Category Archives: Conversion Tracking

Smart Conversions: An Outsider’s Perspective

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This is a guest post from Kyle Sanders, an eCommerce entrepreneur and co-founder of Complete Web Resources.

There is a ton of information available on the web about what you should test on your website. Conversion optimization experts have a litany of conflicting opinions regarding which elements are the most testworthy, as well as which ones you should continually be testing.

Like most business owners with an online store, I had little to no experience optimizing for conversion and started testing random elements based on suggestions from blog owners and experts I didn’t know. Button colors, trust symbols, and guarantees were on heavy rotation for several months but only yielded minor increases in sitewide conversion rate. Building out great product pages helped somewhat, but the increases were less than satisfying. Disappointed, my business partner and I began searching for other options. There were a few tools that streamlined the process and made it easier, but in the end, we were making design changes in a market with mature competition and a large number of brands with heavily enforced MAPs (minimum advertised price).

After much discussion, we knew we needed a way to test promotional pricing and other offers while maintaining the integrity of our website. There were free options and a few fly-out coupons and menus, but most offered minimal design control and provided no data other than number of times a coupon was used (which was already available via our cart software). Sure, it was data, but the time to process it and evaluate made it tedious. We needed a better overall solution.

Enter Spring Metrics

My partner found and suggested Smart Conversions from Spring Metrics. There was a 14-day trial, so we got started right away. What initially impressed me the most was how easy and useful the conversion data was; we didn’t need to be analysts to understand any of the data or reports. Everything was clean, understandable and allowed for quick decisions and iterative testing.

Using Smart Offers for Solid Conversion Lifts

In addition to the effortless conversion tracking, we implemented several different smart offers based on visitor data and time-on-site that doubled our conversion rate almost overnight.

Our most impressive Smart Offer is for visitors that have been browsing our store for more than 5 minutes; it converts at a whopping 22.63 percent. The offer is displayed in a completely controllable fly-out that you can customize to match the look and feel of your website (you can also use bold colors, if desired, to draw more attention to the offer). The beauty of Smart Offers is that they look and feel organic and can be easily dismissed if the visitor isn’t interested. View the offer below.

In addition to the above, we also offered “10 percent off” for orders over $50 for individuals who have either:

a) never visited our website before (this one converts at 2.59 percent)

Google Shopping Offer

or

b) who visited before and didn’t purchase anything (this one converts at a stronger 5.69 percent)

For the eCommerce space, all three offers outperform industry-standard conversion rates and have increased our average order value substantially. In addition to that, I’m confident Smart Offers will be the most effective way to deliver and test offers during the upcoming holiday season. For the cost, it’s an unbelievable value for any online business. I’m also confident that Smart Offers will prove the most efficient means of delivering and testing offers during the upcoming holiday season.

The Unexpected SEO Benefit

Through using Smart Offers in conjunction with Spring Metrics conversion tracking, we are able to get a quick, real-time breakdown of exactly how our customers were searching before arriving at our site—and more importantly, which search terms most frequently results in conversions on our site. The recent algorithmic updates rolled out by Google (namely Penguin) makes it increasingly important to maintain a highly diverse link profile.

After checking our incoming keywords and real-time conversions several times per week, our SEO strategy was revamped completely. Rather than optimize primarily for brand-related terms, we were able to create a highly diverse link profile based on the data from Spring Metrics, which has directly resulted in stable organic placements through the most recent Penguin data refresh (10/6/2012).

There are several ways to optimize for and track conversions, and everyone has an opinion about which works best. We chose Spring Metrics. It worked for us and we wouldn’t recommend anything else.

Speed Dating and an Evening of Marriage Proposals

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Speed Dating

Let me set the scene:  It’s 8pm on a Thursday evening and you make your way to a row of tables set up at the back of a local bar.  After plunking down three $20 bills, you grab a name tag and take a seat.  Over the next 90 minutes you will go on 30 “dates,” each lasting three minutes each.

