While digital marketing for large companies is well advanced, SMEs can sometimes struggle to keep up as they can lack the bandwidth and financial capability to do so. However, there are a number of techniques for driving increased website performance that are proven to drive sales within SME budgets and skillsets.

Most SME site owners will be used to the ‘standard’ approaches to generating additional traffic such as search marketing or banner advertising. However, there is now a new generation of SME online marketing approaches that focus not just on driving traffic, but on maximising the value of that traffic once its arrived on site.

Whilst generating traffic has often been considered the major challenge for SME retailers online, persuading them to purchase once they’ve arrived is an even greater challenge. The fact is that 98% of site visitors fail to convert and even amongst people who put items in their shopping cart up to 80% won’t go on to purchase. With the cost of traffic rising all the time, the economics of optimisation are becoming ever more important.

The easiest way to divide these approaches is to look at those which targets shoppers on a retailer’s website and those that enable targeting when they are on other websites.

On-site

Personalisation is one answer to the on-site conversion dilemma. Presenting customers with offers, discounts and targeted merchandising when they’re on a retail website personalises the shopping experience and makes the entire process easier. Customers can be targeted based on their previous purchases, on-site behaviour, or even location – think content matched to local weather conditions and native language.

The risk of cart abandonment – when shoppers fail to complete a purchase after putting products in their cart - can be reduced by serving customers with specific offers or discounts such as free shipping which arise later in the purchase journey. Urgency messaging such as “low in stock” can also prompt a timely purchase as the sense of scarcity pushes customers to make a final decision.

Targeted merchandising is also a useful technique that allows on-site content to be changed in real time. For example, if a customer had purchased from a site before, displaying a new range upon their return may prompt a purchase. On the other hand, displaying popular products to new customers provides initial direction as they begin shopping.

Off-site

Clearly on-site personalisation is effective and improves the shopping experience, but reaching out to customers before or after they’ve visited a site is another powerful option for SME online marketers.

Traditionally, off-site approaches have focused on creating new traffic, for example through search marketing or banner advertising. However, these channels are becoming increasingly expensive and also don’t answer the issue of low conversion rates.

Another option is ad retargeting, which lets retailers serve ads to users who have previously visited their site. It’s a technique that has become popular amongst SMEs as it allows businesses to serve ads to customers who have previously expressed an interest in their site and can therefore increase conversions by up to 85%. Using “intent signals” from on-site behaviour, such as type of products viewed, likelihood to convert and referral source, this data can be used to really understand a customer’s reason for leaving and subsequently serve them with relevant messaging.

Personalisation

The key to driving increased value from site visitors is essentially in some level of personalisation – giving customers an experience that is tailored to their needs and preferences. In a world where only a tiny percentage of shoppers make a purchase it is vital to ensure that retailers use every trick they can to help drive sales from existing traffic. In today’s market, value lies in customer data and behaviours and by using this to deliver a tailored experience retailers can ensure increased conversions, brand loyalty and overall sales.

 

By Marius Smyth of AdRoll. 

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