How Old-school Catalogs Help Drive Up Online Sales
I recently received an email from Internet Retailer promoting a piece of research
which suggests that online shoppers that received a catalog in the mail spent on average 163 percent more than those that didnt.
One hundred sixty-three percent? Thats a big difference.
This prompted me to go back to the research SeeWhy did into the Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Converting Websites, which revealed that 9 out of 10 of the top converting websites in the U.S. also have catalogs. These companies have visitorto-sale conversion rates averaging 23 percent, compared with an industry average of 2-3 percent. However, this cannot be attributed solely to having a catalog.
Most online marketers strive to maximize their website conversion rates. When setting out on this path, the usual starting point for conversion rate optimization is data. Now, Im a data-driven guy who lives in the analytics world, but its important to remember that conversion rate optimization is about getting more sales online.
Its not about data, web analytics reports, conversion funnels, website tuning or anything else. These are all tools at your disposal to help you optimize your conversion rate, and it is important not to become overly fixated on the tools, but to focus on the goal: drive more online revenues. Its not about whether the checkout button should be in green or on the right hand side.
So take a step back for a moment, and look afresh at your website. Think about your buyerswho they are, what they are like, and in a moment of escapism, become one. Visualize how they arrive at your site, where they come from, who influences them, and what makes them visit you online.
Sooner or later, we all realize that the quality of traffic to a website is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rate optimization. One hundred thousand visitors per day that never buy may make your high-level visitor stats look good, but they throw off the rest of your metrics and do nothing for sales. An extra 1,000 visitors per day that convert will make all the difference. This doesnt mean that high traffic volumes are bad, but the higher the quality of traffic arriving at your site, the greater your chances of converting visitors to sales.
The mainstay in driving quality traffic to websites for many years has been email, and increasingly for many ecommerce sites, traffic referred from their other website on Facebook. But catalogs? How very 1980s.
Yet all the evidence suggests that customers love to browse offline and purchase online. In fact, research conducted by the USPS and Comscore (see below) found that catalogs doubled sales and increased website traffic for both existing and new customers.
This is one of the primary reasons why the big direct marketing companies consistently have high converting websites. Visitors that arrive at their websites are not cautious and in need of convincing because they have probably already been warmed up by an old-fashioned direct mail campaign and a catalog that arrived in their mailbox. They also have a very strong repeat purchase culture. While many marketers are fixated about new visitors, many of the top converting websites are focused on getting the second, third and fourth sale.
The purpose of this blog was to get you to step back from your website conversion problem for a moment and look holistically at your business, your customers and how to reach them. Hopefully its helped.
Many ecommerce companies could benefit not only from catalogs, but by thinking more holistically about their market and integrating communications across the full spectrum of channels in order to drive better quality traffic. And therein, their conversion rate will climb.
Without changing their checkout button to green or moving it two inches to the right.
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Web analytics visionary Charles Nicholls is founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy and author of Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Converting Websites which can be downloaded here and In Search of Insight which has established a new agenda for the analytics industry. As a veteran of the analytics space, he has worked on strategy and projects for some of the worlds leading ecommerce companies, including Amazon, eBay and many other organizations around the globe. Incorporated in 2003, SeeWhy helps companies improve website conversion rates by bringing back up to 50 percent of visitors that abandon sites prematurely. Learn more at http://www.seewhy.com and the SeeWhy blog at http://www.seewhy.com/blog. Contact Charles at charles.nicholls@seewhy.com, and follow the company on Twitter at @seewhyinc and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SeeWhyInc.
by: Charles Nicholls
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