Although lost sales might seem like a major drawback where ecommerce marketing is concerned, they can offer a number of surprising benefits. There are a number of lessons to be learned when sales fall through.
Whether carts are abandoned or orders are cancelled at the last minute, sales are lost for various reasons. In some cases, it could simply come down to customers changing their minds before completing their purchase. In other cases, lost sales could be a result of a glitch in your process, an ecommerce marketing plan that needs more work, content that does not entice your target audience or even something that you may not have considered.
Whatever the cause of lost sales, seeing them as an opportunity for improvement will help you gain valuable lessons that you can use to prevent further loss of sales.
Ecommerce Marketing Lessons From Lost Sales
How do you get the benefit of ecommerce marketing lessons? For starters, you can take a good, hard look at the root cause behind any lost sales. To help you dig a little deeper, here are some steps to take.
1. Listen to feedback
Customer feedback is, without fail, the goldmine of ecommerce conversion. Reviews, comments, and customer feedback in the form of calls, emails or completed feedback forms are all incredibly valuable. You may find out that there are specific issues, either with your products or your checkout process. You may find that customers have expectations that are not being met. You may even find that something as simple as poor product images is affecting your sales. Whatever the case, the only way you can make fixes is to first know what needs to be fixed.
2. Fine-tune your content
In addition to listening to customer feedback, you can also take a good, hard look at your content. You may be trying to appeal to every single person who arrives on your product pages. You may be trying to sell your product rather than the benefits. You may have too much content (or not enough). Your descriptions may not be engaging, or they may not adequately explain core features of the product. If you are constantly having customers add products to wishlists, only to leave the site and not come back, you might find that updating your content offers a way to make customers get excited about what you are offering, rather than feeling rather lukewarm.
3. Test user experience
As you know, testing is essential. For product pages and online stores in general, there are many things to test. The most important of all is user experience. How easily can shoppers navigate your site? Can they find their way back to product lists after viewing specific products? Do you have quick view options? How streamlined is your checkout process? How many steps do customers have to take to make payments? Testing is the best way to be sure that it is not your entire store that is leading to lost sales.
Boosting Ecommerce Marketing Sales
Improvement is not a one-time thing – it is an ongoing process. When you consistently take the time to fine-tune, evaluate and test, you will have the best chance of ensuring ecommerce marketing sales.
