In average, acquisition of clients in Ecommerce costs about 109$ USD. According to Marketing Sherpa, only 15% of the companies surveyed reported a decline in customer acquisition (15%), while most of Ecommerce marketers are worried about their rising expenses in this department (30%).

From one perspective, investing in the further development of your marketing strategies will certainly increase your ROI. However – the great majority of Ecommerce stores on the web is failing in employing some of the most crucial elements of their sales funnel. There are millions of us who are well aware that we should leverage social media marketing (which is 37% effective) and email marketing (which is 57% effective). On the other hand there are a very few companies that are actually acquiring and employing strategies from their competitors.

While your onsite and offsite SEO can gain a lot from competitors’ research, and you are usually targeting the competition which is close in status and revenue, surpassing one competitor at a time; when designing your conversion rate optimization strategies you should look up to well-established brands and global companies. Why? Because they’ve already set the standards that we keep on neglecting.

Here is a detailed explanation of what key elements you should employ in order to build a bulletproof sales funnel.

Revision of your Customer Value Optimization

Targeting a specific group of people, and finding the exact target audience to present them your products, is something that you are certainly already working on. 85% of the people shop online, it is a global, booming trend that has grown to a standard really quickly. This means that there are people out there that are searching for your product and your service. Presuming that you are answering a need and not trying to create one.

Count on the fact that more and more people will invest in creating leads and prospects and redesign your strategies as soon as possible. In that process, one thing that we keep taking for granted is definitely Customer Value Optimization. When you are designing your landing page, or building an Ecommerce online showcase that is advertising your products and services, you should always emphasize the value

Think about what your customer is gaining by purchasing your product, and concentrate on delivering that message as quick as possible.

Always bear in mind that hardly anyone has stumbled upon your website by accident. If you are offering a service, and your SEO is doing its job correctly, you should receive converting traffic within your first six to nine months, depending on the industry and state of the market. When leads do reach your web presentation, make sure that your value proposition is not just presented in a manner that will grab your visitor’s attention; at the same time it needs to deliver a message instantaneously. The best example of this practice are certainly discounts. When you have a transparent sign saying 30% off that sends the message and explains the value proposition within a second to your lead. However, this doesn’t mean that just by adding an attention grabbing discount proposition will attract more conversions (eventually it will, but you need a steady stream of traffic for those type of propositions since they are the most effective once your brand is established and in demand). Instead, think about utilizing your unique proposition so that you can present it in a manner that will make it comprehensible and understandable within a 3 seconds period. By doing so, you are investing in cheaper and faster acquisition.

Intelligent Elements of Effective Lead Magnets

Believe it or not, books are one of the most sold items online. Selling books on Amazon has become as competitive as any other form of marketing, and while this information may seem comforting for some, it is also a great clue for Ecommerce marketers. Keep in mind that your online shoppers are searching for useful information as well.

Providing your audience with quality content is still the number one driver of conversions, and your content marketing strategies should be focused on quality instead of quantity.

In terms of SEO, sure – you need a lot of indexed pages optimized in order to show up in relevant search results. On the other hand, the practice of pushing content for the sake of pushing content presents a complex question for your ROI. Not just because of the cost of creation of that content, but also because of the image that you are sending out to your audience. Sure, an occasional pillar post titled 10 best ways to attract customers will draw traffic and attention, and will take effect on your traffic stream, but on the other hand if you are not providing people with actionable tips and useful information that traffic will just increase your bounce rate.

Whitepapers, useful checklists, infographics and case studies present the most conversion friendly type of content that you can publish.

By offering your customers a valuable insight, you will gain their trust. Of course, always ask for a subscription when you are sharing content. Remember that email marketing is still the most effective way of converting your prospects into clients. Offering high quality content through a subscription form is a tactic used by all CRO professionals.

The trick of maximizing the number of your subscribers is, yet again, in the question of speed. Although we would all love to gain as much information as possible about our prospects, asking for detailed credentials will drive away your prospects very fast. Ask for a minimum number of details. Ideally, you will ask only for an email address. Have the process of subscription utilized in a manner that will allow your prospect to fill out a subscription form within 10 seconds or less.

Look into social logins. By allowing your visitors to subscribe via Facebook or other social media, you are not just adding them to your mailing lists but also in your Social Media Marketing funnel.

Profit Maximizing Tactics

Useful but incomplete purchases always lead to bigger purchases. If you are able to make a sale, no matter how small it might be, by establishing that form of relationship with your buyer will eventually lead to more sales. Here is a pretty straightforward example: if you are running a fast food shop, giving a 70% discount on your fries may seem as an odd proposition. However, by implementing a strategy of this sort you will not just attract broader numbers of your audience. You will also encourage them to make more purchases from you, and sell them additional products with your discount proposition. Rarely someone will get attracted to a 70% discount and stay just to eat a bunch of fries. Additional purchases are almost guaranteed.

Conversions rarely happen within the first visits of your leads. You need to concentrate on providing constant quality, on building valuable relationships, and on long term goals such as referrals.

While we are on the subject of fries, think about your latest visit to a fast food shop. Any larger food chain store employee will offer you additional products along with your purchase. So “do you want fries with that” is not just a phrase used out of courtesy, of course. Triggering your needs in this manner, by encouraging you to make an additional and almost insignificant purchase that will complete your order is a great profit maximizing tactic.

However, if you don’t deliver that purchase within a small window of time you may just lose that customer for good. While shoppers are extremely thorough in their search, they are also very quick in losing interest. Shop carts get abandoned fast.  Making your online purchase process user friendly, fast and responsive should be your main focus. Not only that you should invest time in creating a simple but comprehensible purchase form, but you should mind every aspect involved.

With Alternative Payments, you are not just reaching out to a much broader audience, you are also optimizing your sales funnel for a conversion rate increase.

By offering conditions of purchase that your visitors are accustomed to, and by optimizing the purchase process to be user friendly and user intuitive, all that is left is to make that process as short as possible to have a bulletproof check-out system. Increasing your ROI is highly dependent on all of the above mentioned strategies, including your basic SEO and SMM strategies that we will not elaborate on here, but if you neglect your payment processes all the traffic that you are gaining will add up to a very small conversion rate.

Conclusion

Ecommerce merchants will have to stay as competitive as they come. With more and more Ecommerce stores opening up daily, neglecting your sales funnel will turn up to be a real issue along the road. Bear in mind that conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process, same as any other form of digital marketing, so take the time to commit to your website today, take the right actions now, and utilize the key elements of your bulletproof sales funnel.