A little over a year ago Clare (my better half) was getting ready to buy a new car. I went to a few of the dealerships with her, and at the first place we went to salespeople assumed that because we were a couple and I was the man, I was the one making the decision. Suffice it to say they did not get a deal, and this is an example of bad segmentation that I will tackle another time…

The second place we went to, we got a good salesperson. He lead by asking who was making the decision, asked about budget, and sat down to work his deal. Clare met all the criteria of someone he can sell to. She was in the market for a new car, she had the money to make a purchase, and she was sitting in front of him talking about the Honda Fit (a wicked car btw).

Now I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the sales director at Ottawa Honda doesn’t sit down once a month and calculate his closed sales metrics based on:
• The population of Ottawa
• Visitors to every Honda dealership in North America
• People who have gone past the dealership on bikes

He looks at his sales metrics based on:
• People who came into the store
• People for whom a car purchase was financially feasible
• People who engaged a Salesperson.

Seems pretty obvious right? Sales 101.

So why do the vast majority of websites calculate their conversion rates against all visitors to their site? Why isn’t conversion a function of the close ratio of people who could be closed at all?

Example: Many eCommerce websites in the United States don’t ship outside the continental United States, and the ones who do tend to make it so complicated it amounts to the same thing. Why do they not calculate their conversion rate against the traffic that originates in either the 50 US States, or the lower 48 that they build their business around?

I spend a lot of time in other people’s data, and I put this thought to the test through a number of analytics accounts in the last week. The changes in conversion rates are profound when you look at the percentage of prospective customers who convert instead of the percentage of all visitors who convert.

Separating the wheat from the chaff will not only provide clarity into your actual close rate, but will allow you to see opportunity. After you have segmented out the US, you might see that the UK generates 20,000 visits a month but has very low conversion. Perhaps it is time to build a cost-effective and easy UK shipping plan.

It’s not your fault as a marketer if you don’t close any visitors from Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. You don’t ship there. Clean up your conversion reports, and you won’t only make your numbers better (and more transparent), you might find your next major market opportunity.

If enough Ulanbataarians show up, maybe “Spend over $200 and get Free Shipping to Mongolia!” isn’t such a bad idea.

Cheers,

Jim

Sitebrand recently published another customer case study and it’s featuring Wholesale Tool - a multichannel retailer headquartered in Michigan. Like the name implies, Wholesale Tool provides a full supply of name brands and quality import tools for consumers and industry.Before launching their website in 1999, they based their business on 7 retail stores strategically located across the US. As well, they generated sales via an impressive mail catalog with over 50,000 items.

In order to better optimize the web site potential, Wholesale Tool turned to Sitebrand. In addition to the goal of increasing conversion online, Wholesale Tool was also very interested in driving traffic to their seven physical store locations. In addition to finding success using personalization for first time visitor segments, lost shoppers and cart abandonment to name a few, Wholesale Tool takes advantage of geo-segmentation opportunities. Before I get into that, let me show you a screen shot of a Sitebrand powered first time visitor experience. The first time messaging is populating a pre-determined smart content area of the web site - just under the main top banner, under search and in bright yellow… 

Wholesale Tool First Time Visitor

Charlotte Geo

Prior to serving these campaigns, Wholesale Tool was getting lots of comments  (on the website) from people saying they didn’t know there was a store near them. After implementing these geo-campaigns, they immediately saw these types of comments drop…

For all the scoop, read the full Wholesale Tool case study which is part of Sitebrand’s ever-expanding library of case studies. DMNews picked this story up as well = check it out!

I had a good chat this morning with my colleague Larry (Manager, Corporate Training) about a term he has been bumping into in the last few weeks called ‘Social Conversion’. It all seems to stem from a nice blog-post that was written last month by Justin Talerico, CEO of ion Interactive, about the importance of monitoring, understanding and optimizing the micro-conversions associated to social media marketing.

Loved the blog, agreed with the concepts, but not sure we need to coin any new terms. Social Conversion is just another way of saying conversion. According to the WAA Standards Committee, Conversion is “The number of times a desired outcome was accomplished.” So let’s try and really nail down the basic definitions before we throw them out the window and come up with new ones. (Still, it’s a great piece, specifically the landing page and whitepaper examples)

Wondering what my intro has to do with the title yet? Here we go.

Just as the term ‘social conversion’ has been doing the rounds in the last few weeks regarding its relevance and veracity (or truthiness), the concept of engagement in digital marketing has done the rounds for almost two years, and has been the subject of heated debate and scrutiny.

