Need to increase the 2% conversion ratio .. anybody listening ?

By Manisha Rastogi on September 14, 2012 3 Comments / 1686 views

Hella people !

Let me be absolutely honest by saying , that since i had experienced Alok’s wrath of slicing up people into two to what he thought was not required and didn’t make any logical sense to him , it really takes a lot for me to figure out what to write on this discussion. ( i was thankfully part of the audience 🙂

Am i to be posing a world problem ? a political scenario ? an opinion on a merger or acquisition ??! Unfortunately i ve none of these above , but there is this situation that i can brief you ll with ..

“Right from days in working at Sify a decade back , learnt about no matter how many leaflets we d distribute in and around our Sify iways , there would just be a 2 % lot coming back.

First and foremost to go about defining a catchment , highrises , schools , colleges in and around the iway and you simply distribute 1000s of leaflets talking about the iway. No discounts or free trial offers , mind you a decade back there weren’t any of these malls that we suddenly have now at every main junction and signal ! And with all the small detailing of coding each an every leaflet to know which catchment worked better ! A 2% only sir !

And even now while doing an emailer campaign or conducting a customer survey , still stuck at the same percentage ratio ! Is it that no matter how much is the sample size , only that many number of people really care to read or respond back ? Though Customer surveys still are at a better rate of 9-10%. So yes you would say it depends on the content – who wants only a piece of information , where s the call to action ? wheres the need for the prospect to simply start doing what you d want him to ? Though everything seems to be in place ( at least i think ) , but still there’s something missing ..

So would really like if there could be some suggestions that can flow in and enlighten yours truly..

Cheers

Manisha

Comments

Manisha Rastogi

3 Comments

Abey John September 22, 2012, 4:45 am

Manisha, conversion optimization is my pet baby so I would definitely love to help out. 🙂 When the rodinhoods started out I went all enthu gungho and posted something about it.

Will need more info about your market, your audience, your product, your offer, and everything else. After you strip away all the jargon and point of assurance widgets (call to action is one of them) conversion improvement boils down to three things:

1. Get your message in front of your target audience

2. Kill/Destroy/Eliminiate or at least depress the anxiety and fear people have when buying into a product (before putting down the money)

3. Increase trust.

For a more specific response let me know about the business and market. If you prefer to not discuss specifics in an open forum email me – abey(at)clickmantra.in. Warning: private conversations will inevitably lead to me digging my money sucking tubes into your pile of loot :D. You can see my work profile here: https://bit.ly/odesk-abey
Manisha Rastogi September 27, 2012, 6:26 am

Hi Abey,

Apologies for the late response on ur reply. We are into accessories for high end gadgets. Essentially cases, screen protectors , chargers and so on. You could visit http://www.stuffcool.com to get a further idea.

And yes initially to begin with help seems to be a more desirable way : )

regards
Abey John September 27, 2012, 10:38 am

Aaah okay. Consumer Ecommerce. That means lotsa work. :))

Conversion improvement:

You need to do ton of testing: copy, colors, product placements etc to up the conversions. You can use Google Analytics Content Experiments for this (Old: Website Optimizer) or go for a paid solution like convert.com or visualwebsiteoptimizer.com. Both are great, google’s solution is a bit more basic and support is atrocious (basically no support) but if you have a js guru on board that should be the cheapest. Long run your tool cost is going to be a subset of your testing cost so go with whatever you like with a view to switching or testing both tools parallely. Depends on your team size, resource availability and other blah blah variables. 🙂

To put it in my best imitation colloquial hindi: testing karkey raggud thay raho. 🙂 In about a year you’ll see patterns emerge that will help you make dramatically greater jumps in conversion.

Landsend one of the top retail ecom sites has a conversion rate of 40%. So you see there is ample room for you to grow.

Personalization:

The second wing of your strategy is deep personalization. If a person buys x widget what are the related widgets that this person may like. Put them into an email follow up schedule offering related items. I think mirapost.com handles this.

Be careful with your email list though. You need to start a conversation with them. Not dump product lists on them. Best example for a newsletter in your category would be woot.com. I subscribe to them even though I have no intention of buying from them. Copywriting matters, keep it funky, contemporary, and fun. The products themselves have no distinguishing feature.

Not your “Best keychain with flashing LED flashlight” more like

It was a cold winter’s night and Mohan was hunting for his super-hero glares before he stepped out of his psychedlic Tata Nano. The chicks at the DumArreyDum disco dug guys with super-hero glares even if it made them blind as bats. Mohan’s glares had a thin sliver of plain glass running through the center that allowed him to see through and navigate. Aaah the price of being cool. But at this moment all this cool was about to get lost. The glares weren’t findable. The weak raspy cabin light cast everything in a wicked shadow and his glares were nowhere to found. He touched Ganesha’s feet. Lord help. And the Lord directed his glance to his Keychain.

This trusty keychain sheds light on all things hidden and unhidden. He grabbed the super-cool-name-LED-light-keychain and triumphantly switched it on. And obviously, at least in this tale, his supercool glares floated out of hiding.

And Mohan triumphantly, stylishly slouched out of the car his eyes eagerly scanning for chicks. Unfortunately though vision was limited to his eye level and he fell flat in a shining pothole puddle on the road. Had he but used his super-cool-name-LED-light-keychain. Sigh. Such is the price of cool.

To protect yourself from such uncool events and fumbling in the dark, grab your very own super-cool-name-LED-light-keychain <here>

The theme/style is entirely up to you and you may want to experiment with various options before you decide on a mix that conveys an authentic voice without making it boring. Poking fun at stereotypes is one way. Not the only way. 🙂

You should also investigate personalization feature in both convert.com and VWO to tap into the repeat visitor crowd who are not yet your customers.

Also look at Adwords remarketing. Basically ad stalk visitors to your site with a cycle of offers on Google Display Network.

Priority wise I’d say start with your customer audience segmentation and put them into an email follow up cycle before moving to the rest.

Once you have all these pieces moving then you can look at your overall conversion rate and start tweaking the different parts for further improvements.