Abandonment Issues

It certainly feels like a huge mistake has been made when you know that a shopping cart was created by your (potential) customer, and then abandoned.  So, where did the site or product go wrong?

Shopping cart abandonment is a large concern for tiny and massive online retailers alike.  Research has shown

• 60-70% of online shopping carts are abandoned, and
• 99% of people will not finish a purchase on the first visit (SeeWhy reports), but
• 60-75% of those people do intend to complete the purchase
• most within the following 24 hours.

So, it seems that shopping cart abandonment is a normal part of the online shopping process.  Why?

Once a shopping cart has been abandoned, you have two main strategies at your disposal.


Re-targeting

The concept is fairly simple, when a visitor leaves your site to continue browsing, your ads will display on the other sites that they ultimately visit.  You would need to go with a service provider, and is priced similarly to other pay-per-click endeavors.  Your ads can be very dynamic, and include logos, top selling products, or the exact products the customer was browsing within your site. 

The payout?
According to comScore research (2010) retargeting brought an increase in visitor traffic of over 1,000% to a site above advertising without retargeting. 

The drawback?
This method is not suitable for sites visited fewer than 1,000 times per month.


Email Remarketing
This strategy delivers specific and relevant emails to engage customers and address customer needs, specifically their reasons for abandonment.  Many retailers employ this strategy, and it works for businesses large and small.

How do you make email remarketing work?
Fist, make it timely, 12-24 hours for initial contact is recommended.  In the email, include:

• appreciation and personalization ~thank the customer (by name) for visiting the site and for looking at your products.  Ask if there was a problem that you can help with.
• images ~not only of the abandoned items, but also recommended and/or additional products. 
• contact information ~logo, phone number, web links to the main site and their cart, FAQ page link.  Use unique contact sources (phone number and email address) to track email related inbound communications.  This will not only help measure conversions, but also identify those most likely to complete the transaction.
• customer loyalty ~information on guarantees and/or warranties, shipping policies, return information, and other perks available.
• call to action ~make it easy for them to complete the transaction

Some retailers offer discounts in these remarketing emails, but there is a drawback to doing so.  It can condition the customer to purposely abandon the cart, in order to receive a discount.  If you decide to offer a discount, do it sparingly, with a specific reason, and most experts agree that waiting is best.  Offering a discount in the second or third email, rather than the initial one, can have the most conversion impact.  The holiday season does give you a good excuse to try a discount for a limited time, without some of the conditioning risks.  Running and A/B test would be a good idea, to ensure that you are not giving revenue away unnecessarily.

Other email remarketing ideas that avoid discounting include:

• free shipping (with order thresholds that slightly exceed your average order total)
• live support, phone or chat (people still crave human interaction)
• free return shipping (combat the purchase-fear inaction)
• loyalty programs

The payout?
Your products are brought back into the minds of the consumer, when they are actually at the point of completing the purchase (which is at a far different time from their initial visit.)  Actual conversion rates vary, but research indicates up to 80% conversion for well timed and executed remarketing emails.

The drawback?
There are costs involved, varying quite a bit in the details.  Research different providers to ensure you get the right service, at the right price.


Mitigation
It would be a far simpler thing to just eliminate shopping cart abandonment in the first place.  The graph above shows that is unlikely, but there are a few things that you can optimize that may mitigate your efforts.

1. Simplify checkout ~Prevent abandonment by streamlining the process for user-friendliness.  Eliminate unnecessary or complex steps (like account creation.)  Ensure 100% error free shopping cart service, as one glitch can drive your customers straight onto the site of your competitors.
2. Embrace the cart game ~Add a "save for later" or "add to wishlist" type function.  This gives the researching customer time to complete the sale at their pace, without skewing your metrics.  Also, give your cart sufficient time before clearing to allow the customer to return and complete the sale without having to go through the shopping process again.
3. Shipping rate competition ~Adding shipping calculations before the cart can also avoid skewing metrics, and avoid spending on retargeting those customers who will probably not complete the sale, due to shipping prices.  That said, this is the time to negotiate for lower shipping costs, and to seriously consider your handling costs as well.  Noone likes hidden expenses, and the holiday season is over-run with shipping and handling discounts.  Don't lose sales by ignoring these most basic of customer concerns.
4. Security and trust ~People are more worried than ever about payment and information security.  Prominently display your security provisions at every point in the shopping cart experience.  Include confidentiality information, guarantees / warranties, return policies, reputation enhancers like reviews, professional affiliations and testimonials also help.

