How enticing customers to stroll down a virtual aisle can increase conversion rates
By Michael Sack
The increased focus on improving online conversions is leading the retail industry to embrace skills that were developed offline, long before the Internet existed. Having struggled with multiple models for web stores, online marketers are realizing that if they want to achieve comparable success, they are going to have to start paying attention to what makes the offline channel work.
What do offline marketers focus on to drive business? In a retail store, the physical environment is strategically planned. For example, how a customer enters the store, what she sees first and where the cash registers are located are all planned to improve conversion. Retail designers regularly test product placement and items that are likely to cross-sell land in close proximity.
Here’s a great example. Milk is in the back of the supermarket not by coincidence. Customers have to walk all the way through the store and back again to purchase milk. And, it is not by coincidence that they pass so many other products on their way. These items are often strategically placed to increase the likelihood of a bigger shopping cart at the register.
Similarly, direct marketers produce multiple versions of the same catalog and test sample groups before rolling out the larger mailing to ensure good response. The copy, product image, page layout and order form are all variables the marketer can influence. Suppose a merchant knows his catalog is typically read by women and that they tend to start from the back of the catalog. Influence over what products are placed where becomes very strategic.
In these examples, the marketer is in control of the customer environment, the content, and the very path by which the customers access the store or catalog. Marketers are able to measure the outcome of the tests and then effect changes in the user environment to improve results. In others words, they test, they analyze, they make incremental changes, test again and so on. The process never ends. There are always improvements to be made, different aspects of the user experience to be tested, and greater ROI to be achieved.
Ball of confusion
Let’s contrast that with what we typically do online today. Technologists have built incredible infrastructure for our web sites. Retailers are dynamically producing highly personalized content and creating truly unique web experiences for users. Designers have created fantastic imagery and site layout. Navigation schemas let users go wherever they want at any time—just point and click. We set about driving traffic to our sites and many of us actually get a substantial number of visitors. Except that the number who buy is small relative to the number who visit, so it’s not so simple anymore.
Why is it that online marketers have yet to apply the science and skill learned in the offline world? We drive people to home pages that are cluttered with links to every product we sell. Imagine walking into a supermarket only to be greeted by a massive shelf, seven feet high, littered with products from all over the store. Could you find what you were looking for? Home pages generate the same response in visitors. They get confused. They don’t know where to go or how to find what they are looking for. And then they leave. Sometimes it happens right on the home page, other times they leave because they start down a path and get lost. Either way, their departure means lost revenue to a merchant.
We need to start thinking about our online channel the same way we think about our offline channels, yet not lose sight of what makes the web so powerful. Why don’t we think about orchestrating a visitor’s experience, controlling where they go and what they see?
If we are to bridge the gap between offline and online channels, we need to consider creating web aisles. A web aisle is a virtual path you create for a specific visitor to walk down and shop. You decide what items are on the “shelves” based on knowledge about your visitors, where they came from and what they are seeking. You decide what product copy to use, which promotions to test, which placement works best.
Using the concept of web aisles, online marketers can leverage the power of the online channel to increase conversions. Let’s go back to the milk in the supermarket example. Suppose Tom walks through the door and milk is in Aisle 2. Tom purchases more than just milk because of this placement. Wouldn’t the store merchandising manager want to know this? It would be great if store managers could snap their fingers when you walk through the door and the store instantly changed to meet your particular needs. One of the web’s unique advantages is the ability to virtually put milk in whatever aisle you want.
Who is it?
Marketers still face the challenge of knowing who is walking through the door of the site. The supermarket does not know whether it is Tom or Cindy entering the store. However, in the online world we can solve the dilemma of having to know who is walking through the door by creating multiple virtual doorways into a web site. These virtual doors can be different banner ads, e-mails, links or even specific keywords used at search engines.
By tracking the behavior of the visitors that come through each one, marketers can identify group trends that tell them where to place products, what copy works best, etc. In other words, if a marketer can determine that visitors coming into the site through Door B respond best when milk is in Web Aisle 3, then whenever anyone walks through Door B, the milk is located in Aisle 3. The best part is, merchants don’t have to know who is actually coming through the door, just which door the customer is coming through.
Orchestrating the search
Using these concepts, the online experience can be orchestrated through a number of event-driven activities by visitors themselves. Let’s consider how this would apply to traffic that comes from search engines. Search engines enable people to specify, in their own words, what they are seeking. This information can be leveraged to provide the best user experience as a result.
Here is an example of how this can work: Suppose you sell electronics online and potential customers do the following searches at MSN:
- User 1 searches for “DVD Comparison”
- User 2 searches for “Panasonic
MD-11”
- User 3 searches for “Low Cost
DVD Player.”
User 1 is shopping for comparative value. Direct this individual to a category results page on your site, or a comparison chart displaying a variety of DVD players, and see which gets them to click deeper. A savvy marketer will also realize that User 1 is also communicating, through the search, that he is not committed to any one DVD player and can possibly be persuaded to purchase a DVD player the retailer might like to sell from an inventory management perspective.
Highlight the specials
User 2 knows exactly which DVD player he is interested in. Deliver this searcher to the specific product page and test different copy or pricing to see which results in sales. Again, a savvy marketer realizes this individual is also communicating he is probably an audiophile and that increased content might help persuade this visitor to buy.
User 3 is shopping for value. He may be an unsophisticated buyer; not seeking detailed content, but rather a good value. Deliver this person to a “specials page” promoting the bargain DVD player of your choice, with minimal information to make the sale happen, but providing trust-building language such as your 800 number, shipping and return policy information.
Greater granularity
Critical to this testing of different product placement is the ability to analyze the results. Only through being able to connect which doorway is accessed, what the incoming visitor sees (i.e. the web aisle) and the resulting actions can online marketers begin to leverage the power of the web.
The concept of web aisles can also be applied across many different initiatives, including banner ads, e-mail, and offline URLs. Advertisers can now increase the granularity of the types of advertising vehicles they use to better understand customer behavior and response. When you test three or four different banner ads, you are testing for click-throughs. With web aisles, you can test many more permutations to better match the advertising vehicle with your message content.
Achieving success online is really a matter of transferring offline practices to this new, still emerging channel. Without sacrificing any of the technological achievements of the Internet, we can now begin to create personalized user experiences for our anonymous visitors. Through a process of testing, analyzing and adjusting, online marketers can begin to see patterns emerge which can help produce the ROI we are all in search of today.
Michael Sack is senior vice president and chief product officer of Inceptor
Inc., provider of conversion marketing software. He is responsible for Inceptor’s
Excedia and eLuminator solutions. He can be reached at mike.sack@inceptor.com.
