Ahh… website conversion… feels like the holy grail of eCommerce doesn’t it. You spend all this time making your pretty website, uploading your products, driving traffic… and then, after all, that time, energy, money, blood sweat, and tears… you only get a few sales.
So what gives?
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Well, the easiest way to figure out what you need to focus on is to break down the shopping journey on your website. Anytime you’re trying to troubleshoot results, you’ll want to break it down to the smallest possible denominator. Because different metrics are influenced by different variables, there are going to be different reasons or insights you’ll pull from those results and then take different actions to fix them.
For instance, if you have a lot of traffic coming to your website, but no one is viewing your products, then it’s likely related to irrelevant traffic, or a not-so-great home page or navigation. Maybe you need to feature more products on your home page or put your most popular product categories from and center on your navigation bar instead of hiding them in a shop menu.
On the other hand, if lots of people are going to your product page but aren’t adding to cart, then it’s likely a problem with your product page. Maybe you need better photos, a more enticing product description, or a better explanation of how your product solves their problem or adds value to their life.
And then maybe they are coming to your site and adding products to their cart but they’re not checking out. Then maybe your shipping is too high, or less common with sites like Shopify maybe your checkout is broken.
But if you didn’t break it out like that, you could waste a lot of time on things that aren’t even an issue. Maybe you spend a ton of time tinkering with your product page, when the truth is that they add to cart when they get to the product page… it’s just that not enough people are actually getting to the product page.
And the same goes for your traffic sources. You hear me say this a lot but when you’re looking at your conversion rate, you also want to look at your rate based on your traffic sources. You may think there’s a problem with your website so you focus all your energy on tweaking that – but when you look a little deeper you might identify a specific traffic source that converts super low which then drags down your overall rate. Usually, the culprit is Pinterest by the way.
The moral of the story here is that when you’re trying to discern what is contributing to your shitty conversion rate, start by breaking the data down as much as possible and look at each step in the process individually. Then you’ll know where you need to focus.
And if you’re wondering where to get this level of detailed data from, the answer is Google Analytics. and if you have no idea how to navigate analytics, how to read the reports, or if you’re not even sure that it’s installed properly because there is no revenue being recorded in there, I have something for you. It’s a Google Analytics Crash Course!
Your step-by-step guide to finally understand all that damn data… and what it means. Once you understand the numbers and what they mean, you’ll be able to gather insights that you put you on the fast track to eCommerce growth.
If you want to get your hands on that head to eCommerceBadassery.com/data
Now, before we go I want to give you a few other podcast episodes to listen to or re-listen to if you need to dive deeper into this website conversion stuff.
First up is episode 19 – eCommerce benchmarks to gauge your success. honestly, a lot of you come to me with concerns about your conversion rate when the real issue is traffic – so make sure you give that one a listen before you go down any rabbit holes.
Then check out the eCommerce sales funnel series, episodes 12-15. This gives you a nice high-level overview of the customer journey and how you can build one out for your business.
And lastly, or at least the last one I’m going to share today because there are honestly a lot of episodes that can help you with this is episode 71. The Anatomy of an eCommerce product page with Reese Spykerman. This was a dope episode (did I just date myself). Reese is amazing and she just need a copywriting workshop in the Lounge that the members totally loved. She’s a wealth of information and I love the way to explains things and breaks things down, so take a listen.
And again, don’t forget to check out the Google Analytics Crash Course. It’s super affordable and has video walkthroughs for all the reports you need plus explanations of what the data means and how to use it.