Have a happy, safe and profitable holiday season, one and all, finally free of abandonment issues.
Thank you,
Laura

Physics and Marketing

Physics and marketing are unlikely companions, however this TED talk from Dan Cobley brings the two topics together in a delightful and educational way.

Enjoy!

Laura

Negative Word of Mouth, Adapt and Overcome

Word of mouth advertising is what occurs when a consumer talks abut your business and this pattern continues through various avenues. Positive comments about your brand can lead to increased sales and successes. While negative word of mouth can  damage and sometimes even destroy a business. Negative word of mouth initially starts with two or more people  discussing a bad consumer experience. Is your business experiencing negative word of mouth? Second Chance Solutions is here to assist you in adapting and overcoming this. The bright side of this negative experience is that it demonstrates where your brand is failing and where there is room for improvement.


1. Confront the source
Its important to know what the complaints are, and where they're coming from. What happened with in your company to cause these feelings, or what happened with your product? these are questions you will have to ask about your company.

 2. Acknowledge Wrongs
Whether you feel you were wrong or not acknowledge the wrong or the feelings of others. When people are upset they want to be heard and they want to know you care, so show them that you do. Often times companies fail to acknowledge their consumers feelings.

3. Make Amends
Most initial reactions are to fight the fire with fire, meaning you see negative comments and you respond with negativity. Negative comments only fuels the fire, so how about  fighting the fire with water, this extinguishes it. If replacing the product makes them feel better replace the product, if their service experience wasn't good offer a second try at a  discounted rate. MAKE IT RIGHT!

4. Promote Positivity
Find consumers who view your brand positively and ask for their help in promoting that positivity. In addition once you have made it right with those who had the negative response, ask them to acknowledge your efforts in fixing the situation via positive word of mouth.

 

ADAPT AND OVERCOME!

Its important for your company to adapt to changes. You may have to change company practices or product structure or whatever the issue is its important for you to be open to changing to eliminating the issues. If you take the proper steps overcoming negative word of mouth is simple.


Brieanna Roper

Resources:
http://youtu.be/SunElY0sHs0

Optimize Your Website With Google Analytics

Sure, you have heard about web analytic tools and how great they are. You may even have heard a lot about Google Analytics. But did you really know how you can leverage this free web analytic tool to build your online audience, gain some valuable insights on your business and customers, and ultimately, measure how well you are achieving your website's goals?

Fret no more! Second Chance Solutions is here to provide you a few know-hows to maximize the use of Google Analytics.

But first, what is Google Analytics exactly?

"Google Analytics is a free web analytic tool that can provide you with comprehensive statistics and detailed reports regarding visitors to your website."

You can easily set up a Google Analytics account by following instructions on its website (http://www.google.com/analytics/).

Now you have the account set up and ready to go, what is next?

The Basics

First, you need to get familiar with what is on your dashboard.

You can specify the dates you want to see data for by changing the dates at the top right hand corner. You can also view data by hourly, day, week, or month.

You can see the percentages of new and returning visitors in a pie chart.

You can also access the demographics of visitors as you can see in the example below.

Here are a few Google Analytics terms on the dashboard to get familiar with:

Sessions: The total number of the period time each and every user is actively engaged with your website within the date range.

Users: New and returning visitors.

Pageviews: The total number of pages viewed.

Pages/Session: The average number of pages viewed during a session.

Avg. Session Duration: The average length of a session.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page visit (i.e., visits in which the person left your website from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

% New Sessions: An estimate of the percentage of first time visits.


You can also see more in detail regarding active users. The following graph shows the percentage of 1 day active user within the date range. You can choose to see the percentages of 7 day, 14 day, 30 day, or all together active users.

You can also view the detail regarding demographics of visitors by age or gender.

Another useful data you may want to look at is what type of device visitors use to access your website (Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet). This data will come in handy when you want to optimize your mobile strategy.

Digging Deeper

The Acquisition reports let you see how you acquire users, their behaviors on your site after acquisition, and their conversion patterns. 

All Traffic data tells you more about where your traffic comes from: social media pages, organic searches, or blogs.

Real Time reports allow you to see active users and their geographical locations in real time.

