eComm website performance dynamics

Peterdalkey

I am currently reviewing all aspects of our web presence but in particular the performance dynamics of our main B2B eCommerce site.

This year page views and unique visitor stats are both up 20-25% on last year but total sales are up 69.2%. I am assuming that as we have repeat buyers that it is mainly the organic snowball effect of adding new customers and then retaining their business. Any other observations would be welcome.

The other odd thing is that we seem to have much higher than daily average online sales on Tue/Weds and to a slightly less extent on Thursdays! Hmmmmm?

Approximately 25% of all our online sales are made during our non-business hours, evenings and weekends, which is just great!

We know from our customer service/telesales crew that many telephone callers use the site more as a brochure type resource and prefer to order from a person. This makes it nearly impossible fully quantify the total business generated by the site(s) But hey.....happy days!

We have a decent effort ongoing on SEO and a goodly spend on Adwords. Our trials and experiences with FB and their advertising offering were not worthwhile, but we are B2B with boring unbranded overhead type commercial consumables, so not a lot of love out there for them or lust for engagement!

Look forward to any suggestions, ideas, and perhaps even gentle criticism!

Cheers

Peter

Atomico

Peterdalkey wrote: »

I am currently reviewing all aspects of our web presence but in particular the performance dynamics of our main B2B eCommerce site.

This year page views and unique visitor stats are both up 20-25% on last year but total sales are up 69.2%. I am assuming that as we have repeat buyers that it is mainly the organic snowball effect of adding new customers and then retaining their business. Any other observations would be welcome.

The other odd thing is that we seem to have much higher than daily average online sales on Tue/Weds and to a slightly less extent on Thursdays! Hmmmmm?

Approximately 25% of all our online sales are made during our non-business hours, evenings and weekends, which is just great!

We know from our customer service/telesales crew that many telephone callers use the site more as a brochure type resource and prefer to order from a person. This makes it nearly impossible fully quantify the total business generated by the site(s) But hey.....happy days!

We have a decent effort ongoing on SEO and a goodly spend on Adwords. Our trials and experiences with FB and their advertising offering were not worthwhile, but we are B2B with boring unbranded overhead type commercial consumables, so not a lot of love out there for them or lust for engagement!

Look forward to any suggestions, ideas, and perhaps even gentle criticism!

Cheers

Peter

Impossible to suggest anything other than very generic advice like 'try using Twitter as you are in the B2B industry' - generic info gets generic advice!

Saying that sales are up x% and revenue is up y% is meaningless as it's not about the numbers, it's about what the numbers are telling you - and for that you need a lot more data and background info

It would be literally impossible to say why your sales are higher on certain days when compared with other days - this could be just an industry factor, like how room sales peak at particular times of the day for hotels, etc.

One thing is for sure though, someone with access to the stats and a proper overview of the online set-up and - most importantly - what you are looking to achieve and improve, would surely be able to find plenty to recommend and suggest!

I would also say that in your sector SEO is critical, people won't be looking for you on social media as you rightly say (they aren't looking for much anyway), and it will be a case of improving your SEO to capture more visits and opportunities. Same goes for AdWords (tweaking and optimising it very closely on an ongoing basis and potentially getting someone from the outside to review it - if you aren't doing these things already).

Peterdalkey

Thank you for your detailed post and your considered comments.

The actual data numbers are clearly commercially sensitive and for public disclosure.

On the point of it not being about the numbers but rather the story involved. We are fully agreed on that, I have postulated one such scenario... Repeat loyal customers are being one... I fully accept that this could simply be the correct conclusion. On the face of it 20% + increase in unique visitor numbers and page views yielding 69.2% increase in sales revenue/numbers of orders( average order value remains very similar) is worthy of research, in my book. I simply seek other perspectives.

The odd daily pattern is very hard to get a handle on as our product offering is hugely multi-sectoral. I am not sure knowing why it is so offers any meaningful opportunity.

Our focus on SEO and Adwords is a constant and regular focus and we do utilise more specialised external profession digital marketing expertise on an ongoing basis. There are a good few very smart cookies on here in that space too, ;-)


Thanks again

Peter

fg10291

Hi peterdalkey,

There has been a significant increase in people shopping from mobiles and tablets, particularly during commuting hours, is your site mobile optimised, if not it might be something to consider to try and reduces my dropout that you may have. Obviously you'll need weigh up the potential roi.

Peterdalkey

It is optimised for tablet but not for mobile, though it is functional on mobile, if you are really dedicated. There is far too much selection, product detail and pricing/volume options to be handled on a smartphone screen. It is a B2b site not consumer.

Cheers

Peter

fg10291

There are services which can determine what got those particular customers to your site, I think, and I could be wrong here, but www.alexa.com will allow you to see this.

