Getting 1% conversion rate E-commerce site

[theag]

I would kill myself if I had a 1% conversion rate.

From my experience working with hundreds of ecommerce customers there is always a deeper reason for conversion rates that low.

You are either
a) selling stuff that people dont want,
b) selling stuff that is available cheaper and faster on amazon,
c) getting shit traffic / suck at ppc,
or d) all of the above.

You should fix all of those before you get into fine tuning like A/B testing and exit popups.

 

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[theag]

Newbie here. In your experience what do you think a typical or good conversion rate would be for e-commerce?

Depends a lot on where the traffic comes from and what your margins and PPC/SEO costs are.

For adwords you should be aiming for 2-3% minimum (cold traffic, excluding branded searches as these would convert even without the ad and distort the real conversion rate) or you won't be near profitability, at least thats what I've seen in hundreds of adwords accounts that I worked on. Surely there will be exceptions. Organic search you dont have PPC costs as a factor so calculation is harder with monthly SEO bill or the work/time you put in yourself, but should be in roughly the same range.

On the other hand for a business that relies on display advertising (FB ads for example) theres a wider range and you could make it work with 1% or even less if you get clicks really cheap. If you have a really good product thats not too expensive (impulse buy range) and your ads work well you can do 5%++ even on cold display traffic, but its not easy.

In the end, conversion rate is just a vanity metric. What matters is profitability.

Just reread the OP and only now noticed that he is in jewelry and if its higher prices a lower conversion rate makes sense. You should be able to optimize your traffic first though, depending on the source, especially if its PPC and you can disable non-performers. That usually has a bigger impact than onsite optimization.

 

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[Tomer David]

Okay so our holiday season is almost done, I didn't reach the 1% conversion goal (I was close) but i'm extremely happy with the way and journey I went this month, and also the results were not bad at all

I learned the power of outsourcing and delighting jobs.

Power of good website infrastructure and the basic things.

I realized that I need to Focus more on marketing.

I have a lot of work next year and i'm really excited to start a new journey (its not going to be easy) but really fun.

Merry Christmas everyone and happy new year

 

[Tomer David]

Today it was really crazy day, we had many many sales that I couldn't breath, the entire team just took orders online and over the phone and it was great!

I uploaded couple of tweaks and improvements this morning done by two of our developers so we would have better mobile support with an app look!

It feels amazing even though i'm so so tired when i'm typing these words i'm about to fall asleep.

I hope to rest tomorrow and give my body and soul some rest after couple of intense weeks and around the evening tomorrow to get back into things to sit on a plan of conversions and best practices provided by unbounce to utilize their tool (seems pretty solid).

I have collected through their exit intent popup subscribers today, with 60% conversion rate! (subscribers that are in the shopping cart and checkout pages, which are really valuable if putting them into the right funnel)

It looks like a great tool and I want to master it!

Will share with you guys tomorrow what I did toward getting and hitting this 1% .

Today by the way the conversion rate is on 0.83% rate! amazing numbers which I didn't expect so quick.

 

[Phones]

I nearly doubled my conversion rate by adding a one-step-checkout to Magento and making it skip the cart page. No logins/registrations on checkout.

 

[Ecom man]

In most eccommerce stores conversions rates naturally go up between Black Friday and Christmas. If yours has been doing that in years past then you could be giving yourself some false data on your conversion rate increasing. My conversion rate runs 3-4% January through October but this time of year runs 8-10%. If the middle of November I started trying new things I might think I'm a genius because the conversion rate is up so dramatically when in reality it is just the Christmas season skewing the numbers. It's probably better to do all the testing during "normal" selling season so you get an accurate comparison.

 

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[eliquid]

I would be super happy with 1% conversion. we would be really profitable and can scale the business to really high levels since our average sale price is around $1700

Not very many people are going to convert if they are going to spend $1700.

There is going to have to be a mix of email or phone calls to close clients like that, are you counting those?

Where are you getting this sub 1% conversion rate from, PPC... organic... all lumped into everything?

Gotta get more specific. However the % of people that are going to spend $1700 online with no connection to a phone call or email is going to be almost nill unless your highly trusted like Amazon.

Tell us what's going into and how you judge this sub 1% conv rate.

 

[Tomer David]

Yes off course we have data of 15 years, so we know all of that and we have data to compare it to.

When I set the goal of 1% it's a number that we never reached.

Some updates:

* Used the hotjar tool and got some pretty useful insights.
* Sales are back in good volume and things start to work again

We replaced the agency who managed our PPC marketing with a new one which seems to work, but let give it a time...

Things are going good

 

[Tomer David]

I would kill myself if I had a 1% conversion rate.

