Sales Revenue falling? – Here’s an Analytics Checklist – Part 3

Over the last two posts we looked at the basics of how to analyse problems in your traffic acquisition channels and some of the sudden conversion failures that  can occur as traffic comes to your site. In this post we look at a more subtle problem – that of gradual conversion failure, where your conversion rate falls steadily over the course of a few weeks or months.

What Have you missed – Gradual Conversion failure

This can be the most frustrating and hard to identify problem – as there is likely to be no specific event that has caused the drop off – it will either be a gradual misalignment or a combination of factors.

We talked about stock levels in the last posting, and how reductions of stock can affect conversion. This, of course, can have a similar affect over a longer term period. If you let your stock run down gradually then prepare to see you conversion rate follow it. Customers do not wish to wait for items when buying online, they want it now!

Start with your biggest selling products

Your biggest selling products – are they selling well? These are products that are likely to be in a larger majority of baskets – so problems with these products might affect conversion. If you have a range of products that are significantly more expensive, or convert significantly better, than the norm then this might be a first port of call.

Search Terms

A key problem that often happens is that trends come and go and your site does not adapt to take account of it. So how can you tell whether this is happening? One way is to look at Search terms and Keywords. First let’s look at search terms, and by this I mean the search terms that have been used on site – which you can find under “Content” in Google Analytics. What are the biggest search terms? How are they converting. As people using search are statistically more likely to convert (as they are actively looking for something) this conversion rate should be significantly (2 to 3 times) higher that you site wide conversion rate. If they are lower you should ask why – is it because they are not finding what they are looking for? – in which case you may need to look at your navigation – or is it because once they find the item it is not inspiring them to buy  – in which case you need  to look at your product offering in terms of pricing and copy.

Landing Pages

You should then compare search terms and Pay Per Click keywords with your landing pages – do they correspond? Do you have your content arranged to match what customers are looking for?

A recent client was having a gradual fall off in conversion, and noticed that they had no specific landing page for their biggest search term. They had plenty of products that were relevant, but they were not arranged in a manner that showed them off to their best advantage when the customer arrived onsite. Creating a specific landing page for that search term had a marked and rapid effect on conversion

Another example of this is a case where it transpired that the top search term was for a product type where they only had 3 items – all of which were priced in excess of the average order value (ie were relatively expensive items). The company knew that this was a problem but had rather put their head in the sand. There were two options – either source a wider range of product (which proved difficult in the short term) or encourage the customer to look at an alternative/substitute product. In the short term they chose the latter course of action – they created a landing page for the search term (and a search redirect), added in the products they had that exactly matched the search term, and also added in some suitable, and lower priced substitute products. The result was that their conversion rate for the search term improved – which dramatically helped their overall conversion.

Keywords and phrases

You should also ensure that your on-site search terms and your PPC terms match each other, or if they do not that you have ensured that your PPC visitors arrive at a fully relevant landing page (and hence don’t have to use search). On site search terms are also a useful guide to keywords and phrases you should consider bidding on in PPC.

Coming Up Next

In the next post we will look at Average Order Value and consider ways to benchmark your performance. If you have any further questions, or need advice or solutions, then email me – justin@grassrootsdigital.co.uk or call 0333 123 0506