Numbers don't lie: How to use them for Conversion Optimization entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

I was in the mood to write something today so thought I would share my wisdom from all my previous ventures on working out where exactly your business is going wrong by looking at the numbers. They say numbers don't lie, and I've just known that to be true time and time again. I've run online business' ranging from physical goods, digital goods and SaaS sites. My strategy involves buying existing web based business' that I feel have a lot more potential or are supremely undervalued and turning them into money machines. Today, I wanted to tell you guys about one thing that I feel will be incredibly useful for the most amount of people; Learning and Understanding Simple Data for your website. Hopefully this will also teach you why tools like Google Analytics are so important.

Basic Concepts

Conversions

This is probably the single most important thing that you should get out of this. If you want to find out if any of your marketing promotions or website changes are working DO NOT look at just the sales figure. Look at conversions. Even better; look at the conversions only for the dates that you ran the promotions or changes.

What’s a conversion ? It’s an action you want people to take. A lot of the time, a Sale is considered a conversion. When most people talk about conversions though they actually talk about it as a percentage. So the amount of visitors that you get on your site divided by the number of sales you made as a percentage. Eg. 2 sales with 100 visitors is a 2% sales conversion. I don't mean to confuse anyone with math here so just take a break, grab a coffee and read that last paragraph again. It will be worth it, I swear.

An example of a typical mistake when using a "sales" figure rather than "conversions" figure to measure progress is when a store tries a new marketing campaign. Before the campaign they may get 100 visitors per day and 2 sales and during the marketing campaign they make 10 sales from 2000 visitors. Their conversion rate actually declined to 0.5% from a previous 2% but they can never tell because as far as they are concerned, they made more sales than before. This is a horrible situation to be in because you never really know how effective any of your marketing campaigns actually are.

To keep things simple I like to do one change or marketing campaign at a time and see what the effect is on my bottom line conversions. If the conversions go up then I keep the change. If it’s down then I just go back to how it was before. Apply this to your marketing and you will see yourself looking at your campaigns much more objectively.

To do this yourself just open up Google Analytics (GA) and your site. Check the unique visitors (on GA) over a certain period and then the sales (on your site) over the same period. Sales / Unique Visitors x 100 is the figure you want. If you use Shopify then this figure is as clear as day and no calculations are necessary. It is the figure for "Purchased" in the conversion funnel section on your dashboard.

If you don’t already have enhanced eCommerce on Google Analytics set up then I suggest you do that (just google your eCommerce platform + enhanced eCommerce). If you are using Shopify then it comes with a lot of the data you already need right out of the box. Their Analytics tools are absolutely perfect for what we need to do, they already display your conversions and you can even drill down further into the different traffic sources. I will also cover more types of conversions that we can use from the Enhanced eCommerce or Shopify Data that is available.

Hits and Unique Visitors

Hits are sometimes called Page Views (Google Analytics), Visits (Shopify). A hit is just somebody viewing any page on your website, one person can visit 5 pages on your site and it would count as 5 Hits but would only be 1 Unique Visitor. The Ideal situation is to count how many steps or pages it takes a customer to make a purchase on your site and that should be your "Goal" Hits to Visitors Ratio.

Hits and Unique Visitors can tell you a tonne of things.

