.
Their pledge to provide affordable designs and fashion helped them reach significant market shares in the fashion industry in several countries.
They opted for a rather simple but neat outline that successfully conveys their brand image.
What we love:
Distinctive, stary green call-to-action
Sober yet effective design
Plenty of context photos and a video
Product recommendations
Information about shipping & returns
Size guide
What could be improved:
Adding customer reviews on their product pages
9. Salesforce – Software, CRM, Business Solutions
We couldn’t end this article without mentioning at least one notable business solutions provider.
Salesforce is undoubtedly one of the most commonly used, famous CRM and sales management tools.
Their small business solutions product page quickly emphasizes the benefits over the features, such as: “Drive faster sales and simpler service with Salesforce Essentials.”
They also display actual results for their customers so as to convince them, even more, to subscribe: “+26% more deals, +32% happier customers.”
What we love:
Catchy, original designs
Real emphasis on actual benefits
Free trial
Video demo
Clear, straightforward pricing plans
Online chat + phone assistance
Genuine customer testimonials
10. Airbnb – Travel / Hotel / Accommodation
Airbnb remains a masterclass of UX design and product page efficiency from which a lot of travel or tourism-related websites can seek inspiration.
First of all, they kept an insanely simple and efficient page layout that makes it really intuitive to browse.
Then, notice how they’ve put the photo gallery at the top of the page? Airbnb knows that photos are the most important aspect of any travel website: visitors need to envision themselves swimming in that paradisiac pool.
Finally, Airbnb successfully mastered the art of utilizing customer reviews: they are deeply integrated into each product page (except when there are no reviews, of course…) so that their role as social proof is maximized: people just love to read reviews.
What we love:
Clear design, good information hierarchy
Flashy call-to-action
Seamless integration of travelers’ reviews
Convenient map at the bottom of the page
Similar listings to jump from one house to the other
Conclusion
After reading through this article, you see why e-commerce product pages are such a big deal. What works well in one industry may not have the same success rate in others. Due to this, it’s essential to know your customers and test different UX designs to see what gives you optimal results.
Optimizing these types of pages to suit your customers’ needs better is the best way to increase your conversions.
“Failure” can feel like a dirty word in the world of experimentation. Your team spends time thinking through a hypothesis, crafting a test, and finally when it rolls out … it falls flat. While it can feel daunting to see negative results from your a/b tests, you have gained valuable insights that can help you make data-driven, strategic decisions for your next experiment. Your “failure” becomes a learning opportunity.
Embracing the risk of negative results is a necessary part of building a culture of experimentation. On the first episode of the 1,000 Experiments Club podcast, Ronny Kohavi (formerly of Airbnb, Microsoft, and Amazon) shared that experimentation is a time where you will “fail fast and pivot fast.” As he learned while leading experimentation teams for the largest tech companies, your idea might fail. But it is your next idea that could be the solution you were seeking.
“There’s a lot to learn from these experiments: Did it work very well for the segment you were going after, but it affected another one? Learning what happened and why will lead to developing future strategies and being successful,” shares Ronny.
In order to build a culture of experimentation, you need to embrace the failures that come with it. By viewing negative results as learning opportunities, you build trust within your team and encourage them to seek creative solutions rather than playing it safe. Here are just a few benefits to embracing “failures” in experimentation:
Encourage curiosity: With AB Tasty, you can test your ideas quickly and easily. You can bypass lengthy implementations and complex coding. Every idea can be explored immediately and if it fails, you can get the next idea up and running without losing speed, saving you precious time and money.
Eliminate your risks without a blind rollout: Testing out changes on a few pages or with a small audience size can help you gather insights in a more controlled environment before planning larger-scale rollouts.
Strengthen hypotheses: It’s easy to fall prey to confirmation bias when you are afraid of failure. Testing out a hypothesis with a/b testing and receiving negative results confirms that your control is still your strongest performer, and you’ll have data to support the fact that you are moving in the right direction.
Validate existing positive results: Experimentation helps determine what small changes can drive a big impact with your audience. Comparing negative a/b test results against positive results for similar experiments can help to determine if the positive metrics stand the test of time, or if an isolated event caused skewed results.
In a controlled, time-limited environment, your experiment can help you learn very quickly if the changes you have made are going to support your hypothesis. Whether your experiment produces positive or negative results, you will gain valuable insights about your audience. As long as you are leveraging those new insights to build new hypotheses, your negative results will never be a “failure.” Instead, the biggest risk would be allowing a status quo continuing to go unchecked.
“Your ability to iterate quickly is a differentiation,” shares Ronny. “If you’re able to run more experiments and a certain percentage are pass/fail, this ability to try ideas is key.”
Below are some examples of real-world a/b tests and the crucial learnings that came from each experiment:
Lesson learned: Removing “Add to Basket” CTAs decreased conversion
In this experiment, our beauty/cosmetics client tested removing the “Add to Basket” CTA from their product pages. The idea behind this was to test if users would be more interested in clicking through to the individual pages, leading to a higher conversion rate. The results? While there was a 0.4% increase in visitors clicking “Add to Basket,” conversions were down by 2%. The team took this as proof that the original version of the website was working properly, and they were able to reinvest their time and effort into other projects.
Lesson learned: Busy form fields led to decreased leads
A banking client wanted to test if adjusting their standard request form would drive passage to step 2 and ultimately increase the number of leads from form submissions. The test focused on the mandatory business identification number field, adding a pop-up explaining what the field meant in the hopes of reducing form abandonment. The results? They saw a 22% decrease in leads as well as a 16% decrease in the number of visitors continuing to step 2 of the form. The team’s takeaways from this experiment were that in trying to be helpful and explain this field, their visitors were overwhelmed with information. The original version was the winner of this experiment, and the team saved themselves a huge potential loss from hardcoding the new form field.
The team at this beauty company designed an experiment to test whether displaying a message about product availability on the basket page would lead to an increase in conversions by appealing to the customer’s sense of FOMO. Instead, the results proved inconclusive. The conversion rate increased by 1%, but access to checkout and the average order value decreased by 2% and 0.7% respectively. The team determined that without the desired increase in their key metrics, it was not worth investing the time and resources needed to implement the change on the website. Instead, they leveraged their experiment data to help drive their website optimization roadmap and identify other areas of improvement.
Despite negative results, the teams in all three experiments leveraged these valuable insights to quickly readjust their strategy and identify other places for improvement on their website. By reframing the negative results of failed a/b tests into learning opportunities, the customer experience became their driver for innovation instead of untested ideas from an echo chamber.
Jeff Copetas, VP of E-Commerce & Digital at Avid, stresses the importance of figuring out who you are listening to when building out an experimentation roadmap. “[At Avid] we had to move from a mindset of ‘I think …’ to ‘let’s test and learn,’ by taking the albatross of opinions out of our decision-making process,” Jeff recalls. “You can make a pretty website, but if it doesn’t perform well and you’re not learning what drives conversion, then all you have is a pretty website that doesn’t perform.”
