5 Tactics to Boost Online ROI
With the deep discounts consumers have come to expect and demand, especially in their holiday gift buying, maintaining profitability is a challenge for retailers. That’s why it’s more important than ever for retailers to squeeze the greatest returns out of their online efforts. Here are five tips to help you do just that:
1. Test, test, test. Even great online ad placement can produce poor results if your offer or messaging is off. So before you go big, run A/B split tests of different promotions, product offerings and creative units to find which produce the highest conversions.
2. Respond at internet speed. If you “set it and forget it,” you’re not taking advantage of the power of the web. Track clicks, conversions and other online metrics continuously. As soon as you uncover something that’s not working, tweak it or replace it immediately.
3. Use cost per action (CPA) for single product offers. CPA ad networks will promote your product through search, display, email and/or social media for no up-front media cost. You pay only for each sale delivered, so there's zero ad waste. They’re a great way to drive incremental sales without risk.
4. Optimize landing pages. If you’re sending the consumers who click on your ads to your regular website, you're inviting them to surf around and get lost. Keep this from happening by creating landing pages specifically tied to your ad campaigns, and specifically designed to motivate ad clickers to take the desired action.
5. Simplify checkout. The more steps required and pages to load to complete the process of buying a product, the greater the chances for prospective customers to fall out of the purchase funnel. Go to your website and try buying some product yourself to see what buyers encounter; then look for opportunities to make the process faster, easier and painless. Also, try to consolidate as much as you can on as few pages as is practically possible.
Mason Wiley is senior vice president of marketing at Hydra, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based online ad network. Mason can be reached at mason@hydranetwork.com.