Robert Blaise

How to judge success of your ecommerce website

Ecommerce is the exchange of products or services through the internet.  It works the same as a regular store, except in the ecommerce arena, you do not see your customers eye-to-eye, you do not see their body language, all you see is their click and their purchase if ever.  Wait, yes, you see them abandon your page as well.  You think it is a lost sale, may be not.  It may be an untargeted or wrong click.

Anyway, if you are an ecommerce website owner, you surely want to know how you can judge the success of your ecommerce website.  Read this article to have an idea of how ecommerce success is usually measured and how you can improve the numbers as it appears.

To give you a clear understanding of how you can judge the success of your ecommerce website, it may help you to know what the going rate is.  Knowing the going rate will help you gage your performance.

For sales conversion, 1% to 2% sales over unique visitors is an acceptable rate.

For page abandonment rate, 10% is the most acceptable.

Now, how to you measure your sales conversion rate and your page abandonment rate.  Your website design should include a site’s analytic package, this is the only way you can measure your success.  Sales of course are another measure but then, your conversion rate may not be measured if we look at sales alone.

Before I move on, you may also want to look at the site’s analytical package because stickiness of your website may also be a gage of your ecommerce site’s success.

What is stickiness?  Stickiness is the ability of your website contents to keep visitors from staying or reading the sites contents.

If a visitor stays and returns often, the stickiness works well.  Your contents are effective and you only need a little more tweaks to make a sale out of those browsers.

How to improve conversion rate?

As mentioned, 1% to 2% conversion rate is already good but other business make as high as 9% conversion rate and I am sure this is what you want.

To improve your conversion rate and lessen the page abandonment rate; you may need to do the following:

•    Keep visitors browsing your website by including helpful tips on how they can use your products and service more advantageously.  You may publish a regular how-to article helping them improve the performance of the products they purchase from you.  It will keep them coming back for more information.
•    Dependability - If purchasers know they can depend on you for assistance about the product you sell to them, they will trust you and would try other products in your portfolio.

Knowing how to judge success of your ecommerce website should not stop by knowing your conversion rate, you should also know what page visitors abandon.  If they have stayed in one or more pages, chances are the visitor is a targeted audience.  You should improve that page and ensure you answer some of the possible questions they have.

Do not just improve conversion rate, improve your site and sales will surely follow.