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Is your eCommerce website trying to tell you something?

February 21, 2013 Written by NetSphere Category: eCommerce
Is your eCommerce website trying to tell you something?
When a customer is experiencing difficulties when trying to make a purchase, that customer will pick up the phone and let the retailer know. The customer service representative on the other end of the line will then relay the customer complaint to the appropriate department or manager to solve the issue. It’s a fairly simple process: Hire someone to listen when customers have complaints and then work toward a solution to reduce the number of customers who call.
 
If only an etailer could somehow tap into their website to get answers to pressing questions – before customers are forced to call. Unbeknownst to some, there is a way. By paying attention to key performance indicators or KPIs, etailers are given a direct line of communication with their website. According to the editors at Practical eCommerce, a KPI for etailers could be checkout abandonment, when shoppers leave a site before making an order.
 
“This KPI should be monitored closely by all ecommerce businesses,” the editors relayed. “If it is typically 10 percent and suddenly goes to 15 percent, that may be an indicator that something is broken on your website, like your SSL, your shipping estimator, or your credit card authorization.”
 
So more often than you may realize, your website is trying to tell you something. And thanks to Practical eCommerce, the following list includes multiple ways that you can communicate with it – to measure, monitor and listen:
  1. Unique visitors
  2. Total visits
  3. Page views
  4. New visitors
  5. New customers
  6. Total orders per day, week, month
  7. Time on site per visit
  8. Page views per visit
  9. Checkout abandonment
  10. Cart abandonment
  11. Return rate
  12. Gross margin
  13. Customer service open cases
  14. Pay-per-click cost per acquisition
  15. Pay-per-click total conversions
  16. Average order value
  17. Facebook “talking about this” and new Likes
  18. Twitter retweets and new followers
  19. Amazon ratings, response and order turnaround time, and open cases
  20. Email open, click, and conversion rates
  21. Referral sources: percent from search, direct, email, pay-per-click, other

Don’t be alarmed, however, if you’re having a hard time truly understanding the messages that your website is sending you. We here at NetSphere Strategies speak the language of etailing, so feel free to reach out to us. We’d be happy to translate.

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Abbe Miller is the marketing manager at NetSphere Strategies, located just outside Chicago. NetSphere Strategies is a boutique eCommerce company positioned to help businesses transform their online presence by providing a full complement of services that starts with our strategic consulting and creative design teams, then continues with building innovative solutions and providing ongoing post-project support.