eCommerce Simplicity
Everything online usability, marketing, and measurement
eCommerce Geographic Targeting – Use location to drive conversion
As your eCommerce business reaches scale and your physical store operations reach levels of greater than 50 locations, the need to integrate geographical targeting solutions becomes more important to maximizing your multi-channel retail sales.
You can probably decipher what these solutions achieve, but, in a nutshell, geographic targeting allows a website to render dynamic content that is tailored to the web location of a user.
Ultimately the focus of geo-targeting solutions is to create more macro conversions for the business. A macro conversion does not always take place on the website, but rather, may take place within physical store locations and communications with the brand that convert within varied channels.
Over the last 8 years, during the period of true multi-channel retail, we have learned that when customers engage with your brand in multiple channels, their overall value rises dramatically. This is not a new concept.
But building brand loyalty in an age in which consumers are flooded with product and value messaging becomes more and more challenging, but by using geo-targeting, your company can help accelerate transactional progress in creating more location messages within your retail enterprise.
So when can you use geo-targeting?
Are you a multi-channel retailer with hundreds of locations…or just 20? Do you have a product mix that factors into situations for which seasonality affects demand? Do you have a merchandising strategy that takes into location for promotional calendars? All of these questions need to be answered when properly structuring a geographic targeting plan online.
How can a retailer or web business use geo targeting to drive both on-site and in-store conversion?
Use Case #1 Show your physical stores
This is a no-brainer and a project that senior management will likely embrace whole heartedly. This is essentially the dynamic insertion of physical store locations into website templates based upon the geographic location of the user.
Forward thinking retailers put mechanisms in place to render the “3 closest stores” to users, complete with pictures and door to door directions. This is done by integrating solutions that reference user IP addresses to back end databases that match to user zip codes.
Automatically the solution references business rules and current physical locations to decide what to render within a website template. In situations for which a user may not be living close to a store, the system renders “default” creative.
By showing the closest stores, either within a homepage only or global template module, the user now has a clear idea of the closest locations for which he or her can transact with the brand directly, without having to notice or utilize the store locator button or link.
Use Case #2 Create more relevant spotlight promotions
I have talked about this opportunity within this blog in previous posts and I am still surprised that the retail sector seems to be lagging behind other eCommerce sectors with this tactic. Weather and physical location can be great cues to drive more relevant promotions within the first three seconds of a user visit.
Think of these possible scenarios and retailers:
The Home Depot: Do you want to show the same homepage to Florida users versus users in Maine in February?
NFLShop.com: Why would the business not tailor homepage spotlight products to a local team (ex. Jerseys, hats, shirts etc to a hometown team)?
StubHub: Spotlight the local events happening on the homepage that correlate to a physical location
Use Case #3 Use geo-targeting to show your shipping value proposition
Shipping is a key factor when consumers make up their mind of if they want to purchase or not. Large retailers have complex business rules and are limited to certain states for free shipping or even free overnight shipping (which customers love!). Why not be proactive with this messaging to customer segments. Geo targeting can help immensely.
The location of your distribution centers and the corresponding ship rates may lead to having certain states having 3-5 day free shipping versus 1-2 day. This is a BIG difference in the mind of the consumer and if you are not conveying this messaging throughout the user experience then your store is missing a key opportunity.
In this user case, Geo-targeting solutions will again take assessment of the user IP address, map that address to the database of zip codes, and ultimately decipher what type of shipping option, free or otherwise, that corresponds to the user’s location. Embracing this tactic will allow your eCommerce store to be proactive to a key question in the user’s mind and help take shipping out of the equation as a potential roadblock to conversion.
Take a step back and think about your business. Do you have customer scenarios that would be positively impacted by the integration of geographically tailored content or promotions?
Ecommerce businesses are frequently mired in the order management and “blocking and tackling” functions of service and fulfillment. As your store looks to create an innovative gameplan for your 2011 roadmap, take a step back and think about how geo-targeting can enhance your user experience. Doing so can produce great gains, both in the online and physical channel alike.
If you would like more information about Trinity Insight’s eCommerce geo-targeting consulting, please contact us online.
Video Games and eCommerce
I must admit, I’m a bit of a kid at heart as it relates to playing video games. Being a child who grew up in the 80′s, I was immersed with Nintendo and Sega and fascinated by spending hours trying complete Super Mario 3 or Ninja Gaiden.
We get older and with age comes 
responsibilites. Time becomes scarce. I have less time to play video games but try to bust out the XBOX once a week for a little R&R. My interests these days lie in sports games and within a new sports game release I observed the intersection of eCommerce integrated within the online gaming experience.
