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In the early days of some religions, especially Christianity, a lot of pagan people had to convert or face death by beheading. Today, consumers are faced with endless marketing, there’s always a brand trying to pull them towards their “club”. For example, PC vs Mac, iPhone iOS & Android, BMW VS AUDI VS Mercedes VS Cadillac VS Lincoln, Pepsi & Coke, etc. The consequence of picking the wrong brand can be less costly however consumers need to know that they’ve made an informed decision. And knowing you’ve Incorporated best ethical conversion tactics is something your business should be proud of.

Currently,[People convert to a different religion for various reasons, including: active conversion by free choice due to a change in beliefs,secondary conversion, deathbed conversion, conversion for convenience and marital conversion, and forced conversion] through intimidation.

We also live in a world that has elements of persuasive conversion. You want that guy to ask you out? Figure out how. You want that superstar MIT programmer to join your team? Figure out how.  You want that F500, INC. 500 company to use your services, then figure out how to grab attention and convert.

As a founder, cmo, sales manager, president, or a business owner, you know there’s only one critical thing that matters in business---that’s sales. And to get sales you need quality prospects, you need to qualify these prospects, and you need to sale, deliver, & get repeat business. In online business, conversion marketing is the act of converting site visitors into paying customers. Like a brick & mortar retail store. However, everyone slightly has different definition and tactics of conversion. So the team at BJ MANNYST have been kind enough to sponsor this helpful article.

Causes of Conversion Failure:

An astonishing 97 out of 100 online shoppers leave a site without buying a damn thing. That’s not news to you. This is, “According to eMarketer, marketers spent $23 billion on online search and display ads in 2008, while Forrester estimates that in the same year companies only spent about $250 million on site optimization. In other words, for every $92 spent online to acquire traffic, only $1 was spent to proactively convert this traffic. For many retailers, traffic numbers are stellar, yet conversions are dismal.”    

There’s the problem, in a competitive world you cannot afford to waste site visitors. Some causes:  

  

• Signage, images or words might be confusing
• Products or services might not be displayed in a visually appealing or convenient manner
• Site, products are not relevant to their tastes and needs
• Didn’t offer assistance to the customer in finding the right product
• Didn’t help customer locate an alternative
• Price isn’t right
• Promotion just doesn’t appeal to them
• No or terrible step-by-step purchase process
• No personalization and assistance in accomplish goals
• Terrible experience on your site from beginning to end
• Terrible or irrelevant landing page
• See lots of features very little display of benefits
• Page view times on specific pages really low
• Repeat customers not as receptive as before
• Long, tedious forms, process required for purchase

Questions, Solutions & Tips:

How easy you make it for them to make a decision to buy and actually complete the purchase.
The critical questions to ask yourself are:  
1, Is your site gaining traffic traction ?
2, Are you measuring it with tools like Google Analytics?
3, Is your site really achieving its revenue objectives?
4, How well have you tried ethical conversion methods to get the most ROI from social media, apps, offline stores, blogs, trade shows, eBooks?
5, What else could your team be doing?

• Customers must easily find tailored content on your home or landing page that is relevant to what they are searching for based on something specific to them. For example, if you know the local weather is rain, where the visitor is coming from, you can emphasize a Netflix night at home.
• Visitors need to be directed fast and exposed to an uncluttered, easy-to navigate, well categorized and efficient search results pages.
• Ask yourself how relevant the content you are presenting is to what the shopper is trying to accomplish on your site at that particular moment in time.
• Test, test, and test everything. From the your offers, products you display, words, images to the purchase process, it’s essential that you know what works and what doesn’t so you can constantly make adjustment.
• It is really important to look at what goes on in between start and finish.
• Taking a look at customer behaviors Improve engagement on your home page and landing pages. So make a great first impression
• Studies show that you have somewhere between three and eight seconds to really engage online shoppers
• It’s important to base actions on facts and analysis of customer behaviors not just instincts.
• Experiment with your home page, try different images, themes, color schemes, words, position, tone, etc
• Once your shoppers start to search for specific products or browse your product categories, they are explicitly communicating intent.
• In fact, visitors who use site search functions are your most-likely-to-convert shoppers.
• Decision-making criteria are, and this gives you an opportunity to optimize product placement or make offers based on that insight.
• Keep in mind that while these shoppers often know exactly what they want down to the brand and style, they are open to possibilities and want to experience the breadth of choices available to them.
• Make emphasis and guide shoppers to the most relevant information and products.
• Make It easy for shoppers to finalize their decisions on your product / service pages so your product details page should help them do just that. Example: detailed product descriptions, product benefits,  customer reviews, third party credible reviews, alternative product views, customization, videos are all proving to really help in conversion.
• Basically, observe your site and services from the buyers perspective.
• When the products are in the cart, this is your chance to close the sale, great opportunity to cross-sell, as long you stay relevant, keep focus on closing the sale.
• Zero distractions while they finalize the purchase. It doesn’t hurt to remind them of return policy, guarantees, free shipping, your benefits etc anything to minimize their risk.
• Occasionally suggest impulse or complimentary services once primary item as been paid for.
• Recommend what other shoppers had purchased.

