Conversion rates

[Raymond]

I have been working on improving my conversion rate for the past 2 months. My site suffered a very low conversion rate (<0.5%) and now it has gone up to around 1.0% after many revisions of the functionality and navigation optimizations.

Our traffic comes from search engines (40%), affliates (20%) and direct enter of our URL (~30%). I have consulted a few SEO professionals about my conversion rates. All of them told me that even at 1%, my conversion is still fairly poor considering the quality of the hits. They claim that the norm for conversion of direct URL hits should be at least 2% to as high as 10%. Most of my visitors KNOW what to expect from my site and all keywords are narrowed down to a specific niche. We consider our site pretty well designed for our targeted market. We accept credit cards as well as paypal. Cart abandon rate is 70%. Because of the low conversion, we cannot afford PPC. We tried Adwords but it resulted in an overall loss of 10% revenue.

We are running out of things to do. We do realize our cart abandon rate is quite high and that is what we are working on. Can anyone suggest other things that we could work on?

[blaze]

Sticky me your website, I'll take a look.

Few ideas, though:

- money back guarantees and information on how to return
- more assurance of support, such as physical address, contact information, 1800 numbers, live chat, and email contact forms
- lower the price
- simpler and more compelling value propositions in your creatives
- simpler/cleaner layout
- load times
- more features, better product

[Compworld]

Had the same problem. Removed the requirement for registration and logging in and sales are now better than normal. *Knock on wood* :) Also, you have to make sure you are targeting the right places and interests. For instance, if you will not ship outside of the US or CAN, then try not to target those sites that serve those areas. Additionally, if you are selling home & garden products, advertise on home & garden type of sites. For instance, if you are selling home & garden products, don't advertise on an automobile site. Also, stay away from RON campaigns. It seems that you may be in a competitive field, so you are going to have to go back to the drawing board and think up some new ideas. Free shipping, Live Support, Toll-Free Q & A, etc. That should give you a good place to start.

Best of luck!

CompWorld

[derekwong28]

By doubling your conversion, you have probably done what can be done with your site. The only real thing you can do is to look at product pricing. It is not possible to compare conversion rates across different industries and sectors. The only people who you can compare to are your competitors.

Google Adwords have become extremely hard to handle. It is very difficult to get in with highly targetted search terms.

For the first time ever, the no. of our conversions from Overture will exceeds that of Adwords this month. But the conversion rate from Overture is more than twice that of Adwords. What we are doing is to bid for very highly targeted search terms that are often up to 4 words long. We have now got thousands of terms in Overture. It is very hard work but is worthwhile in the end.

[danieljean]

Wow, excellent posts so far.

A couple more suggestions:
-Run a small usability test. Some of the best insights I got were from early tests... 3 people are all that's needed to find any obvious problems.

-If you can, I recommend buying "Ecommerce User Experience" by Nielsen et al. It has a nice, long check-list of recommendations, some of which are very easy to implement.

[tmaglobal]

Tracking and conversions ... I have been using tracking software in a B2B environment and have recently picked up an account for B2C. It is important that the conversion rates are benchmarked.

From research it seems B2C conversion rates sit between 1 - 3% on average. Does anyone have anything to add that can help me?

Thanks

[cfx211]

Have you looked at conversion by segments? If all of your traffic converts at the same low rate then its probably your site. If one traffic source converts at a much higher rate than another, then you are getting unqualified traffic.

Try looking at conversion by product if you can, or at least look at your bestsellers and see if they all have something in common that the rest of your products are lacking.

[T_Bill]

This is one of the best threads I've read here.

I'd like to add the value of a one page order form. We had similar cart abandonment rates until we went from 5 steps to order down to one. This change resulted in nearly a 30% increase in orders. Obviously, this is from a lower cart abandonment rate.

Do you mind sending me your url? If you are not a competitor, I'll offer a few more suggestions.

[iamlost]

Cart abandon rate is 70%.

A few general suggestions:

1. determine where they are jumping out: are there one or two places that need redesign?
   
2. stock availability on each product page - no surprise at the end.
   
3. ensure the least number of steps to order possible
   
4. cart items should link back to product page for handy reference.
   
5. make each next-step and where in the checkout process they are obvious.
   
6. making changes to cart contents must be obvious and easy.
   

You might try a focus group - ask several family/friends and their partners to cruise your site and review your site: appearance, navigation, information level, sales effect, ordering process, etc. Don't hang around while they do this! Can be very helpful.

[Shane]

danialjean is on the right track!

Wow, excellent posts so far.
A couple more suggestions:
-Run a small usability test. Some of the best insights I got were from early tests... 3 people are all that's needed to find any obvious problems.

-If you can, I recommend buying "Ecommerce User Experience" by Nielsen et al. It has a nice, long check-list of recommendations, some of which are very easy to implement.

I work for a large shop and we do usability testing with 3 people who have not seen the site before. Then make changes and test again with the same 3 people and with 3 new people. Works like a dream.

Ecommerce User Experience" by Nielsen et al is good but do the above first to get your biggest bang for the buck as soon as possible.

Good Luck,
Shane