Accelerating Trust Building to Drive and Convert The Right Traffic

Accelerating Trust Building to Drive and Convert The
Right Traffic
Build and maintain confidence and trust among your web visitors and
customers to accelerate the sales cycle.
ANDREAS RYUTA STENZEL – TRUSTE
SHIRLEY TAN – FOUNDER OF AMERICANBRIDAL.COM AND
DEARSHIRLEY.COM
Andreas Ryuta Stenzel
TRUSTe
• Andreas Ryuta Stenzel manages Online Marketing for
TRUSTe, the online trust leader. Andreas has 15-year+
experience focusing on building end-to-end scalable,
profitable, demand generation programs and campaigns
for fast-growing organizations.
Shirley Tan
Founder AmericanBridal.com & DearShirley.com
• Founder of AmericanBridal.com (sold to TheKnot.com),
Shirley Tan has been in Ecommerce since 1997 and runs
the blog DearShirley.com.
Agenda
• Identifying Your True Target Audience
– Relevance and Driving Traffic
– Ideas About Value Perception and Positioning Your Offer
• 5 Tips for Driving Inbound Traffic
• Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales
– Optimizing Site Design
• The Basics: Color, Size, Shape, and Motion
• Design Features, “Mental Models”, and Testing
• Optimization, Accessibility, and Operational
Considerations
– Optimizing Site Elements
• Privacy
• Contact Info
– Ecommerce Store Conversion Tips and Tricks
Accelerating Trust: Relevance and Driving Traffic
• Overall Strategy:
Think about your target:
– What type of company and industry do they work in
– What are their job titles and those on the buying team
– What are their decision making processes and buying
behaviors
– What pain points are they servicing by buying your goods
and services
• Tactical Tips:
– To get answers to the above, work backwards from recent
sales to identify the 80/20 and other patterns
Accelerating Trust: Value Perception and Offer Positioning
• Overall Strategy:
Deeply Understand Inbound:
– What percent of your activities actually drive your specific
targets into your sales funnel?
– How can you improve that number
dramatically?
• Tactical Tips:
– Consider how your marketing efforts are
optimized
– When selling into larger organizations, even over
the web, consider all the touch points in the cycle.
– Consider sales stage when marketing and prioritizing
spend to later sales cycle activities first.
Accelerating Trust: Value Perception and Offer Positioning
• Overall Strategy:
Implement and conduct ongoing information and feedback
gathering activities
– Surveys, Contests, Focus groups (for larger orgs)
• “Research” where you share the summary results as the
offer
• Giveaways – from gift cards to free consulting
– Tactical Tip:
• Web analytics and marketing automation
• Capture abandoned cart contact info with simple
javascript
5 Tips for Driving Better Inbound Traffic - # 5
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
• Where to Start ?!
• The Basics
– Appropriate keywords placements, Friendly Navs, Targeted
Content
• Learn about “Long-tail Keywords” and How they Relate to your
more Profitable Targets
• Use Google Trends and Google Insights
Plus, at a minimum get Branded Paid Search running.
5 Tips for Driving Better Inbound Traffic - # 4
Database-driven Email Marketing
• Spend some time coming up with a Up-sell / Cross-sell plan to
Re-market to your Existing Base.
• Consider CRM and/or DRIP Marketing Tools
• Capture new users - respectfully.
• Use “The New Stationery”
Polling Question # 1
What do you see as the biggest
opportunity in marketing to help build
your business this holiday season?
5 Tips for Driving Better Inbound Traffic - # 3
Great Offers
• Give limited time, limited size, and or limited function Products
away
for FREE to new prospects
• Give FREE Services from your experts as an offer
– Ideas include Technical Support, Expert Consultation,
Testing Help…
• Strategic Uses of Quizzes
– Keep Offers Relevant to
Your Core Profit Centers
5 Tips for Driving Better Inbound Traffic - # 2
Pay for performance
• Affiliates, Search, and Comparison Engines all work to your
spend.
• Set aside some time and budget to methodically test these and
find your ideal margins and/or payback periods specific to your
business.