Through testing you are collecting data on how customers are experiencing your website, which will always prove to be more valuable than never testing the status quo. Are you seeking inspiration for your next experiment? We’ve gathered insights from 50 trusted brands around the world to understand the tests they’ve tried, the lessons they’ve learned, and the successes they’ve had.
Once upon a time, driving digital customer experience optimization (EXO) meant having a competitive edge. You went the extra mile, you won. Nowadays, everyone is focused on EXO to the point where it’s the minimum necessary to stay in the game.
“Experience” encompasses the entire user journey across all touchpoints that a consumer encounters when interacting with your brand. Be it website, app, tablet, mobile, bot-generated or in-store, the quality of these interactions will impact your customers’ purchasing decisions and their loyalty.
Customer experience optimization can greatly influence buyers’ purchasing decisions and loyalty (Source)
Deliver solid experiences and it will shape your brand reputation and increase your conversion rates – the key is to never stop moving. Remain stagnant, and you’ll be overtaken; but if you can figure out what your customers want, find the line between what they’re looking for and what you can offer, and then evolve your interactions on an ongoing basis, you can deliver superior experiences and business success.
Here at AB Tasty we believe that optimization is the bare minimum you should be delivering. In order to stay competitive and stay ahead, the work should never stop. Establishing a continuous feedback loop through experimentation and data gathering and analysis are what it takes to maximize customer experience and keep your competitive edge.
In this article, we’ll cover:
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Why is customer experience optimization so relevant?
At the base, no matter what the product or sales channel, any business will try to satisfy their customers. Customer centricity has been around longer than we might think, but customer experience optimization really started to take flight as technology advanced and brand touchpoints and interactions diversified.
Throw in the fact that data is more readily available, collectible and collected, and suddenly the means to understand your customers better than they understand themselves is out there for the taking.
Use the data you collect to take your customer experience to the next level (Source)
Not convinced that it really matters? Think again. PwC’s Future of CX report found that one in three consumers will walk away from a brand after just one negative experience. Furthermore, 73% of consumers nominate their experience in brand interactions as an important factor in making purchasing decisions.
Is customer experience optimization truly essential?
Think about your own experiences when shopping online. How does it feel? Which brands do you gravitate towards and which ones just don’t seem to tickle your fancy? Do they see you as an individual, a real person, or are you just another transaction to them? It only takes a moment’s pause to consider your own experiences to understand why optimizing customer experiences is not just important, but essential.
As consumers, we make decisions about where to shop, which products to buy and which ones to keep buying based on our past experience of acquiring and consuming them. What’s more: the aforementioned Future of CX report from PwC found that customers are more likely to try additional products and services from a brand they trust, and that they’re even willing to pay more, too – up to 16% more depending on the product category. It’s also less expensive to encourage repeat business (customer loyalty) than to acquire new customers, so leveraging customer experience optimization to drive long-term brand affinity and customer lifetime value will pay for itself.
The three key ingredients to supercharge your customer experience optimization
When a customer arrives on your site – whether they’re searching for products, comparing different options or just looking to learn more about your products – there are a number of steps they’ll go through to achieve their end goal. All of these add up to a path that they’ve taken through your website, and one that presents both opportunities and pitfalls when it comes to optimizing your site and meeting your customers’ needs. The more you can understand your user journey and implement improvements while removing frictions along the purchase funnel, the better your site will perform.
Gathering data about your customers’ behavior and preferences will give you the information you need to run experiments to discern the optimal setup using A/B testing. Not sure if your CTAs have the best wording? Test them! Trying to understand the best configuration for your landing page? Run an experiment! Have doubts about whether product images should be cropped or full body? We can examine that too!
Ultimately, you’re aiming to ensure that all roads lead to an increase in conversions – and driving UX optimization on an ever-changing customer pathway is necessary to keep you ahead of the game.
Continuously optimizing your user experience is essential for staying ahead of the curve (Source)
2. Improve your personalization efforts
Know your customers and tailor to their needs!
Tailoring a digital brand interaction to the unique needs of the person behind the screen builds customer loyalty and drives repeat business. In the experience economy, you’re selling your product plus the interaction with the brand and the purchase itself alongside it. The user experience when acquiring and consuming the product is just as important as the utility it performs. Accordingly, personalizing these digital exchanges with your consumers is key to long-term customer retention.
To better understand your customers on a personal level, building a solid data foundation allows you to best understand your users, identify their needs and deliver personalized experiences that will keep your shoppers returning again and again. After all, personalization is about getting to the root of what customers have shown you that they want and delivering against that.
Use the data you gather to tailor each user’s experience on your site (Source)
As with your customer journey, responding to ever-changing desires can be challenging, so knowing your customers intimately is crucial for personalization success. Get it right and the impact is high so don’t leave any stone unturned when exploring improvement opportunities.
3. Implement server-side testing and feature management
Bring in the tech teams to expand your optimization activities!
Server-side testing is where we bring in the heavy hitters. While A/B testing can be rapidly implemented by marketing teams, server-side experimentation requires the buy-in and expertise of tech teams and developers.
Collaboration between the two groups is essential to deliver seamless customer experiences where the front-end (client-side) lures in your customers and the back-end (server-side) runs smoothly to ensure an effortless shopping experience. For instance, presenting a promotional offer (front-end) will only deliver results if the payment gateway runs glitch-free and the page loading times are fast (back-end).
Lukas Vermeer, director of experimentation at Vista, champions the value of testing both sides. “A lot of the value from experimentation…comes from two things: One is not shipping the bad stuff – a huge value point for experimentation. The other amount of value [comes from] figuring out strategically, going forward, what you should invest in.”
Lukas Vermeer, a guest speaker in the “1000 Experiments Club” podcast, champions the value of testing both sides (Source)
If your business has reached a certain level of maturity and sophistication, maximizing both client- and server-side testing will ensure that your optimization approaches are working the hardest they possibly can to deliver improved business outcomes.
How can customer experience optimization apply to different sectors?
E-commerce
Delivering digital customer experience optimization through experimentation can drive transactions, increase conversion rates and optimize user experience as you test your site in an effort to offer a smoother purchasing experience that caters to your users’ every need.
B2B
Not every website is for purchasing then and there; sometimes site visits are an initial step on a longer journey. You can drive lead generation for purchases in areas like automotive, bedroom furniture or holiday rentals by optimizing site layout, CTAs, and access to product and store information.
Travel
Offering a range of solutions, from individual products (like hotel or transport bookings) right up to comprehensive packages that take care of every step of a holiday, is a particularity of the travel industry. When bundling items together into packages, finding that pricing sweet spot is especially key. Server-side testing is particularly relevant in this field and can give you the tools to both curate your product offering and increase bookings as well.
