How Do Your Site’s Conversion Rates Compare?
With all of the time, effort, money and energy poured into your E-Commerce store, you would do anything to help it perform better…right? Ok, you’ve spent weeks, months and years getting the site developed and designed to your liking. You’ve negotiated for products with wholesalers. You’ve filled the space effectively. You’ve even gone as far as to develop a PPC Campaign or hire the mysterious SEO company. And for all this work, you are beginning to see results. Perhaps, you’ve even been generating a solid revenue for years. But, the question you must continue to ask yourself – and every one of you asks this every day – is how can the site perform better?
Well, there are all kinds of techniques to help convert, but first, you need to start with good data. What is your conversion rate? How does it compare? Is it as good as it could be? Have you settled on a rate that could be improved or do you not even know it? Imagine your company doubling it’s sales if you were to simply improve your conversion rate from 1% to 2%.
From an SEOmoz post:
Supposedly, the magic number is 2.3 as an average for all industry segments, but this goes considerably up and down depending on the vertical. Electronics, for example has an average of only 1.1%, while catalog e-tailers average a whopping 6.1% (my guess is that this is due to the traffic that gets driven to the site from the catalog with the specific intention of making a purchase).
If your site isn’t achieving these rates, there are two places to look – on the site itself, including design, usability, layout, navigation, pricing, stock, etc. and at the traffic sources. The best website in the world won’t convert visitors if they’re targeting the wrong keywords.
This site gives you some of those magic numbers as well as some great tips on conversion.
Downturn in the Economy = Rise of SEO
In the previous article, we discussed that companies spend the majority of their marketing dollars on PPC as opposed to SEO. Since the SEO has a distinguishably better ROI, the question was why? Below are a few comments, again from SEOmozzers, addressing the question:
PPC is something that the client has been able to pick up and play with themselves prior to talking to an SEM pro.PPC is plug-and-play web marketing that works out of the box, SEO is perceived as requiring a pre-existing skill set that doesn’t do anything overnight.I often find myself driving to work instead of cycling because it’s quicker and easier. Unfortunately it’s also more expensive and not as good for me long term. I know this but…
How many of us can relate to this statement? We hate disciplining ourselves in the short term for long term gains.
What we are seeing in our agency is that because of the down turn in the economy, companies are asking us to work on their SEO because they see it as a wiser investment in the longrun. We keep needing to tell our clients that although SEO has a higher ROI in the long run, short term gains are seen quicker with paid search.
In the midst of an economic recession though, companies are forced to work through these short term disciplines in order be the most efficient with their marketing dollars.
It seems like everyone’s answer is right in line with mine. Companies don’t like or understand PPC more (though they like to think they do), it just gets more money because it’s trackable and the results are immediate. At least in the US, business owners are all about instant gratification. Only now in a down economy do they see that investing in long term things like SEO/content is worth their dollars more.
SEOs and the industry can do more by education only. We have to focus more on explaining that there is no secret formula, no magic. SEO is just like every other branch of marketing, just a little more technical. Ask an ad buyer, is there a specific path they use to get sales out of a magazine placement? Nope. They learn about the audience, mold the message and look of the piece to match, and then set it out there. It takes time to craft that message and get it right, it takes time to brand build. In SEO, it’s the same thing. This is not a black craft as many business owners think. It’s just forcing them to marry marketing and IT, which can be very scary sometimes.
A down economy is the perfect chance for hearty businesses to focus on SEO, but only if they are in it for the win. It’s a strategy, sure, but it’s got to be for the right reasons. Developing good content for the benefit of the end user has to be the end goal, not just to gain more business. That comes with the focus on the end user. Cause and effect.
Well said. One of the suggestions as to why companies use PPC more is that they like the control. They like how measurable it is, even if the ROI is not as good as SEO. But with the downturn, they are forced to work through their dislike and fears of SEO because of the obvious long term benefits.
