Embedded Files
Are you driving a good number of visitors to your site? But are your sales numbers low? We understand that it is very frustrating if a lot of people browsing through your site and not purchasing anything. Wouldn’t you like to know that at what point between the browsing and purchase sequence they are leaving? Well if so, don’t worry! You are not an impractical and wishful thinker. After all, Google has the solution for almost everything!
As an e-store owner, you may be familiar with Google Analytics. If your analytics shows you that you have a lot of visitors on your site from different sources, then hey, you are on the right track! Your marketing efforts are paying off.
But now the big concern is, that how many of them actually complete the purchase! Do you know that you can actually track the ‘cursor fall’ of your audience as they navigate through your site?
This can be done by setting up conversion or sales funnels on your website’s analytics.
So let us dive in and see what exactly these conversion funnels are, and how they can help you optimize your website!
What is a Sales/Conversion funnel and why should I set one up?
When a customer visits your website, it may be at the homepage, brand/category page or the product page. So obviously, the number of visitors at the initial pages will be the highest. Depending on the relevancy of what they see, only a fraction will proceed to the next level, as you can see in the image.
So, the number of users on each successive page progressively goes down. A conversion funnel, gives you a way to visualize and analyze the flow of the customers who visit your page, to the customer who buy from you.
How does conversion funnel analytics help me?
Conversion funnel analytics can give you the number of people entering and exiting every stage. You can read and analyse the data and find out what is wrong.
In case of your conversion funnel, if you have decided to start your funnel at the product page, you can see at which stage customers are either abandoning the purchase or completing it.
Once you have set up your funnel, you can
Pinpoint the exact stages where people are exiting your website.
Find out how many people are leaving at a stage.
Optimize your website to minimize the exit numbers.
What Kind of Funnel can I create for my online store?
Before we jump in to the kind of funnel you should create for you store, let us examine the destination. If you know where you want to reach, it becomes easier to chalk out a path to it. The point where you want your customers to reach is called a goal in Google jargon.
Goal is the final step you want the user to take. For instance, the goal for your store will be when your customer purchases the products. A goal is the best way to find out how well your your site is performing. This can be done by checking the achievement rate of your set goal. Each goal met is recorded as a conversion.
Google gives the option of setting four kinds of goals- destination, time on site, pageviews per visit and event. But as an online store owner, the first one is of prime importance.
URL Destination Goals: A destination goal is the best goal type for an online store. A destination goal for your online store will most probably be the URL of the ‘purchase confirmation page’, as that is the final page you want all your customers to reach.
Time on site: If your website has a blog, a video demo or tour or a lot of exciting images, you can track the time a user is spending on the particular page. You can set a number say 10 mins and track how many users are spending greater than or less than 10 mins on a particular page. With this you can figure out which one of your- for instance blog, is getting maximum readership.
Once you have a clear picture of where you want your user to end up on your site, you can create a funnel to reach your desired goal. You can set up a conversions funnel for a product, category or brand. Google allows you to set 20 such funnels with a free account. Some steps in your conversion funnels can be
Product page> product customization page > Add to cart page > Billing information> complete purchase, or
Add to cart page> Address information> Billing information> complete purchase.
You can check out Google Analytics support to learn hoe to set up goals and conversion funnels.
How to read the data I get from a conversion funnel?
The beauty of google- simple and easy to understand. So reading the data generated from a sales funnel is no rocket science.Take a look at the image below which shows a conversion funnel for an online book store. The number of people entering and exiting the funnel at each stage can be seen clearly. You can see that eventually, only 50% of the visitors proceeded to the billing information.
Out of 10,214 people who add to the shopping cart, 1,244 exit and rest abandon the cart.
So like this bookstore, you can create funnels for your products, categories or brands. Let Google work its magic on the numbers and you can work on revamping your website!
What to do with all information?
So far it has been easy. You have just played around with a few settings on Google and you have beautiful pictures of how your consumers are interacting with your website. But what next? Supposing if a lot of people are dropping out at the first page, which in your case is the product page, it is time to switch things up. You may consider
1. Product changes: Sometimes the products or the way they are displayed may not be up to the mark. You may want to
Change the product all together.
Improve the picture quality and/or product description.
Change the price of the product.
2. Customer engagement tools: Use customer engagement tools such as WebEngage. With WebEngage you can show a pop-up to engage your customer. The pop up can be a discount on the item your customers have been browsing or an online survey to take feedback. Check out more about web engage and how to integrate it to your Zepo store here.
3. Reduce Cart Abandonment: If you feel a lot of people are dropping out after adding the product to the cart, a few simple changes can take care of this problem.
Avoid hidden charges like shipping, processing or handling charges during checkout. Include everything in the price of the product.
Provide free shipping where possible or free shipping for purchase of over a certain amount.
Provide guest checkout option. Skip asking for registration and other details at checkout.
Have COD as a payment option as Indian customers are still sceptical about putting their card or bank information on websites
Check out our article on How to reduce abandoned carts on your online store.
Moral of the Story
Conversion funnels provide very useful insights about what are your customers are up to when they enter your website. You can track their behaviour and accordingly modify your website features or communication strategy to suit their need.
What will it get you?
Insight on where to allocate more time and resources.
Ways to encourage those flaky and indecisive customers to buy from you.
Move value for you money, and
Eventually more sales.
So it is time to use this valuable resource and rock your website to drive those sales!
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse