This document provides guidance on maximizing online conversions for e-commerce businesses. It recommends focusing on key areas like having a user-friendly website with high-quality product images and descriptions, optimizing search and filtering capabilities, offering competitive pricing and delivery options, and driving traffic through search engine optimization, paid search, and social media marketing. Testing different website designs and pages through A/B testing is also emphasized to improve the customer experience and increase conversion rates.

1. Mark Allison
ICT Advisor
Invest NI

2. Maximising your Conversions
(Doing the Thing)

3. Where to Sell? Business Strategy.
Own Web Site Marketplaces

4. Own Web Site
• Full control over
design, branding
• Customers are yours
• Easy to cross sell,
upsell etc.
• No Commission Fees
• Traffic can be a major
issue
• Ongoing costs of site
maintenance
• Responsible for
Security etc
Most People will Need 3rd Party Help

5. Conversion

6. What is a Conversion?
View a ‘Thank you’ Page
Sign up for your email list
Download a White Paper
Listen to an ‘MP3 Audio Track’
Make a Purchase

7. Market Research
•Find your products
•Price? CRUCIAL
•Can you compete?
•Remember the Costs
•50 products x 100 sales=££
Create a Spreadsheet of your top 50 products

8. Web
Site
Social
Media
Organic
Search
Email
Marketing
Offline
Marketing Affiliates
Blog
PR
Activities

9. Traffic All the
Marketing
Conversion Visitors to
Buyers
Fulfilment
Manage
Orders,upsell
Customers etc

10. Sales – Costs = Profit
Simple Maths
Cost of Goods
Post and
Packaging
Commission
Advertising
Bank Fees
Staff

11. Simple Maths Part 2
Visitors Conversion
(% Buyers)
Avg Order Sales
1000 2% £20 £400
1000 3% £20 £600
1000 3% £40 £1200
Visitors Conversion Rate
(% Buyers)
Avg Order SALES

14. AdWords Scenario 1
• 1000 visitors @ 50p per click will cost
£500
• 2% Conversion rate = 20 sales
• Each sale costs £500/20 = £25
• Worth while for a boiler repair?
• Worth while for a £600 Dress?

15. AdWords Scenario 2
• 1000 visitors @ 20p per click will cost
£200
• 3% Conversion rate = 30 sales
• Each sale costs £200/30 = £6.67
• Can be very profitable – if done well
• Cab be very costly – if done badly
• Google ‘Google AdWords’ for more info.

16. Easy Online Checkout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sk7cOqB9Dk

17. Conversion Rate Optimisation
• CRO takes advantage of your existing traffic by
increasing your campaign’s ROI
• It significantly reduces your cost of acquisition (COA)
• Your profit is directly linked to your conversion rates,
so increasing your conversions means increasing your
profits
• It makes your customer’s journey thru’ your website
more efficient and satisfying
• It increases your competitiveness against competitors
in your vertical market who do not utilise CRO
• You are able to understand your customers conversion
path (journey) on your website, allowing you to
blueprint every action (Part 2)

18. Getting your customer to
Do The Thing.
• What conversion rate should I be happy with?
• Don’t worry about average
• A good conversion rate is – Better than the
ONE you have NOW.
• When is the best time to plant an Oak tree?
• Around 1-3% is common… Apples and
Oranges… You can’t really compare
CRO Tips – Do all the things…
Eat the Elephant.

19. Quality Product Images
• If I’d have to pick one
single thing that would
sell a product online, it’s
images.
• Images are King
• Would a web site work
with no descriptions –
Just images?

21. Great Images, in Context and Zoooooooommmmmable….

24. • People want to see what
they’re getting. The
starting point in boosting
ecommerce conversion
rates is having high
quality photos of your
product.
• The more the better.
• Show the products from
different angles, and in
context, make them
zoomable………

25. • 36%
To get a 1% improvement is eCommerce is
good!

26. Great Product Copy
• Product descriptions matter
• The shopper should convince
themselves this is the right product for
them.
• Clear descriptions beat persuasion.
• Long or short descriptions? You should offer
both, the concise version and the long
version. The shorter version should capture
the key points: who’s the product for, what
will it do and why is that good.

