Sometimes, e-commerce marketing can feel like a shot in the dark. You follow all the best practices and work with an experienced firm, but how do you know that your efforts are generating results?
Measuring the ROI of your e-commerce marketing strategy can help you track your progress. If you’re seeing too little ROI, there are several ways you can boost those numbers and produce long-lasting success.
Build SEO-Friendly Websites and Content
Whether you’re selling clothing or cleaning services, you need more eyes on the page. A big part of ROI is lead generation and conversion. If nobody visits your website, you’ll see a decline in e-commerce marketing ROI; however, increasing traffic will often lead to increased conversions and sales if you deliver on your promise and provide outstanding quality to your customers.
For instance, we worked with Two Men and a Truck on an aggressive lead-generation campaign that resulted in an ROI of 4709%. That’s a spectacular result, but it’s the result of careful strategy. We started by helping Two Men and a Truck rank highly in Google for critical keywords. This boosted traffic, which gave the website a chance to work its magic.
This means you’ll want to track organic traffic as well as paid traffic. If you discover that you can drive significant traffic from organic search alone, you’ll know you need to supercharge your content marketing efforts to give people a reason to stay on the page. It also requires search engine optimization for all of your content.
Nurture Leads Throughout the Buying Cycle
Keep in touch with your customers as you usher them through the transaction. HubSpot recommends nurturing leads in both the pre- and post-transactional phase. Create trust by offering free downloads and other assets that your target market can use to make educated decisions. Provide them with useful information that builds loyalty and generates interest.
After the transaction takes place, don’t drop the ball. You can boost e-commerce marketing ROI significantly if you encourage repeat purchases and help your customers make the best use of your products or services. For instance, you might send surveys to request feedback or invite your customers to view instructional videos so they can use your products or services more effectively.
Create a Better Shopping Experience
Potential customers will quickly click away if they’re confused by your product descriptions or frustrated by the checkout process. When working with Pelle Pelle, for example, we increased online year-over-year revenue by 1100% by optimizing the shopping process for both desktop usage and mobile.
If your customers find it easy to select a product or service, conduct the transaction, and receive the order, you’ll see an increase in sales, which translates into better ROI for your e-commerce marketing campaign.
Track ROI Correctly
You can track numerous metrics to calculate your ROI, but some metrics are more important than others. The best metrics might vary by industry or product category.
Start with broad-range metrics, from repeat customers and total sales to most-viewed product pages and keyword analysis. Over time, the metrics will show you which are more indicative of business health and prosperity. For instance, you might see an increase of 200% in site traffic, but if your sales don’t increase proportionally, you know that traffic isn’t the best metric with which to define ROI. More importantly, you can start analyzing the reasons behind those trends.
Creating a robust e-commerce marketing strategy is essential for success. To learn how to update and upgrade your website for increased ROI, download our ebook: Intro to Growth-driven Design.
