November 18, 2010 at 15:17How to buy sales, not traffic?
Hello, habrachelovek.
We looked here the program of the conference Igor Ashmanov about search engine optimization. An entire section is devoted to why optimizers charge for traffic and line items. And there is not a word about taking payment for sales.
If you look at the comments on the post about the reasons for mistrusting SEO-employees , it becomes obvious that unlike many other customers of SEO companies, hawkeepers understand: positions in the top and the amount of traffic is not an end in itself. The online store doesn’t need the traffic in FIG if it gives nothing but the load on the server. He needs buyers. Not "potential", but who visited the site and bought something.
He is even willing to pay for attracting buyers. But before giving money to the “seo-guys”, or maybe even before opening a store, you need to decide two things for yourself:
For counting customers who made an order through a form on the site, there is Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica (which by the way recently has a useful heatmap of clicks). For us, as an SEO company, it’s important to keep track of the people we brought in. Accordingly, we track at what request in the search engine the buyer came - we consider how many such people came before and determine the monthly increase.
If we need to track user behavior on the site, for example, to understand the cause of a large number of failures, we use eyetracking and mouse tracking, as well as conduct usability testing.
But what about orders received by phone? To ask the manager on the phone to record where the buyer came from is risky, often the manager simply clogs. Therefore, the following control options are most often used.
We have a client in WebProjects - TsifroTerra , an online store of electronic equipment. At some point, our relationship came to a standstill. The client wanted to know what exactly he was paying for, and what exactly was getting from it. Then we proposed the following.
We place on the site pages a unique “customer code” for each visitor. I type in Yandex a request, go to the store’s website, call the store - they ask me to name the code located under the phone number on the store’s page. I was considered, now it is known for certain what request I came and what I bought.
The technique is not new; we picked it up from Alexey Ivanov from the Sinilok company. Admittedly, thoughts are in the air, and recently we have witnessed the development of this idea. Unfortunately, the author of this ingenious customer accounting system is not present on Habré (at least a search by company name didn’t give anything), so we’ll take the liberty of telling about his brainchild.
At the last conference " Electronic Commerce - 2010 " we met with the work of Timofei Shikolenkov. On the first day, usability and SEO experts lynched his site. And in the second - he read a report about the web analytics of his online store, which put the majority of internet marketing gurus in his belt. Just make a reservation, the sitelynched for the cause. But the way in which statistics are kept, and how this helps to increase sales, deserves respect.
The impetus for Timofey’s creation of his own web analytics system was the fact that a person, before buying something in a store, can log into the site ten times from different computers, phones and iPads, and then make an order by phone . Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica, firstly, will consider that they were all different people, and, secondly, it will reduce the significance of the requests and sources that the person came in the first 9 times, and increase the significance of the request and the source from which the person came when he finally decided to make a purchase.
The usefulness of Google and Yandex services does not detract from this, but for a person who is stubborn and principled can become an occasion for creating his own analytics system. It is long, expensive, and that is why it is respected. So what did Timothy do.
One client may have several unique codes (IDs), several IP or forum accounts. Or vice versa, for example, husband and wife could enter from one IP, and this is also taken into account. And most importantly, about the client (not about the abstract host) it is known what he was looking for in a search engine and what he ultimately bought.
Other examples of the work of this Big Brother with visual screenshots can be found in Timofey's presentation .
Very often, a client tells us that he wants an honest “affiliate program” and is ready to track buyers. If at the same time he cannot change the telephone number on the site within six months or does not want to establish his own business processes, we will not succeed.
Therefore, we identified for ourselves three factors on which it depends on whether we will work with payment for sales.
The first factor : the store has a working service. The person on whom your sales depend is the one who picks up the phone when the customer we brought in calls the online store. An unscrupulous or incompetent manager can ditch 60-70% of orders.
Checking it is very simple - call your store under the guise of a customer, order "mystery shoppers" or put software that records telephone conversations.
The second factor : the store sells usability. If the user cannot add the product to the basket or does not understand that it has been added, there will be no sales boom. About how to make the store convenient - we wrote on our blog earlier .
Third factor : the store has competitive prices. Roughly speaking, it is necessary to answer the question: will anyone even buy these goods and services at such a price? We look at competitors, we monitor the market - we draw conclusions.
This is all. Take care of yourself and attract buyers.
We looked here the program of the conference Igor Ashmanov about search engine optimization. An entire section is devoted to why optimizers charge for traffic and line items. And there is not a word about taking payment for sales.
If you look at the comments on the post about the reasons for mistrusting SEO-employees , it becomes obvious that unlike many other customers of SEO companies, hawkeepers understand: positions in the top and the amount of traffic is not an end in itself. The online store doesn’t need the traffic in FIG if it gives nothing but the load on the server. He needs buyers. Not "potential", but who visited the site and bought something.
He is even willing to pay for attracting buyers. But before giving money to the “seo-guys”, or maybe even before opening a store, you need to decide two things for yourself:
- How to determine which marketing activities have influenced sales growth?
