Last updated on 07/13/2022
In this article, we will not talk about acquisition strategy to acquire visitors but optimization of the e-commerce website to get more conversions.
If you still struggle with your acquisition strategy to get more visitors to your e-commerce website you can check our article.
As a brand owner, there are certain metrics that you need to keep an eye on. The question is: Which metrics?
Is visits the right metric?
What other metrics would help contextualize it better?
Visits
Marketing and traffic managers use this metric to measure how many customers they are bringing to the website. While it was beneficial to understand how many visits come to the e-commerce site, this alone doesn’t give insight into the sales impact.
Unique visits
A website visitor can make multiple visits but they are one coming to the shop.
Unique visits tell us the level of engagement a visitor is having with your website, not their likelihood to purchase.
Here is an example:
You are on a lunch break and you enter a retail store because you have time to spare and you like or sell the same items. This does not mean that you will buy a product or even intend to buy it. You are just visiting.
However, if you pick up an item and put it in your shopping cart, you will be more likely to check out and pay.
Sales Funnel
Item in cart
The order entering in the sales flow is that website visitors have filled up their cart and are ready to checkout. Understanding the sales flow is important in analyzing online sales.
You want to make sure that online customers have the most optimal experience and nothing is obstructing the sales process.
Completed orders
This metric lets you know how many customers made online purchases on the website.
The difference between add to cart and order completed is when the prospect has signaled an intent to buy a product by adding items to his cart, but is not yet ready to buy because he left the website afterwards.
This has resulted in an event that has been reported to the tracking tools installed on your e-commerce website (google tag, ecommerce tracking events).
Abandoned cart
Now, you may ask yourself why a visitor would add to the cart but then leave the website without purchase?
Many hypothesis can be highlighted:
- They are in public transport and need to leave the subway
- Don’t have their bank cart on them
- Need to read more informations about your brand, products, reviews later
- Doing price comparisons against other competitors.
They will be distracted during the day and maybe forget your website afterwards. You have to remind them so that they come back and complete the order.
Go reach out to them via an email or retargeted online ad with a personalized message, and unique promo code.
This audience is the middle of your sales funnel and you want them to go down. They are qualified leads.
There are two ways to increase sales, completed orders and average order value. One can optimize the top of the funnel, i.e. visits and unique visitors, or focus on the bottom of the funnel, i.e. shopping cart conversion.
Track your customers
Returning customers rate
Tracking the number of customers returning to your online store is a good way of determining customer satisfaction and brand trust.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
All KPIs are metrics but all metrics are not KPIs. KPIs are selected metrics used to evaluate whether or not your business is achieving its goals for growth. KPIs should reflect your sales and marketing strategy.
“ecommerce metrics are any source of data that requires interpretation and measurement over time. KPIs are subjective goals based on metrics and are custom-tailored to your ecommerce business. “ – Whiplash
The analysis of your metrics and the definition of KPIs allows you to make better decisions on the digital marketing strategy to activate.
By identifying the user journeys that convert best, you can focus on the traffic sources that have the highest conversion rates and invest more marketing budget in these channels to reach your potential buyers.
Analytics Tools
You need to have Google Analytics and setup tags in order to use it to its full potential.
Enhanced e-commerce allows you to track everything that happens in your ecommerce store, the acquisition attribution model, sales funnel, average order value, and more.
Google Analytics is a very simple web analytics tool to help you create performance reports by country, by product, by revenue line etc. And set up your KPIs and business goals to achieve.
It is essential to make the right decisions, optimize your strategy and your ecommerce website.
Don’t be fooled by many web visitors, as they spend more and more time, more and more people on the web are simply curious. The metrics to distinguish between customers and curious people is important.
Same as the number of likes on social media, they can be vanity metrics that don’t help with conversion or achieving your business goals.
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