Peterdalkey

fg10291 wrote: »

There are services which can determine what got those particular customers to your site, I think, and I could be wrong here, but www.alexa.com will allow you to see this.

We can view this data on our CMS system and the mobile visits are so low as to be of little interest/significance, but we do keep it under review. Thanks for taking an interest and time to respond.

Cheers

Peter

How much are you spending on SEO etc Peter? Im redesigning my distribution site at the moment and going to hit this side of things pretty hard. Going to do a package for 400 euro a month, Im interested to know any hits to spend ratios after things have been built up for a while

Peterdalkey

We do most of the work inhouse as once you learn the ropes, it is pretty straightforward. One of our senior guys is very keen on it and keeps himself apppraised of the current trends. We also get guidance from our outside web designer/advisor and use the tools in our CMS and their support blogs/tutorials.

The key appears to be to have every thing properly named and images properly tagged, but I would be the last one to advise you. Changing things around, adding new products and content are all part of the daily in-house routine. The words and phrases are repeated in meta tags, site text, blogs, articles, photos, Adwords etc etc. I bought the latest version of SEO for Dummies to try to understand how little I know!

There is a lot of legwork to be done and you need to do much of it yourself, as no outsider can have the intimate market/product/ sectoral stuff that makes the real difference. That said I am currently looking at having our combined efforts reviewe by a totally independent SEO expert to see how good we really are and hight light areas for improvement. According to our webanalyzer stats, The site will score 5.5 million hits and 800k page views for 2013 from a current rate of about 2000 unique visits per week.

I have not costed the internal costs but can't see €400 per month covering them and the external costs.

jimmycrackcorm

The obvious question is why people prefer to buy from a person than use the site. Is the purchasing deficient or do your customers simply crave the human contact?

Peterdalkey

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

The obvious question is why people prefer to buy from a person than use the site. Is the purchasing deficient or do your customers simply crave the human contact?

Sure there are some people who simply are not comfortable with the whole online experience and we have lots who want to give us their credit card details over the phone, they don't trust the web.. But trust us... Weird I know!

The main reason people want to talk and view online at the same time is for advice on doing the job, product selection help and the various options that are available from a performance and cost perspective. We love them to call as we convert north of 90% of these calls into sales, a great credit to the expertise of our telephone/customer service crew.
We also get a good number of follow up visits to our trade sales counter where they can see and handle the products, try for fit etc. We love them too!

Gloomtastic!

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

The obvious question is why people prefer to buy from a person than use the site. Is the purchasing deficient or do your customers simply crave the human contact?

I've bought stuff off your site a couple of times Peter. You can tell the business was there first with the website added on later, probably by someone in-house. Investing a significant amount on a professional web design from home page through the whole buying process I believe would add confidence for any buyer. If the web site looks less than professional then maybe buyers are calling your sales team to check that you are a kosher operation.

I will agree about the mobile site as well. Last time I bought off you, was an emergency, late at night and I only had access to my mobile. I was able to navigate through the site as I'd been there before but it wasn't a pleasant experience!

Peterdalkey

Thanks Gloomtastic and most of all for your business. You are quite right there was no website when we started in business on Friday 14th September 1860. These are boring industrial products, sold to people who would prefer not have to spend part of the gross margin on even buying them.

Sadly for us, you are incorrect in your assertion that we have not used professional software or web designers. I would never contend that what we have is as good as it could be, but our primary effort is to get the wide range of product types to view on the front page. No single product even comes near to 5% of online sales. This causes the layout to be visually "offensive" according to our web designer. At the end of the day, if effective rather than lovely is the outcome, I am afraid I would choose the former. That said we are having another go at trying to pretty up the child!

The other area we have concentrated on to date has been to have the minimum number of page clicks and keystrokes to get an order placed successfully. Our average order has three different product lines.

The mobile/phone capability just about works, as you found out yourself. To be blunt, it would be ideal to have a fully functional mobile enabled/optimised site but would need to see real evidence that such investment would be profitable and not a case of burning money on loss making trade. When the market goes there, we will follow. Other improvements are more of a priority at this stage.

We do ask every buyer for feedback, after they have received their order, by email. The general response is extremely positive with nearly every response being 5 out of 5 with only 3 of less than 4 out of 5 and 2 rated it below that. (3000 sales transactions of which about 10% actually respond).

This is also but part of our business, we have other specialised industrial and marketing products areas, with separate sites (not eCommerce) dealing with export markets and industry specific solutions. Each business segment has to fight for its share of resources based on it's potential to generate a return! All hungry children!