For some of your “competitors,” the goal is simply to meet someone interesting and schedule a more meaningful second date – but for you, you have a plan and a purpose:   to leave the bar with a new fiancé.  I mean, a 3% conversion rate seems possible right, and with a cost-per-date of $2, you can definitely afford to cast your net wide.

Can you say “reeks of desperation?”  Seriously do you think anyone would try and find a marriage partner this way?  And if they did, do you think they would be happy with the result?

So tell me this – Why do so many businesses use EXACTLY the same method, the “I know we just met, but I’d like to get in your pants, err I mean I like to have your credit card number please?”

A Better Approach

As I was thinking about this article, I came across an excellent post from Lee Odden called Is a Rush to Revenue Hurting Your Marketing Innovation & Domination?  I especially like the diagram that Lee put together (shown below) which outlines a solid approach to customer acquisition.

Customer Lifecycle

Does this mean that each of these steps is a necessary checkmark before moving along to the next?  Absolutely not; however it does suggest that there is a process of earning trust before a business should think about a selling proposition.

John Jantsch (a frequent contributor to the Spring Metrics Blog) seems to be singing from a similar hymnal when he talks about “The Marketing Hourglass” in his new, free eBook called “How to Build a Remarkable Business by Focusing on the Total Customer Experience.”   In the book, John outlines a process of Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer.

If you are selling cheap widgets, the speed dating approach might be right for you.  But if your business has a higher value proposition, be patient and appropriate with each individual prospect.

Increasing Social Engagement at the Time of Purchase

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social engagementHere at Spring Metrics, we’ve been helping our customers increase their social engagement and we’ve been seeing some noteworthy results. After gathering data for a few months now, we’re able to share some early and surprising figures.

While the public debate about the impact of social media on your online business continues (our data shows they are clearly positively correlated, and the only question should be how much a Like or Follow is worth to your business), many e-commerce merchants and retailers are quietly getting on with the business of adding social media to their toolkit.

Looking at the question from a different perspective, we have seen that catalyzing your following at the time of purchase by enticing buyers to become advocates has increased social engagement, as measured by the total number of Likes, by 23% in an average of six weeks. That’s a stunning result, and we humbly believe only partly due to our product and our awesome support team; the rest is due to simply leveraging the opportunity at the right time, when the visitor is at the point of purchase and feeling good about their decision.

Also captivating is that in early results we’re seeing that more than half of the visitors will Like or Follow, but then not purchase… yet. It’s too early to show stats on how many of those social advocacy actions turn in to purchases at a later date, but we can see that it’s not zero. And looking at the infographic we released today you can see that 54% feel more likely to purchase after Liking. So rather than simply losing the momentum of that visitor after the non-converting visit, you have preserved on average 54% of the time and money you spent attracting that visitor. And of course there’s the indirect effect, again too early to quote stats but it’s not zero either; customers are seeing a clear increase in sales from social media channels.

5 Ways to Make the Most of Real-time Data

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Every businessperson knows that good data makes you smarter. Well, a truer statement might be that an accurate analysis of the right data can make a company smarter, but lack of any data can be fatal.

Today’s reliance on the web and social media requires real time tracking and analytics that are delivered in real time. This isn’t just a way to feed the obsession over traffic and other sometimes meaningless stats, this is a valuable way to view and react to business opportunities as swiftly as they arise.

Speed may indeed be the most important competitive business advantage.

With real time data tools you can:

React to mentions of you brand more fully – you’ll know the minute your business has been mentioned by a blogger or other online publication and the implication that mention may have in terms of traffic and potential reciprocal reactions. You may choose to go comment on every post that mentions your brand, but you may really make it a priority to comment on a post that is sending buckets of traffic your way.

Interact with site visitors live – you’ll get a view of who is visiting your site in a live mode and witness where they came from, what paths they take and where they exit. Some real time stats packages actually allow you to launch a browser chat session with a specific visitor that, say, clicks on several links like they are looking for something.