Conclusion
When it comes to digital customer experience optimization, improving continuously is essential to your strategy; here at AB Tasty, we can’t stress that enough!
With both technology and customer attitudes evolving every second, the only way to keep the pace is by continuously adapting your company’s own optimization practices to respond to customer demands and unlock increased value and continuing loyalty.
Living and breathing such an approach means setting up your marketing, product and technical teams for smooth cross-collaboration and a shared mission and objectives. Ensuring that they’re also sharing the same experimentation and development roadmap to unlock resources and roll out improvements at the right time will keep your business on the road to success.
Any business selling products or services online has a conversion funnel — but not everyone realizes it. If you’re unsure what a conversion is or how you can refine yours to sell more online, you’re in the right place. In this post, we’re going to take you through everything you need to know about conversion funnels. We’ll start with the basics — what conversion funnels are and the three key stages — before moving on to some of the most effective strategies to improve your funnels to increase sales. Let’s get stuck in!
In this article, we’ll cover:
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What is a conversion funnel?
A conversion funnel is a process that takes potential customers on a journey towards buying your products or services. They’re the cornerstone of all e-commerce business models, guiding potential customers from the moment they first become aware of your brand to the moment they make a purchase and beyond.
If you’re new to conversion funnels, think about the shape of a funnel — it’s wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. This represents the flow of people through your marketing strategy. Not everyone who becomes aware of your business will go on to become a paying customer. It’s like brewing coffee using a drip filter — a large volume of coffee grounds go into the top of the brewing equipment and then the funnel filters the high-quality stuff out of the bottom into your mug. A sales funnel works in the same way. The goal is to get as many relevant leads into the top of the funnel as possible, filtering out unsuitable prospects to leave your ideal customers ready to buy from you.
When you optimize your conversion funnel, you maximize the impact of your online marketing strategy and boost sales. This isn’t a once-and-done exercise, but something you need to continually refine throughout your business life. Do you want to know how to do it?
What’s the difference between a conversion funnel and a sales funnel?
The terms conversion funnel and sales funnel are often used interchangeably, but are they the same thing? The answer to this question is no, although they are closely related. A sales funnel typically starts when a potential customer enters the sales pipeline. This can happen online (in an e-commerce environment) as well as offline. However, a prospect typically doesn’t enter your sales funnel until they’re already familiar with your brand and your products or services.
It can take a while to get to this point in the online world, particularly if you’re targeting people who have never heard of your brand before. It takes time to build a connection and trust with your audience.
This is where a conversion funnel comes in. Here, the focus isn’t just on making a sale. It’s about making a connection with your audience, generating leads, and then taking those leads on a journey with your company. Potential customers might come into your funnel cold, without much awareness of who you are or what you do. Over time, your funnel will warm them up, build trust in your offer, and get them ready to buy. It encapsulates the whole process — from the first contact through to purchasing.
The three conversion funnel stages
There are many different conversion funnel models out there. All of them broadly suggest the same thing: breaking the process down into several conversion funnel stages the leads must travel through before making a purchase. Although a customer may enter or exit the funnel at any stage, your personalized model sets out how you intend customers to connect with your business.
The exact model will look different for every organization, but here are the three stages we suggest you follow.
Stage 1: Building awareness at the top of the funnel
The top of the funnel is all about making people aware of your brand and capturing leads. This stage is arguably the most crucial. If you don’t get people into your funnel, how are you going to sell to them? This critical step is often referred to as the awareness stage, and the exact strategy you use to do this will depend on your ideal customer. Who are they? Where do they hang out? What are their fundamental problems and challenges? Why would they be interested in what you have to offer them? The answers to these questions can provide useful directions during the awareness stage. Remember: this isn’t about you; it’s about the customer. Here are a few things that should be happening at the top of the funnel.
Content marketing
To grab attention online, you’re going to need content. This content can take many forms, so it’s essential to think about the types of content your audience is most likely to consume. For example, TikTok videos will likely appeal to 18 to 24-year-olds, but they might not be the best option if you’re targeting an older demographic.
You should consider both onsite and offsite content when outlining your content marketing strategy. An effective conversion funnel needs both. Offsite content helps capture attention and attract people to your website. In contrast, onsite content engages your audience and encourages them to take the next step, such as signing up for your mailing list.
Marketing campaigns
Alongside your content marketing strategy, you should also consider the marketing campaigns you will be running to get people to engage with this content. How will you get your content seen? How will you capture users’ attention? Are you only operating online, or will you use offline marketing to generate leads?
Often, e-commerce businesses are quick to dismiss offline marketing campaigns as irrelevant. However, highly targeted offline campaigns can be extremely useful. The online marketplace is crowded! If you can think of innovative ways to reach your audience offline and direct them to your online content, it could turn out to be a cost-effective way to generate leads for your conversion funnel.
You could also consider how you might automate some of your marketing campaigns. Creating evergreen campaigns that can run in the background while you and your employees focus on other tasks is useful to maximize profits. In essence, it means you can be generating leads for your business while you sleep.
Lead capture
Lead capture is the final step of the awareness stage. It’s where you move your prospects from the top of your conversion funnel to the middle. Once you’ve directed a potential customer to your website and encouraged them to engage with your content, what’s next? Each piece of content your audience engages with on your website should have a call to action — something that tells them what action to complete next.
To achieve this, you might want to consider a lead magnet. This can be something as simple as a discount code. But, for maximum results, you could develop something that helps solve a problem directly related to the product or service you’re offering.
Not only does this ensure you’re capturing highly qualified leads, but it also means people are likely to sign up even when they’re not ready to make a purchase. Given the point of a conversion funnel is to get them ready to buy from you, this is a vital point to consider when outlining your content marketing strategy.
Once you have that email address, it’s time to move on to the second stage of the conversion funnel: nurturing your audience to build desire for your products or services.
To maximize the number of leads you’re capturing, you should focus your stage one activities across a range of digital marketing channels. Here are some of the most popular options:
Social media
Given there are almost 4 billion social media users worldwide (over half the world’s population), it’s no surprise social media marketing is one of the most popular ways to generate leads. That said, it’s important to note it isn’t an easy option! Many business owners expect social media to be a fast and cheap way to grow an audience. Still, it takes time and persistent effort to get results — just like any other marketing strategy.
Work with a professional to develop a social media marketing plan that helps you stand out from the crowd. Many businesses use social media to attract people into their conversion funnel, but few do it well.
Paid search
What’s the first place you turn to when you need information? It’s estimated there are around 2 trillion Google searches every year — so advertising your content on Google could potentially be very lucrative! Unlike social media marketing, people using search engines are actively looking for the information you’re providing. To get the best click-through rate, make sure the phrases you’re targeting are directly relevant to the content. And test campaigns with a small budget before increasing your spending.