SEO vs. PPC
The following is from a post by Rand Fishkin on SEOmoz: 
There’s a big disconnect in the way marketing dollars are allocated to search engine focused campaigns. Let me highlight:
Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008OK.
So companies in the US spent $10 billion last year on paid search ads, and even more this year. How about SEO?
SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008According to SEMPO’s data, it’s 11% for SEO and 87% for PPC (with another 1.4% for SEM technologies and <1% for paid Inclusion).
Conclusions: SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets.
Where are your marketing dollars going? As told in the story by the above numbers, the majority of Search Marketing dollars are by far being spent on PPC as opposed to SEO. If SEO drives 75% of all search traffic, the obvious questions is WHY???
When deciding where to spend the marketing budget, there is one all important factor – ROI. SEO outscores PPC by a long shot of page visibility and clicks, and yet people continue to make poor decisions on where to allocate their marketing budget. Many people can grasp PPC easier, and their instant gratification itch is scratched. But it is a severe mistake not to invest in SEO for the long run.
Optimizing Your Shipping Company
Are you taking full advantage of the services offered by your shipping company? If not, you could be throwing money down the drain.
Several shipping companies, like UPS, offer the advantage of providing and Account Rep. Working for you, this person can help you save money in place you may not realize. An Account Rep can help you get a better incentive, offer a new rate plan, negotiate international rates, set up paperless invoices and introduce you to UPS WorldShip. You can also use one UPS account number with all of your suppliers, which will save you money.
While it may take a little time to integrate new changes, more often than not you will be saving money for your business. Plus, you’ll have a contact at UPS or another shipping company whenever you need them.
Are You Losing $ with Your Redirect Structure?
Whenever you make changes to a web site, one of the most important considerations should be how to use “redirects” to alert the search engine to your changes to avoid having a negative impact on your search rankings. Whether you’re moving pages around, switching CMS platforms, or just wanting to avoid duplicate content and PageRank dilution, you’ll want to employ redirects so as not to squander any link juice (PageRank) that your site has acquired. There are multiple ways of redirecting, and it’s important you get it right if you want the SEO benefit without risk of falling outside search engine guidelines (such as is the case with “conditional redirects”).
Read more here: Redirects: Good, Bad & Conditional
Online Sales Are Up – Gas Costs Turning People to Ecommerce
If you’ve been on the fence as to whether or not to start your own e-commerce store, there is no time like the present. Due to recent and continual hikes in gas costs, more and more people are turning to the web to tackle their shopping. Customers are finding the experience more welcoming than before as e-commerce websites continue to improve in usability. Check out this recent article that states a number of mega-retailers reporting growth in online sales, including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — all are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites. 
Have a online store already? Take advantage of this current panic by being creative with free shipping promotions. Several stores are reminding their customers of the high gas prices. EBags.com, a purveyor of items like dainty clutches and backpacks, sent more than a million members an e-mail message late last month with an illustration of gas pumps set at various migraine-inducing prices. Then there was a pump that said “eBags.” It was set at $0.
More and more people are turning to the web, which means new people are becoming familiar and comfortable with online shopping. Online sales are expected to climb from $175 billion to $200 billion this year, which makes it a perfect time to enter or grow in the ecommerce world!
Content is King
In the world of ecommerce SEO, and the internet for that matter, it is imperative that we understand this foundational rule: Content is King! As you are designing your site, or even looking to improve it, quality content is what the search engines are looking for. So, we must keep that on the forefront of our minds. The best linking strategy in the world can only go so far if it is linking to a content barren site. So, with that in mind here are a few rules to remember about quality content:
1. Make sure your content applies to your specific audience. Whatever product you are selling, have quality content that relates – a no brainer.
2. Have Unique Content – more and more websites are getting in trouble for having duplicate content on their sites or just grabbing it from another site. While it may take a bit more time, take the effort to include unique, quality content. A great place to do this is in your products’ short descriptions.
