Moving Your Business Into the World of ECommerce
By Lena Raman
So, you've finally taken the big step and added a 'shopping cart' onto your website, entered the world of eCommerce and the money will start rolling in, right? Probably not. Adding eCommerce to your website is just the first step in the process of ensuring your website is a successful online shopping portal for your target market. However, there are a few subsequent steps that must be taken to help build and encourage sales from your online store.
Whilst we live in South Africa and international eCommerce statistics are not applicable in terms of general acceptance and online user population making purchases, in the future this will change. Ensuring your business taps into and grows with that market could mean continued revenue from eCommerce.
Conversion rate, the process of converting a person 'browsing' your website to someone performing an action such as buying a product, is the most important aspect of eCommerce.
Understanding this is incredibly important in eCommerce. You can determine the conversion rate of your website using the formula: Total Conversions / Total Visits * 100 = Conversion Rate. It is the sum of all purchases (or actions performed such as newsletter signup) divided by the number of visitors for a selected period, multiplied to give a percentage value.
Consider the two sums below:
Site 1 gets 1,000 new visitors a day and has a conversion rate of 1%
Hence: 1,000 X 0.01 = 10 purchases are made
Site 2 gets 200 new visitors a day and has a conversion rate of 25%
Hence: 200 X 0.25 = 50 purchases are made
Whilst Site 1 gets 500% more visitors and probably boasts lots of other impressive statistics, due to the fact that it has a lower rate it only achieves 20% of the sales that Site 2 does. For this single reason if you have, or are planning on having, an eCommerce solution on your website conversion optimisation of your website is essential.
On any popular website that get high volume traffic on a daily basis just a small percentage increase in conversion rate can mean many more customers. For this reason making changes, analysing user behaviour and statics as well as split-testing are essential.
There are many factors that influence conversion rate including:
- Website cross compatibility - between browsers & devices
- Offer online discounts, promotions and incentives
- Build user trust ie. secure transactions
- Install analytics and use the data
- Selection of payment options
- Make your website accessible
- In-store pick up
- Free shipping
For more on internet marketing visit www.BizAssist.co.za
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