Conversion Rate Web Marketing Blog 

Is shipping a mystery on your online shopping website? Lack of clarity around shipping is one of the biggest conversion killers in eCommerce. Fortunately there are some simple conversion techniques that you can use to stem the flow of lost orders caused by shipping mystery.

Let’s start with the basics:

• Detail your shipping policy
• Link to your shipping policy
• Display shipping costs up front
• Keep shipping simple
• Use shipping offers

Detail your shipping policy

The first shipping conversion technique is having a clearly stated shipping policy. Some of the details that you need to cover in your shipping policy include:

• Where do you ship to?
• What options are there?
• What carriers do you use?
• How long does it take to get there?
• How do you calculate the shipping price?
• What happens when problems arise?

Link to your shipping policy

Once you have a good, well detailed shipping policy, you need to make sure that it can be found. Include a link to the shipping policy near the shopping cart, in the menus and on product pages.

Display shipping costs up front

One of the real keys to succeeding with shipping is being up front about it. Unfortunately, many shopping cart systems are configured to kill conversions by default. That’s because they force you to register and enter your personal details before they show you the price of shipping.

Make sure your shopping cart shows your customers the full price of the sale before they’re asked for their personal details.

But what if you need to know the customer’s location to calculate the shipping price? Ask them for their postcode, state or suburb, but… keep it simple.

Keep shipping simple

If your shipping calculations are complicated, do they really need to be? You might have more success with a simpler shipping price structure. Even if it is more expensive, making shipping easier to understand for your customers could have a positive effect on conversions.

Of course, this may depend on other factors such as competition, but it’s worth a test!

Use shipping offers

Shipping can be a conversion killer, but it can also present a profit opportunity for your eCommerce business. Try using quantity based shipping incentives to increase your average order value. For example, you might offer free shipping on orders one $100.

You can also use free shipping or discounted shipping offers to create an artificial deadline to push some of those conversions over the threshold.

Carefully calculate the costs of any offers that you make on shipping and make sure that the cost will be less than the return.

Once you have the basics covered, you can then start to look at some of the technical tricks that can improve your customer’s shipping experience even further.

From the author: If you run an eCommerce website then you might wonder, “How do I know if I’m getting as many orders as I could be through my website?” The answer to that question is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your eCommerce website you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too ;-)!

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 to find out how you could boost the conversion rates of your eCommerce website.

Have you noticed that your Email Marketing piece looks real funny in Outlook 2007? That’s probably because Outlook 2007 now uses Microsoft Word to digest a HTML email. Previous versions of Microsoft Outlook used Internet Explorer to display HTML emails.

For email marketers that means that a number of significant HTML features are gone.

In Outlook 2007 you may have noticed that you can’t use:

• Background images. Not in HTML or Style Sheets (CSS).
• Rowspans to format a table.
• Forms to capture users input.

As Office 2007 gradually gets rolled out, you are going to have to change the way your emails are built and perhaps designed.

It may be of little consolation, but Microsoft has released a tool that checks to see if your email will work in Outlook 2007. The tool is for users of Microsoft Expression Web, Microsoft Visual Studio or Macromedia Dreamweaver (MX 2004 and Version 8). You can download it here.

It would be a good idea to check your next email marketing piece before you click send!

From the author: If you use email marketing to reach your customers and prospects, then there are simple things that you can do ensure that your message gets through and is acted on. The key is in your email marketing conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your email marketing you need a combination of the best email marketing tools and a team that includes experienced web marketers, email designers, web programmers, copywriters, and editors. That’s why we created Bitemark.

Contact us on 03 9012 6600 for a free conversion rate review of your email marketing.

We’re happy to say that we’ve set a new conversion rate record for our lead generation websites - 41.82%.

That means that for every 100 people that visit this page, at least 41 of them will complete and submit this form.

Why is this page converting so well? Here’s a couple of reasons:

• It’s a simple form
• It’s being seen by the right people
• It meets the visitor’s needs

What’s even better is that it’s the second most popular page in the whole website. Congratulations to the Piano Removalists - Network Piano Carriers.

From the author: If you regularly advertise for leads in the Yellow Pages®, in the newspaper or on the radio, then there’s a good chance that your website could be generating more leads for you than it is. The key is in your website’s conversion rates.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your web marketing you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too ;-)!

Contact us on 1300 248 362 for a free conversion rate review of your website.

Yellow Pages® is an Australian registered trade mark of Telstra Corporation Ltd. This company has requested and has been granted permission from Telstra Corporation Ltd to use the Yellow Pages® trade mark. This company is not otherwise associated with Telstra Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.