Yahoo Store & Conversion Rate
As Seen in
Y-Times Newsletter For Yahoo! Store Users - Newsletter for Yahoo! Store Users
Got a call from my brother one day last year. “Rob? What did you do to the x-60 on e-collars.com?” Steve, what are you talking about?
“Why are we selling more of these than the x-50?” I dunno. Let me take a look. (Opens Store Manager). Oh, yeah. About 6 weeks ago I was trying something out. Did it work? (I actually forgot about this little experiment I was trying.)
“We’re selling about three times as many x-60s as we normally do compared to the regular version (the x-50). Seriously, what did you do to the x-60 on e-collars.com?” (You’ll have to read the rest of the article.)
Conversion rate, conversion rate, conversion rate. I’m OBSESSED with conversion rate. What’s the big deal? Increasing your CONVERSION RATE is the easiest & cheapest way to get the biggest gains in sales in a Yahoo Store. How? Remove all impediments to buying!
CONVERSION RATE (the % of folks who actually buy versus simply visit) is also know as ORDERS/CUSTOMER in the Yahoo! Store STATS>GRAPHS. It shows up there as a decimal, and most stores are around the average of .01 to .015.
According to Shop.org the average internet conversion rate in 2002 was 1.8%. This group includes such retailers as Neiman Marcus Online, Victoria’s Secret Direct, JCPenney.com, and QVC.com. We can beat these guys!
Honest Planet? The only thing that matters to me is that a Yahoo Store makes money. I want happy clients, and “well-designed” sites tend to do better than dog-ugly sites, but in the end the clients that make money come back.
In the past two days, I’ve had two conversations that lead me to believe that I need to continue my crusade for increasing the conversion rates on Yahoo Stores.
First client has 750-1000 people a day. He has $X in sales and now wants to sell twice as much. He asked me, “How can I double my traffic? How do I get 1500-2000 people a day when the big boys are paying up to $3.00 a click for my keywords?”
What about the 99 people out of 100 who visit your site and DON’T buy? Let’s sell one or two more of them, and THEN go for more traffic. Fix the machine first and then drive more traffic across it!
Second guy calls me up and wants a redesign on a brand new store that’s not performing. He wants a design that’s “unique and creative.” I asked him if he would take something mundane and boring if it made him lots of money? He sure would.
TRUE STORY - The ugliest store I’ve ever designed (in my opinion) sold over $250,000.00 via the web & phone in the first 9 months or so of existence beginning a little over a year ago. And this was with a baby marketing push: a minimum of pay-per-click, pay for inclusion, a few directory listings, and simple search engine optimization. We just found another magic fishin’ hole.
How? After poking around the Yahoo! Store manager’s stats for a weekend, we simply creamed a client’s product line using the most profitable products for a spin-off project. We figured this out by looking at the client’s big Yahoo! Store, took the top 50 selling products and picked the ones with a magical combination of selling price, profit margin, and CONVERSION RATE.
GP100 -- I have a number I call the GP100 or Gross Profit per 100 page views which I use to rank a client’s opportunities. Example: Imagine an $80 product with a 50% gross margin and CONVERSION RATE of 4%. For every 100 folks who visited the page, you sold 4 widgets for a total of $320 in sales which yields $160 in gross profit.
Not only does the GP100 tell me the value of the traffic, but it also gives me some realistic numbers for setting my “threshold of pain” in the pay-per-click universe.
"How I got a 300% increase in my Conversion Rate on a $250 product."
See http://e-collars.com/tritspor60wi.html
Here’s what I did :
Moved Order Button Above The Fold For An 800x600 Display
I wanted to get the ORDER button closer to the top of the page, “above the fold” as they say, but I didn’t want to have to do any custom programming, so I simply made an ACCESSORY called More information about the Sport60. I put the three screens or pages of product information BELOW the order button inside the ACCESSORY. I made it orderable as well so I could see if folks would drill into the extra page and then order there. Most folks order from the FIRST button, though.
