Are you thinking of a florist website redesign or maybe switching your website to Shopify? Maybe you are just starting out and you want to choose the best marketing tool to attract and convert website visitors into customers.
I see this happen about once a month. A business owner comes to me for marketing and sales services after investing in a new website and their sales or traffic tanking. It goes one of two ways, either they invest in a brochure website, that is a terrible marketing tool, or they spend to much on form and the website does not have the functionality they need to build a thriving eCommerce business.
I wanted to put a case study together about this for a florist client of mine.
Before: When a website build goes wrong! (p.s. not It!)
Client X came to us after a website redesign went horrible wrong! Her traffic took a nose dive, her sales were in the toilet and she was $10,000 poorer.
Her mobile was not mobile friendly (and 90% of people research online before buying) (this was one of the main reasons she wanted to build a site)
It did not have a box to choose a delivery date.
It did not have a box to include a message with your order.
It did have a over 18 / 21 message for people to buy gift baskets with wine
They had not connected the dots between the old and new website so she kept her search engine traffic.
It was not easy for her to make changes so she would have had to pay them $300 every time she needed to change something.
There was no tracking set up to tell her:
Which marketing was working so she could do more of it
Which marketing was performing poorly so she could stop paying for it or make tweaks to improve it.
It wasn’t easy to set up things like a Facebook shop, google shopping, and marketing tools to help her grow her business.
What happens when you build a website that is a crappy sales person
You make little to know sales or they take a dive
You don’t attract free traffic from google into your business
After – Her Conversion Optimised Website Redesign
She has a fast website, that works on a mobile phone, tablet & desktop.
It is a fantastic sales person that works for her 24/7 attracting customers from around the world.
It has all the clever functionality she needs to run her business, age checker, delivery dates, shipping based on the gift recipients post code, gift messages, up selling cards and chocolates so she increases her average order value.
We 5x Her sales by using conversion rate optimisation design and tactics.
We doubled the amount of free traffic she received from google by using search engine optimisation practices on the new website.
We set up a measurement plan so she knows what marketing makes her money and what marketing to tweak or turn off if it is under performing.
Her new website is built on the Shopify platform so as her business’s grows she has technology that will grow with her.
Other Services: We also provide ongoing Monthly E commerce Growth Marketing Management running her Google Ads & Facebook Ads to continue to grow her business.
Do you need a Florist or Gift website? Considering a website redesign?
Talk to us today about our Shopify eCommerce website Design & Development Services or organise a quick audit to find out what you need to build a powerful online marketing machine that attracts strangers and turns them into customers.
How to attract more customers to your physical premisis and get them to #shoplocal
Covid19 has seen many retail business’s shut and others struggle to bring in customers. I wanted to put together a quick free training to help business attract more customers FOR FREE by leveraging their Google Business Listings.
P.S. This is also a great hack for improving your local SEO.
Are you struggling with attracting people to your website? Do you wish you could drive more free traffic and build website traffic from multiple sources so you are not to heavily reliant on one channel? Today I am going to give you 5 tips to optimise for image search!
5 Ways to Optimise your website for Image Search
Your customers use different channels within the search engines to find products they are interested in.
If you are selling physical products there will be a percentage of your customers searching Google Images for the items that they crave….
So how well does your eCommerce product image optimisation stack up?
Do your images load fast? – Try running them through an image optimise like smushit to make them a smaller size while maintaining quality
Are they unique? – Take your own photos to avoid duplicate image content – Google does not want to show the same image side by side with your competitors
Do they look good on a desktop, tablet or mobile? – Made sure your website scales images so they fit on a mobile screen
Are they named after the product? – Google doesnt know what image 12345043.jpg is make sure you call it icebreaker-womans-black-merino-jersey” so they know to list you when someone types that into google
Do they have alt tags? This stands for alternative name tag. It tell the website what words to show if the image is slow to load – or a blind person is searching.
Search Engine Optimisations not just about keywords
The days of scattering keywords on your page to get you website traffic are gone. You need to thinking about the various channels and ways your customer tries to find your products and make sure your website is optimised for them. Speed is key!
Want to squeeze more sales out of your website? Lets talk – organise a quick 15 minute and find out where the holes are in your marketing.
So you are paying all this money to drive traffic to your website, be it time spent on writing content, google ads, Facebook Ads or print advertising.
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But how do you encourage repeat traffic or sell higher-priced products where peoples decision-making process takes a little longer.
