Nick Brogden, the founder of Earned Media, answers Prianka’s question on how she can use conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to increase sales.

Now, this is a topic that Nick gets asked about all the time. no matter how you’re driving traffic into your site via SEO, Google ads, or social media abandoned carts are always going to be an issue. I recently sat down with David Koch to discuss this on this Channel 7 show Kochie’s Business Builders.

Video transcript

David Koch:
This week on Ask Kochie, how do you turn an online window shopper into a paying customer?

Prianka:
Hi, my name is Prianka, and I’m a budding entrepreneur living in Sydney.

I own an online e-commerce store called Silver Turtle.

I sell eco-friendly products online. I do get a lot of visitors on a daily basis to my store.

What I’ve noticed is that visitors come in and they browse products and they add them to their checkout card, but they do not follow through with the checkout process.

So my question really is how do I reduce abandoned checkouts?

David Koch:
Abandoned digital shopping carts. That’s a great question.

To help weigh in on this we’re joined by our digital growth guru, Nick Brogden. Nick, good to see you.

Nick Brogden:
Thanks a lot.

David Koch:
Now, how common is it for people to abandon their digital shopping cart?

Nick Brogden:
Well, it’s actually extremely common for abandoned carts to happen.

David Koch:
So, don’t feel bad.

Nick Brogden:
It’s factually way more common for people to abandon a cart than to actually complete the conversion.

So the trick on that is to work out how can we make people convert better?

David Koch:
Right. So how do you do that?

Nick Brogden:
There’s a tactic in digital marketing we called CRO, which is conversion rate optimization.

Now conversion rate optimization is the process of looking at what’s actually happening when someone is making a purchase and look for roadblocks.

• What can slow them down?

• What could entice them to buy more?

So for instance, say the images of the Silver Turtles were not quite as polished as they could be. Or they didn’t allow for a rotation of the product so customers could see all angles. Then people aren’t totally sold on the purchase.

David Koch:
And in your analytics, can you find out what’s stopping them? What stage of the process?

Because I suppose it’s the images. Or if they like the images and say by then it’s a fright bit of it.

Nick Brogden:
It can and can’t, depending on how you’ve structured it.

But it can be quite complicated to set it up to monitor a form.

So you can use tools that actually record the screen.

Then you can watch back on where people have dropped off, and you can see where they stopped. But most of the time it’s the shipping.

David Koch:
So is it then better to build your shipping costs into the actual price and just have free shipping?

Nick Brogden:
Yeah, that’s a tactic I like to use is to build the costs into it.

Another really good one if you actually can increase your sales, is if you order over X amount of dollars, it’s free shipping. So then you might sell two or three items rather than the one.

David Koch:
Do you go back to people who have dropped out on a constant basis with a better offer?

Nick Brogden:
That’s actually one of the most effective ways to follow people up is to use what’s called an abandoned cart email sequence.

Now of course you do need the email address first, which is why you’ll find when you make your first purchase, there’s generally an incentive to sign up, to be a member to buy.

Then you can actually get plugins that will set up sequences that are, very simply, will take people right back to the pointy end of the purchase.

David Koch:
It’s an art form. Isn’t it?

Nick Brogden:
Yeah.

David Koch:
But it pays off.

Nick Brogden:
Absolutely.

David Koch:
Nick, good to see you. Thank you for that.

Nick Brogden:
Thanks.