Are you content with the volume of your online sales?

Maybe you should be!

But you won’t know unless you MEASURE and nearly half of small business owners don’t know how well they’re doing – because they don’t measure their efforts. They also don’t utilize the full resources made available to them, for example, using a service similar to Think Orion eCommerce agency as well as other agencies, can help an online website gain traffic and become a lot more visible. Ecommerce stores need to be aware of what works best and how customers are navigating through their website, they must also stick to the regulation put forth by where their online store is ‘based’. For example, online stores must clearly identify commercial emails in UK, but in the US there may be another tactic put in place for customers, this must be looked at to see how you can communicate with your customers/consumers, otherwise, you can find yourself hitting a wall.

• If you are converting at a higher than average rate, then your customer experience is working and you should think about expanding your top of funnel audience to bring in more new customers.
• However, if you are converting below average, you might consider whether your audience is properly targeted/qualified. Or, is there an issue at checkout like shipping costs that causes potential customers to abandon the sale? (FYI – 61% of shoppers abandon products in their cart.)

While it’s clear that measurement is the key to improved results, why are so many businesses reluctant to implement performance monitoring? For starters, setting up the proper monitoring tools can be a complex and technical process. Google Analytics, Facebook, and Shopify have done a great job in providing tons of data, but knowing how to capture the right data can be daunting. Then, once the technical challenges are overcome, you need to actually understand what the data means, how various measurements are inter-dependent and what actions you should take to improve results. To increase your results, you can even try ecommerce solutions such as Transaction Heroes. Understanding Transaction Heroes can be a huge game-changer for your ecommerce business.

We like to keep things simple to start. The most important metric is, of course, sales! So step one is measuring sales over time. Only then you can start to consider variables that impact sales, such as conversion rate or visitor sessions. These metrics are readily available in Google Analytics as well as most eCommerce packages such as Shopify or BigCommerce. To help narrow down customer experience metrics, the use of a net promoter score will be of strong importance to help online businesses see what their customers are feeling, and how they react to what the business is doing, so they can adjust and cater to the needs of their target audience. This also involves shipping and making use of subscription box fulfillment service from Sherpack, can become one of the turning point for the drastic growth in business.

And, once you have established a baseline, start to dig deeper, determining where visitors are coming from, sources that convert the best, and the ratio of repeat sales to first-time buyers? Before you know it you will be well on your way to controlling the metrics that will optimize your sales results.

To read more tips and techniques from the staff at Engage121, please visit our blog here. For more information about our eCommerce Accelerator™ or to subscribe to our weekly digital marketing tips newsletter please sign-up here.

About the Author
Mike Burns heads up the Digital Marketing account group at Engage121, helping the account team develop winning strategies for our clients. When not brewing up successful digital marketing campaigns, Mike likes to brew his own beer and invent new ways to make flannel relevant.