• An overall low amount of hits and visitors signifies that your marketing needs some work. I like to work backwards and assume that at least 2% of people will convert and use that as a way to find out how many people I need on the site every day. Example: If i wanted to make at least 2 sales a day I would want at least 100 unique visitors on the site. 2% is a low figure and I just use it as a base conversion rate for all my sites to work out my ad budget.
  • To fix the problem of low hits and visitors; Invest some time in CPC Ads, SEO**, Social Media Channels or Email marketing campaigns. You should be getting some traffic to your site if you hope to make sales, once the traffic starts to flow you can start to optimise your traffic based on the data that you get back. If you are still not getting traffic then it might have something to do with your site loading slowly or some other usability issues. I will assume there is no such issues and you managed to get data back just to keep the flow of this post going.
• A Hits to Visitors Ratio that is way more than the goal ratio i.e amount of hits compared to visitors are too large. This tells you that your visitors are browsing more than they are purchasing,
  • To fix the issue : Try and incentivise them to make the purchase NOW. Create a sense of Urgency. Use limited quantities of items, try implementing a countdown timer or run a sale for a short amount of time.
• A Hits to Visitors Ratio that is way less than the goal ratio i.e amount of visits compared to visitors are too low. Your customers do not understand what you are selling and how it benefits them or just simple do not see the value in what you are selling. Yes, this is probably the worst out of all the situations to be in BUT there is a light at the end of the tunnel, your dream is not over. You can still get this sorted out.
  • Work on the landing page. What do your customers immediately see when they land on your site ? If it's through a marketing campaign then what page are you directing them to? Make sure that they have some sort of context when they land on your site ! i.e DO NOT send them to a product page without either having your ad explain what you are selling or having the product page explain it. It's a recipe for disaster.
  • Improve your copy : Try and explain exactly how you are helping them, what problems you are solving. A big mantra that I follow is don't sell the solution, sell the problem. If you don't quite have a way with words then get someone to write something for you ! not everyone has that skill and you'll be glad you got someone.
  • Trust also plays a major part in why your visitors leave after the first page so have a look below for the Trust section.
• If your visits and visitors are close to the "Goal" Ratio and your Conversions are low then there is something preventing the purchase. This could be a high product price, raw deal on shipping (price or time), low trust in your site or some other problem preventing people from reaching checkout or adding to their cart (often a bug, or something else site / plugin related)
  • if it is a bug then it will become apparent when you try and make the purchase yourself
    • Try making the purchase from a mobile phone, computer and tablet (Chrome has a tool that will make it seem like you are visiting from a mobile phone or tablet - but always try it on an actual tablet, mobile and pc as well)
    • Make sure the process is as obvious as possible and the customer doesn’t need to think too much about what to do next.
    • Also be sure that everything loads as quickly as possible. You might want to decrease the size of your photos if this is the case.
  • It’s a known fact that customers hate waiting. Try and minimize shipping times and offer free shipping if possible ! You can even pair this with offers like "make a purchase over $100 and get free shipping".
  • Do some research around pricing and adjust it to suit. Try the new pricing for at least a few days or weeks and see if it changes the conversions figure. If you do have competition and your pricing is similar to your competitors then you probably have a trust issue to overcome.
  • Trust is one of the main reasons why people don’t purchase from a site and can also be a reason why they don't stay. It comes in many forms.
    • Good Reviews,
    • Money Back Gaurantee,
    • A Good Cohesive website that looks like at least some effort was put into building it
    • Good Quality pictures &
    • Site Giving the buyer as much information as possible to make an informed decision
    • A good brand that people engage with on social media or that ranks highly on Google.
    • Trust Logos
    • Asking for a customers email before giving them anything of interest really does not help your trust factor, try having your popups only show up when they have scrolled or interacted with the page a little bit. You can also try implementing "Exit Intent Popups" which only show up if they want to leave the page.
  • Spend time as much time as you can on all of these trust factors except perhaps the "ranks highly on Google" part - unless SEO is a massive part of your marketing strategy your brand will automatically rank for branded keywords eventually.

**Note on SEO: I actually recommend against SEO when starting out. I have nothing against Organic Search Results but I just see too much time & money wasted by inexperienced companies in this regard. Most of my own websites rank very well for organic search results but it takes away a lot of your time to get there and there are no shortcuts. I will do a basic SEO guide too if anyone is interested in it but alot of the conversion optimization concepts in this post will still apply no matter your marketing strategy

This section above is a good Answer to:

Q: Why am I not making any sales ?

Q: What is the best way to spend my time when starting out with my online business ?

Q: How do I know if my pricing is working ?

Q: How can I experiment with pricing and how do I know what works ?

Q: Should I offer free shipping ?

