Individualization for Higher CR, AOV, and Repeat Purchases
There has always been a bit of competitiveness between Digital Marketers and eCommerce Managers, sometimes unspoken and sometimes not. Marketers tend to look at site visitation rates from ad exposure or engagement and then track it down to the CR. When the CR doesn’t keep up with the visitation rates, friction occurs. “Hey, we got them there, you just didn’t close them.” Well, at least that’s the sentiment. So what can we do to make this better? Well, drive higher conversion rates, larger average order values, and more repeat purchases of course.
When I was on the marketing side of things, we used to look at CR and AOV online vs in-store and in-store was always significantly higher. This was mostly accepted but rarely questioned. Things are different now and we expect online CR/AOV to be much closer to in-store so how can we achieve this? The reason in-store numbers are higher is because of the experience. I can walk into a store and see all the merchandise nicely laid out across the store. If I need assistance, there is someone there to help me find an item, look for matching items, or look for something in the back. The experience is personal and so we spend more. My typical Nordstrom experience was going there to buy a sport coat or suit (so old school now). And after every time I was in the fitting room or working with the tailor, the salesperson was on the floor building custom pairings for me. He would have a shirt, tie, and shoes ready to show me. I always at least bought the shirt that I probably didn’t need but now wanted. This helped convert my order and increase the order size by $60-100 or more. It was this experience that always had me coming back to Nordstrom the next time I needed something.
Now online, a typical experience is a bunch of static images flat on a page, divided by category. This isn’t very engaging but we all click in and see what more they have to offer. Most of the time it’s just product info and product images of what people bought that also looked at the item we are looking at. Maybe I buy something, maybe I don’t. But regardless, we typically only buy the item we came looking for if we found something we like. There are 2 things brands/retailers can do to create a better experience and drive more revenue:
- Automate merchandising for every product and don’t simply show shoppers other items you sell or others looked at.
- Create an experience where shoppers can engage with a real person that can help them find things they didn’t know they needed or were looking for.
Merchandising: A typical website only merchandises 10% of their catalog together. This is all their Merchandisers can do with limited resources and time before new items arrive. So use FindMine to take the brand image that the Merchandisers have created and expand it across the rest of your catalog. Most shoppers don’t know how to match products together, especially online where they can’t see everything. This will lead to higher CR, larger AOV’s, and these shoppers will come back more often because they had a good experience. This works in fashion, cosmetics, and furniture/home decor.
1:1 Experience: Data shows that if you can get a shopper to engage with a real person (face to face), they will convert 30-50% more often, spend 50-100% more, and come back more often because they feel like they have a personal relationship with a brand. FEEL is pioneering this space by helping brands not only provide a face to face experience but also:
- layering in connections to a brands entire catalog
- helping shoppers schedule time with a sales associate
- co-browsing
- co-check-out Process
- additional sales people with performance models
- and custom experiences for each brand category
So many things can go wrong during a shoppers journey that can lead them to leave so do something to help them. Here is a list to consider:
- Too many unnecessary pop ups
- Too slow page load speeds (often times this can be the shoppers issue)
- Cluttered pages that are difficult to navigate
- Out of stock inventory
- Confusing product recommendations
- Lengthy checkout process that includes registration
- No one available to support them
So if you are going to spend marketing dollars to drive traffic to your website, do everything you can to get them to convert. This isn’t a marketing or eCommerce challenge, this is a company challenge. Here are a couple of good articles to help you along. As you will see, Feel and FindMine can help brands avoid most of these pitfalls and not become one of the 76% of websites consumers don’t come back to because of a bad experience.