How do you double the conversion rate of a client's e-Commerce site?

The Webselect team are masters at e-Commerce, and turning a good e-Commerce site into a great e-Commerce site is exactly what we do.

Our latest client,is a leading supplier of tools, equipment, clock and watch materials to the jewellery and horological trades. Since our work with them began, and in under a month after their new e-Commerce site had gone live, they have seen a significant increase in their conversion rate of customers. 143.35% to be exact! This is tangible proof of our expertise in e-Commerce and testament to the time we take to truly understand what our clients are selling and which buyers they are trying to communicate with. It's never a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and we are well respected in our industry for achieving results like this for online brands and retailers.

How did we approach it?

We started by investigating the client’s old site, looking for anything that we could enhance or redesign as a first step, as it's not always appropriate to tear everything up and start again from scratch. Something that we were quick to discover was that their Google Analytics had been set up incorrectly, and was not accurate for all their products, meaning that the sales team did not get the right data to understand the market (strike 1).

We also concluded that the User Experience (UX) was clunky, too focused on lists of products and prices and didn't sell the story behind the heritage, experience and quality of service (strike 2).

From a back-end perspective, the management of stock, slock levels and availability was broken, workflow was manual and products were potentially available online when not in stock, creating a backorder nightmare. Worst of all, there were products that were showing as not available online, when there was in fact stock (strike 3).

The client has a mature discounting policy for trade, and this was not being managed well in the old site. Discounts were being inconsistently applied, requiring manual over-writing and adding to the overhead of the site management and costing the client money, as well as being a hit to the reputation and revenue (strike 4).

The processing of orders was also taking too long, impacting the customer’s experience of fulfilment (strike 5).

So what to do?

We reported back these findings to the client, and talked through the options with them. Our primary recommendation for the best course of action was to rebuild the site and migrate all the data. It was a simple business case for the client of good money after bad versus a new platform and site that is optimised for the latest technology, that would represent a very positive ROI. We transitioned the client on to our SelectCommerce platform, as a basis for building their website, which empowered them with a working outline of the website very quickly, without causing any impact to the operation. This also allowed them to streamline their back office processes and get to grips with how to use the very intuitive CMS quickly.

The Outcome for the client

The primary reason for an increase in conversion rate, we suspect, is down to the new site’s design and usability (UX). With the previous site, there was very little interaction with the customer; the website simply displayed the products and asked visitors to pay for the items. This gave the site a very ‘cold’ feel to the customer. Now, on their new site, customers have access to blog content, videos, and a method of contact, all of which offer interaction and bring the site to life by giving it its own personality, telling the story and building credibility and community. This helps the customers to build rapport with the website, and the company in turn, by allowing visitors to discover more about the company and navigate their story behind the store, which is an integral part of e-commerce in this current age.

Using our powerful SelectCommerce platform, stock management, page building, product categorisation, integrations with payment providers, fulfilment and finance systems are now all standard. We eliminated some of the manual processing issues in the back office, saving money, time and also reducing variation in customer experience. In addition, we built a bespoke discounting management system to accommodate the legacy discount model. It is consistent, easy to manage and works every time.

Also, changes such as using HTML5 and optimising the site for mobile has helped with shoppers across different devices. As mentioned earlier, the old site’s Google Analytics had not been set up correctly, and as a result of this most, but not all, purchases were being captured. This, in turn, caused a slight miss-representation of the stats from their old site’s conversion rate. The reports from Google Analytics, only 4 weeks after the launch of their new site on SelectCommerce, compared to the previous month, had increased by over 140%!

So what?

What's the story here? Is it a story of ‘client had a problem and now has a better website’? Or is this a story about how the client was able to work with us, as their digital partner agency, to honestly and openly discover the problems, limitations and opportunities to accelerate their online sales? Hint; it's the latter.

The client knew that there was a problem, but did not know what the problems were. It requires trust to work with an agency and believe what they are telling you, but we built that trust and were always looking for reasons for them to save money, or at the very least spend their money wisely on solutions and a platform that would provide a ROI quickly. Additionally, it's not always about the software, we took the time to look at the whole workflow and codify what we could to improve the quality of data, information and therefore controls on the business.

Is your e-commerce site performing as you want it to? Are you looking to accelerate your online sales and spend your money wisely on a solution that will return on investment? Are you getting the maximum levels of conversion from your online customers?

If you are unsure or need a second opinion, talk to us. It's all about being honest, and we are definitely that.

You can chat to us by calling: 0208 066 1000

Or email us at: [email protected]