Unfortunately, yes it can. Let me explain.

Suppose your website is relatively new, and you currently only rank for a few terms, namely your brand name. After a year or so of optimizing your site for search engines, you notice that despite a huge increase in search traffic, your conversion rate is significantly lower than it used to be. What happened?

Unfortunately, the SE’s are not as smart as we think they are. Occasionally, they will rank your website for keywords that are completely irrelevant or too broad for your business. For example, I have a client who retails a highly niche clothing type. After about 2 years of SEO, they currently rank first page on Google for the broad search term “clothing stores”. However, looking at the web analytics, I found that not a single visitor from this keyword has converted to a sale.

I would venture to guess that most sites rank for several major keywords and many long tail keywords that are either too broad or have nothing to do with their website. So what’s the big deal? Nothing really, express your conversion rate will suffer.

From a birds eye view, it would be very disconcerting for an executive to see the conversion rate fall after beginning an SEO campaign. However, this is completely normal. It’s important to delve deeper into the analytics and monitor not just the overall conversion rate, but the individual conversion rates from SE’s, direct traffic, and referring sites.

It’s important not to obsess too much over conversion rates. If overall conversions (sales) are up, yet the conversion rate is down due to some external factor, there is absolutely no cause for alarm.

About PWM

Palmer Web Marketing offers e-commerce site reviews and advice on the PWM e-Commerce blog.

Create a Discount Pop-Up Window

Another creative way to decrease your abandonment rate is to launch a popup window anytime a customer exits your website while the shopping cart is still full. The popup window can say something like, “Complete your order now, and receive an additional 10% discount.” Hopefully, the customer will re-consider their action and stay to finish their purchase.

 Typically, I’m not a big fan of pop-up windows in general. In order for this to work, it must be executed correctly. If done wrong, the pop-up may be blocked or immediately closed by the user. The pop-up must not look like an add, and must load fast enough before they close the window.

As always, test a system like this thoroughly before implementing.

Add a “email me when in-stock” feature

This feature is a no-brainer for sites that frequently sell out of their inventory. However, it’s amazing how few websites actually do it. Here’s how it works: Anytime a customer visits a product detail page that displays an “out of stock” notice, give them the option to be emailed if the item becomes available again. This serves two purposes.

First, it gives you an opportunity to capture their email address (opt in, of course). And second, it gives you the opportunity to save the sale if you re-stock the item. Now wait a minute, you think, most websites don’t allow people to visit pages of items that are out of stock. That’s true, but keep in mind that search engines will keep these pages indexed for some time. In addition, people frequently bookmark pages of products they would like to purchase in the future. This feature is even more useful if you sell a product that comes in multiple sizes or colors. For example, if you sell widgets that are available in both green and blue, and the green widgets are out of stock, your customer’s can be emailed when that color is re-stocked. Just like that, another lost sale is captured! We implemented this program at C28 (checkout the “Email Me When My Size Is Re-Stocked” link under the options section), and it was very successful at bringing back customers who otherwise would have not ordered.

About PWM

Justin Palmer is the founder of Palmer Web Marketing, a Christian website marketing company specializing in Christian e-mail blast marketing and Christian search engine marketing.

#1 Email Customers Who Abandon Their Shopping Carts

An extremely smart tactic to bring back lost sales is to checkup on those people who never complete the checkout process. If you have already captured the customers’ email address, you can easily send them a friendly message informing them that you’re currently trying to improve your checkout process, and you apologize if they found anything confusing. In addition, you might want to give them a coupon code as an additional incentive for bringing them back.

In my experience with one client, customers were completely blown away that the company cared enough to check up with them. The program was extremely successful, and brought in thousands in sales.

About PWM

Justin Palmer is the founder of Palmer Web Marketing, a Christian web marketing firm specializing in Christian e-mail marketing, website usability, and search engine optimization.

Let me sum up a conversation I had recently with a member of the production staff of a company I work for.

“Justin,” she began, “Why do you allow just anyone to post product reviews? Too many people are complaining about prices, etc.” I responded with something to the effect of, “Well, consider this. If you’re on website that allows customers to post what they actually think of a product, what impression does that give you of the company?” She then understood my point. When a company is transparent enough to let their customers opinions come out unfiltered, the amount of trust it creates for the website is tremendous. Sure, someone may not buy that particular product due to a negative review, but they are more likely to purchase another because they now trust your website.

Quite frankly, people are tired of hearing what the “marketing department” has to say about a product. They want straight facts from their peers. How did the product perform? Did it meet expectations? Would they recommend it?

This is simply another example of how consumer generated media (CGM) will  work its way from socialization sites such as myspace and facebook  into e-commerce. Sooner or later, everyone will realize that transparency with customers is the most effective way to gain their trust.