How to Increase Conversion on Amazon
Building a customer base is one of the most important things about owning a business, but ensuring those customers ultimately make a purchase can be a challenge.
While Amazon has made it easy to start an e-commerce business of your own, trying to increase your conversion rate and ensure that more customers are filling their carts can be a sticking point for a growing business.
Here are a few things to consider when trying to improve your e-commerce conversion rate.
What is Conversion Rate?
A conversion rate is the most important metric of your online business because it indicates how your customers interact with you.
More than just tallying the number of purchases made in your store, a conversion rate can take into account the number of shares you receive on social media, items added to a cart before check out and even when a customer signs up for a mailing list. Any meaningful interaction with your store that can be counted towards your conversion rate.
Conversation rates are determined by dividing the number of visitors your online shop has received at a given time by the number of interactions with products. a conversion rate of 1% to 2% of your store's visitors is considered a decent average and an opportunity to expand.
Understanding the E-commerce Funnel
An E-commerce funnel is a simple way to visualize your customers' thought process as they find their way to your store and follow through to making a purchase. Understanding how an E-commerce funnel works can be a great help when trying to expand your reach and increase your conversion rate.
A sales funnel can help you set goals for different levels of your marketing strategy. Whether you're trying to introduce new customers to your brand or entice long time followers into making a new purchase.
Here's an example of what a basic funnel would include:
Awareness
This is the point in the funnel when potential customers have yet to hear about your product. It is a time to introduce yourself through ads and targeted content that display how you can address a specific need the customer is looking to meet. This stage will put you on a potential customer's radar, but will not necessarily result in a purchase until they've had time to learn more.
Interest
Now that your potential customers have been made aware of your product, the next step is to maintain their interest. Once you've made it onto their radar, stay there with consistent ads and content to remind them that your product is out there just waiting to meet their needs. Think of this phase as a window display in a brick and mortar shop. The objective at this point in the funnel is to get potential customers to enter your store. To click through the ad and wind up on your landing page.
Desire
At this stage in the funnel the customer has shown greater interest in your products and is nearly ready to make their final decision. This is when you get into greater detail about your product with a solid landing page that features reviews, concise and engaging descriptions of the product, and perhaps even video demonstrations to confirm the customer's need for your product.
Action
This phase of the funnel is the customer's follow-through. It's the point at which you've done your job. They want to make the purchase, you just need to make it easy. But your work is not yet done. At this phase you should consider how to make this final decision as quick and easy as possible. Amazon has done this quick effectively with their "Buy Now" button which allows the customer to skip the many steps of the checkout process where second thoughts could halt the final purchase. Consider optimizing your checkout process in the same way.
Loyalty
A step that's usually overlooked in the e-commerce funnel, but just as important as making a sale, is maintaining customer loyalty. Once a customer has made it all the way through the funnel to purchase, you'll want them to return and keep returning to your store. This can be achieved in many ways. A customer may have really enjoyed your product or perhaps your website and check out process was so streamlined that they'll want to return for the convenience. But one way you can be proactive about creating loyalty is by promoting a mailing list on your landing page and encouraging customers to sign up to receive updates on future offers. You might even consider creating a loyalty program for returning customers, offering deals for returning shoppers.
One important thing to understand is that not all of your customers and followers will make it all the way through the funnel on their first visit to your store. Getting to know where they stop on the path to a purchase is what makes the e-commerce funnel so useful. It can help you identify what aspect of your marketing strategy needs improvement.
Branch Out From Amazon
Amazon may have been an excellent place to start your business, but now that you're looking to expand your sales, branch out to other channels to bring in customers.
If you don't already have a website of your own, this is a fantastic place to start. Creating your own site will give customers a sense of entering a store and will allow you to have full control over your customers' experience.
Get to Know Your Customers
Once you've set up an online presence, with a mailing list or a social media following, stay in touch with your customers. Getting to know who's buying your products and what they're looking for is an excellent way to increase your conversion rates.
If you have a substantial number of followers or your previous customers have signed up for a mailing list you could use these resources to ask your customers directly what they're looking for through surveys or direct engagement on social media. Don't be afraid to ask what your customers want. Engaging directly will make them feel catered to and allow you to avoid taking shots in the dark on the products you're offering.
You can also follow your own metrics and focus on what's already been purchased. Look at who is buying your product and try to customize the experience for certain customer profiles. For example, if your product appeals mostly to customers in the 18-24 age range, target your advertisements to this age group. Knowing who is buying your product is just as important as what you have to offer.
Update Your Website
This is a step so basic that many might overlook it, but keeping your store up to date and optimized can help customers make their way to the end of the funnel and keep them coming back.
Use Original Images
Original, high quality images offer customers a visual prompt towards making a purchase. High quality photos can instill a sense that what the customer is purchasing is a high quality product. In addition to this, original photography also increases the SEO value of your store, bringing more customers in.
Update Your Landing Pages
Landing pages are vitally important to your online store. They are the first thing a customer sees when they click through an ad. Your landing page should grab a customers attention with images and well written descriptions, but should also have clear prompts to purchase. In short, don't hide your "Buy" buttons. Make it easy for a customer to flow from one page to another and eventually to the checkout.
Highlight Your Best Sellers
You know what your best selling products are and you shouldn't hide them. While you may want to branch out and emphasize everything you have to offer, your best selling products are one way your customers speak to you. They are telling you what they want, so display it prominently on landing pages and make it easy for customers to find.
Invest in Search Engine Optimization
One way to bring your conversion rate up is to bring more customers into your store. This is where e-commerce stores have an advantage over brick and mortar shops. There's hardly a way to make a physical building more visible, but with search engine optimization your e-commerce business can appear in front of more eyes, bringing in more potential customers.
Registering your business with Amazon is an excellent way to start, but once you've done that you'll want to branch out and make sure that you rank on Google searches.
This means optimizing your content, descriptions, images and reviews to ensure that you rank higher.
While you can learn to do this on your own, it could be a good investment to hire out an expert in SEO to optimize your content or point you in the right direction.