E-Commerce Backpack

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Tag: ROI

Ways that Website Analytics Can Save Your Online Business

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Website analytics is probably the last thing an online business owner wants to worry about. With 15 things to do every day before 10 am and another 50 to do before you can call it a day, sitting down in front of a bunch of web traffic stats seems like a waste of time. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s completely wrong. In fact, website analytics should be the first and last thing you review every day and I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Web Analytics Help You Detect Fraud and Incompetence

Have you hired an SEO expert? PPC marketer? Social media guru? If you have people on staff or retain contractors to help you with your site, website analytics are your best friend.

Forget about the reports these experts create because all stats and data can be manipulated or ommitted. What you need is raw, reliable data to calculate the ROI of the services you are paying for.

Specifically, programs like Google Analytics can help you quickly isolate specific traffic streams and provide a host of useful data to calculate ROI, including:

Conversion Rate of Specific Traffic Channels
Conversion Rate for Specific Targeted Keywords
Average Time on Site for Specific Traffic Streams
Bounce Rate for Specific Traffic Streams

Of course, the conversion rate data for specific traffic streams (or Internet marketing experts) will help you calculate the ROI. But the average time on site will also help provide a rough gauge of overall traffic strength. If a specific traffic channel can’t keep visitors on site for more than 2 minutes, the traffic is either weak or you have significant issues on your landing pages.

2. Web Analytics Help Assess Site Health

To put that another way, web analytics essentially help show you where you need to invest your money most to boost online profits. Specifically, website traffic analytics will help you assess:

A. Traffic Strength
B. Sales Funnel Effectiveness
C. Shopping Cart Function and Conversion Rate
D. Website Conversion Rate and Rates for Specific Services/Products

For instance, high bounce rates and low average time on site typically indicate weak traffic or exceptionally poor landing pages. You can confirm which by looking at the data for specific traffic streams to see if there are significant variations in performance. If there are, then the issue is likely a weak traffic stream but if all channels are doing poorly, it’s more likely to be landing page.

The point is, the data tell you what’s wrong with your site so you can best channel your investment dollars to the most critical areas.

3. Web Analytics Eliminates Needless Split Testing

In most cases, optimization of landing pages and product descriptions is completed via split testing. That is, decide what sales tool you want to test (like a headline or CTA) and then create a new one to split test against. If your new sales tool performs better, conversions will increase and your hard work rewarded. However, this is rarely how it works.

You see, the thing people always forget about split testing is it’s sheer expense. To statistically verify even a lead gen site with a non-monetized CTA, you need at least 1,000 visitors or more to each version.

So if you think a landing page or product description might have problems with the headline, value proposition, and credibility tools, that’s at least 3 tests you need to run at 2,000 visitors per test. At even $1 a click, you can see how that would get very expensive, very quickly.

And the worst part: You have no idea if the headline, value prop, or credibility tools are even suppressing conversions. You are just split testing one sales tool versus a new one and hoping for the best, seriously.

But with web analytics, you can pinpoint the issues and eliminate the guesswork saving loads in unnecessary testing costs and content creation.

In conclusion, web analytics really are vital to your online success because they provide you with an accurate assessment of site health and your investments in traffic generating services. If you don’t know the true health of your site, then how can you possibly know what it needs to grow and be more profitable?

Mobile Commerce Platforms – Facts to Consider

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With mobile commerce becoming advanced each day, retailers are becoming eager to branch out into the mobile web scenario. To make their products and services more reachable, new mobile commerce platforms need to be developed. There are numerous players in the market who provide platforms like Magneto, ATG, Marketlive, Escalate Retail, and Demandware. Platforms are being offered within the app through the mobile web combining browser detection and CSS, through services that allow mobile app usage, and through partnerships with third parties.

However, there are some factors that need to be kept in mind while retailers are looking to provide this mobile ecommerce solution:
Attention must be paid to the cost. Although the forum is expanding, the ROI will be significantly less due to lack of direct mobile transactions. M-commerce will surely be beneficial to the multichannel customer experience, but there is no parameter against which we can measure the benefits.
The management of the mobile site has to be integrated into the management tools and existing site merchandising. Adequate support must be available for content management, product content, category management, and order management.
Any mobile website needs to be maintained on a regular basis. The inventory, price, and production information must be up-to-date, but it also needs to include brand assets, product data, and assortment taxonomy. A constant synchronization needs to be maintained with the platform provider. Agencies and firms are cashing in on marketplace feeds or retailers affiliate to power the mobile websites but this has a drawback too. The feeds are often a part of the total assortment and may not have catalog management features.
The payment options must be made extremely easy. Users should be able to conduct transactions quickly using secure and PCI compliant webservices. That is why Apple has tasted success with their iPhone or iPod Touches.
The foundation of the operating systems of phones frequently undergoes changes with OS versions, new devices, and ecosystems. The management needs to be done pro-actively and the providers must help their customers to navigate easily.
Order management and customer care needs to be effectively coordinated. If this is not done, then the rate of customer satisfaction will start to drop and they will be roped in by the other players. Ideally, a constant and portable cart should be present that allows customers to shop via mobile and web and to be able to access via the other channel makes the entire procedure simple and easy for them. With the help of a consistent customer authentication capability, the multichannel effect of mobile commerce can be easily measured.

Mobile commerce platforms
have been developed and tested successfully but they still have a long way to go in terms of performance. Industry experts say that the current infrastructure of m-commerce platforms is not suitable to keep up with the demands that are increasing each day. A lot of evaluation and upgrading needs to be done immediately so that the implementation can be done in the proper way.

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