From my experience working with hundreds of ecommerce customers there is always a deeper reason for conversion rates that low.

You are either
a) selling stuff that people dont want,
b) selling stuff that is available cheaper and faster on amazon,
c) getting shit traffic / suck at ppc,
or d) all of the above.

You should fix all of those before you get into fine tuning like A/B testing and exit popups.

I would be super happy with 1% conversion. we would be really profitable and can scale the business to really high levels since our average sale price is around $1700

 

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[Tomer David]

I really love your positive attitude through all of this, and appreciate your updates. With your attitude and work ethic no date you will hit your goals eventually + more.

Thank you brother I appreciate your support it gives me more motivation!

 

[Tomer David]

Last couple of days we are back on track sales increasing again and all the issues we had starting to fade...

We installed new tool called HotJar that records visitors actions that way you can track and find issues on the website

We are going to hire someone expert with this tool so he can extract the data and give insights.

 

[Tomer David]

Hey Guys,

I'm starting this thread so I can have a commitment to myself increasing our eCommerce store conversion rate from 0.35%-0.50% to 1%.

That is my goal for the next month! I'll do whatever it takes to make it happen (I already have defined a clear statement that I read couple of times a day to support this).

Ill be committed every day to update and upload new features to the website in order to achieve this goal.

We have a full time developer/designer helping me (i'm also a developer for the last 12 years) So we have the man power for that.

I'm open to any new services/add ones (We are using Magento) so if someone know something ill surly appreciate it!

if you are wondering we sell diamond jewelry online and we just lunched a new website (company and entity as well).

The main focus would be in the next month on the current website which is online for the last 15 years.


So right to the actions: yesterday I tried new tool, exit intent tool called optimonk.com.

I have setup the campaign but their technology is not solid enough. I'm pretty much looking for a solid solution to exit intent popups so when someone is on our shopping cart or checkout pages, and he is trying to go and close the page, a popup, with offer will be showing to him (try save him and convert him into a sale).

I tried it today and I just stopped the campaign there since there were couple of glitches with it and we have heavy traffic, so I couldn't take the risk of having errors to our customers.

I have also adjusted the abandoned emails serious and added couple of coupons to each email for Black Friday.

 

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[Tomer David]

I nearly doubled my conversion rate by adding a one-step-checkout to Magento and making it skip the cart page. No logins/registrations on checkout.

Thank you for the tip. I'm also using the Magento (MAGECHECKOUT EXTENSIONS) one page checkout (with some modifications like capturing email address on key press so that way they can get into the abandoned list).

Which one are you using?

 

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[Tomer David]

yesterday actions/report:

* built a follow up system to insert those emails collected with the exit intent popup to the abandoned emails serious (they also get a special coupon).
* created automated script to collect regular newsletter popup on homepage and insert them into our subscribers list
* we had a meeting we put some guidelines and motivated our sales reps to collect as many sales as possible.

Couple of new things going to be executed today as well

 

[Tomer David]

Yesterday's action report:

Made a video with instructions for developers to implement login and pay with amazon, I really believe it would increase overall conversions on the shipping cart.

Almost done with testing new filtering system our store listing pages so customers can effectively browse and be exposed to all our products collection easily

Added second batch of a abandoned cart users.

Created with our designer Christmas homepage elements and extended cyber Monday sale and coupons


Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

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[Tomer David]

Sorry I'm so busy these days, but i'm still committed to achieve my goal!

We had an idea to change all pages to HTTPS by default so that way customers feel more comfortable browsing the store, and eventually purchasing, which will make me get closer to our 1% goal!

Divine, a user here mentioned this in private message, thank you for that advice man!

Will implement this very very soon!

 

[welshmin]

What about instead of focusing on CTR for the initial sale, focus on up-sell / cross-sell / re-targeting / email list engagement? More than one way to skin a cat.

 

[Tomer David]

Things done in the last couple of days:

* Reduced page speed by 2.5 seconds Hopefully will see the fruits of this work soon!
* Done implementing the https for all pages. now its running under a monitor (pingdom) comparing it to the version without https, and in couple of days if its going to show that its the same speed like regular version we'll put it live.
* Working harder to reduce page speed even more in the next couple of days
* adding couple of changes to the shopping cart.

 

[Tomer David]

You right and we are doing it already

Trying to see what else I can do in addition to push us more.

Yesterday actions.

* started to with Criteo which is a re-marketing company like ad roll to grab more wider exposure in their ad content network.
* increase shopping cart items to stay up to year with cookies configuration on our store.

Think on ideas on what to do next...

Thank you guys for the help and Ill be glad to hear more ideas!