Use Headline Field To Emphasize The Best-Selling Points
On orders over $125 we had FREE SHIPPING, so I put that in there. After it became a BEST-SELLER, I said that. We have a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee. People like to have No Risk, so I put that in there, too. Play with it. Watch your best-sellers conversion rates on a weekly or monthly basis.
Change What The “Order” Buttons Says.
I changed the ORDER-TEXT to something less of a commitment than “ORDER!” BUY IT NOW on ebay always makes me nervous when I’m thinking about buying some expensive concert tickets. If I click BUY IT NOW, am I buying it RIGHT now?
I usually use “ADD TO CART” or “Add to My Shopping Cart”. If it’s good enough for Amazon, it’s good enough for me. They have millions of dollars to test and access to the best copywriters in the industry. Don’t steal. Simply be inspired.
Use the OLD Checkout!
I’m seeing the OLD CHECKOUT convert about 10% better than the NEW CHECKOUT. Why? It's that dang CONFIRMATION PAGE. The new Yahoo Store checkout (while sexy!) has an extra step called the CONFIRMATION PAGE where your customer has to click again after clicking the PLACE ORDER button.
More than several clients have told me customers call looking for orders never placed and would swear that they placed an order only to NOT have clicked the final button on the confirmation page.
Maybe next year they’ll add an “ARE YOU REALLY, REALLY SURE” button. At least make it optional, guys! Please!
If less than half of someone’s sales come from Y!Shopping, I’ll usually drop Yahoo! Wallet, too.
Show folks that you have a real company, with real employees, and give them all the contact info they could ever want!
I put our 800# and physical address all over the site to give folks confidence. I used real names of folks who would be talking with you so folks see that they are dealing with a small company where they’ll get better service than with a “dot-bomb.” I used normal language in the copy, removing jargon whenever I could.
Emphasize FREE SHIPPING as an OPTION on the PRODUCT.
That way FREE SHIPPING (as an option) shows up in cart, on SHIP FORM, and on the BILL FORM. I really want to hammer home the fact that this products comes with FREE SHIPPING (US48).
Looking at the page today, someone took it out again, so I’ll have to go out it back in! If you have several people maintaining the site, you need to educate them about WHY you are doing what you are doing. I send out global emails to staff all the time saying things like touch my title tags on pain of death.
Remove all NEGATIVE LANGUAGE in the CART and on BOTH ORDER FORMS.
Negative language is anything that a lawyer or bureaucrat would put in there that would make someone feel that their order is going to get screwed up.
Examples I have seen: You must agree to the following terms & conditions. An adult signature is REQUIRED on all packages. No returns. All sales are final. There is a 15% restocking fee. All returns must have an RA number accompanied by a letter explaining the reason for return. You get the idea.
I think some people want to have a sentence or two about anything possible that might come up. Put all that language on your TERMS & CONDITIONS page if you must, but keep it out of my shopping cart! Remove all impediments to buying!
I prefer positive language like "100% Satisfaction is guaranteed. Order with no risk. Don't like it, send it back. We have hassle-free returns. Questions? Call us toll free at 1-800-332-7601. We appreciate your business. Call Bid Ed at the store unless it's fishing weather."
Used WEBTRENDSLIVE.com For Additional Tracking.
While I love them most of the time, sometimes Yahoo! Store stats are not enough. I normally look at GRAPHS > ORDERS per CUSTOMER and CLICK TRAILS which show you completed carts, dropped carts, and click trails.
What Yahoo Store WON'T tell you is WHERE they dropped the cart. Did they select the shipping options and make it to the BILL FORM only to bail, or did they take one look at your SHIP FORM and click cancel?
This way I could see where in the cart folks were dropping out. Did they make it to the SHOPPING CART and quit or get to the SHIP FORM and bail before they saw the shipping, or did they eject at the BILL FORM page? Your Yahoo! Store stats won’t say. I could make changes to the website, and hide and watch to see what impact if any was made by additions & deletions of various elements.
