Sure, sale conversions are the ultimate goal for Ecommerce business websites, however I do not think they should be the main focus of your marketing campaigns. Moving the focus from the sale to the views and interactions will create campaigns that will produce the conversions, however not right away. A lot of marketers may not see it this way, however I have proven through success of my campaigns that focusing on an action other than the conversions can produce even more sales in the end.
Marketing with a “non-sales” focus
Some people enjoy being sold to, but most people don’t. With today’s tools, it is much easier to nab that conversion when they are ready and not shoving it in their face from the get go. When I create a campaign for social or email, I prefer to create the call to action to produce any other action than a conversion. My overall goal is eyeballs. I use the term “eyeballs” because that is what it is. Getting the eyes on your site and your business. Once they land on the website, any action taken is valuable.
Following is a list of potential actions that a visitor may take on the website, why they are valable to your campaign and how you can get the conversion.
The Bounce
Why is the bounce valuable? For a multitude of reasons. First, it gives you the opportunity to see which pages need work and need tested. I live for testing, so I enjoy bounces as much as the conversion. Testing gives you the opportunity to create alternate versions of that page and find out what these visitors respond to and what makes them back away. Because testing is an ongoing process that should continually be repeated, bounces allow you to focus your work.
How to get “the bounce” back?
Depends on where the bounce came from, however Re-Marketing is my biggest solution for converting the bounced visitor. Obviously, something brought them to you in the first place, so depending on how your Re-Marketing campaigns are set-up, you could have 30 days to get them back. We don’t always know the reason they bounced and they may still have interest enough to visit once again. In addition, if the bounce was a result of an AdWords campaign, depending on how it is set-up, the sale conversion will report up to 30 days after the visit which allows you track advanced metrics.
The Social Visitor
So, someone visited your site and was enticed by a social icon and went there, liked your page, subscribed to your updates but did not convert. This is fabulous! Why? The visitor showed enough interest to do so. If they are not ready to buy now, you now have them in your social grasp.
How to get “the social visitor” to convert
Perhaps they are looking for a coupon or a deal or they may just want to learn more about the company. If your social campaign is not consistently asking for the sale, they will likely visit again when they see something that interests them. Keeping your social feed human, engaging and offering an occasional deal can get this visitor back. Re-Marketing could also affect this visitor, doubling your chances for a later sale.
Non-converting visitors are just as valuable as converting ones. While I admit that immediate sales are fabulous, shifting the focus to your non-converting visitors will help your online shop achieve a long-tail conversion stream. Thoughts? Let me know!
I just launched Vint.me, which is a pet project that initially came to me as I was driving in the car. Literally. For those who are familiar with my history with the vintage clothing market, this project will be welcomed with great understanding. For those who don’t, the quick and dirty is that I spent at least 10 years selling vintage clothing online in a multitude of ways, utilizing every possible method and I learned how to market vintage. Really well.
I miss it to a point. This lead to Vint.me. I wanted to open the file of all of the knowledge I gained and incorporate a lot of my recent knowledge in this project. I also wanted something that would let me participate in this niche market without actually having to do all of the work in running an online store (call me lazy). It became a labor of love…and I am quite proud of it. By “labor of love”, I am referring to the gigantic pain that it was and all of the jQuery I had to teach myself to build it. It was worth it. There are some things I just had to incorporate into the site, which were vital to the vision, that did not come easy. Such as:
Front-end subscriber posting (WOW…what a pain)
Mobile responsiveness
Social “sharability”
and ease of use
It took me 3 solid days to create this from start to finish, and I did use a great theme…however the theme needed a severe amount of “tweaking” to match my vision.
This project filled a big need, which I have yet to see developed. There are excellent shopping engines out there like The Find, however they are not niche by any means. The other need this fills is creating a place where shoppers can shop every possible store at once…and only stores that offer genuine vintage clothing. If you have ever tried to look for something specific in the vintage clothing market, you know what I mean. Once user numbers increase (which in a few days has already gained quite a bit of growth), it will be an excellent outlet for shoppers for shop a lot of places at once while knowing that what they are looking at is genuine vintage.
If you have an opinion about this project…certainly let me know! It is still a baby.