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One of the easiest ways to lower your cost per conversion is to shift your focus to your existing customers and getting them to buy from you again…
This is great if
If you are spending too much to acquire a sale
Your marketing is costing a lot
Your conversion rate isn’t that hot
Customer retention
Why not try regularly contacting your existing customers who have purchased from you and have a relationship with you and drive them to your website to buy other things, or the same thing when they run out?
Why?
They are more likely to buy from you as there is less risk
They trust you
Email marketing is more or less free versus having to pay per click to get in front of strangers.
They have to buy things somewhere – why not from someone they trust
But how do you start?
Here are four ways you can start to build up your email list.
Add a timed pop-up email opt into your homepage ( don’t make it trigger in the first 30 seconds – its really annoying)
Give them something for free – people are not likely to give you their details unless you give them something in return. Think of this as the cost of buying a customer and keeping them for life
Ask them to opt-in at the shopping cart (they are giving you their details anyway)
Utilise your thank you page after a sale – and ask them to give you more details.
Over to you… What are you doing to increase customer retention in your business? Any questions? Leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by I would love to connect with you.
Are you thinking about investing in a new website in 2020 or maybe giving your current one a polish?
Are you confused about all the acronyms, bells and whistles and what you actually need for your website to function as a marketing machine in 2020 and beyond?
Is your current website a crappy salesperson who frustrates and drives customers away to the competition who needs to be fired?
Learn from your analytics
Whatever your motivation for investing in a new website it is important to analyze what’s happening with your website and digital marketing. Find out what’s wrong, then invest your marketing budget in the right place so that you can generate leads, sales, repeat business and pay for itself.
Creating an online sales person (without the 80k+ salary)
How would you like to turn your new website into your best salesperson who works 24/7 365 educating strangers, generating leads and helping you turn website visitors into customers? What kind of impact would that have on your business?
Let me tell you a story about a growth marketing client of mine.
Client C came to me after commissioning a $10,000 redesign of his website with a local freelancer. The site was beautiful, the images were super high quality, it oozed sophistication…But sadly it KILLED his conversion rate.
After they pushed “go” on the new website and went live the leads stopped rolling in, the free traffic from google declined and the phone stopped ringing… tumbleweeds were rolling past his business AND he was 10k in the hole.
Why do you ask?
The website:
Was not mobile-friendly and was SUPER SLOW
It was not built in a way to attract their ideal customer (using SEO best practice to get free traffic from google)
There was no tracking to let them know what to fix to turn things around, which marketing made the phone ring, and where they were losing leads, customers and marketing budget.
To make any change to the website was super confusing and often cost $100s of dollars because it was built in a confusing system.
How did we fix it:
First we put tracking code on the old website so we knew which elements to get rid of and what to change to increase leads, make the phone ring and make them sales.
We built them a new conversion rate optimized lead generating website that they could update regularly with campaigns, products and services.
We structured the pages of the website around the keywords their customers typed into google when they were looking for the services they sold so they could be found on google.
We didn’t put all the marketing budget into the build, we put some aside to constantly measure, test & tweak.
Put tracking on the website that told them which marketing channels made the phone ring, leads come in, and generated customers.
This gave us the data we needed to drive changed on the website that helped them generate more business for less money. We still regularly analyzed the data and tell them what needs to change to help them grow.
The result:
A marketing machine that attracts their ideal customer educates them into a lead, makes the phone ring, quote forms come in, so their sales team can take over and glide into a sale.
It’s all about choosing the right tools and team at the right time.
The trouble with most freelancers and designers is they build the website, hand it off, and move onto the next one. They are not around to see what happens when the client starts paying for advertising, driving traffic to the website then leave… without buying.
As growth marketers we are constantly tracking and measuring what is happening on our customer’s websites, testing and optimizing campaigns and landing pages to help them drive results.
Are you unhappy with your current website? Not sure if you need to tweak it? Upgrade it? Or start from scratch? Do you want to build a marketing machine? Let’s chat about your digital marketing and come up with a killer lead generating a strategy to help you explode your sales and drive business growth.
We can help you figure out:
Exactly what you need in terms of a website and digital marketing to start generating leads and sales on demand when you need them.
The way we do business is changed with many companies scrambling to go online… or even keep the doors open.
I was having an interesting conversation during a coaching session with one of my clients today about surviving after all this.
She said, ” After all this with so many business’s closing when it comes to marketing we can either be a hunter or hunted… We are a hunter”
So what makes her a hunter?
She is buying traffic and customers at a predictable cost using Facebook & Google ads. She has a system to get into the phone, tablets and computers of people who visited her website and did not buy the first time. She has a website that is a great salesperson. She practices regular optimisation to fix and improve things. She knows her numbers. She has a system to bring customers back into her website beyond the first purchase.