Organic search
It’s also a good idea to optimize your content for organic search. While this isn’t a short-term strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can deliver large volumes of traffic to your website over time. Focus on creating evergreen content — content that doesn’t become irrelevant or outdated and can appear in organic searches for many years to come. When you gain website visitors organically from search engines, you improve your ability to build a list of qualified leads, improving the quality of people entering your conversion funnel.
Stage 2: Nurturing your audience
Many online businesses make the fundamental mistake of pushing for a sale too soon. While you can (and should) always have an option for potential customers to buy from you on their terms, you should design your conversion funnel to nurture your leads, building trust with your brand before moving them into the sales pipeline.
Staying in contact
Once a potential customer has told you they want to hear more from you, it’s essential to stay in touch with them. If you can, you should aim to use multiple channels to do this. Encourage them to follow you on social media, re-target them with relevant online content, and send them regular emails. Research consistently shows the more opportunities a potential customer has to engage with your brand online, the more likely they will buy from you.
In short, it’s not enough to let people know you exist. If you want to sell to them, you need to put in the work to keep them engaged!
Positioning your products and services
As you stay in touch and nurture your audience, you should also ensure each lead is familiar with your products and services. This step isn’t about pushing for the sale — we’ll come back to this in the next stage — but you should be introducing your offering interestingly and engagingly. Essentially, we need your leads to be ready to make a purchase when you deliver your sales pitch. To get to this stage, they need to know what you’re selling.
Building a desire to buy
And finally, throughout the nurturing stage, you should be gearing up your audience to perform the desired action. In most cases, this is completing a purchase. How do you do this? Use emotion.
Humans are emotional beings. Remember earlier when we discussed the problems and challenges your product or service can solve for your customers? What are the emotions behind that problem? Aim to appeal to these emotions when engaging with your audience, and make it clear that you’re here to help them overcome these feelings to foster more positive and desirable emotions. How will your product or service make them feel? Can you impart some of these feelings with your content?
As well as feeling emotion, people have an inbuilt desire to be understood. The more you can show them you understand them, the more they will connect with your brand, and the more desire they will have to do business with you.
Throughout this step, you should be keeping your competitors in mind, especially if you’re operating in a competitive niche. Why should your audience choose you above your competition?
Stage 3: Convert potential customers into paying customers
Stage three is what it’s all about — securing the sale. Without this stage, your business is nothing — without paying customers, you have no profits. But we hope you now appreciate why it’s important to take your audience on a journey through the preceding stages before you attempt to convert them. Once you’ve optimized your funnel, your leads will now be ready to buy from you.
Continue to nurture leads
It’s crucial to be aware of this: you don’t stop nurturing your prospects once you get them to the end of your funnel. This stage should continue as long as your leads — and eventual customers — are in contact with your business.
Work at your potential customer’s pace
It’s also important to remember your potential customers will all travel at their own pace. Some will be ready to make a purchase sooner than others. For this reason, you should think of your conversion funnel as a process. It isn’t about throwing leads in at one end and spitting them out at the other side but about fostering connections that will help your organization thrive over time.
If you attempt to trigger a sale, but your customers aren’t ready, you should continue to engage and nurture them — and try again further down the line. Similarly, if none of your prospects are buying from you at this stage in your conversion funnel, it’s a sign something needs tweaking — we’ll get back to this in a little while.
Trigger a Sale
Now it’s time to encourage your leads to become paying customers, but how should you do it? As always, there are many options here. Finding the right approach will likely involve some trial-and-error. It’s a good idea to test out a few sales tactics and see what works. For some, a simple email or retargeting campaign on social media might do the trick. But for other businesses, you might need to come up with something more personal or creative.
What makes a good call-to-action?
Calls-to-action are the lifeblood of any effective conversion funnel. But how can you make sure yours are effective? Here are some tips to get you started.
Be clear and concise
Your call-to-action shouldn’t be too wordy. It would be best if you were direct. Use short sentences and tell your audience exactly what you want them to do. Use verbs like “buy,” “shop,” or “download.” Telling someone to “shop the new collection” is likely to result in more sales than something like “our new collection is now live on our website.”
Ask yourself why
As you develop your call-to-action, put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. Why should they do what you’re asking them to? This is where the copy in the rest of your sales pitch comes in. The call-to-action is the final piece of the puzzle. By the time your lead gets to this part of your content, they should already be ready to hit that button. Make it a no-brainer for them.
The role of the shopping cart
The shopping cart on your website can be one of your biggest assets for driving sales. Did you know you can follow up on abandoned carts with your email subscribers? If not, you’re missing out on one of the most effective conversion tools available to e-commerce businesses. Research suggests around 70% of all shopping carts are abandoned online. Think about it: these are leads that have been through the conversion funnel and are almost ready to make a purchase. What is it that stopped them? It might have been something as simple as an interruption. Get back in touch and ask them if they’re ready to complete their purchase. The results may surprise you.
Evaluating your funnel with conversion funnel metrics
As we mentioned at the start of this post, a conversion funnel isn’t something you can create and then forget about. It’s an ongoing, interactive process that you must refine over time. The digital marketing world is dynamic and ever-changing — and your conversion funnel will need to evolve alongside industry trends and technological advances. Evaluating your funnel is an essential part of this, enabling you to improve each stage of the process to generate more qualified leads and convert more of them into paying customers.
Your first step should be to set up Google Analytics to track your conversion funnel. When you do this, you can track a lead from the moment they join your funnel until they make a purchase. This gives you an overview of how well your funnel is performing, as well as helping you access some of the key conversion funnel metrics that help you decide what to focus on next, such as:
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Marketing costs money and the expenses associated with your conversion funnel can quickly mount up. It’s vital to understand the benefit these investments bring. What is the return on investment (ROI) associated with your conversion funnel? To understand this, you need to calculate your cost per acquisition. To calculate this, divide the costs associated with your conversion funnel by the number of paying customers the funnel generated in the same time period. For example, if you invested $500 and generated 10 paying customers, your CPA would be $50.
You can then compare this with the average spend to figure out whether your conversion is profitable or not. Using the example above, if the average customer spends $200, your funnel is profitable. On the other hand, if the average lifetime spend is $20, the funnel is operating at a loss.
Conversion rate
Google Analytics calculates your funnel’s conversion rate by working out how many of the visitors went to the goal page (e.g., “thank you for your purchase”) as well as one of the pages associated with the earlier stages of your conversion funnel. This provides you with useful insight into how well your funnel is working over time, which can help you evaluate any changes that you make to optimize the funnel.
Are you ready to optimize your funnel?
In summary, conversion funnels are an essential asset to all e-commerce businesses. If you want to improve sales, optimizing your funnel is often the best place to start. What steps will you take after reading this post?
