Hey there. In the previous video, we learned how to build consideration and get customers super interested in a product or service. Now they're ready to buy. The next stage of the marketing funnel is conversion. Think of conversion as the process to get a potential customer to take a desired action. This could be to sign up for a consultation, or as simple as coming into the store. For this video, we're going to focus on online purchases. You'd think this is an easy process. Someone visits a website, and they make a purchase, but it's not always that easy. What if they have difficulty with the checkout process, or get distracted and cannot complete the online transaction? Or what if they're interested in the product or service, but are still undecided if it's right for them? As a digital marketer or e-commerce analyst, it may be your job to ensure the checkout process goes smoothly for the customer. It may also be your job to increase the likelihood that the customer makes a purchase. Or you may be tasked with increasing the purchase volume or total value. Now both of these jobs have one main goal: to increase conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of users or website visitors that take a desired action. The typical conversion rate of an e-commerce business is around 1-2%, For example, if two people out of a hundred visit a product page and make a purchase, that is a 2% conversion rate. Imagine if you could increase that by just one person out of a hundred. So, three people out of a hundred make a purchase. You could increase the business revenue by 33% with a simple website change. That would have a huge impact on the business' revenue! Now that you understand more about the conversion, let's discuss strategies and tactics. Optimize the checkout process. When a customer goes to check out, it should be as easy as possible. Every additional field or page may decrease the conversion rate. A field is any piece of information the customer needs to enter before purchasing the product. For example, do you need their phone number? If not, delete that field. Another optimization idea is to change the purchase button from "add to cart" to "buy now." Or consider adding additional payment options such as Google Pay or Shopify's Shop Pay. Add better product and service photos. The quality and number of photos on a webpage may drastically affect the conversion rate. Add high-quality photos with varied angles to increase that. Additionally, many e-commerce companies only put photos of their product or service. So consider adding lifestyle photos. A lifestyle photo shows someone actually using the product or service. Encourage customers to add lifestyle photos to their product reviews. Strengthen the product or service copy. When a potential customer reads about the product or service they will purchase, it should be persuasive. The copy is any written material that encourages a customer to buy a product or a service. Make sure the copy is not only explaining the product but also making an emotional appeal to buy it. Add live chat. Not all companies will be able to add live chat. However, if they can, it could increase the conversion rate. If a customer has an issue with checkout or a product question, they can simply ask the question through the chat. That's better than having them actually leave the webpage. If you're working for a small business that cannot staff live chat, they can add chatbots instead. Chatbots are software that answers basic questions for website visitors. Pursue abandoned carts. This is when a customer starts the checkout process and enters their email but doesn't make the purchase. You may think this isn't common, but it is. Many e-commerce softwares now come with the capability to send these customers an email. The email reminds them that they still have items in their cart. Some customers with an abandoned cart will revisit the website and finish their purchase. Additionally, this is a great opportunity to send a remarketed ad. The ad will remind these potential customers what's in their cart. Increase website speed. According to a study by The State of Online Retail Performance, for every second delay in page load speed, conversions can fall by 20%. Website speed is something we'll discuss later in the program. There're a few simple strategies to increase the speed of a slow website, such as reducing the size of images. Offer a trial or money-back guarantee. While this isn't possible for all products or services, it can nudge a customer to a purchase. You typically encounter a money-back guarantee for more expensive purchases. Products I've recently experienced with money-back guarantees include mattresses, glasses, and clothes. Experiment with A/B tests. This is a more advanced strategy because it involves analytics. An A/B test is when you compare two versions of a webpage to determine which has the highest conversion rate. We recommend that whenever you change an element on a page, you compare its conversion rate to the page's previous version. Generally, you should change one element at a time to get the most accurate results. For example, you could test different main photos for a product. Which converts the highest: the product photo with a white background, outside background, or a lifestyle setup? Remember A/B tests apply to more industries than just e-commerce. It's for any type of business that wants to make it easier for their customer to take a desired action. When implementing any strategy to increase conversion, you have to keep in mind the return rate. It doesn't benefit a company if, when the conversion goes up, so does the amount of products returned. Keep this in mind. All right, you've taken the potential customer from the AWARENESS stage, to the CONSIDERATION stage, to the CONVERSION stage. Congrats, they're now a customer, but are you done marketing? No, no, you're not. In the next video, we'll discuss the LOYALTY stage: How to turn customers into repeat customers that support the brand.