When playing FIFA 10 (a killer soccer game) within the menu of the game there is the ability to go to the FIFA store. When there, users have the ability to use stored payment options to purchase additional gaming components among other things. It makes a ton of sense to personalize the store based upon user preferences and with the millions of consumers who use video games daily, this can be an interesting channel to watch in the years to come.
Lets say I am a Liverpool fan. For those in the U.S., Liverpool is a popular football (not soccer in Europe) team that has a devoted following in the Premier league of England. When configuring the game upon my first play, I select Liverpool as my favorite team. Imagine the possibilities and potential revenue share potential that can take place.
Within the store, I could be presented with Liverpool apparel, memorabilia, ticket offers, and other items that passionate fans love to buy. Essentially, it could operate as an affiliate marketing relationship, but instead of the publisher getting paid by the retailer, the video game company, in this case Electronic Arts, would get paid a revenue share from the retailer or wholesaler that ships the item.
This becomes simplistic because payment info (Credit card data) is already stored within most user accounts. Online gaming has led to users purchasing subscriptions etc online and most users have their info stored. This leads to an easier transaction and higher conversion rates.
Video games and eCommerce is an emerging channel and one that should be watched. Take a minute and think about your assortment and target demographic. Maybe this opportunity is closer than you think.
Google Optimizer & Analytics Enhancements
So last week, Trinity Insight was visiting Google at their Mountanview headquarters for the yearly summit that takes place with authorized partners within the analytics and optimizer products.
Always a great time full of learning, including progressive discussions into how businesses can maximize their web properties through conversion optimization.
While there, we got a glimpse of some of the new developments with these products. Recently announced at this week’s eMetrics conference are enhancements to both Website Optimizer and Google Analytics that further close the gap between Google’s offerings and other paid solutions.
These new developments make these solutions even more useful to marketers and technology teams across the globe.
First lets discuss website optimizer. For those who are not familiar with website optimizer, it is Google’s free tool that allows webmaster to conduct both multivariate and AB Testing in efforts to improve conversion rates. Two primary enhancements were announced.
An API for website optimizer
One of Website Optimizer’s previous limitations was the difficulty that sometimes arose in tagging creative and text within content mangement systems. Users, after monitoring and completing tests, had to re-tag pages and jump through seemingly un-necessary hoops in order to conduct follow up testing.
Google identified this as an issue and created an API for the Optimizer product. This will allow tests to be conducted without having to add the JavaScript snippets for each test that is conducted. This is a great development within the area of conversion optimization and should help businesses in embracing the culture and mindset of testing.
Right now only two CMS platforms have completed the integration. One is Crown Peak and the other is Motivity. I am sure that Google is already in discussions with other shopping cart and CMS vendors, and I believe that the open source community is developing ways to integrate leading tools like eCommerce platform provider Magento and content management systems like Joomla.
Still many technical issues to figure out, but the premise of non-tagging based testing is an exciting development within the eBusiness marketplace.
Over Time Charting
Not as big a development as the API, but this enhancement is something that will help marketers in assessing test trends over a period of time. Previously, reporting data within the Optimizer back-end was limited to an aggregate of data.
With this enhancement, you can see how the conversion rate fluctuates over a unique date period. This functionality seems great for media sites, where users return daily, to assess how new design approaches are embraced on subsequent visits.
Google Analytics, not to to be undone by it’s sister product, also enhanced their product. Let’s look at the biggest enhancement.
Google Analytics Intelligence
A great stride in the product allows web analysts to be essentially alerted by their analytics system when certain key metrics fall or rise above key thresholds. This type of functionality is going to be great in helping users identify problems with the site or marketing efforts before the problem becomes a crisis.
Some interesting things you can do within this is to define your alert sensativity. This allows a marketer to be able to structure their exact notification preferences for the metrics that matter to them and get their notifcations in a manner that will impact business decisions.
That’s what these tools are all about: Getting the right data in order to make proper business decisions. Sometimes I think that message gets lost in the clutter and complexity of site optimization. These tools will not optimize the site themeselves, but rather provide the insights and datapoints to empower someone to do so.
Great to see these enhancements and these new functionality sets make the Google products even more of a player when a business is looking for a onine testing and web analytics platform.
If you want to speak to Trinity Insight about web analytics consulting and how it can impact your marketing and site efforts, please contact us!
The eCommerce metrics you must track
Web Analytics can be an amazing technology, but also a highly under-utilized one. Complex deployments and integrations frequently leave business users befuddled. Without dedicated staff to analyze, analytics packages more often than not collect dust.