5 Tips for Driving Better Inbound Traffic - # 1
Interact with your Customers!
• Ongoing Feedback
– Set up product / page / content review tools
– Suggestion boxes, CEOs email address
– Surveys in email / newsletters / even snail mail!
• Appreciation activities
– Contests, Promos, Events
– Case Studies, Co-presenting on Webinars etc.
– Grandfathered pricing where it makes sense
Keep Feedback Unfiltered and Ongoing
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: The Basics
• Color
– Brand identity and logos
– Heuristics for Attractiveness and Aesthetic Design
– Thoughtful, Judicious Use of Color
– Contrast
• Size, Shape, and Motion
– Symmetry and style specific
to visual layout.
– Structured and consistent
layout using grids.
– Depth of fields
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Web Design Best Practices
• Design / Web Best Practices
Guidelines for engendering user trust to convert visitors into
customers to accelerate sales on your site and your client’s sites.
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Web Design Best Practices
• Simplify the Design Features
– Users are much more likely to engage with a design they
can quickly interpret and feel comfortable using.
• Reduce Visual Clutter
– Clarity and simplicity make your design more
usable.
– Consider what Marketing knows about the Eye Path
– Arrange your content into logical clusters.
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Web Design Best Practices
• Support the User’s Mental Model
– Users want to feel good about using an interface.
User-centered design expert Donald Norman calls this the
“designer’s model” – present information in a way that
supports how the user thinks. Metaphors, imagery,
checklists.
• Testing Design
– Most small businesses are afraid of testing because they think
it’s too expensive, will take too long, etc.
Usability expert Jakob Nielson says you can find 75
percent of the major problems in a design within the first
four user tests.
– Also, outside of the pages themselves consider testing other
operational tactics like load times, screen res, monitor size…
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Web Site Best Practices
• Customer-centric design
– Optimized Usability
– Links
– Feedback Mechanisms
• Privacy Practices
– Privacy Policy…
– Practices articulated at point of collection
• Human Touch
– Contact Info, About Us, Leadership pages
– Pictures
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
What is Purchase Delay
– Understanding your Customer Shopping Patterns are crucial to
reducing purchasing delay.
– Structured shopping experience.
It should flow naturally .
– Product Pages should have
complete information about
the product
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Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
Design and Structure
– Professional error-free design and description to prevent pause
– Sensible & Customer centric Site Navigation that makes sense
– Study your traffic source data and review your websites
appearance on the different browser
– Site look and Feel
Building Site Trust
– Quick load time of site
– Everything is easy to find
– “Unbury” privacy policy
– shipping rates and delivery times
– Refund & return policy
– sales tax
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Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
Cart Abandonment: The Biggest Culprits
1. Shipping Rates
– Study your Analytics,
– Display shipping rates before cart, you can gauge true
purchase intent
2. Shopping Cart Flexibility
– Making it easy to change out shopping cart information
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Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
Cart Abandonment: The Biggest Culprits
3. Forced Registration
Registering to shop
Polling Question # 2
What are the biggest challenges for your
business this holiday season?
Best Practice #2
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
• Clear call to action buttons, images, links
• From Greekgear.com
Best Practice #3
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
• Not having multiple images/videos
• From Americanbridal.com
Best Practice #4
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
• Tell them you have it in stock
• From Myweddingfavors.com
Best Practice #5
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
• Be Upfront with Your Shipping Costs
• From Skygeek.com
Best Practice #9
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
• Optimized Relevant Cross sells
• From Brookstone.com
Best Practice #10
Accelerating Trust to Increase Sales: Ecommerce Best Practices
• Optimizing for your own coupons
Top 5 Takeaways
1.
Deeply Understand Your True Target Audience
2.
Know How They Hear About You
3.
Prioritize Customer Marketing
4.
Consider Site Design Tests to Accelerate Trust
5.
Deeply Understand Traffic Behavior in Your Cart
Bottom Line: Customers Who Trust You Buy More
Thank You
Shirley Tan
www.dearshirley.com
Andreas Ryuta Stenzel
www.truste.com