69 percent of all shopping carts are abandoned before a sale is completed, which is cause for concern for any marketer – never mind those working on eCommerce websites.
Baymard averaged the figure based on 37 different studies containing statistics on eCommerce shopping cart abandonment, and it provides a stark reminder about the difficulty of achieving a conversion online.
In eCommerce alone, conversion rates are low. Net-a-Porter, the women’s luxury apparel etailer has a conversion rate of around three percent, according to Intersecret Retail. ASOS, however, does twice as well. “At the close of 2016, ASOS had a conversion rate hovering at around six percent. That number is higher than the average online retailer, which hovers at around three percent,” Intersecret reveals.
But that’s just one metric to measure. According to the marketing experts at HubSpot, the data you should be monitoring includes (but isn’t limited to):
- Site visits.
- Organic traffic growth.
- Landing page conversion rates.
- Social engagement.
- Keyword rankings.
- Visits from referrals.
- Leads
- Re-conversions brought in through email.
- Facebook fan growth.
- Prospects brought in through word of mouth.
And the reason for monitoring this information? You can use all this data to create better campaigns, increase efficiency and get executive buy-in for your marketing ideas.
The key for you as a marketer is to focus on the patterns the data shows up – not the data itself.
In order to laser-target your focus and hone your goals so your campaigns convert, you should ask yourself these five questions.
Question 1: Why is data so important?
Circling back to cart abandonment, the level of abandonment is a critical stat for eCommerce stores – and marketers need to find the ‘why’. Delving into your data could show any number of reasons.
At what point do your customers abandon their cart? What’s the source of their visit? Is your checkout process too lengthy or do you offer multiple payment options?
And even then, are you using your checkout data to retarget the cart abandoners with dynamic product ads on Facebook, email marketing, or retargeting ads via Google?
By optimising the checkout process, you can increase your company’s conversion rate by over 35 percent.
That’s an impressive stat – and optimisation is exactly why your marketing data is so important.
One company which uses data particularly well is the American retailer, Vera Bradley. In its old strategy, customers were sent blanket emails with a vast range of promotions. But after analysing sales data and seeing customer preferences, analysts noticed certain patterns (e.g. customers who bought a jacket in October often bought matching gloves in November).
By concentrating on targeted offers based on individual shopper purchase history, Vera Bradley sent 63 percent fewer emails but saw a 101 percent increase in click-throughs and a staggering 275 percent increase in the conversion rate of visitors to buyers.
Question 2: What results should I seek from my data?
The difference between Big Data and smart data is asking the right questions to find the right answers for your brand. With advancing analytics, the list of metrics you can measure is growing all the time – but too many marketers focus on fluffy, vanity metrics. Getting eyes on your content is important – but conversions are necessary for business survival.
Above all else, you should be using your data to track and optimise your conversions.
Question 3: How do I define a conversion?
Depending on the industry you’re in, a conversion may mean something different; it’s by no means a synonym for ‘sales’.
A conversion could be an email address or contact details for your sales team. For example, a simple sales strategy for customer acquisition could involve creating a downloadable asset for the customer. The customer inputs their email address in the value exchange and, in return, they get the asset and you get their information.
From there, it’s over to your sales or marketing team to progress the lead through a careful pipeline of useful content. Again: your marketing data is crucial. Who are these leads? What are they interested in? Can you utilise smart call-to-actions or personalisation tokens in your marketing?
Are you A/B testing imagery, copy, and colour across the various strands of your strategy?
Question 4: How do I optimise for conversions with my data?
Digital marketing’s main advantage over traditional or offline marketing is the breadth of tracking and reporting data. Modern software and tools like HubSpot, Google Analytics, and social media give marketers a 360-degree view of their campaigns.
Data-driven marketing breaks down into three core methods for improving conversion rates:
- Customer journey analysis.
- A/B testing.
- Website personalisation.
With customer journey analysis, you consider your customers at each step of the buyer journey. The more details you know about your personas, the more you can tailor your content and offers to them – which, in turn, will increase conversions.
Every marketer will know the importance of A/B testing. You should test and monitor everything: speed, colours, imagery, copy, CTAs, and more. The more you test, the more you’ll come to understand what works best for your audience and on what channels.
It doesn’t even have to be big changes: According to A Better Lemonade Stand, store owners noticed a one percent increase in revenue for every 100 milliseconds of site speed improvement. Others noticed a seven percent decrease in conversions for every one second delay in page speed.
Milliseconds may not seem that important, but the evidence is there. By monitoring your business on a granular level, your marketing team can succeed by concentrating on the biggest challenges your business faces. Whether you’re dealing with cart abandonment, low click through rates, or poor optimisation, your data is the secret to your success.
Finally, website personalisation is the process of creating a customised experience for visitors to your website. To do this, you’ll need data about your customers and the segments they belong to. Do you want to show a particular CTA to someone who has downloaded an asset or have you created a landing page for a different segment of your visitors?
Whatever it is, personalisation will make your visitor feel like you’re marketing to them – which will increase conversions too.
Question 5: What will a marketing dashboard do for my business?
It’s not enough anymore for marketers to skim the surface of their data: to note vanity metrics or the bones of their campaigns in top-level details.
A marketing dashboard gives you the ability to view, collate, and report on all your data with relative ease. You can log hours of time trawling your data for insights and action, but a marketing dashboard like Statwolf allows you to bring all your data together seamlessly without any of that hassle.
Your data is no longer something to wrestle with and fit into endless reports. Instead, it becomes a basis for invention, setting the scene to allow you and your team to spot the areas that need improving in your business.
It’s not Big Data. It’s your data – and your future.
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