The document outlines strategies for increasing online sales through best practices in e-commerce, emphasizing customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. Key techniques include optimizing SEO, effective use of email marketing, and enhancing user experience on websites. It also highlights the importance of analytics and ongoing measurement to adapt strategies for better results.

1. roger@screenpages.com
50 ways to increase your online sales

2.  300+ e-commerce websites since 1997
 Substantial e-commerce website experience (ca. 100 yrs)
 Magento specialists since 2009 (ca. 100 implementations)
Screen Pages key facts

4. Best practice e-commerce
Bespoke/customised websites – down to the
last pixel
Professionally designed & specified &
constructed
Heavily content-managed by you
Functionally rich/complex + integrated with
ERP/back office
Fast, reliable & scaleable
It’s going to be changed almost as soon as it’s
Our philosophy to website building

5. Agenda
Getting new customers
Engaging customers
Persuading them to buy
Making it simple to purchase
Getting them to come back

6. No silver bullets…
….it’s good old-fashioned hardwork

7. First…measure
 Analytics – build a custom dashboard
 Surveys
 Usability studies
50 ££s of dynamite

8.  Order confirmation page
 Three questions
 One text box
 Surveymonkey £26 p.m.
The answer to the “survey debate”

9. Getting new customers
 Email
 SEO
 PPC
 Referrals
 Affiliates
 Marketplaces
 Catalogues/lists
 Offline (eg PR)
 Hidden gem: retargeting

10. Getting new customers
Source Traffic Conversion £ per visit
Brand related searches 14.5% 6.3% £4.45
Generic search 14.1% 1.5% £0.55
Paid search 19.9% 3.4% £2.74
Email marketing 20.6% 4.9% £2.73
Referrals 10.5% 2.4% -
Average 3.9% £2.64

11. Funny thing, conversion rate

12. SEO basics
 Page titles
 Meta data
 Keywords in copy (& other places)
 Sitemap
 You should be able to “content-manage” the onsite assets
 It’s all about (interesting) content
 You can’t trick Google
 Mobile is now a big issue for many

13. Other ways to get in Google
1.
2.
3.
4.

14. Content marketing dumbed down
Category page copy (hardest pages *** more later)
On domain blog (Wordpress, please)
Content pages optimised for target keywords
 How to…
 Buying guides
 FAQs
 Ideas/inspiration etc

15. Articles, style guides [& video]

16. Buying guides

17. How to & tips

18. Social Media
 Facebook Like & Tweet (or Share This)
 Distribute your content
 Make videos, host on Youtube & embed
 Get a channel
 But:
 Ca. 1% of traffic & 0.1% conversion
 Exception: “causes”

19. • Case study
 Holy Grail at the end of the ‘long tail’?
 3,729 search terms = 55% of sales
 5x increase in generic traffic in 6 months
 Increase from 5% to 10% of total traffic
• Looking good!?
SEO – holy grail?
 6% of total sales (vs. 10% of traffic) = lower conversions & ROI
 No. 5 “swiss watches” = 400 visits per month & no sales
 First page for “watches” (negative ROI)

20.  PR
 Catalogues
 Inserts
Offline marketing

21. How to get good PR

22. Sign of the times

23. 27%
21%Mobile opportunity?

24. 2.9%
0.9%
4.5%
Mobile conversions

25. Mobile usage

26. Speed matters
Each second costs you a 7% decrease in conversions

27.  85,000+ visitors on both 13th & 14th November
 20,000 orders processed
 Appeal raised £32m
 Two front-end, load balanced servers
 One database server
 Magento Enterprise
 Synchronised with eBay store
 Integrated with warehouse
Scale, load & peaks

28. Engaging customers
 New/latest/sale
 Promotions (regular & varied)
 Content (lots of it) & photography (lifestyle)
 Make your landing pages compelling (category & product pages)
 Navigation
 Categorisation is critical
 Dropdowns (esp. multi-layered)
 Filters (price, colour etc – but caveat)
 Put your products in the “right” order

29. Navigation

30. Customer engagement fail

31. % landings bounce%
Home page 39% 17%
Category page 22% 31%
Product page 19% 56%
i.e. not on the home page. Opportunity.
Where do visitors land?
37%

32. Special case: category pages
 25-50% of all entrances
 BUT: 40-50% of all page views
 Three roles:
 Landing pages
 Routing pages
 Conversion pages (with add to basket)
 Yet, sadly overlooked…
Remember:
68% of people don’t arrive on the home page.
About 4 in 10 of these bounce

33. Category page

34. Product pages
 Bullets and copy
 Photography/video
 Call(s) to action / how to transact / service
 Reviews/testimonials
 Why are you selling it?
 Instructions
 Delivery & returns
 What if it’s not quite the right product?
 What goes with this?

38. Write great copy
Buy this

39. Anatomy of a product page
Link: http://www.smartinsights.com/conversion-optimisation/product-page-optimisation/retail-product-page/

40. Persuading them to buy
What makes a good proposition?

41. First: meet your competitors

42.  Desirable products
 Well presented
 Attractively priced
 Securely paid for
 Nicely delivered
 Communicated on every page
What makes a good proposition?

44. Persuading visitors to buy
Service & “hygiene factors”
Delivery
Returns
Packaging
Call-centre

46. Customer service
Source:: E-consultancy

47. Work on delivery options
 Standard delivery (free?)
 Next day premium
 Nominated delivery
 ….and communicate them

48. Reviews & ratings (social endorsement)
Onsite or offsite

49. Make it simple to purchase
 Basket
 Security
 Big buttons (especially for mobile)

50. Show your beautiful packaging

51. Make it simple to purchase
 Integrated payments (+ alternate methods)
 No distractions (different header?)
 Registration or not?
 Language & tone
 Example: “pay securely now” vs. “submit”

52. Quiz time: which checkout performs best?

56. Abandonned basket chaser
 13.3% of these emails are clicked
 35% of these clicks lead to a
purchase
 AOV is 19% higher

57. Getting them back
 Conversion data
 Surveys/Analytics
 Trigger emails
 Email marketing (once a week now, twice for VIPs)
 Loyalty schemes
 Catalogues
Recent survey
26% had 20%+ of traffic from emails.
20% had email traffic converting at 8%+

58.  Build your email database
 Those that do it well, benefit extremely well
 It can performs at 4-7 times regular traffic
 Emails are increasingly opened on mobiles
Guidance:
1. Design your transactional emails
2. Manage & update their content
3. Tag them for Google Analytics
Read this article:
http://www.screenpages.com/email-marketing-20-ways-to-expand-your-email-database
Email marketing (best converting traffic)

59. Loyalty schemes

60. Plan your attack

61. But first….
1. Agree & quantify business goal
2. Breakdown into key activities
3. Identify metrics for each activity set
4. Define activities to achieve the metrics
5. Measure results
“A goal without a plan is just a wish”

62. Planning taps you can turn
New
customers
Existing
customers
Visits/traffic sources % increase % increase
Orders/conversions % increase % increase
Average order values % increase % increase

64. Ling’s Cars £35m
“…On a website, you are competing with
You Tube, porn sites and Facebook. You are
not trying to out-bore your local council
website. So, open the energy taps, eat
sugar and get on with something exciting.
Split testing/focus groups etc, is just a fast
road to the lowest common denominator,
just as you see in politics; boring.”

65. Things change

66. Keep it simple
“The best website is one that the
customer doesn’t notice”
Source: Screen Pages’ 5th E-commerce Forum, 2013

67. Bonus tip: pick the right platform & agency

68. roger@screenpages.com
@screenpages
01932 359 160
Thank you