Watch your test in real time – You can track A/B split tests and see immediately not only what page is getting conversions, but what visitors are doing and not doing on each test page. I think this might allow you to make your testing adjustments much faster and more accurately.

Test your PPC campaigns in real time – Google AdWords data is often hours old and, in my experience, not terribly accurate. By monitoring a new ad campaign you real time you can know immediately which ad version or which landing page version is a winner in a matter of moments.

Understand the impact of your blog posts – I’m still puzzled sometimes by the reaction to my blog posts. I find it very hard to predict when something I’ve written is going to catch fire. With real time stats I know within minutes of publishing if I’ve happened to spark a reaction with readers and that gives me the cue to get proactive about promoting the post in bookmarking sites and social networks much more aggressively. I don’t like to promote everything I publish in this manner, so this gives me the filter to know when to amplify big right away.

There are by my guess dozens of packages available that can help you get web site data in real time. Some are free and some come with monthly fees.

For some, the idea of a monthly fee for the benefit of stats in real time may feel excessive, but in the increasingly competitive web world, the businesses that react the fastest win.

Take your Analytics & Shove ‘Em

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Spring Metrics is Presenting at Internet Summit 2011

Our very own CEO and recovered web analytics addict, Doug Kaufman, is presenting on the Mobile & Web Analytics Panel at Internet Summit 2011 in Raleigh on Wednesday November 16th.

Hear how Doug found analytics happiness by focusing on fewer metrics, but the ones that really matter for online businesses. (Hint: It’s all about the conversions!)

Conversion Tracking

If you are going to the event, be sure to grab a seat – This session was packed last year!

 

Updated Spring Metrics Dashboard

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If you have subscribed to the Spring Metrics service recently, you have probably noticed some significant improvements to the look-and-feel and features of our dashboard. These improvements include:

  • A completely redesigned user interface. Along with a top ribbon which shows you key metrics, we have also created a more dynamic, color coded status which alerts you visually to changes in trends.
  • Introduced a new concept called “channels” which allows you to easily compare and contrast the results from different campaigns.
  • Drill down – From the highest level channel, you can click down through multiple layers to see what is happening at the most granular level. For example, you can compare how Paid is doing versus Direct versus Social versus Search, and then drill down into Paid to see which how Paid Search compares to Paid Content.
  • Contextual awareness – click on the Conversions box in the top ribbon and all info on the dashboard represents conversions….click on Visits and everything morphs to show metrics revolving around visits. Instead of seeing how many people visited the site, you can see what all those visits mean with respect to your conversions, revenue, etc.

While this isn’t a complete list of everything we have recently rolled out, it does represent some areas you might be interested in exploring further. And stay tuned. We are working on additional improvements that should be coming your way in the next few weeks….

New Feature: Untrack Your IP Address

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Sometimes your visits to your own website can obfuscate your true performance metrics. A number of our customers have requested — and we have now delivered — the ability to specify “Untracked IP Addresses” that will not register in Spring Metrics’ numbers.  

 

To “Untrack” your IP address, start by clicking on “My Account” 

 

…and scroll down to the “Untracked IP Addresses” area, and enter your IP address in the area appropriate box.

 

Turning Web Garbage Into Gold

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Many people think the holy grail for analytics tools is identifying which campaigns work and drive sales. You know, the stuff that ‘works’ and increases ROI. I agree that when current analytics tools can do this well, it will be a great day for everyone.

However, I would argue that finding problems and things that are lowering your total ROI is just as important —you know, finding the garbage that’s stinking up your campaigns, your traffic, and your site. Continue reading “Turning Web Garbage Into Gold” »

Think Data Make You Look Cool? Think Again.

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In my opinion, there are few people that understand web analytics better than Avinash Kaushik – he’s brilliant. And there are few people that are more passionate about web analytics. If you haven’t read his blog, I highly recommend it. That said, there are plenty of times I disagree with him–in fact, I believe we have very different perspectives on many aspects of web analytics–but I never question his uber-mastery of the subject. Continue reading “Think Data Make You Look Cool? Think Again.” »