What is Conversion Marketing?
In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is the act of marketing with the intent to increase conversions – that is, turning site visitors into paying customers. The process of improving the conversion rate is called conversion rate optimization. That being said, certain sites may consider a “conversion” to be a result other than a sale. One example of a conversion event other than a sale would be if a customer were to abandon an online shopping cart and the company were to then market a special offer – for example, free shipping, the convert the visitor into a paying customer. A company may also try to recover the deserter through an online engagement method, such as proactive chat, to assist the customer through the purchase process.
Common Conversion Marketing Services
- Recommendations – behavioral analysis that identifies products and content relevant to the customer’s perceived intent and desires.
- Targeted offers – Targeting aimed at fitting the right promotion with the right customer, based on the behavioral and demographic information.
- Ratings and reviews – Using user-generated ratings and reviews to increase conversion rates, capture feedback and engender visitors’ trust.
- Email personalization – Emails with embedded recommendations and chats that are tailored personally to the recipient.
- Chat – Attempts to use proactive chat, reactive chat, exit chat and click-to-call methods to convert consumers, who tend to abandon sites after only three clicks, into customers.
- Click-to-call – Supports cross-channel conversion without losing the context of the conversation when visitors move from the website to the phone.
- Co-Browsing – Tool for support agent infrastructure (chat or call) to assist customers in online transactions.
- Voice of the Customer – Feedback about products, services and online experiences, which is captured through carefully analyzed structured and unstructured data.
- Automated Guides – Predetermined steps that allow a customer to better understand product features and options to assist with the selection process.
- Re-targeting – Identification of visitors interested in particular products or services based on previous site browsing or searches. This offers relevant content through targeted ad placement.
Methods of Increasing Conversion Rates in E-Commerce:
Among many possible actions to increase the conversion rate, the most relevant may be to:
- Employ attention, Interest, Desire, and Action (AIDA) principles to guide the user experience through the conversion funnel.
- Enhance the user’s credibility and trust in the site, the product, and the business by displaying third-party trust logos and through quality site design.
- Improve site navigation structure so that users can browse and shop with minimal effort.
- Improve and focus the website content towards target conversion, including text, photographs, illustrations and video.
- Review and edit, or remove, obsolete or distracting content.
- Increase usability in order to reduce barriers to conversion.
- Create a self-serving customer service format by letting the user reach informative answers quickly with a learning database.
- Offer active help (e.g. live chat, co-browsing).
- Generate user reviews of the product or service.
- Gather a baseline user experience by recording user actions and compiling key objections.
- Enable clear tracking of standardized metrics using website analytics software for a predetermined conversion goal (e.g. “increase volume of newsletter subscriptions” or “decrease shopping cart abandonment rate”).
- Take repeated action to monitor and improve the website, based on quantitative and qualitative metrics.