Key Ecommerce Metrics that Determine Success

1. Understanding lifetime value of a customer-

   Customer lifetime value, CLTV = (Avg profit generated per year X no. of years) – Acquisition costs

2. Monitoring customer satisfactionThis will tell:–

   – customers perspective
   – required potential changes in current offering
   – truth behind the numbers

3. Measuring your sales funnelAnalyzing and working on the following plays an important role:–

   – Landing pages
   – Conversion rate
   – types of visitors

4. Determining marketing ROI

   Avg. acquisition cost = Acquisition spending / number of customers acquired

Conversation rate optimization (CRO)

Simply, Conversion Rate Optimization is – finding why visitor aren’t converting!

Here are some quick points one should definitely keep in mind while planning the CRO:

1. Don’t assume that if something has worked for someone else, it will work for us. Every site, domain, group of users varies in itself.

2. Look at your product as a customer. Go and buy your product or service and analyze the experience.

3. Set up funneling in Google Analytics. Analyze which pages are having the maximum bouncing rate and where do you see big opportunities.

4. A/B split testing – this process involves serving up different page variants in order to measure objectively which version of a page performs better. Some of the important variants that can be used are:

– site headline wording
– product sales, prices
– layout, size, image of products
– color, location of ‘Add to Card’ button
– funneling method

5. Use Analytics apps like app for heatmaps to see the where users click the most

6. Gather feedback – getting feedback from customer directly is very important. This can be done by tools like live chat, in-page surveys, emails etc. Also there are some apps/ tools for getting customer feedback which can be used.

7. A simplified landing page is very important. One should check and make sure that the information on the landing page is simple and not verbose.

8. Post conversion experience is something people happen to ignore. We should not forget that a confirmation page can be well utilized by providing good recommendation so that user buys something more or by asking user to follow/ share on Facebook, Twitter to share the information with larger audience. We may even suggest the user for an email subscription.

9. Trust – make sure that user is able to trust your website which would give him the confidence to buy the service  -> make the payment. To ensure the same, one may discuss his successes, show verisign , big customer names etc.

10. Track results – keep tracking the results of tests and conversions and analyze the data. One can focus on many areas like, which products are more sold, what time more payments happen, what group of people are making payments – based on age, location, sex, what prices work the best, which pages/ funnel lead to conversion. And such information can be studied/ brainstormed to conclude further next steps.

eCommerce conversation rate optimization 101

Stumbled at this nice video (here) explaining eCommerce store conversation rate optimization. It covers basics of eCommerce store design, funneling and things which matter.