PHPR is a UK-based results-driven on and offline PR agency. Our wealth of B2B and ecommerce experience is behind the results we get for businesses like yours.
Our MD, Penny Haywood Calder (pictured), launched the world's first online bank in the mid 1980s. We've been online ever since, bringing you a wealth of on and offline know-how.
We regularly land our clients on page one of the natural search results on Google. Yet we remain a boutique agency: small, experienced and cost-effective,
with no junior staff to fob you off with. Just top professionals personally driving your business forward.Barriers to online sales
No point in creating hurdles customers have to leap before they can buy from you online.
I stumbled across a surprising hurdle when I was writing case studies for an online payment processor. One interviewee mentioned they had a 24% hike in sales on the day they switched from one payment service provider to another, due to the decrease in 'failed carts': in this case, abandoned transactions during the payment part of the sale.
I asked the other 3 interviewees if they had seen a similar difference. None of them had been tracking failed carts during the change over, but they took a look. Sure enough, they all reported over 20% growth in sales on the day they switched online payment service provider, but had attributed the growth to other factors. The increase in sales persisted thereafter.
I was writing these case studies a while ago, so individual payment services providers may have changed the way they work now. My interviewees reckoned the uplift was due to the new payment service provider making it much easier for the customer to pay online. They didn't have to go through a cumbersome registration process. One less barrier to the sale. And a 20% hike in sales without any additional sales, marketing or PR? Now that's a potential added bonus that's well worth checking out!
Looks like the cost of services is not necessarily the only factor when choosing an online payment service provider. In this case, it was one of the most expensive providers that created the biggest barrier to sales, making it an even less attractive proposition.
But it's not just the payment process on your site, it's the site as a whole. Are there any online barriers you could remove for your customers to make your website more sales effective?
It's very hard to see your website the way a first-time user sees it. Can you test your site using people with no familiarity with your website? Friends and family? Or run a short test as part of a recruitment selection process? Record testers talking through their actions and feelings as they work their way through a series of tasks on your website to collect information and make a purchase. That could produce very useful information on both the potential recruits and your website.
Some usability experts reckon they get over 100% uplift in sales by streamlining pages and placing clear and appropriate calls to action on key landing web pages. They test variants again and again against the free Google analytics service. Are there any tweaks you can make to test, refine and fine-tune the sales results from your site?
As my favourite NLP master and trainer (Erick Rainey) says: "There is no failure, only feedback!"
Here's to your ecommerce success.
I stumbled across a surprising hurdle when I was writing case studies for an online payment processor. One interviewee mentioned they had a 24% hike in sales on the day they switched from one payment service provider to another, due to the decrease in 'failed carts': in this case, abandoned transactions during the payment part of the sale.
I asked the other 3 interviewees if they had seen a similar difference. None of them had been tracking failed carts during the change over, but they took a look. Sure enough, they all reported over 20% growth in sales on the day they switched online payment service provider, but had attributed the growth to other factors. The increase in sales persisted thereafter.
I was writing these case studies a while ago, so individual payment services providers may have changed the way they work now. My interviewees reckoned the uplift was due to the new payment service provider making it much easier for the customer to pay online. They didn't have to go through a cumbersome registration process. One less barrier to the sale. And a 20% hike in sales without any additional sales, marketing or PR? Now that's a potential added bonus that's well worth checking out!
Looks like the cost of services is not necessarily the only factor when choosing an online payment service provider. In this case, it was one of the most expensive providers that created the biggest barrier to sales, making it an even less attractive proposition.
But it's not just the payment process on your site, it's the site as a whole. Are there any online barriers you could remove for your customers to make your website more sales effective?
It's very hard to see your website the way a first-time user sees it. Can you test your site using people with no familiarity with your website? Friends and family? Or run a short test as part of a recruitment selection process? Record testers talking through their actions and feelings as they work their way through a series of tasks on your website to collect information and make a purchase. That could produce very useful information on both the potential recruits and your website.
Some usability experts reckon they get over 100% uplift in sales by streamlining pages and placing clear and appropriate calls to action on key landing web pages. They test variants again and again against the free Google analytics service. Are there any tweaks you can make to test, refine and fine-tune the sales results from your site?
As my favourite NLP master and trainer (Erick Rainey) says: "There is no failure, only feedback!"
Here's to your ecommerce success.
Labels: case studies, ecommerce, Edinburgh, failed carts, online payment systems, PHPR, PR, pr agency
posted by Penny Haywood Calder at
14:36
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