More Thoughts…
The secret to increasing a Yahoo! Store’s conversion rate seems to be different on every store. I guess it’s because everyone’s customers are a little different. What really works on one store doesn’t always work in another store.
What is the path of someone who buys and how can we remove all impediments to buying? HOME PAGE > SECTION PAGE > CART > SHIP FORM > BILL FORM > THANKS.
Shoppers go from wherever they enter the site (usually a SECTION page or a
PRODUCT page), they add stuff to their SHOPPING CART, then they CHECKOUT where they go to the SHIP FORM, then the BILL FORM to pay and complete the order to the CONFIRMATION page, and hopefully a THANKS page.
Not All Changes are GOOD Changes!
About a month ago, I took a look at the higher volume stores I work on (1000+ visitors a day), and two stores had close to a 5% conversion rate. Wow! I looked at every single aspect of what they were doing, and the only they were doing that I was NOT doing was using the SECURE BASKET option under VARIABLES.
I tried SECURE BASKET on one of my sites and after 2 days of 50% of the normal number of orders, I really believe SECURE BASKET matters not.
Track everything you can. Spot check everything you can.
I use my daily CONVERSION RATE OBSESSION Calendar where I track Click Trails, Dropped Carts, and Completed Carts on a daily basis for 5-6 Yahoo! Stores. I record changes I made on the site, and use it to experiment with different combinations of elements / language.
I take monthly looks CONVERSION RATE by ITEM which is really just PAGEVIEWS/ORDERS on the ITEM level. You can get this information from your SALES graph in MANAGER.
More traffic usually means a lower conversion rate because you probably have more unqualified traffic. If most of your sales come from Yahoo! Shopping, you’ll probably have a higher conversion rate than if you get most of your traffic from Google.
Do you have an 800#? YES/NO Is it in the cart? On the SHIP FORM/BILL FORM? How many additional fields do you have ADDED to SHIP FORM/ BILL FORM ? Do you use the COUPON field? What about people who don’t have a coupon?
Design improvements (not sexier, just EASIER) improve conversion. Better load speeds (not FAT STORES, no big ole graphics) improve conversion.
Answer these questions for your potential shoppers BEFORE they get in the SHOPING CART: How fast will I get my order? Will you spam me? What happens if I hate it? Where are you in case I have a problem?
HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS METRIC? It's everything! On a site with 1000 people a day, 1 more person out of 100 to buy means 10 more orders a day from the SAME traffic. No additional increase in marketing costs (unless you change your business model/shipping model).
By measuring your CONVERSION RATE, and CLICK TRAILS data, you can make small incremental changes that will have a big impact on your bottom line.
Remove all impediments to buying! -- Rob Snell, Managing Partner of Ystore.com / Snell Brothers Web Development.
What do the guys at YSTORE.COM / SNELL BROTHERS do?
We develop what I call TROTLINE MARKETING projects for folks. These are strings of closely related, keyword rich targeted sites that go after a SEGMENT of a particular market with a laser beam focus.
First, we help you target a specific niche in your industry. The most important aspect of starting a web-based business is FOCUS. Pick a profitable, popular niche to focus your business on, but not one too broad, or with too many competitors. We put together a list of targeted keywords, and I search for marketing opportunities on the Net.
Next, we help you pick the right products. We make sure that enough people are looking for what you want to sell by testing the popularity of your search terms in the various search engines. I also suggest a list of product categories and the specific brands you can focus on to maximize your business.
Finally, we help you prioritize based upon your interest, price point, margin, competition level, or internet opportunity.
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Rob Snell is the older brother of Snell Brothers Web Development / Ystore.com and has been designing Yahoo! Stores since before they were called Yahoo! Stores (since April of 1997). Email rob@ystore.com or call 1-800-332-7601 or 1-662-320-9196
Hear me speak at 2006 Pubcon in Las Vegas! This should be a GREAT session! I know all my fellow panelists: 