Advanced

Be sure to set up goals to better evaluate your conversion rates and gain some valuable insights regarding your visitors' behaviors. Your business goals can be varied depending on the type of your business. For example, if you are an e-commerce site, you may want to enable e-commerce tracking and start monitoring conversion rates for your products.

The Moz Blog

Utilize Behavior Flow feature to identity your website's strong areas with the most successful conversion rates and weak areas that need to be further optimized. Converters and Non-Converters segments can tell you the difference between visitors' behaviors that have made a conversion and those that have not.

Amazee Metrics

This is just a small portion of what Google Analytics can do. The tool is capable of so much more analytical wonders that could help gain better understanding of your business and customers.

Visit Google Analytics YouTube Channel for more in-depth tutorials.



May Mandy Han

Social Media 2015

Social Media 2015

 

It’s that time again, with just a month left in this year we all begin to think of what the New Year will bring.  Social media continues to shift and be influenced by users and shaped by marketers and brands. Some platforms have outperformed and outlasted others, while new platforms continue to emerge. Social media marketing will no doubt require more diversity.  So what will the year of 2015 hold for social media?

 

1. Google Plus fades with 2014

Google plus launched in 2011 as an invite only platform and initially had a lot of activity surrounding their presence.  However within the past few months Google plus has gone public as well as many of the features of Google Plus have now become an independent application such as hangout. The prediction is that Google Plus will fade away in 2015 because their offerings do not offer any unique feature that is not already offered on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

2. Advertising Increase

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have all developed sophisticated advertising tools allowing targeting and performance measurements. For 2015 advertising is coming to Instagram and Pinterest, even Snapchat. Most brands have learned that social media is a way to market and the so called “free ride” is ending. This doesn’t mean “pay to play” it simple means  each platform will position themselves to offer a variety of features in which organizations must invest in some form in order for their social media efforts to perform and complement their overall digital efforts.

 

 

3.  Mobile Savvy

Consumers are turning more to mobile use using phones rather than computers. For 2015 you will see social media creating more digital experiences to fit the preferences and needs of their audience.  Mobile applications will begin to diversify and become much more user friendly in addition to increasing the amount of social media applications. You will then begin to power up your social media channels with micro-content create thumbnails or build a slide deck to view draw viewers with bite-sized  chunks instead of long, overwhelming images.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pahLo5TTy4

 Brieanna

Who Are You?

Who Are You?

The Power of Personal Branding

Stop and think!

Who are you?  

What image are you presenting to the outside world?  

Are you working to be the best that you can be, personally?  

Or are you instead resting on your laurels, your past experiences, your past achievements?

We oftentimes define ourselves as what we have achieved or experienced in the past.  Is this a true definition of how you want people to perceive you?  Is your past good enough or are there things in your life that you are still trying to achieve, a brass ring that is still just out of your grasp?

You are constantly branding yourself through your values, your flaws and even your idols, those people that you look up to. 

In real life, branding is a powerful and effective approach to how people perceive you and can be an effectual way to beat out your competition in your professional or business world.  The things you do and say influence others, creating a “brand” that identifies you in their eyes.

Branding is physical as well as emotional.  Choices in appearance and music, reading materials, even the people you choose to associate with, all contribute to your personal brand, and the types of people that are drawn to you, whether in person or on social media sites.

Successful personal branding can be just as important to you personally as well as professionally.  Showing a strong personal brand is an important asset in the on-line atmosphere of today’s marketplace.  This can be seen with some of the most recognized personalities like Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, and Opra Winfry, to name just a few that currently come to mind.

You are developing concepts to build your image, sell, package and promote yourself, for whatever path life is taking you down, whatever journey you have embarked on, what the eventual destination will be.

Having stated that, you also need to be authentic in your personal branding.  Many times people try to make themselves out to be something it is impossible to keep up, because it just isn't them.  By being yourself, liking who you are, it is easier to make your dreams, goals and achievements happen to make you happy and at ease. Do it for yourself first.  Know who you are.

TED Talks addresses this idea of "Take Control of Your Personal Brand" through a speech by Jay Clouse, a student of Columbus University in 2013.

Second Chance Solutions is here to help you bring about a second chance to make a first impression, to overcome some past impressions you may have established, recreating yourself in a positive way that brings fulfillment into your life, whatever that means to you, both personally and professionally.

Join in the conversation.  Let us know how you are working on your own personal brand.

by Karen Boggs