- and in general, how is it known that there will be sales?
How to track customers
For counting customers who made an order through a form on the site, there is Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica (which by the way recently has a useful heatmap of clicks). For us, as an SEO company, it’s important to keep track of the people we brought in. Accordingly, we track at what request in the search engine the buyer came - we consider how many such people came before and determine the monthly increase.
If we need to track user behavior on the site, for example, to understand the cause of a large number of failures, we use eyetracking and mouse tracking, as well as conduct usability testing.
But what about orders received by phone? To ask the manager on the phone to record where the buyer came from is risky, often the manager simply clogs. Therefore, the following control options are most often used.
- Separate phone number on the site. You won’t be mistaken with the number of calls, but if you do not pay extra for recording calls, you will again have to ask the managers themselves to calculate how many orders have been processed from this number. In addition, for each advertising campaign (in order to evaluate its effectiveness) you will have to make a new number.
- Special software on the site ( reklamer.ru , adscontrol.ru , as well as (suggested in comments by n0_quarter habrayuzer ) istat.com.ua ). These are complex solutions - using virtual phone numbers, you can keep statistics on all channels for receiving orders and for all advertising campaigns. The downside is the relatively high cost.
- Promo codes. Each advertising campaign includes a discount offer. The client calls and calls the promo code to receive a discount. Promo codes for different campaigns, of course, are different. Less - you have to make a discount.
How to track customers: an alternative
We have a client in WebProjects - TsifroTerra , an online store of electronic equipment. At some point, our relationship came to a standstill. The client wanted to know what exactly he was paying for, and what exactly was getting from it. Then we proposed the following.
We place on the site pages a unique “customer code” for each visitor. I type in Yandex a request, go to the store’s website, call the store - they ask me to name the code located under the phone number on the store’s page. I was considered, now it is known for certain what request I came and what I bought.
The technique is not new; we picked it up from Alexey Ivanov from the Sinilok company. Admittedly, thoughts are in the air, and recently we have witnessed the development of this idea. Unfortunately, the author of this ingenious customer accounting system is not present on Habré (at least a search by company name didn’t give anything), so we’ll take the liberty of telling about his brainchild.
At the last conference " Electronic Commerce - 2010 " we met with the work of Timofei Shikolenkov. On the first day, usability and SEO experts lynched his site. And in the second - he read a report about the web analytics of his online store, which put the majority of internet marketing gurus in his belt. Just make a reservation, the sitelynched for the cause. But the way in which statistics are kept, and how this helps to increase sales, deserves respect.
The impetus for Timofey’s creation of his own web analytics system was the fact that a person, before buying something in a store, can log into the site ten times from different computers, phones and iPads, and then make an order by phone . Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica, firstly, will consider that they were all different people, and, secondly, it will reduce the significance of the requests and sources that the person came in the first 9 times, and increase the significance of the request and the source from which the person came when he finally decided to make a purchase.
The usefulness of Google and Yandex services does not detract from this, but for a person who is stubborn and principled can become an occasion for creating his own analytics system. It is long, expensive, and that is why it is respected. So what did Timothy do.
- as well as we, he began to place a unique code on the pages of the site - when the client called, the manager asked to give him these numbers,
- the store completely refused to count visitors and switched to counting living people,
- web statistics has been integrated into CRM,
- The "dossier" for the client began to include all the possible information: visits to the site from various, orders, letters, messages on the forum, calls, visits to the store,
- Now, when a customer calls the store, the manager simultaneously opens his “file” and uses the information from him in the conversation.
One client may have several unique codes (IDs), several IP or forum accounts. Or vice versa, for example, husband and wife could enter from one IP, and this is also taken into account. And most importantly, about the client (not about the abstract host) it is known what he was looking for in a search engine and what he ultimately bought.
Other examples of the work of this Big Brother with visual screenshots can be found in Timofey's presentation .
I am ready to track customers. Where are my sales?
Very often, a client tells us that he wants an honest “affiliate program” and is ready to track buyers. If at the same time he cannot change the telephone number on the site within six months or does not want to establish his own business processes, we will not succeed.
Therefore, we identified for ourselves three factors on which it depends on whether we will work with payment for sales.
The first factor : the store has a working service. The person on whom your sales depend is the one who picks up the phone when the customer we brought in calls the online store. An unscrupulous or incompetent manager can ditch 60-70% of orders.
Checking it is very simple - call your store under the guise of a customer, order "mystery shoppers" or put software that records telephone conversations.
The second factor : the store sells usability. If the user cannot add the product to the basket or does not understand that it has been added, there will be no sales boom. About how to make the store convenient - we wrote on our blog earlier .
Third factor : the store has competitive prices. Roughly speaking, it is necessary to answer the question: will anyone even buy these goods and services at such a price? We look at competitors, we monitor the market - we draw conclusions.
This is all. Take care of yourself and attract buyers.