Q: Do people want my product ?

Q: How can I sell more ?

Q: How can I increase conversions ?

More Advanced Concepts

eCommerce Conversions

I think its now time to confuse you all. Above I said a conversion is an action you want people to take. I then proceeded to use the word "conversion" synonymously with "sales conversion". All the data until now was used to increase that final figure for "sales conversions". I will now introduce more conversions figures which you will probably instantly get. All of them involve a step in the eCommerce sales process. They are

1. Add(ed) to Cart
2. Checkout
3. Sales Conversion or Purchased - i.e what we have been using so far

Think of it like actions that your customer will take before they buy from you. "Added to Cart" is the % of people that added a product to their cart. "Checkout" is the % of people that .. well … checked out. etc.

Each of these figures can pinpoint further any problems you might have with your site. If you only had data coming in for Unique Visitors and Hits then it might be a little bit more difficult to pinpoint EXACTLY the issues you are having. So for example if your Added to Cart conversion % was high but your checkout % was much lower then you would find a way to increase that percentage to be as close to add to cart as possible by looking at the process after someone adds an item to their cart - see below.

Here are common reasons why each of the situations can arise and how you can go about solving them.

• "Added to Cart" is not very high at all. This is a problem which can be solved by looking at the Unique Visitors and Hits (or Visits). We covered this above in the "Hits and Unique Visitors" Section.
• Percent of people that "Added to Cart" are much higher than ones that Checked out
  • Someone might just have forgot they were buying something on your site. You’ll be surprised how common this is. To stop this I usually aim to get their email soon after they have added something to their cart. This allows me to send them a cart abandonment email asap if they haven’t completed their purchase. There are a gazillion cart abandonment suites out there in many shapes and sizes, but I like recommending the mailchimp abandoned cart plugin because there are so many people out there that already use mailchimp and this just goes well in their existing workflow.
  • Sometimes people add to cart and then try and find a better deal elsewhere - If all you are selling are things bought from China then you have a bit of a problem here. You need to have a Unique Value Proposition; something that makes a purchase on your site more valuable than a purchase on anyone else’s site. Do some more research on Unique Value Proposition and found out all the different forms it can take. See if you can apply any of them to your products
  • Thirdly, Something might be bugging them about what they purchased. Will the t shirt fit me ? Do the shoes look as cool from the side ? Are the condoms wood or does it just look like wood ? Always remember to put yourself in your customers shoes. Give them as much information as you would need to complete the purchase. Take pictures from all angles, have a sizing guide for your t-shirts, and condoms people ! Also have your shipping times clearly visible.
  • Fourth reason why this can happen is Shipping; and this doesn’t really apply to the Shopify users but might apply to others using WooCommerce or Magento. Your shipping times may be too long or the shipping cost may be too high
• People that checked out are much higher than ones that made a purchase
  • On Shopify; a big reason this can happen is Shipping. Shopify calculates the postage after the customer has started checkout and gone through a few steps. Your shipping times may be too long or the shipping cost may be too high.
  • When checking out, customers want to give you as little information as possible about themselves. According to this study by eConsultancy over 25% of shoppers abandon their purchase at checkout if they are forced to create an account. So give them an option not to ! In Shopify you can make customer accounts optional by going to Settings -> Checkout -> Check the box "Acounts are optional". There are similar options in WooCommerce and Magento

This section above is a good Answer to:

Q: Why are so many people abandoning cart ?

Q: How can I increase my checkout percentage ?

Q: Why are so many people not completing checkout ?

Q: Should I make Customer Accounts Optional ?

Last Words

I hope I’ve helped you guys with the basics of data & conversion optimisation of your eCommerce stores. I've seen too many posts that just ruin the entire spirit of this community by trying to sell us all something and I thought I would just provide you guys raw value for a refreshing change. No Ifs and Buts (hehehe - Butts). I guess all I'm saying is that I have got to a stage in my life where I don't need the money so please don't throw it at me. Good luck with the hustle guys. Love you all.

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