The ongoing dialog (or should I say blogalog? Yet another new term) has revolved around two primary questions:

• Is engagement an important concept?
• If it is important, how can it be quantified.

To learn more about the topic, here are a number of great posts on the subject. I specifically recommend checking out the recent flamewar between Omniture and Eric Peterson, both industry heavyweights with very differing opinions.

I myself blogged on the issue back in February, and my take is that being able to understand and manage visitor engagement to/from/within a given web property is the first major step towards ‘analytics 2.0’. Standardizing what metrics are used however is much more difficult.

If you work with a company like ion Interactive, engagement will have a strong landing page/social media focus. If you are a multi-channel marketer, engagement might have strong online/offline ties.

Having helped some of Sitebrand’s customers directly identify engagement related KPI’s in their business for the purposes of Optimization, I know it works. As for the ‘philosopher’s stone’ of engagement equations that work for every site, the jury is out.

In a fairly new industry like internet marketing, new terms will be coined at the speed of….internet. But some terms stick and have a profound impact on our discipline.

Engagement is one of these important terms.

Do some homework and form an opinion. If you think it’s bunk so be it. But if you think engagement monitoring and management could be a core aspect of your job in the coming years, start applying some of the concepts now so you don’t miss the boat.

Cheers,

Jim

PS. Larry heard I was referencing him in the blog today and wanted to make sure all our customers knew that he is available for all training requests/questions at training AT Sitebrand.com. Go team go!

A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Natalie Myers, a reporter from MarketingSherpa. She called me because she was curious to understand more about the Canadian online shopper. Since I’m a Canadian living, working and shopping in Canada, I was happy to step up and share my views with Natalie. And in the end, so did several others - hence why it’s been in the works for several months!

The result of all this input is outstanding. It’s part one of a Special Report called Marketing to Canadians: How to Deal with Language, Cultural, Location and Regulation Differences.

So for anyone looking to maximize conversion opportunities in Canada, this report is jammed with great strategies and tactics you can’t ignore. Here’s a hint of what you’ll learn…

As Canadians, we want to know a few things right up front. Perhaps one of the top things is do you ship to Canada? Letting this be known right up front in a visit is key. At Sitebrand, we have many US ecommerce sites reinforcing this type of messaging through geotargeting and it’s highly successful in terms of lifting conversion. In fact, this Sherpa report references Kiyonna, a Sitebrand customer who does a great job recognizing and responding to Canadian visitors in a creative, fun way. It’s referenced with some graphic examples of how they personalize the experience for Canadian visitors, so check that out. For more on geo-targeting and how it can improve convesion, you can also browse Sitebrand’s library of case studies.  

Another nice touch is Canadian pricing and if you can have it via a Canadian site, even better! One site that impresses me is Proactiv Solution. This is a US site that does an amazing job recognizing international visitors - including Canadians via a Canadian site that clearly states Canadian pricing in red font (when you think of the red maple leaf in our flag, this is colour of font is very appropriate).

By the way, notice how I spelled “colour”, that’s the Canadian way of spelling colour. And this is another point made in this special report. To really appeal to Canadians, use Canadian English. It’s subtle, but we notice - i.e color is colour, pay by check is pay by cheque, behaviour is behavior etc. 

Anyhow, back to Proactiv Solution, they’ve purchased all the right domains and they’ve set it all up to work like a charm. I bet they have huge success around the world and give kudos to the extra steps they take online. Even when you proceed through the Proactiv Solution checkout, it’s smart enough to prepopulate the country datafield to be “Canada”. And it asks for postal code which is the Canadian equiv of a US zip code. Love it! Nothing more frustrating than being forced to put a zip code in when you don’t have one! Trust me, it will contribute to lost sales in a big way.

Getting back to the importance of shipping - if you can make shipping affordable to the Canadian visitor, this is a definite advantage. Simply offering great pricing isn’t going to make us buy. Shipping has to be reasonable or we’re out.

I could go on and on, but I think you should just read the report. And after you do, post a comment and let’s get start some chatter. For example, are you doing anything special to encourage Canadians to buy online? If yes, what? If no, why?

There’s already lots of buzz about Cyber Monday. So if it’s something you’re ramping up for (and it should be), this is one webinar you don’t want to miss. For a realistic discussion on what’s achievable - even for the typical resource-crunched online team - join Jessica Koster, Danskin’s Director of e-Commerce Marketing, and myself on Wednesday, July 30 for a 29-minute webinar that will reveal how to:

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