The Conversion Diversion – How Important IS that Percentage?

Posted on November 20, 2007
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‘Tis the season when online merchants fixate on their conversion rates like a moth on a warm winter lightbulb. Even now, with Thanksgiving almost upon us and Santa villages popping up in malls everywhere, customers call asking how to improve overall conversion numbers—but are stunned when we suggest tweaking anything else.

We here at FastPivot are anxiously awaiting the summer of ’09 when the beta drops for “The Converterator”, a revolutionary new platform-independent plug-in aimed at controlling conversion with a slider. Unfortunately, it’s only Christmas of ’07—and neither The Converterator nor the company that will create it exist yet. That means we still have to entice customers, dominate the competitive landscape, and sell that warehouse full of product—the hard way.

There’s no question that a store’s overall conversion rate should not go unmonitored. However, many times we find store owners consumed by their site’s overall conversion to the point of considering it an independent metric that is unaffected by the rest of their site. If only that were true.

The truth is…conversion does not live apart from the traffic-driving, layout-changing, product-shuffling, feature-adding, and campaign-launching activities on or around your store. Conversion is a product of all of that an e-retail business is – from the industry it is a part of, to the product line it contains, the brand presence it’s earned, and the interfacing with the customer. Converting the quality visitors that you’ve worked so hard to acquire is serious and specific task, no question. However, to say that the conversion percentage is not completely dependent on all the other work you’ve done in the last year on your store - is simply false.

When fielding your conversion percentage to get a grip on how “healthy” your site really is, you must take into account every step of the shopping process and effectively measure the success of each stage to best understand the final conversion metric. And we mean every step:

Search > Enter > Shop > Cart > Purchase

Define what the ideal experience for that shopper would be-then take a close look at how each action above really works on your site. Also, if you have a product line that appeals to more than one audience—yes, you need to outline the ideal shopping experience for each.

(Nobody said successful online retailing was easy…or it at least, we didn’t.)

STILL want to improve conversion? Use the download link below and get our Improving Conversion checklist to help you scout out what your site offers consumers and the purchase path it creates. Be prepared to answer tough questions like:

Are you paying for incredibly general keyphrases in your PPC or other paid campaigns? If so, can you insert ten more specific keyphrases that can completely replace that general phrase?
Do you use “Calls to Action” to immediately get visitors to the right product?
Are the customer’s most important questions answered first?
How many “clicks” are your visitors away from a purchase?
Do your visitors have an incentive to buy?
Are you offering the visitors help in deciding what they need?
Is the checkout process seamlessly integrated in your site design?
Can you reduce the number of steps at checkout?

With so many variables that play into that vague conversion percentage, there’s no quick fix for “bumping” this metric quickly. Until that magic plug-in turns the e-retail world upside down, every store owner must

look at every step of the shopping process
dig into the metrics of each step a little deeper
shop that store of yours every once in a while!

All store owners dream of the boost in revenue that comes from simply upping that conversion percentage by a few ticks. However, simply is not always as easy as it sounds. If what we describe above sounds like work, it’s not. It’s a LOT of work, but essential if you want to really begin to uncover the true drivers of your overall conversion numbers.