When it comes to using A/B testing to improve the user experience, the end goal is about increasing revenue. However, we more often hear about improving conversion rates (in other words, changing a visitor into a buyer).
If you increase the number of conversions, you’ll automatically increase revenue and increase your number of transactions. But this is just one method among many…another tactic is based on increasing the ‘average basket size’. This approach is, however, much less often used. Why? Because it’s rather difficult to measure the associated change.
A Measurement and Statistical Issue
When we talk about statistical tests associated with average basket size, what do we mean? Usually, we’re referring to the Mann-Whitney-U test (also called the Wilcoxon), used in certain A/B testing software, including AB Tasty. A ‘must have’ for anyone who wants to improve their conversion rates. This test shows the probability that variation B will bring in more gain than the original. However, it’s impossible to tell the magnitude of that gain – and keep in mind that the strategies used to increase the average basket size most likely have associated costs. It’s therefore crucial to be sure that the gains outweigh the costs.
For example, if you’re using a product recommendation tool to try and increase your average basket size, it’s imperative to ensure that the associated revenue lift is higher than the cost of the tool used….
Unfortunately, you’ve probably already realized that this issue is tricky and counterintuitive…
Let’s look at a concrete example: the beginner’s approach is to calculate the average basket size directly. It’s just the sum of all the basket values divided by the number of baskets. And this isn’t wrong, since the math makes sense. However, it’s not very precise! The real mistake is comparing apples and oranges, and thinking that this comparison is valid. Let’s do it the right way, using accurate average basket data, and simulate the average basket gain.
Here’s the process:
Take P, a list of basket values (this is real data collected on an e-commerce site, not during a test).
We mix up this data, and split them into two groups, A and B.
We leave group A as is: it’s our reference group, that we’ll call the ‘original’.
Let’s add 3 euros to all the values in group B, the group we’ll call the ‘variation’, and which we’ve run an optimization campaign on (for example, using a system of product recommendations to website visitors).
Now, we can run a Mann-Whitney test to be sure that the added gain is significant enough.
With this, we’re going to calculate the average values of lists A and B, and work out the difference. We might naively hope to get a value near 3 euros (equal to the gain we ‘injected’ into the variation). But the result doesn’t fit. We’ll see why below.
How to Calculate Average Basket Size
The graph below shows the values we talked about: 10,000 average basket size values. The X (horizontal) axis represents basket size, and the Y (vertical) axis, the number of times this value was observed in the data.
It seems that the most frequent value is around 50 euros, and that there’s another spike at around 100 euros, though we don’t see many values over 600 euros.
After mixing the list of amounts, we split it into two different groups (5,000 values for group A, and 5,000 for group B).
Then, we add 3 euros to each value in group B, and we redo the graph for the two groups, A (in blue) and B (in orange):
We already notice from looking at the chart that we don’t see the effect of having added the 3 euros to group B: the orange and blue lines look very similar. Even when we zoom in, the difference is barely noticeable:
However, the Mann-Whitney-U test ‘sees’ this gain:
More precisely, we can calculate pValue = 0.01, which translates into a confidence interval of 99%, which means we’re very confident there’s a gain from group B in relation to group A. We can now say that this gain is ‘statistically visible.’
We now just need to estimate the size of this gain (which we know has a value of 3 euros).
Unfortunately, the calculation doesn’t reveal the hoped for result! The average of group A is 130 euros and 12 cents, and for version B, it’s 129 euros and 26 cents. Yes, you read that correctly: calculating the average means that average value of B is smaller than the value of A, which is the opposite of what we created in the protocol and what the statistical test indicates. This means that, instead of gaining 3 euros, we lose 0.86 cents!
So where’s the problem? And what’s real? A > B or B > A?
The Notion of Extreme Values
The fact is, B > A! How is this possible? It would appear that the distribution of average basket values is subject to ‘extreme values’. We do notice on the graph that the majority of the values is < 500 euros.
But if we zoom in, we can see a sort of ‘long tail’ that shows that sometimes, just sometimes, there are values much higher than 500 euros. Now, calculating averages is very sensitive to these extreme values. A few very large basket size values can have a notable impact on the calculation of the average.
What’s happening then? When we split up the data into groups A and B, these ‘extreme’ values weren’t evenly distributed in the two groups (neither in terms of the number of them, nor their value). This is even more likely since they’re infrequent, and they have high values (with a strong variance).
NB: when running an A/B test, website visitors are randomly assigned into groups A and B as soon as they arrive on a site. Our situation is therefore mimicking the real-life conditions of a test.
Can this happen often? Unfortunately, we’re going to see that yes it can.
A/A Tests
To give a more complete answer to this question, we’d need to use a program that automates creating A/A tests, i.e. a test in which no change is made to the second group (that we usually call group B). The goal is to check the accuracy of the test procedure. Here’s the process:
Mix up the initial data
Split it into two even groups
Calculate the average value of each group
Calculate the difference of the averages
By doing this 10,000 times and by creating a graph of the differences measured, here’s what we get:
X axis: the difference measured (in euros) between the average from groups A and B.
Y axis: the number of times this difference in size was noticed.
We see that the distribution is centered around zero, which makes sense since we didn’t insert any gain with the data from group B. The problem here is how this curve is spread out: gaps over 3 euros are quite frequent. We could even wager a guess that it’s around 20%. What can we conclude? Based only on this difference in averages, we can observe a gain higher than 3 euros in about 20% of cases – even when groups A and B are treated the same!
Similarly, we also see that in about 20% of cases, we think we’ll note a loss of 3 euros per basket….which is also false! This is actually what happened in the previous scenario: splitting the data ‘artificially’ increased the average for group A. The gain of 3 euros to all the values in group B wasn’t enough to cancel this out. The result is that the increase of 3 euros per basked is ‘invisible’ when we calculate the average. If we look only at the simple calculation of the difference, and decide our threshold is 1 euro, we have about an 80% chance of believing in a gain or loss…that doesn’t exist!
Why Not Remove These ‘Extreme’ Values?
If these ‘extreme’ values are problematic, we might be tempted to simply delete them and solve our problem. To do this, we’d need to formally define what we call an extreme value. A classic way of doing this is to use the hypothesis that the data follow ‘Gaussian distribution’. In this scenario, we would consider ‘extreme’ any data that differ from the average by more than three times the standard deviation. With our dataset, this threshold comes out to about 600 euros, which would seem to make sense to cancel out the long tail. However, the result is disappointing. If we apply the A/A testing process to this ‘filtered’ data, we see the following result:
The distribution of the values of the difference in averages is just as big, the curve has barely changed.
If we were to do an A/B test now (still with an increase of 3 euros for version B), here’s what we get (see the graph below). We can see that the the difference is being shown as negative (completely the opposite of the reality), in about 17% of cases! And this is discounting the extreme values. And in about 18% of cases, we would be led to believe that the gain of group B would be > 6 euros, which is two times more than in reality!
