A whistle-stop, rapid fire tour of e-commerce tips and advice that retailers can implement on their e-commerce websites based our experience working with the creative, marketing, and technical teams of hundreds of niche retailers. The talk will cover practical examples of ways in which you can increase traffic, improve engagement and conversions and generate more sales from retail websites.

1. roger@screenpages.com
How to increase your online sales

2.  300+ e-commerce websites since 1997
 Substantial e-commerce website experience (ca. 100 yrs)
 Magento specialists since 2009
 Award winners & award-winning clients
Screen Pages key facts

4. Agenda
Getting new customers
Engaging customers
Persuading them to buy
Making it simple to purchase
Getting them to come back

5. No silver bullets…

6. First…measure
 Analytics
 Surveys
 Usability studies

7. Google Analytics
Get Google Analytics & build a custom dashboard

8. Whatusersdo & attentionwizard
50 ££s of dynamite

9.  Order confirmation page
 Three questions
 One text box
 Surveymonkey £26 p.m.
Surveys

10. Getting new customers
 SEO
 PPC
 Direct
 Referrals
 Affiliates
 Refer a friend
 Catalogues/lists
 Offline (eg PR)
 Deals with similar brands

11. Getting new customers
Source Traffic Conversion £ per visit
Brand related searches 14.5% 6.3% £4.45
Generic search 14.1% 1.5% £0.55
Paid search 19.9% 3.4% £2.74
Email marketing 20.6% 4.9% £2.73
Referrals 10.5% 2.4% -
Average 3.9% £2.64

12. Funny thing, conversion rate

13. SEO tips
 Page titles
 Meta data
 Keywords in copy (& other places)
 Sitemap
 It’s all about (interesting) content
Google: “SEO in Magento”

14. Get in Google
1.
2.

15. Quick content wins
 Category page copy (hardest pages)
 On domain blog (Wordpress, please)
 Content pages optimised for target keywords
 How to…
 Buying guides
 FAQs
 Ideas/inspiration etc

16. Social Media – pros & cons
 Facebook Like & Tweet (or Share This)
 Distribute your content
 Make videos, host on Youtube & embed
 Get a channel
 But:
 Ca. 1% of traffic & 0.1% conversion
 Exception: “causes”

17. How to measure SEO
 Organic search
 Filter: exclude <your brand name>
 Generic traffic is ca. 25%
Note: apportion “not provided” pro-rata

18. • Case study
• Holy Grail at the end of the ‘long tail’?
• 3,729 search terms = 55% of sales
 5x increase in generic traffic in 6 months
 Increase from 5% to 10% of total traffic
• Looking good?
SEO – holy grail?

19. SEO – the truth
 6% of total sales (vs. 10% of traffic) = lower conversions & ROI
 First page for “watches” (negative ROI)
 No. 5 “swiss watches” = 400 visits per month & no sales
My experience: build a brand.

20.  PR
 Catalogues
Offline marketing still works!

21. Co-operative marketing

22. 27%
21%Opportunity?

23. 2.9%
0.9%
4.5%

24. Speed matters
Each second costs you 7% decrease in conversions

25. % landings bounce%
Home page 39% 17%
Category page 22% 31%
Product page 19% 56%
i.e. not on the home page. Opportunity.
Where do visitors land?
37%
37%

26. Engaging customers
 New/latest/sale
 Promotions (regular & varied)
 Content (lots of it) & photography (lifestyle)
 Make your landing pages compelling (category/product pages)
 Navigation
 Categorisation is critical
 Dropdowns (esp. multi-layered)
 Filters (price, colour etc – but caveat)
 Put your products in the “right” order

27. Special case: category pages
 25-50% of all entrances
 40-50% of all page views
 Three roles:
 Landing pages
 Routing pages
 Conversion pages (with add to basket)
 Yet, sadly overlooked…

28. Product pages
 Copy
 Photography/video
 Call(s) to action / how to transact / service
 Reviews/testimonials
 Instructions
 Delivery & returns
 What if it’s not quite the right product?
 What goes with this?

32. Write great copy
Buy this

33. Persuading them to buy
What makes a good proposition?

34. But first: meet your competitors

35.  Desirable products
 Well presented
 Attractively priced
 Securely paid for
 Nicely delivered
 Communicated on every page
What makes a good proposition?

36.  Delivery
 Returns
 Packaging
 Call-centre
Think hard about delivery & service

38. Customer service
Source:: E-consultancy

39. Work on delivery options
 Standard delivery (free?)
 Next day premium
 Nominated delivery
 ….and communicate them in the right places

40. Reviews & ratings (social endorsement)
Onsite or offsite

41. Make it simple to purchase
 Basket
 Security
 Big buttons (especially for mobile)
 Delivery & other hygiene factors

42. Show your beautiful packaging

43. Make it simple to purchase
 Integrated payments (+ alternate methods)
 No distractions (different header?)
 Language & tone
 Registration or not?
 Example: “pay securely now” vs. “submit”

44. How does it convert?
Quiz time:
which of these checkouts
converts best?

48. Basket and checkout funnel

49. Abandonned basket chaser

50. Getting them back
 Conversion data
 Surveys/Analytics
 Trigger emails
 Email marketing (once a week now, twice for VIPs)
 Loyalty schemes
 Catalogues
Recent survey
26% had 20%+ of traffic from emails.
20% had email traffic converting at 8%+

51.  Build your email database
 Those that do it well, benefit extremely well
 It can performs at 4-7 times regular traffic
 Emails are increasingly opened on mobiles
Guidance:
1. Design your transactional emails
2. Manage & update their content
3. Tag them for Google Analytics
Read this article:
http://www.screenpages.com/email-marketing-20-ways-to-expand-your-email-database
Email marketing (best converting traffic)

52. Loyalty schemes

53. Plan your attack

54. Before you start
1. Agree & quantify business goal
2. Breakdown into key activities
3. Identify metrics for each activity set
4. Define activities to achieve the metrics
5. Measure results
“A goal without a plan is just a wish”

55. Planning taps you can turn
New
customers
Existing
customers
Visits/traffic sources % increase % increase
Orders/conversions % increase % increase
Average order values % increase % increase

57. Ling’s Cars £35m
“…On a website, you are competing with
You Tube, porn sites and Facebook. You are
not trying to out-bore your local council
website. So, open the energy taps, eat
sugar and get on with something exciting.
Split testing/focus groups etc, is just a fast
road to the lowest common denominator,
just as you see in politics; boring.”

58. Things change

59. 22. Keep it simple
“The best website is one that the
customer doesn’t notice”

60. Bonus tip: pick the right platform & agency

61. www.screenpages.com
roger@screenpages.com
@screenpages
01932 333 592
Contact information