Basically, she has a marketing machine to attract, convert and retain customers.
And what makes someone hunted.
They build a website and never change it and wait for the customers to roll in. They don’t have systems in place to attract, convert and retain customers. They keep buying new customers and have no systems in place to get repeat business They don’t know how to buy leads, customers and sales They relying on foot traffic, word of mouth, and wait for the customers to come in.
Which will you be? What is one thing you have done to be a hunter this week?
When it comes to building a florist eCommerce website, it’s hard to choose a platform with all the bells and whistles you need.
A florist website needs special customisation like.
A Date for Delivery Box
Personalised Message Box
A Recipients Address that is different from the billing address
Last-minute add ons (or upsells) like chocolates, wine or a gift card.
Shipping by suburb.
The great thing is these can all be customised on Shopify e-commerce platform. The cool thing is you can also use the Shopify system to take payment and manage your stock in the store.
You can see them in action on this website we built for one of our clients Gina.
Why we love Shopify?
Easy to use – you don’t have to be techy if you can write an email, or use Microsoft word – then you should be able to handle Shopify.
There are tutorials and videos for everything – If there’s something you can not do – spend 2 seconds searching and you will have the answer you need.
100s of beautiful templates – Ifs easy to fit out a template with your logo and branding so you have a slick, smartphone-friendly website design
Integrates with all the good merchant facilities – so taking payment is a breeze.
Allows you to send email to people who abandoned carts – so you convert more of the traffic coming to your website
Why you should take care when you choose an eCommerce platform.
When you decide to build a website it’s important to make sure the technology it is built on has all the functionality you need to market in 2015 and beyond.
Old outdated platforms may not allow you to give Google all the information it needs to send you traffic
or to make your links look really slick on social media sites.
Or allow you to easily get the customization you need to take orders online (like delivery locations, shipping dates, and personalised messages).
So make sure you research your cart before you buy. (or use Shopify)
Is your website currently on a crappy outdated platform? Or do you need to build a new website from scratch?
When it comes to marketing business owners are faced with some big decisions as to how to spend your money to bring in new customers.
You want to make sure:
You are spending money in places where potential customers will be looking for you.
You are tracking the results of your marketing (not spending money blindly and hoping for the best).
You continue to invest in the channels (types of marketing) that bring you customers and make money and stop spending money on channels that do not result in sales.
Here is an info graphic I have put together on the cost of online marketing v.s. offline marketing
Now don’t get me wrong…Offline marketing can be a powerful tool for branding, or if you have a product or service that a lot of people are going to be interested in (likes clothes and food – we all have to eat).
But if you are operating with a smaller marketing budget – it’s important to focus your budget on the channels that will bring you the best possible results.
Get more targeted leads and turn them into customers online.
Get in front of people who are actively searching online on their computers and smartphones right now, looking for your service, with their credit card in hand – ready to buy.
Want to focus your marketing budget to grow sales and measure the results so you can scale?
Get audited today and learn how to turn your marketing from a DUD into a STUD!
Hey Lucy here, I have just thrown together a video talk talk about a really common mistake I see with businesses who are starting out with online marketing.
Watch this video to make sure you avoid this crucial online marketing mistake.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, Lucy Ross here with another online marketing update. Today I am going to talk you through the biggest mistake most businesses make when they are starting out with online marketing.
And it is actually crucial if you want to measure if you actually get a return on investment when you spending money on things like Google Adwords, S.E.O or perhaps paying for banner advertising, facebook advertising, and social media marketing.
So what we are actually talking about today is the fact that you need to build a measurement plan.
If you are spending money on online marketing you need to know how you are going to measure the results.
Ask yourself:
What would a favorable end result look like – What do we want them to do on our website?
How would I measure that?
HOMEWORK:Â What you need to do is sit down and think about what a positive result would look like and then the different ways you could measure that.
Do you want someone to make a purchase on an e-commerce website?
Are you wanting them to ring up and make a booking (restaurants, physios, doctors, Dentists)
What are the key performance indicators that tell you that the money that you are spending on marketing is actually resulting in sales
All this is going to tell if the money you have been investing in marketing campaigns has worked or not.
What kinds of things can you measure online?
Well, the cool thing about online marketing in relation to old school marketing is that you can track almost anything.
How many sales
How many contact forms were filled in
If someone downloaded a menu, coupon or p.d.f.