Why Doesn’t This Work?
The reason this doesn’t work is because the data for the basket values doesn’t follow Gaussian distribution.
Here’s a visual representation of the approximation mistake that happens:
The X (horizontal) axis shows basket values, and the Y (vertical) axis shows the number of times this value was observed in this data.
The blue line represents the actual basket values, the orange line shows the Gaussian model. We can clearly see that the model is quite poor: the orange curve doesn’t align with the blue one. This is why simply removing the extreme values doesn’t solve the problem.
Even if we were able to initially do some kind of transformation to make the data ‘Gaussian’, (this would mean taking the log of the basket values), to significantly increase the similarity between the model and the data, this wouldn’t entirely solve the problem. The variance of the different averages is just as great.
During an A/B test, the estimation of the size of the gain is very important if you want to make the right decision. This is especially true if the winning variation has associated costs. It remains difficult today to accurately calculate the average basket size. The choice comes down soley to your confidence index, which only indicates the existence of gain (but not its size). This is certainly not ideal practice, but in scenarios where the conversion rate and average basket are moving in the same direction, the gain (or loss) will be obvious. Where it becomes difficult or even impossible to make a relevant decision is when they aren’t moving in the same direction.
This is why A/B testing is focused mainly on ergonomic or aesthetic tests on websites, with less of an impact on the average basket size, but more of an impact on conversions. This is why we mainly talk about ‘conversion rate optimization’ (CRO) and not ‘business optimization’. Any experiment that affects both conversion and average basket size will be very difficult to analyze. This is where it makes complete sense to involve a technical conversion optimization specialist: to help you put in place specific tracking methods aligned with your upsell tool.
To understand everything about A/B testing, check out our article: The Problem is Choice.
Gone are the days when shops and retailers could measure sales conversions by counting the physical customers in their shop and dividing it by the number of sales that went through the till, as the change in shopping behaviors and the huge shift to online shopping has meant retailers need to adapt, too.
The one major online retail site that sellers are eager to have a presence on, and as one of the most visited websites in the world, Amazon Marketplace offers great exposure to 12 markets around the globe. Whether you’ve just started selling or you’re an established presence in the marketplace, conversion rates are a very important metric for any retailer, as it is often considered a measure of how successful their business is. With more retailers looking to understand the secret to increasing their conversions on the e-commerce giant, we explore what a ‘good’ Amazon conversion rate looks like, and how you can optimize your listings to increase conversion rates – something all budding Amazon sellers will be keen to invest in!
First, let’s cover conversion rates and what ‘good’ looks like:
What is Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of sales by the number of times people have visited a product. Conversion rates apply to any sales made – both on and offline- and they are often affected by things like the volume of people clicking through to the advert or from visiting the store, the competition level from other sellers as well as price comparison and seasonal discounts, etc.
What is an Amazon Conversion Rate?
Amazon conversion rate is the same, but focuses just on sales made through the platform. It is automatically calculated by the retail giant and can be accessed by logging into your ‘Sellers Central Business Reports’, under the header ‘Business Report’. Within this section, there is a row called ‘Order Item Session Percentage’, which is the conversion rate Amazon attributes to each item.
Amazon breaks conversion rate down for sellers to see the conversion rate of each product, by viewing the ‘By ASIN’ reports.
Whilst those figures look impressive, there are a few other factors at play to help increase conversion rates on Amazon. Our tips look to optimize Amazon listings to help increase conversion as well as improve the ranking of listings on the digital marketplace.
Strengthening Your Amazon SEO
When looking to improve conversion rates on Amazon, the first thing to review is the keywords you are targeting and the placement of these words within your product listing. Amazon SEO is a relatively new concept for online retailers but is a very important part of achieving success on the world’s biggest-selling site. Conduct keyword research before writing any listing, make sure you are aware of what people are looking for when it comes to your products and target the most relevant search terms. In a previous article, we cover how to conduct keyword research using some free tools that are widely available – so there’s no excuse for poorly performing listings. There are several opportunities to use keywords when creating a product listing, so make sure these terms feature in the product title, features, description as well as the URL of the item.
Write Accurate and Engaging Product Descriptions
In order to potentially increase conversion rate, you need to increase the click-throughs on a listing, which means creating engaging and descriptive titles that encourage users to click and learn more. Remember, conversion rates are calculated based on the number of people viewing, or clicking your listing, so get writing those ‘click-worthy’ headings. Make sure to accurately describe your product too, don’t be vague or mislead potential customers, as this will affect your opportunity to rank higher in search on Amazon which will directly affect your conversion rates, too.
Offer Competitive Pricing and Other Perks
This is particularly important for sellers who are in a highly competitive market, as offering competitive pricing can make the difference between people clicking through or not. If you are able to do this, offer reduced shipping – or even free delivery. If you are the only seller offering free delivery, people will be far more likely to convert. Often, sellers who have sales on products or offer discount codes see an increase in conversions, so try experimenting with a sale or offering money off for returning customers. Of course, the most prominent perk for Amazon sellers is joining the FBA, as this automatically makes your products eligible for Prime; the next-day subscription delivery service Amazon offers paid subscribers. As one of the most successful subscription models online, Amazon Prime significantly increases conversions as Prime members are much more likely to convert each time they visit the website.
Trial Amazon Pay Per Click
Another great way to potentially increase conversion rates is to secure the top spot, by paying for an advert. Amazon pay per click, or PPC, is identical to search giant’s Google in that sellers can pay to secure the top spot with relevant adverts. By targeting known search terms, sellers have the opportunity to buy the search space and appear in relevant results, with listings that are marked as ‘sponsored’.
Upsell Relevant Items
Upselling items by offering related or complementary products that people may find useful when they are looking to buy will increase the potential of selling further products. By making ‘suggested’ or related items visible at the ‘add to basket’ stage, customers will be more inclined to add more products. Upselling relevant items will not only have a positive impact on conversion, but it will also encourage repeat purchases and indicates your online store has further products to explore.
Link to Products From Other Online Places
Be sure to share your products on other online channels such as social media and websites. Featuring products on other selling sites such as eBay and Gumtree will target a wider audience. If you are exclusively selling on Amazon Marketplace, consider using targeted adverts across relevant websites online, using cookie data to retarget people who have viewed or previously purchased from you. Increasing the exposure of your products via banner adverts and sponsored listings on social feeds can significantly increase conversion rates.
Trial and Error Testing!
These tips are some great options to help improve conversion rates whilst making sure listings are well optimized, however, there is no real magic ingredient to producing high-converting product listings on the world’s biggest marketplace. We highly recommend testing what works well for you as an individual seller. From tweaking product descriptions, using shorter or longer titles and even including emoji’s to entice readers to click through- try testing subtle differences with product listings to find something that works for you.
