How to Analyze Your eCommerce Conversion Funnel

Conversion Optimization

ARTICLE

How to Analyze Your eCommerce Conversion Funnel

Improving something does not begin with making changes; instead, it starts with identifying the source of the problem. This concept also applies to conversion funnels. The eCommerce industry is one where over 70% of customers abandon carts.

As a marketer, you want to understand what causes issues like cart abandonment on your website. In this article, you shall learn how to analyze funnels. With this knowledge, you can find where to get the most value from optimization.

What is a Conversion Funnel?

There is no sense spending a ton of money to lure customers only to end up with abandoned carts. Your website needs easy-to-follow pathways to maintain a healthy conversion rate.

A conversion funnel is a path that you design for visitors to move through your website. Some times, the conversion funnel goes by the name sales funnel. It is a funnel because each step gets the customer closer to conversion. A conversion is an action you expect a customer to take. A conversion could be making a purchase or leaving contact information.

Do you need some contact information from your customers? Use a conversion funnel that leads to a contact form. Are you looking for sales? Use a conversion funnel that guides the customer to a purchase.

Why are conversion funnels so important?

Without clear paths, a website could be a confusing mess. Specific pathways allow you to test and optimize the conversion funnels. Once you determine the conversion funnels, you can work on ways of improvement.

Funnel Analysis: How to Analyze Your Conversion Funnel

Conversion funnel analysis highlights the specific areas in the funnel that need improvement. The analysis lets you know what percentage of users made it from one step to the next.

Here is how you analyze your Conversion Funnel:

Take a Top-Level Approach

You need to identify the main problems before you can zero into the specific issues. To perform this, run top-level analysis on the following aspects of your website:

  • Landing Page
  • Product page
  • Shopping cart
  • Purchase

From the analysis, you can tell which areas need more conversion rate work.

For Example:

A thousand users logged on to your site. Of the total visitors, 443 users viewed an item. Only 17.9% (79) of the 443 users add the item to carts. Out of the 79 carts, there are only 46 purchases (59.2%). 

From this example, out of 1000 visitors, there are only 46 purchases. With the information, you can identify the problematic areas and work on possible solutions. From the example above, you want to take a look at the transition between adding items to the cart and completing a purchase. 

 

Dive Deep into the Specific

Yo have identified the primary stage that you want to improve on; we can take a closer look. We can examine the specific steps that customers take between adding items to cart and completing the purchase.

These steps include:

  • Adding to cart
  • Cart visits
  • Adding personal details
  • Payment and shipping
  • "Thank you for your purchase" page.

A more in-depth look into our earlier example revealed that 90% of clients adding items to carts visited the cart afterward. About 73% of the customers who visited their carts added personal information. It always seems like once someone enters their personal data, then they are likely to make the purchase. Let's see what happens in our hypothetical website.

About 92% of customers who entered their personal information proceeded to the "Payment and Shipping" page. Out of these customers, around 98% completed the purchase.

From the information above, you can appreciate that there is a surprising drop-off between the steps. Almost 30% of people who visited their carts are leaving.

It could be that the "Personal Details" form needs some work. Maybe the form is too long; perhaps it is the color choices or any other reason.

To solve the problem, make a hypothesis and try to disapprove it. Trying to approve the hypothesis may lead to confirmation bias. Instead, work to disapprove of the hypothesis.

For example:

Hypothesis: Customers drop off at the "Personal Details" page because of the form color.

You can test this hypothesis by creating different versions of the contact form with various colors. If all the color combinations perform roughly the same, then you have disapproved of your hypothesis. It is time to come up with another hypothesis.

If one color combination performs notably better than the others, test it again. This time test the color against different variants of itself (lighter, brighter, etc.).

 

Optimizing Your Conversion Funnel for 2020

You have run your funnel analysis, you have identified the problems, what is next? The natural thing to do is to optimize your sales funnel for conversion.

Below are some of the best practices to implement in this year and beyond:

Make Your Website Easier to Navigate

There should always be a clear pathway for your customers to follow. Regardless of how a customer enters your site, there should be a clear navigation path. Ensure that every page highlights the shopping cart. People abandon carts for different reasons. Fix the reasons that are within your control.

 

Keep Your Pages Simple

Each step in your conversion funnel should provoke action. Define the action that you want, be it getting an email address or finalizing a purchase. Ensure that there is nothing on your product pages to distract the customer. 

 

Test Regularly

Test every adjustment that you make. Come up with hypotheses and parameters that you can disapprove of and test. A tool like Google Analytics can help you carry out site analysis. Test regularly; just because a strategy worked for January is not a guarantee that it will work in December.

 

In Conclusion

A conversion funnel is a pathway that you design for your customers to follow within your site. Another name for the conversion funnel is the sales funnel. Conversion funnels are supposed to make your site easier to navigate for potential customers.

Conversion funnel analysis helps you identify the problems within the sales funnel. To analyze your sales funnel, start with the top-down approach. Analyze the funnel starting with the primary sections, then drill deeper into each section. Find the problematic areas.

To test the problematic areas, come up with hypotheses and try to disapprove of them. You must test your site regularly. There are multiple tools on the web and beyond that can help you analyze and optimize your sales funnel.

A website that converts should be easy to navigate. Your pages should provoke action from the web surfer. Each product page should highlight the shopping cart. Analyze and optimize your conversion funnel. The eCommerce industry is one where 70% of potential buyers abandon their carts. 

 

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