Worst Case & Extra:

• If shoppers do abandon their carts, or don’t finalize their purchase, it is a good idea to follow up a few hours or a day later with an e-mail with relevant content and promotions or wondering if they have further questions.
• Have a system in place for recovered revenue or revenue that comes in from following up, order confirmation e-mails, retention marketing, great customer service.
• Improving conversion is an ongoing goal
• To accomplish this, it is important to select tools that support all aspects of optimization and give you everything you need to test and target content and offers,

Further Knowledge:

The consumer mind is no different from yours. There are frequent and common questions that comes up.

Where am I?
Does this site stand a chance of meeting my needs?
Do I need this product or service?
Is this the right website for me to purchase from?
What is the downside?
What would be the impact of making the wrong choice?
What users are sub-consciously trying to determine is ‘how likely is it that I will be able to attain my goal during this visit?’  

Common questions to ask your team.

• What do they want from us?
• What are the standard expectations?
• What is the distance for them to attaining their goals?
• Do we have great UI, UX, personnel experience that presents users with a clear path?
• Have we removed unnecessarily items, distractions, dead links, link leaks?
• In the payment purchase process have you removed irrelevant navigation, nothing links to the homepage?
• The only links on the page are the ones directly required to complete that stage in the funnel?
• A progress tracker is displayed to communicate distance remaining to the goal?
• What do we want our conversion tactics to achieve: awareness, subscription, downloads, trials, etc?

Thanks To Wikipedia:

Common Conversion Marketing Services

Recommendations - Behavioral analysis that identifies products and content relevant to the customer’s perceived intent.
Targeted Offers - Targeting attempts to fit the right promotion with the right customer based upon behavioral and demographic information.
Ratings and Reviews - Using user-generated ratings and reviews to increase conversion rates, capture feedback, and engender visitor’s trust.
Email Personalization - Email with embedded recommendations and chat that are tailored personally to the recipient.
Chat - As consumers tend to abandon sites after only three clicks, attempts to use proactive chat, reactive chat, exit chat, and click-to-call to convert consumers quickly.
Click-to-Call - Supports cross-channel conversion without losing the context of the conversation when visitors move from the website to the phone.
Voice of the Customer - Feedback about products, services, and online experiences that is captured through carefully analyzed structured and unstructured data.
Automated Guides – predetermined steps that allow a customer to better understand product features, and options to assist with the selection process.
Re-Targeting – Identification of visitors interested in particular products or services based on previous site browsing or search to offer relevant content through targeted ad placement.

Other Methods of increasing conversion rates in e-commerce:

Among the many actions taken to attempt to increase the conversion rate, these are the most relevant:
Generate user reviews of the product or service
Improve credibility and trust by showing third-party trust logos and by good site design
Use AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to move the user through the conversion funnel

***Some insights were inspired by Kevin Lindsay Director, Product Marketing at Adobe article “The Online Retail Conversion Guide” & Adam Justis Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Adobe, Wikipedia,

Sponsor: For further assistance with your marketing challenges and marketing solutions, Contact Us, BJ MANNYST. Plus, Pick Up Marketing Special eBook called, "Quickly Fix & Improve Marketing".

[BJ Mannyst can take you from idea to execution and work with you through the tough process it takes to get the right strategy or boost your current initiative. For a free consultation, contact BJ Mannyst