Key Takeaways
Whilst there are many ways to optimize your Amazon listings with the view to increase conversion rates, there is no real magic recipe that fits for every business. Some optimization techniques may work really well for some retailers, whilst others have found their success through trial and error. Applying just one change won’t make a difference to conversion rate so try to work on a few different elements of your product listings. For this, A/B tests are an excellent way to find out what does and doesn’t work.
Conversion rates are an excellent way to measure success, and by looking to make some or all of the changes listed above, sellers will also automatically benefit from increased visibility on the platform, as the Amazon A9 algorithm appears to consider sales velocity and conversion rate as two of the most important factors when it comes to ranking well on the digital marketplace. With the opportunity to rank your products higher in Amazon search, potentially increase click-through rates and ultimately increase conversions, there are some great reasons to optimize on Amazon and reap the rewards via a better click-through rate and hopefully higher conversions.
Changes in shopping habits, advances in technology, and a more competitive landscape mean that high street brands are closing or reducing their physical locations.
Businesses used to be able to get by with a website and basic social media profiles, but now, in order to survive as a retail brand you have to work harder than ever to reach, attract, and engage with shoppers online.
Users want to engage with brands in a personal way. As a brand, you need to build a community, establishing rapport with your existing and potential customers, and tell your brand story.
For this purpose, Instagram outperforms all other platforms. Arguably, it’s the best place for you to promote your brand and engage with your users.
That’s because Instagram allows brands to show their personality in a way that’s engaging, interactive, and human, with features like geographical location tagging, gifs, hashtags, polls, and so on, all designed specifically to grow your following and increase engagement.
Brands like Nike, for example, don’t use Instagram Stories to sell products or brag about its successes; Nike uses them to share the experiences of inspirational people and athletes like “thatbigguy700,” the story of a 700-pound man on a journey to lose weight.
Influencer marketing is successful because it uses a pre-made audience and leverages the relationships, trust, and credibility an influencer has with their fans.
People respect and trust influencers’ content and recommendations and are more likely to buy based on the suggestions of the people they trust.
There are two types of influencers:
Micro influencers: 1,000 to 100,000 followers
Macro influencers: 100,000+ followers
You may be tempted to dive straight in with macro influencers as, clearly, the reach is far greater.
However, the type of influencer you need will depend on your business type, business objectives, and your budget.
Studies show that micro influencers get better engagement, are perceived to be more trustworthy, and are cheaper.
In fact, micro influencers offer the following benefits:
Better engagement: Micro influencers get 7x more engagement than macro influencers
Higher trust: 30% of consumers consider purchasing a product that was endorsed by a non-celeb influencer and only 3% of consumers consider buying a product that was endorsed by a celebrity
There’s no right or wrong type of influencer, but you do need to find one (or more) that fits with your brand goals.
For example, if you’re a smaller brand aiming to make sales, micro influencers could be a better fit. On the other hand, if you’re a global brand looking for increased reach and brand awareness, consider macro influencers.
In reality, the most compelling is a blend of micro and macro influencers.
Here’s how to find Instagram influencers.
Option One: Search Instagram
The most basic technique is to use Instagram’s search bar. Enter a keyword relevant to your brand into the search bar.
Browse through a list of profiles associated with the keyword and if you find a good match, send them a message asking about a potential collaboration.
However, there is one important caveat. The results presented will depend on your profile and how you’ve interacted with Instagram in the past.
This means that if you’ve engaged with cat posts but are now searching for kitchen-related influencers, your results will be different to someone who’s only ever interacted with kitchen posts.
This means that while it’s a workable technique, it’s not the best out there.
Option Two: Use Google Search
Go to your Google search settings and set your location results to your preferred location or global.
Click the profiles and check them out. The first one in my example above is a luxury bed company with almost 250,000 followers, which isn’t bad for a couple of minutes of research.
If you decide that they are a good fit, send them a message and chat about possible partnerships.
Option Three: Pay an Agency
If budget isn’t your primary concern, you can hire an influencer agency. They will research, find, and negotiate with influencers on your behalf. There are tons of agencies around and you can find them by performing a search on Google for “Influencer Agency.”
By creating a brand hashtag for your UGC campaign, you can encourage your customers to showcase how your products are used.
Take the online furniture store Wayfair’s UGC campaign.
After purchasing items from Wayfair and setting them up at home, customers post pictures of their new furniture and add the simple hashtag #WayfairAtHome.
Instagram acts like a search engine, but instead of keywords, it uses hashtags to rank your content.
Let’s take a brand like Lululemon, for example.
Enter Lululemon into the search bar and you’ll find more than 2.5 million posts using the hashtag.
Click on #lululemon and you’ll see the Top Posts (the most popular posts with that hashtag) and the Recent Posts.
It’s not easy to get into the Top Posts, especially when you’re targeting a highly competitive term, but there are a couple of hacks.
When your post lands in Recent Posts, if your post is well-considered, engaging, and appeals to your audience, then you’re likely to get comments and likes.
If your post works really well and gets lots of attention, then it can be potentially pushed up into the Top Posts section.
I’m not saying this is easy, but it is possible, especially if you consider your hashtag selection to make sure it’s popular.
Let’s consider the other side of this coin.
If you don’t use hashtags, your brand won’t be found and your carefully curated post will have gone to waste. Don’t be that guy.
As with any kind of marketing, it’s important not to be fake or spammy. In the Instagram community, this means using #hashtags that are relevant to your post.
Here’s how to find popular, relevant hashtags on Instagram:
Create an Iconosquare account
Connect your Instagram account
Use the search bar to enter one hashtag that you are considering
Once you’ve completed the above steps, Iconosquare will let you know how many posts use that hashtag, plus offer relevant suggestions.
Create a spreadsheet of your findings so you can easily refer to them at a later date.
Tip 5: Increase Instagram Followers with Contests and Giveaways
An Instagram giveaway or contest is a promotion in which brands give away a product or service according to a specified set of criteria.
When done well, it is a great way to get more likes, followers, and shares for your brand.
But there’s a caveat. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is worth considering at the outset.
As the primary driver is the interest in free or cheap prizes, the quality of a user won via a contest or a giveaway and their willingness to pay may be lower than other users.
#1 Choose the Prize
It goes without saying that you need something to give away. It needs to be something that your audience will love, whether it’s a gift card, an experience, or one of your products.
#2 Collaborate
Next, the best giveaways are done in collaboration with other Instagrammers. If you can, try to collaborate with an influencer (or two) or with some of your most active followers.
Getting your audience involved right from the get-go is a great way to skyrocket your campaign.
#3 Decide on the Entry Criteria
Create a strategy for what you’d like your users to do in order to get a chance to win. For instance, to be entered into the draw, they might need to do the following:
Like your photo: More likes on a post could mean you land in the coveted Top Posts spot.
