{"id":989,"date":"2014-02-18T09:30:06","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T14:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/?p=989"},"modified":"2014-02-18T09:30:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T14:30:06","slug":"the-e-commerce-goals-waterfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/the-e-commerce-goals-waterfall\/","title":{"rendered":"The e-commerce Goals Waterfall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Credit: Flickr<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

For Ecommerce Testing, Clarify Conversion Goals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before you can start<\/strong>\u00a0any testing on your ecommerce site, you need to clarify your goals. Setting the right goals is the first step to making any improvements. There\u2019s a saying, \u201cWhatever you measure grows.\u201d So, make sure you measure the right thing.<\/p>\n

Goals may seem like the obvious part. After all, you already know you want more sales, right? But there\u2019s more to goal setting than just deciding to try and increase your sales.<\/p>\n

The Goals Waterfall<\/h3>\n

Your goals for your conversion-optimization tests should flow from your marketing goals, which ultimately flow from the organization\u2019s overall goals and strategy.<\/p>\n

Business Goals \u2013 Marketing Goals \u2013 Conversation Optimization Goals.<\/p>\n

The goals from optimization testing should follow from a company\u2019s overall goals and strategy<\/p>\n

Your business goals should determine your website goals, which should be prioritized to determine your leading conversion optimization goal.<\/p>\n

The conversion optimization goal for any test should be selected based on how well it supports the website\u2019s goals. This is often an area where there\u2019s confusion about what are the priority metrics to improve. Don\u2019t get off track by following website goals that don\u2019t support marketing goals.<\/p>\n

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Prioritize Goals<\/h3>\n

Most sites will have several key goals, so you\u2019ll need to prioritize them. You can do this in three steps.<\/p>\n

Rank your goals in terms of their relative value to your business:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/b>Assigning values to goals.\u00a0<\/b>The values don\u2019t have to be absolutely accurate revenue-producing numbers to begin. Pick a median goal on your list, and assign it an arbitrary amount, and then estimate the relative value of goals above and below it.<\/p>\n

Estimating actual goal values.<\/b>\u00a0Now, to get even better results, you can refine these relative numbers with whatever hard data you have, such as average order value, lifetime value of a customer, or the close rate and value your sales team sees when following up on quote requests. Don\u2019t worry about 100 percent accuracy. It\u2019s better to start testing with relatively firm numbers than to delay until everything\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Priority\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n

1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Product Sale<\/p>\n

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3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whitepaper Download<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/b>Tracking Your Goals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve identified your most important conversion goal for your experiment, make sure you track it. Goals are a crucial part of your web analytics setup. If you don\u2019t have keys goals in place, you\u2019re missing out on half the value of your various reports.<\/p>\n

That means translating your testing goal into a technical goal trigger that will be tracked by the analytics and testing tools you\u2019re using. The goal you track must be represented by a specific action the visitor takes on the website, like a button click or a visit to a page. Think about an action on the site that the visitors will do only once they have completed the goal.<\/p>\n

The key is that it should be an action as close to revenue as possible. So, if your goal is to sell a product, you should track a post-sale thank you page as the goal trigger. (If you also accept phone orders, you may need to tackle some advanced tracking techniques to get reliable test results.)<\/p>\n

Goals with values attached to them, as explained above, are the only way to find your most valuable visitors, they\u2019re crucial for effective conversion optimization testing.<\/p>\n

Be sure to set up ecommerce revenue tracking as well. Increasing average order value can be just as effective as boosting your sales conversion rate, and you\u2019ll want to be able to include that in your results analysis.<\/p>\n

A Single Goal<\/h3>\n

Web analytics tools can provide a ton of information, and it\u2019s not uncommon for e-commerce sites to have a handful of key performance indicators. Example, you may track time on page and the add-to-cart rate, but when it comes to conversion optimization A\/B testing, it\u2019s important to focus on only the revenue-producing goals or goals for each test. Always make sure you are tracking revenue for each test variation. Otherwise, you could pick a conversion rate winner that inadvertently sells lower-value products.<\/p>\n

Track revenue-producing goals for your A\/B tests, but those other goals are still useful too. While not all web analytics goals are the best for A\/B testing, they still may be helpful to generate hypotheses and explore new testing opportunities.<\/p>\n

By paying attention to secondary goals, you can discover new testing avenues that help you get even more value from your ecommerce website.<\/p>\n

Track as many goals and actions as you can with your web analytics tools so you can be free to explore your visitors\u2019 behavior. Within web analytics is where you can do freeform exploration to generate ideas or hypotheses for your A\/B tests. Then, validate those ideas through revenue-tracking controlled tests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Ecommerce Testing, Clarify Conversion Goals Before you can start\u00a0any testing on your ecommerce site, you need to clarify your<\/p>\n

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