If they spend X minutes on a page (this tells you if they are actually sticking around to read your content).
And if they signed up to your newsletter.
You will need to think about what is important to your business
What kind of things would you like to track in google analytics? This could be things like
What people looked at on your website,
How long they stayed on that page
If they abandoned the shopping cart or perhaps abandoned one of your sales processes half way. e.g. Maybe they read they reach the sales page but they did not get to the thank you page that comes up after they put their email details in or their credit card details and made a purchase.
How do you create a measurement plan?
Basically, you need to sit down with a pen and paper and map out the points we just covered and map out what a positive result would look like and incorporate that into your analytics tracking.
You can also build dash boards into google analytics
Analytics goal tracking or e-commerce tracking
Adwords conversion tracking
Need some help?
If you need any help with this we offer an analytics training product and we can also tie that into google AdWords Training. This is Lucy Ross from EcommerceMarketing.co.nz with another online marketing update – catch you next time.
Ever wondered how much you can afford to spend on your marketing and still make money? Do you struggle to set a marketing budget? Confused about how to measure the effectiveness of your marketing?
The key to digital marketing and creating a predictable lead and sales generating system is knowing your money metrics. When you have a measurement plan and you know your money metrics, you can easily measure if you put $1000 into marketing exactly how much you get out of your marketing machine at the other end. The idea is to make sure if you put $1 into marketing you always get $3, 5, 10, 20x more out at the other end.
Lucy Ross – Director at EcommerceMarketing.co.nz with an online marketing update video about your customer life cycle, what it is, how to calculate it and how to know if your marketing is working.
How much is a new customer worth to your business?
We all know the old saying goes you have to spend money to make money. But when I speak to people about their marketing budget it is amazing to see how many people do not know how much they can afford to spend to acquire a new customer. As a business owner it is important to think beyond the first sale… and start to think about your customer life cycle. How long do your customers stay with your business?
What is the customer life cycle? –Â This is basically the length of time a customer will stay with your company and keep returning to spend money.
How do I track a customer life cycle? –Â Depending on your business model there are different ways of doing this, the most common would be:
Look at past appointments by customers e.g. Hair Dressers, Spas, Chiropractors, Physios, Doctors, Lawyers.
Set up customer clubs and in store promotions so people scan each time they buy e.g. Pharmacies, Retail Stores,
Supermarkets (like the One Card), Farmers card, customer clubs, reward cards.
Two really cool examples here in New Zealand would be:
The Countdown One Card – You swipe that card and they track what you are buying, the things you like, how often you come, how long you have been using the one card for and that gives them some really great data to market to you with.
The Farmers Club Card – They do a similar job where they will send you promotions based on purchase history and they know how long you have been using their farmers club card.
By tracking a customer against their purchase history you can start to build statistics about the frequency with which people return to your business.
How often do they shop with you?
How much do they spend?
How Long do they stay with your business?
So here is an example of what I mean….
Lets say you sell Chiropractic Services. You charge your customer on average $65 for an appointment. Let’s say you spend $2000 on a marketing campaign (online or offline).How many customers does that advertisement have to bring you in order for you to break even? $2000 divided by $65 = 31 Single bookings to cover costs.
If the average customer generally stays with you for X time and books an appointment at X frequency that customer is actually worth the following….
Stays 3 months and books every week = $838 (3 customers to cover this cost)
Stays 1 year and books every 1 months = $780 (You need 3 customers to cover costs)
Stays 3 years and books every month = Â $2340 (you would need one new customer to cover costs)
Stays 10 years and books 6 times a year = $3900 (You would more than cover costs with this one customer)
So the question really is… What is a new customer worth to you?
You would worth this out by looking at the following:
How much do they spend on average?
How often do they return?
How long do they stay with your business?
 how many customers you will need to make a profit rather than just cover costs.
What are your overheads
How much margin will you make off each sale
How much margin will you make over the customer life cycle?
This will give you an idea of how much you can afford to spend to acquire that new customer taking into account your overheads.
That is our online marketing tip on how to calculate your customer life cycle for this week. Really Important when you are considering any business marketing online or offline so you can figure out how much you can afford to spend to get those new customers.
This will really help you make marketing decisions about what success looks like when you finish that campaign.
What did you think of this article?
We would love to hear your feedback, let us know what you thought of the video and if you want us to make more or answer any questions you may have using the comment box below
Want to find out where the holes are with your current marketing and hatch a plan to grow your business?
Let’s get together for a digital marketing audit to find out what you have, what you do not have and what you need to explode sales and get more return on investment from your marketing.
