By Nazli Yuzak, iQuanti
Can you imagine a life without Amazon?
I know…it’s almost too scary a thought to have.
Brick-and-mortar store sales used to be the main revenue driver for businesses, but let’s face it…we’re now in a world where online sales dominate traditional store sales. In some cases, companies are even starting to close their physical stores and using an online-only business model!
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And the way we see it?
This trend will continue to grow.
“Double-digit growth will continue through 2020, when sales will top $4 trillion.“ — eMarketer.
$4 trillion??? WOW! And with that many more customers moving their purchasing power to online retail, it only further proves one thing: an optimized shopping experience is a not a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have.
But how do you do that?
Here are three proven Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategies that can help you drive your online sales:
1. Build a customer-centric navigation: Does your site navigation align to your internal company structure or does it prioritize how customers actually consume information? As we transition from traditional businesses to online, a common issue we see is companies carrying their way of doing offline to the online experience; they design their user experience based on their internal teams and not how their customers navigate through their content.
However, any digital experience you build needs to revolve around your customers and their needs. That’s where you tap into various data points, including site analytics, market research, online surveys, focus groups and former A/B testing results to build a robust understanding of your customers and their expectations from your online store.
2. Prioritize with direct user insights: Improving the online user experience is a perpetual mission, and you’ll soon find that with a never-ending list of optimization opportunities, prioritization can become a challenge. In order to get to the “golden nugget” of what your customers really want, you need to hear it directly from the user. Utilize tools like online surveys, customer feedback or usability reviews. For example, one that we like using is usertesting.com.
Whether you go with all or one, it will be an effective way to gather the qualitative data that you’ll need to complement the quantitative data you could be receiving from site analytics and/or testing data.
3. Relevant and personalized web sites: Relevancy is the 21st century’s digital currency. Companies have been spending significant time and effort to understand their customers’ digital journeys so they can serve up the most relevant and personalized experiences. For online retail, personalization is a key building block; spanning from personalized emails to offers that are based on the customer’s history, to checkout abandonment reminders and to location-based deals.
These three strategies will help you build a strong CRO foundation and ideally you will implement all three, but even if you start with just one, you should expect to see your online sales grow meaningfully.
Nazli Yuzak leads the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) practice at iQuanti, a data-driven digital marketing agency in New York City. She has over 10 years of experience helping companies drive superior digital results via proven site optimization and lead generation strategies. Prior to joining iQuanti, Yuzak worked at Laureate International Universities, Dell, and National Instruments. In addition, she has presented at worldwide industry conferences including Adobe Customer Summit, eMetrics, Conversion Conference and the Live Event. Yuzak holds an MBA in International Marketing and Technology Management from American Uni