This brief is focused on outlining the 7 most important web metrics to monitor within your eCommerce business and what to look for as it relates to your website’s performance.
Bounce rate
First on our list is the most important metric you will encounter: bounce rate. Think of bounce rate as a first impression. The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of users that leave your website after only viewing the initial page that was presented.
Bounce rate is so vital because it provides details into how you initially message your value proposition to the customer or prospect. It provides a cue to also help you identify performance issues with your site that may be causing the inflation the metric.
Bounce rates vary by industry, but eCommerce businesses should focus on getting the metric below 30%. Especially important within paid search campaigns, bounce rate will provide valuable cues into which product assortments and promotions at the category and sub-category levels of your taxonomy are doing well. This knowledge can be leveraged across the business in other categories and implemented via multi-variate testing deployments.
Email Capture Ratio
The next metric you want to track is your email capture ratio. As an online business, you probably sell some type of tangible product or service in which you monitor orders or completed information forms. Most businesses monitor their standard conversion rate, but few businesses frequently monitor their email capture rate and take a proactive approach to increasing.
With eCommerce conversion rates yet to eclipse an average of 3%, 97% of users who come to your store are leaving without buying something. Just because they are leaving however does not mean they are not interested in communicating on some level with your business. By gaining an intial step of trust through the capture of an email address, you are not only increasing the size of your house list for future marketing but you are also building a relationship with your customer and can win their business by providing them solutions to their lives.
Strive for a 7-10% email capture rate and place the sign up tool prominent in the header. Too many businesses bury their sign up tool and do not leverage rich applications that can use browser technologies such as ajax to expand a capture field over standard text in an overlay fashion.
Number of non-branded organic keywords
Make sure you look at number of monthly non-branded organic search keywords. When monitoring SEO performance, you need to first strip out the branded terms that correlate with your business. Thats traffic that you would have received without effective SEO. Then look to the number of remaining keywords that were utilized to make up the balance of the remaining natural search visits.
Why is this important? Because SEO is driven from the long tail. Sure, core SEO terms are nice but you need to capture the 4 and 5 word queries that make up the majority of Google queries each day. Long tail placements are acheived through proper site architecture and quality targeted content. Simply put, the more terms that people are using to find you, the better your site is doing in content development. Aim for a 5% to 10% increase each month within non-branded search keywords as you structure your SEO campaigns.
Shopping Cart to Checkout “Step 1″ Progression Rate
Our next metric directly correlates to the transactional process. Make sure you monitor your direct progression percentage from the shopping cart to checkout step 1. See how many of your users are bailing for price shopping and/or they see a promo code box on your site and they are going hunting for one. This type of behavior dramatically impacts your conversion rate and overall profits and steps should be taken to measure and reduce.
Consider adding the promo box at the end of the transaction for non-affiliate sessions in order to reduce leakage. Use a cookie from an affiliate or potentially a URL to trigger two versions of the cart page. By incorporating checkout abandonment tools that re-market via email, and aggressive banners both internally and externally to try and re-capture the lost transaction, eCommerce businesses can pull prospects back in the sales funnel.
Browser and Resolution Percentages
Dont forget about looking at Browser/Resolution percentages (types and sizes) when scaling your eCommerce business. Lace face it, when you sell online you are in the “looks professional…is professional” world and goo design can make even the smallest retailer seem large. If your build your site and it breaks in Safari (Mac’s browser), or the navigation breaks on Firefox 3.5 on a PC, you essentially shoot yourself in the foot.
Look at the varied browsers and resolutions that are being used to view your website. Conduct full cross-browser testing, on varied platforms, to fully notice any potential usability problems that arrive.
Average number of cross/up sells added per visit
If you are an eCommerce business, you already know that intelligent merchandising is a crucial key to success. A primary metric to help you understand performance within online merchandising is that of average cross/up sells added per visit.
This datapoint associates to your cross sell tools that integrate at the product and the cart level and measures the average number of cross-sells added to the cart per visit. The number will provide details into the effectiveness of your product recommendations and if the recommended products are actively engaging and persuading customers.
It is tough to provide a benchmark statistic for this metric since products can vary so greatly in terms of pricepoint. But look at your historical performance and consider automating this component through algorithmic third party solutions.
In conclusion, web analytics is a complicated tool only when you let it be. When mining your data, consider the business need and goal before running the reports. Doing so will help you leverage your analytics in ways you never considered and help drive incremental ROI online.
Looking for more info? Contact us about our ecommerce consulting and web analytics consulting services