Follow your account: To state the obvious, this will help you increase your following.
Repost your image with an @mention: Get seen by a wider audience and generate more engagement.
Or is it a combination?
There’s no rule, but the key is to make sure the criteria align with your business goals.
You can run your contest for as long as you like. If you’ve got a large audience then a shorter period might suffice, while smaller brands might allow a week to ten days to ensure enough interaction.
#5 Design the Post
Create a beautiful, highly shareable post for the giveaway. It needs to include clear instructions on how to enter, what needs to be done, and what’s up for grabs.
Don’t publish the giveaway post and forget about it. To get the most interaction out of it, create multiple reminder posts throughout the period of the giveaway.
#7 Spread the News about the Winner
Once the contest has finished and the winner has been picked, shout the winner from the rooftops. This is another great opportunity to get positive feedback for your brand and capitalize on the goodwill of the contest.
Now It’s Your Turn
Now I’d like to hear from you.
Which strategy from this post are you going to try first?
Or maybe I didn’t mention one of your favorite techniques to grow your Instagram following?
Either way, let me know by leaving a comment right now.
Picture this: You’re moving into a new home in a month and have started online shopping for furniture. You see a coffee table from Birch & Oak that you like, add to your shopping cart, but don’t buy—yet. You have time to evaluate other options.
A few days later you notice an online ad for the exact Birch & Oak coffee table you were considering. In fact, you see an ad for this coffee table across various websites and social media platforms.
Finally, you decide to buy it.
This is retargeting in action, which (when done well) can be an effective tool for increasing conversion rates.
Consider the following:
Retargeted customers are 3x more likely to click on your ad than those that haven’t interacted with your business before.
Retargeting is when you use ads to recapture the interest of a website visitor that left without buying or responding favorably to your calls-to-action. It gives you a chance to stay top of mind and encourage them to come back and complete a purchase.
Just the other day I realized I was being retargeted: I was looking to buy Indian wear for a friend on Kilol’s website and later saw this ad on Facebook:
Kilol displayed a retargeted ad on Facebook
How Retargeting Works
Businesses add Javascript code or a pixel to website pages, typically in the footer. The browser then places a cookie on a visitor’s computer when they land on the website. This cookie stores information about the consumer’s online behaviorlike the products they view, web searches, and social media use. Based on this data, retargeting vendors deliver personalized ads they think will most appeal to the individual consumer.
BBC alerts website visitors about the use of cookies
Is Retargeting Annoying for Internet Users?
Some people don’t mind being tracked and willingly share their personal data to see relevant ads.
Consumers on why they purchase more from certain retailers
Others can find frequent retargeted ads annoying. This can happen when they see a retargeted ad from visits that didn’t reflect a serious interest.
To avoid ad fatigue among visitors, apply the marketing rule of 7. This is when you use multiple marketing channels (not just ads) to stay fresh in customers’ minds. As it turns out, the more visible and relevant you are to consumers, through multiple channels, the better the conversion chances. In fact, you sell 50% more than you would otherwise!
Amazon sends remarketing emails to users with abandoned carts
Static vs. Dynamic Retargeting
Static retargeting creates several versions of the same ad as a part of a broader campaign. With static retargeting, you can set parameters for which ads display to visitors based on the pages they view on the site.
Dynamic retargeting, on the other hand, is more specific: it creates personalized ads for visitors based on how they’ve interacted with your site (and often incorporates machine learning to help analyze behavior and optimize the campaign).
Tip: For some prospects, retargeting just won’t work. Once you identify these “no-go” visitors, it’s best to delete them from your list and focus on prospects that will be more receptive.
Setting the Stage For Retargeting
While there are various different targeting platforms to choose from, the two most popular ones are Google AdWords and Facebook ads. (You don’t necessarily need both, but you need to know which would be more effective in reaching your prospective clients.)
Then, you have retargeting vendors like AdRoll, Retargeter and Perfect Audience that cover various platforms (including Google).
Here are a few resources to provide a more in-depth view of getting started with these tools:
Different visitors have different goals and interests; meaning retargeting won’t work with a “one-size-fits-all approach.”
For someone that visited a product page, a way to retarget could be by displaying a carousel advertisement to encourage new product discovery. For the person that abandoned their shopping cart, a retargeted ad that offers a discount or free shipping could be more effective.
Also, consider segmenting visitors on the basis of how long it’s been since they were on your site. A person who visited a week ago shouldn’t see the same ad as the person who visited a month ago.
Optimize Ads
In a HubSpot survey, 63% of people surveyed said they felt most online ads don’t look professional and insult their intelligence.
To avoid this, try to incorporate the following into your advertisements:
Eye-catching visuals: Images must complement the ad copy. A common observation is that ads with photos of people outperform those without them.
Clean copy: Without being boring, address user’s hesitation and spark curiosity.
Clear call-to-action: Use an action-oriented catchphrase to draw readers in. Replace overused verbs with compelling ones, such as claim,reserve, activate, etc. Use urgency if it fits the context.
Post-click landing page: Be sure you’re delivering what users expect to find!
Set Frequency Cap
Showing an ad 100 times a day is not a strategic way to pique interest. In fact, more often than not, users will develop a “banner blindness” and ignore the ad completely.
Set a frequency cap to control how many times an ad appears to the same user. While there isn’t one ideal frequency rate, the best way to find the optimal number is to run A/B tests for your campaigns. This will help to reduce campaign costs, improve ad CTR, and increase conversions.
(It’s also worth considering a “recency cap” or how much time passes between when users see the same ad.)
Rotate Ads
A ReTargeter study revealed that running the same set of ads for about five months decreases the CTR by almost 50%. One of the common culprits is the fact that the more people see the same ad, the more easily it blends in the background. It becomes invisible, no matter how compelling the CTA is.
To overcome this hurdle draft versions of the same ad with different visuals and CTAs. Another benefit of doing this is that you’ll learn what kind of messaging visitors are more inclined to respond to.
Use Burn Pixel
Retargeting the wrong audience is a waste of time and your marketing budget. To prevent this from happening try using a burn pixel: a snippet code that’s placed on a post-transaction page to remove users who complete a purchase.
The goal is to not retarget these customers with the same item they already purchased, but move them to campaigns that focus on upselling and cross-selling based on their purchase history.
Conclusion
Retargeting can boost your ROI, create brand awareness and drive conversions. But, when it comes across as pushy to users, it can actually cause prospects to turn away for good. It’s important to segment audiences, establish the right cadence, and to keep testing to stay relevant and incentivize users to return to your site.
In the image above, you can see that they even highlighted in green that their smoothie is, “a source of vitamins C, B2, B3 and B6 which can help reduce tiredness and fatigue…”