 

[quanttastic]

Yesterday and today we had big issues with the website caching and cart, sales went down dramatically and the feeling is not that good.

I'm not sure if ill reach my goal by the end of this season by ill give 100% of myself no matter what!

I'm facing a lot of obstacles in the journey but I know i'm learning so much valuable lesson through so it makes my excited toward next year!

Was also able to have the https with EV support enabled today by default for the whole website.

I really love your positive attitude through all of this, and appreciate your updates. With your attitude and work ethic no date you will hit your goals eventually + more.

 

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[Niptuck MD]

good info best of luck

 

[Tomer David]

Yesterday and today focusing on page speed reduced it by half second and still working on it.

Hopefully this week we are also going to implement checkout with amazon

 

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[Tomer David]

Hey guys,

Quick update: We are having a very high number of sales comparing last year, i'm really happy, we had a lot of problems and unexpected issues this holiday season but we went through them stronger, and at the end, its a better season if we compare the last couple of years!

I'm not at 1% yet, but we have an average of the entire last week of 0.65%!

I'm happy with that number too

Anyway i'm not adding new things, just focusing on getting more and more sales. We are pretty much extending the Christmas delivery guarantee while our competitors stop since they don't have the abilities of manufacturing that we have, so its an advantage

 

[Tomer David]

Alright today's actions toward getting the 1% conversions.

Implemented fixes for better UI experience on the website including couple of compatibility issues found on old versions of Internet explorer browser to make the visitors experience better and bug free.

Found and tried to play with a new tool for the popup exit intent called http://unbounce.com/ seems to be pretty solid but I still need to test it and read their case studies and best practices.

We work hard on capturing every visitor that is showing buying intent we are build a logic of followup system to try maximizing sales!

 

[quanttastic]

Today it was really crazy day, we had many many sales that I couldn't breath, the entire team just took orders online and over the phone and it was great!

I uploaded couple of tweaks and improvements this morning done by two of our developers so we would have better mobile support with an app look!

It feels amazing even though i'm so so tired when i'm typing these words i'm about to fall asleep.

I hope to rest tomorrow and give my body and soul some rest after couple of intense weeks and around the evening tomorrow to get back into things to sit on a plan of conversions and best practices provided by unbounce to utilize their tool (seems pretty solid).

I have collected through their exit intent popup subscribers today, with 60% conversion rate! (subscribers that are in the shopping cart and checkout pages, which are really valuable if putting them into the right funnel)

It looks like a great tool and I want to master it!

Will share with you guys tomorrow what I did toward getting and hitting this 1% .

Today by the way the conversion rate is on 0.83% rate! amazing numbers which I didn't expect so quick.

Wow. Great job so quickly. Thanks for sharing your progress and tools!

 

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[miked_d]

Did you do A/B testing?

Making mobile work right is always important. What % of your visitors are mobile?

Have you broken up your pipeline into smaller pieces to check improvements? I am not a guru in this stuff, but I know there are many, many pieces to the overall conversion rate. Assuming you are using PPC marketing, what is your click-through?

 

[juan917]

Good job on taking action man but a 1% conversion sounds really low. Are you even profitable at a 1% conversion rate?

 

[quanttastic]

I would kill myself if I had a 1% conversion rate.

From my experience working with hundreds of ecommerce customers there is always a deeper reason for conversion rates that low.

You are either
a) selling stuff that people dont want,
b) selling stuff that is available cheaper and faster on amazon,
c) getting shit traffic / suck at ppc,
or d) all of the above.

You should fix all of those before you get into fine tuning like A/B testing and exit popups.

Newbie here. In your experience what do you think a typical or good conversion rate would be for e-commerce?

 

[Tomer David]

Wow. Great job so quickly. Thanks for sharing your progress and tools!

Thank you!

 

[Tomer David]

Did you do A/B testing?

Making mobile work right is always important. What % of your visitors are mobile?

Have you broken up your pipeline into smaller pieces to check improvements? I am not a guru in this stuff, but I know there are many, many pieces to the overall conversion rate. Assuming you are using PPC marketing, what is your click-through?

I'm doing A/B testing on anything for the last 6 years, right now since its already the holiday season i'm just implementing all my knowledge with new tools that i'm checking out (was busy last year on building and creating the new company and website so I didn't have a lot of time focusing on the current website/company).

I'm focusing pretty much on the areas first that will bring most profit/increase in overall conversions (top 3 traffic pages, shopping cart, detail page etc)

the CTR depends on what ads we have like 20 campaigns in : adwords, bing, facebook/instagram would like to test some pinterest traffic soon (I tried it before didn't really perform well).