3. Have a Personality – Let your content be unique to you.
4. Be Grammatically Correct – Make sure your content is understandable and easy to read.
5. Keep it Fresh – Try to update your content as much as possible.
Ok, so while this is a bit basic, it is still so crucial and gets overlooked. Google and other search engines want to rank the most relevant and worthy pages for specific keywords. So, take the time to make sure you are giving them the very best through quality content.
Leveraging Your Happy Customers
Any ecommerce owner knows how important it is to have links pointing back to your site. Well, here is a simple tool that you can use to help leverage your existing satisfied customers. It can be used in multiple variations (ie. widgets, badges, even hand written notes), but here is a simple example to use in a confirmation email after the sale.
Dear _____,
Thank you for ordering from ____ - we strive to ship orders by 4pm each business day.
If you have any comments or suggestions for us, please reply to this email. We value your feedback.
If you happen to have a website or blog of your own, please consider placing a link to ______.com – Every link helps!
Thank you again for your order!
Kindest Regards,
The _____ Staff
The desired effect is a soft sell request to your happy customers, who in turn thank you by placing organic and natural links on their blogs or websites linking back to you! This can also be done by offering a discount off of their next purchase or even cash back. Some even weigh the discount based on the PR of the site sending you the link. Others make it extremely easy by offering a simple cut and past line with the desired anchor text. Regardless of which technique you use, this is a great way to boost your PR and get lots of juicy links pointing back to your site from your happy customers.
How SEO Can Help Your Brand Name
When we typically think of SEO and Branding, we may not link the two together. First, let’s look at what each usually accomplish. The effects of a typical SEO search are that someone out there performs a search. A page of results may point them to your site where he can get marketed and perhaps even buy your product. If for nothing else, you get the advantage of having the traffic on your site for ad revenue.Branding, on the other hand, is a bit different. Some sort of creative content is trying to get out a message, and they push it out through a medium. For example, Coke may be trying to push Coke Zero through some type of medium, either a commercial, magazine, billboard, or even a banner online. This medium hopes to reach a lot of people, and you hope that when this person has a need for your product he remembers you. So, only the people who have a need and recall your brand will be touched. So, how can SEO help with Branding? Here are a few possibilities:
- Appear “all the time” – If your brand is showing up consistently in the top spots on the search engines, people will repeatedly see you and remember you. This happens through tons of content, so that you can show up for lots and lots of tail searches. It’s tough as a small company.
- Optimizing Branded Queries – If someone performs a search for your company. If you can own the results for your brand, some top searches, this will help you.
- Social Media Marketing – In something like Delicious, Digg, or Yahoo’s home page, you can reach lots of people with your message. They may not be interested in your product, but reaching them is just like a Branding strategy.
- Owning High Value, Generic Searches – If you own a generic search phrase like Cincinnati Office Space and have your domain come up with all of it’s links, the search engines are saying you are equivalent to that search, and it’s extremely helpful for branding. Check out Aaron Wall ranking for “seo book” as an example.
When creating an overall ecommerce strategy, it’s important to think through the mixture of both SEO and Branding. To be too far weighted one either side could put you at risk. Developing a strategy with both included will give your company a greater chance at longevity.
To Dropdown or Not To Dropdown
A lot of ecommerce sites these days are implementing dropdown menus for the main navigation. Ecommerce store owners need to be careful with this, as this could potentially reduce your competitiveness on the search engines. Let me explain:
- There are many way to program dropdowns and most of them are not “search engine friendly”. This means that if the main navigation of your site is not usable by the search engine spiders (that come regularly and index all of your pages), that means that many pages on your website will no longer be accessible (other than direct access to the URL) by the spiders.
- The potential impact of #1 is that the internal linking architecture of your site is massive when it comes to competitiveness on the search engines. Making sure your main navigation is usable by the spiders and that your navigation also takes you deep into your subcategories can help you compete better.
So, be careful with dropdowns. If you have to do it, I would suggest using DHTML (not Flash) and supplement with another navigation of your categories/subcategories elsewhere on your site template (that’s accessible on each page).