The external comments are very valuable and challenge the status quo and make one address the issues. I have had some very useful feedback and comment/suggestions by message too, all of which is appreciated.

I have started a work list, and will commence implementation of the biggest bang bits first, starting in the morning!

Gloomtastic!

I always gave you a high mark Peter cos the products were the cheapest I could find not because your website was good - sorry!

Peterdalkey

That is perfect, we are selling our gear... Lucky it is not websites! But at least you were able to find the best prices on the web! And from a real Irish business.....

;-) Peter

Peterdalkey

www.seokitten.com

Very interesting new Irish developed SEO testing tool in Beta format, Which I found on the Internet Marketing/ SEO board here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057093063

Fukuyama

I'd look into getting those customers who use your site as a catalog to become 100% - but this could depend on your industry.

Overall I'd say you're looking at repeat business. Try to see where your customers are coming in from compared to last year. If they're arriving from Google Search or Absence then it's not repeat business. But if they're arriving directly to your site by typing in the URL then chances are they're repeat business.

Atomico

Dean0088 wrote: »

Overall I'd say you're looking at repeat business. Try to see where your customers are coming in from compared to last year. If they're arriving from Google Search or Absence then it's not repeat business. But if they're arriving directly to your site by typing in the URL then chances are they're repeat business.

Not quite that clear cut as repeat customers could be googling the company name or URL, and these queries will show up as Search queries / search traffic. Direct traffic is clear cut though.

It would be more instructive to look at it in terms of Direct traffic and branded traffic vs non-branded Search traffic, but even that won't be fully accurate as people may forget the company name even if they bought from them before, etc.

ifah

Hi peter

I've been playing around with unbounce as a lead to conversion measure - you can setup different landing pages to try test different marketing strategies and the conversion rates of each in terms of getting signup or sales etc.

I have also linked mine into zoho crm which I use as my crm tool.

Www.unbounce.com for more info.

Fukuyama

Atomico wrote: »

Not quite that clear cut as repeat customers could be googling the company name or URL, and these queries will show up as Search queries / search traffic. Direct traffic is clear cut though.

It would be more instructive to look at it in terms of Direct traffic and branded traffic vs non-branded Search traffic, but even that won't be fully accurate as people may forget the company name even if they bought from them before, etc.

Search terms leading to their visit to the website can be monitored however. A lot of people using old versions of IE (mostly older computer users, themselves) do that. So he could include Google search traffic derived from Googling just the company name as repeat business or, at the very least, customers that are aware of his business.

Peterdalkey

It is quite irrelevant as to how repeat customers return to the site and buy again, the important dynamic is that they do. That said, a question never posed is under debate here.

The question was, what could be the reason for a greater increase in sales than the percentage increase in site visitor numbers given that the average unit sale value has remained the largely the same. Can anyone offer an explanation/suggestion other than repeat business from existing customers, simple customer retention/snowball?

Atomico

Peterdalkey wrote: »

It is quite irrelevant as to how repeat customers return to the site and buy again, the important dynamic is that they do. That said, a question never posed is under debate here.

The question was, what could be the reason for a greater increase in sales than the percentage increase in site visitor numbers given that the average unit sale value has remained the largely the same. Can anyone offer an explanation/suggestion other than repeat business from existing customers, simple customer retention/snowball?

An increase in conversion rate.

Let's say 10k visitors in month A, and a conversion rate of 8% = 800 sales.

8k visitors in month B, but a conversion rate of 12% = 960 sales.

That is, sales outpacing growth in visitor numbers.

Peterdalkey

Atomico wrote: »

An increase in conversion rate.

Let's say 10k visitors in month A, and a conversion rate of 8% = 800 sales.

8k visitors in month B, but a conversion rate of 12% = 960 sales.

That is, sales outpacing growth in visitor numbers.

A veritable miracle, that but for the throw of a die, could have gone the other way!

Peterdalkey

I am not really sure what I expected to come from my original post on this topic, but less than 7 days later, we have started on an action plan. I have engaged the services of a SEO/Adwords guru, who is a regular poster on that forum on Boards and on here on occasion. Stage 2 will be to make the site prettier/more visually appealing,I have asked our web graphic deaigner to have a go a some "new look" ideas/concepts. I hear Gloomtastic on the mobile-ability/optimisation, but am going to kick that can down the road, after all he did manage to make his emergency buy with his phone.

I appreciate all the effort that people made to post their comments, it takes time, so thank you.

The greatest benefit came from the thought processes of having to put my own brain into gear to defend, argue, reason, plead or just be a smart-ar*e in my responses. Very much like brainstorming, it is not necesarily what is said/contributed but the real gems come from the thought trains sparked off.... as long as you stick with them and chase them down.

cheers

Peter