Guest Checkouts to Increase Your Conversion Rate

A recent study in the US has found that 8 of the 10 major stores have a better conversion rate when they allow their customers to purchase as a guest.

Asking a user to register their details before they are able to purchase products off their store is making some customers leave the site and look for alternatives, therefore lowering the conversion rate. 

What a customer wants is to visit an online store, select the item they want and complete the payment process in as quick a time as possible. 

How can this impact your business?

Well obviously, if you are an eBay store owner this is going to make no difference to your store and all buyers first have to create an eBay account before purchasing anything from any store.

However, if you run your own online store that is not connected to eBay, you make look at experimenting with your checkout procedure in an attempt to boost your conversion rate.

A guest checkout procedure will not only allow you to make more sales over a shorter period due to its increased efficiency, it will also stop your server from potentially becoming bogged down 

If you are looking to possibly add guest checkouts to your website, be sure to first analyse the security set up of your store. Some of the big brands have great security procedures in place, meaning that even if something goes wrong with a guest's checkout, they still have enough information to fix or cancel the transaction. 

When running a small business, every single sale is important. The last thing you want to do is have a transaction go wrong leaving you out of pocket or unable to get in touch with the guest buyer to solve the issue. Even if someone is using a guest checkout procedure, you must ensure you still record some contact details from the user such as their email address and telephone number. This means that if a product is out of stock or if there is any kind of delivery issue, you can contact the person easily despite them not having a registered account on your store.

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Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing

Improve you business’s ability to target and convert customers

"Consumers are like roaches - you spray them and spray them and they get immune after a while." – David Lubars, Omnicom Group.

Although in the past heavy reliance has been placed on typically stale marketing techniques such as trade shows, direct mail and telemarketing (outbound marketing/channels), consumers are now sophisticated and wise to these intrusive methods which involve messages being pushed on them.  When you take into considering the fact that daily your average human is immersed with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions, new techniques have been developed to tune out unwanted drivel, such as spam filters and caller ID.

When planning your business’s marketing campaign, it would be highly recommended that you choose techniques which concentrate on building and maintaining strong relationships with potential and current customers.  Inbound marketing focuses its communications around consumers who are interested in their business or product type, allowing people to “opt-in” for information and news online.  Inbound marketing techniques include:

•    Blogging
•    Content Publishing
•    Organic Search SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
•    Social Media

Why should I implement inbound marketing within my business’s activities?

Web 2.0

In recent years there has been increasing interest in customer engagement and CRM (customer relationship management), linked with the evolution of technology and the internet; with social media such as Myspace, Facebook, wikis, blogs, micro blogs such as Twitter, bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, video sites such as YouTube, and virtual worlds.  With the influx of these sites as well as estimations stating the social media industry is set to grow by 34% next year, it makes sense to strive to integrate social media into your business’s marketing; and target consumers in a new, non-invasive way, making it easier to put across offers and information to consumers who care.

SEO

Recent surveys show inbound channels produce higher quality leads in relation to SEO, as SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, and are also 8 times more likely to close into customers.  Your business should focus on not only targeting the right customers, but drawing them in and converting them, to increase WOM recommendations.

http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/docs/ebooks/the_2012_state_of_inbound_marketing.pdf

Cost Saving

A further advantage recognised from adopting an inbound marketing communications method is the obvious time and money saving aspects.  As consumers are already interested in the product as they have “opted-in”, they will be more open and happy to receive messages.  

As a small business, inbound marketing can be particularly effective as it improves your companies networking and ability to generate leads.  It also saves a chunk of your budget, which could have previously been wasted on unsuccessful trade shows, direct mail and telemarketing.  The statistics below support the notion of adopting inbound marketing within smaller businesses.



http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9408-the-inbound-marketing-explosion-infographic

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