29. Mobile Version?
• If you are not Mobile – You are not there!!! Google says…
• Extremely Simple Navigation
• Information is concise, images are consistent in size and quality
• Product purchase - fit everything on one screen:
• 3-line product descriptions, with the ability to save to a wish list..
• Facebooks last Qtr. Advertising revenue was £2.8bn. Nearly 80% of
that came from mobile advertising………..
• Build your Web Site initially on a mobile platform and then PC?
• https://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

31. Product Videos
• Videos Sell.
• Even if your customers don’t watch them.
• Livens up your pitch, increases interest.
• Clarifies a complex product. How to Video?
• Who owns YouTube?
• Rank better in Google Search.
• Easily Sharable. Will it blend?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

34. Charging for delivery is a
conversion killer –
Ireland’s pet hate!!!
• If you are charging for delivery – you are doing it
wrong.
• £6.99 off delivery is better than £10 discount.
• An E-tailing Group study revealed that
unconditional free shipping is #1 criteria for
making a purchase (73% listed it as ‘critical’). In
another study 93% of respondents indicated that
free shipping on orders would encourage them to
purchase more products.
• The French Connection… Amazon.fr
• If you need to charge – Be upfront about it.
(Increase order value?)

35. • Great Search
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbtf1oyNg-8

36. Great Search and Filters
• Search is crucial to e-commerce
• People just want to find the product,
quickly
• Over 50% of visitors will use the search
facility
• Amazon etc. much more.
• More products – more important.
• Use Filtering to help

38. Pricing is Crucial
• Getting the price right
• Very visible offers page / Area
• Discount codes
• 1st order offers
• Communicate your value proposition
• Why are you better or different?
• Say something interesting about you.

41. Which site/page is better?
• How can we tell?
• A/B testing.
• Trial and error
• Up Sell… Increase average order (buy this
too)
• Sell Confidence in your site
• Analysing the Statistics
• Do it all again
• Eating the Elephant, a bite at a time.

47. Getting the Balance
Right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5WurXNec7E

48. • Pestering your visitor – The American way?
• Landing Page problems
• Online Survey pop up’s
• Distraction…
• Device Specific Landing Page – Just phone
No?
• Check your UX..
• Work the process
Getting the Balance
Right

49. Security
• Do we really need to ‘Talk Talk’ about this?
• Vodafone recently upgraded their site.
They are ‘securely getting all the things’
• Part of your Value Proposition.
• Your site needs to be trustworthy.
• Becoming a major concern.

52. Big Call to Action.
• Increase your visitor response.
• Size
• Colour
• Wording
• Contrast with the rest of the page
• Position
• Urgency

57. Checkout
• Ease of Payment? Try yourself
• Payment Choices – More the better
• Registration – Only of necessary
• Paypal – Easy way out
• Abandoned Cart – Follow-up
email/Phone.
• Stored shopping basket

58. Some Useful Tools
• http://www.semrush.com/
• SEMrush is a powerful and versatile competitive
intelligence suite for online marketing, from SEO and
PPC to social media and video advertising research.
• https://moz.com/
• Backed by industry-leading data and the largest
community of SEOs on the planet, Mozbuilds tools that
make inbound marketing easy
• http://seositecheckup.com/
• Find comprehensive search engine optimization (SEO)
tools for your site

59. Useful Sites
NI Business Info
– http://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/sales-marketing
– http://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/e-commerce
– http://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/online-business-networking-and-
social-networking
Get Invest NI support?
www.investni.com/about-us/what-we-do/how-we-support-
business.html
Invest NI
0800 181 4422

60. Driving Traffic Summary
• Search Engine Optimisation
– Needs ongoing work
• Need to think about Paid Search
– Google Adwords, Bing
• Social Media
– Draw visitors from Social Media to your site
– Facebook Advertising, Twitter Advertising
• Online and Offline PR

61. AdWords Summary
• Depends on your market/margins
• Can be very profitable
• Needs to be done by someone who
understand it properly
– Very easy to waste money
• Easy to measure ROI

62. Conversion Summary
• Price
• Ease of Use/Design
– Responsive Design
• Great Images, Clear Copy
• Trust
– Delivery Cost and Options
– Returns Policy, Security
• Checkout Process/Payment Options

63. At Last…
• Creating an E-Commerce web site is
within reach of most small businesses
• Marketing and driving traffic needs time,
effort, money
• Ebay and Amazon may be a good testing
ground prior to your own site
• Make sure the sums add up