Help: Trouble converting customers with new adwords campaign for a new site

[edward-may]

I have just launched my brand new e-commerce site www.zenory.co.nz

We are wanting to expand global as you can see we have com.au and also .com but due to our min budget we had to start with NZ first for organic search and a min monthly budget on adwords which doesn't come close to what our competitors are paying.  Really is it worth paying out our limited budget with adwords? Or should be put that into ranking organic search.

While we have only just started our adwords PPC campaign and I think it has only been roughly two weeks - We have had around 18 people sign up, to which we have a 3 step process, however, we are struggling to convert and complete a transaction which customer places credit card details in step 3.  Does anyone have any ideas around how we could better optimize or perhaps make any suggestions?

Our competitors spend rather large amounts of up to 3000k - 300k per month on adwords, and there is just no competing with that.  Any suggestions I would definitely be open to...

Thanks alot

[CommT]

Try using a service like Session Cam (http://www.sessioncam.com/)

It records users as they use your website and will help give you the answers to your conversion issues, fairly quickly. Otherwise you could spend months testing stuff without any real idea as to how people actually use your website.

I'm not affiliated with them, I am a customer who happens to think it's an incredibly useful tool. I'm sure there are others out there that do a similar thing so have a hunt around.

Good luck,

Amelia

[Ray-pp]

If you're a Moz Pro customer, you can get 3 months free of Crazyegg - That service will help you understand what may be causing the bounce from the checkout funnel process and you can optimize it as needed.

Make sure you have your goals setup in Google Analytics and try to find the reason why people are navigating away when you want them to convert. If the conversion funnel is optimized, then maybe you can consider onboarding customers without a credit card, giving them a piece of your service (get their feet wet), and when the real value proposition kicks in ask them for their credit card info to continue.

[edward-may]

Thanks again Ray-pp for your great feedback! We know of others that do the on boarding before the credit card, and sadly its a no go, as a lot of clients want free readings and then leave… etc

[edward-may]

Hi Ameliavargo,

Thanks for your feedback.  I never heard of anything like this, will give it ago seems really good and an effective way of getting results much quicker.  Thanks for this.  Much appreciated!

[Ray-pp]

Hi Alec,

So, I tried to go through the signup process and see first-hand what some issues may be. It's important to note, as I'm sure you know, that CC information is very sensitive and the majority of users will not give it up easily. They will question the service and question the value of that service when they know they need to give CC info to use the service/product.

I wanted to sign up to know more about the site and value proposition. I clicked sign up and began the process. Filling in my personal info was ok, although I would have preferred to see a shorter onboard. What I want is information, quickly. I found that I needed to give my personal details and then my CC info, all of this before I am able to see what you have to offer when becoming a member.

At this point I would suggest that you consider a signup a micro-conversion. Make it so users can create an account with your site, even if they cannot do anything with that account. From your standpoint, allowing them to create an account, prior to CC information, will give you valuable email addresses. Even if they didn't convert, I'd bet that you will be able to convert users through email and since I've signed up you can now promote to me through email. An email onboarding process will be important to your overall business model and provide a healthy amount of paid member conversions - get those email, allow accounts to be created.

After I gave my personal info, I was then taken to the CC screen. At this point there will be a large amount of users that second guess the purchase, but remain interested. What they will do is try to go back to the home page and re-evaluate the service's value proposition. It was at this point that I found that I was u**nable to go back to the homepage! **

This is a huge problem. Every time I tried to go back to the home page I was redirected right back to the CC page. I can't get back to the home page and read your value proposition. At this point I have completely abandoned your website. If I can't go back to the main site then my second guessing will lead to a failure, probably 100% of the time.

Even when type the domain in directly I'm redirected to the CC page. I would have to clear my cache to be able to view the website again and, as marketers, we cannot count on user's being this savvy or willing to go to that length for our product.

I suggest starting with these points and look for those micro-conversions.

[JasmineA]

Hey Alec!

First & Foremost - GORGEOUS site. I haven't seen a psychic readings sight that puts so much emphasis on the human connection (through these amazing photographs you have). I love bouncing around between free psychic reading sites. I'm your worst customer haha  While I love the design, I feel like it's information is lacking. You could take some time to really provide some value prop on the first page instead of just talking about how it's free and asking people to click words that are no where on that page. I would recommend testing different images of your home page carousel first. My first impression would be to place them as: 3,4,1,2 but of course you should test to find the optimal order. Being met with a conversation about quality and legitimacy for psychic readings (at least from my very American perspective) would be something that I would already have on my mind while I was browsing different sites.

So, to directly answer your cost allocation question: I think that where you put your money is entirely dependant upon what your budget and targets will allow for this year. If you invest in getting more people to the site for organic & referral traffic, then you should also be prepared financially for your business to not take off for a few months. This is a much less costly way to obtain traffic, but it will definitely cost you time. I don't know what your goals are. If you decide to invest into a few keywords with lots of traffic and some competition, then you will need to make sure that you are converting a good portion of the traffic that you are paying for - and then the conversation leads into user tracking and such as Ray-pp & ameliavargo were discussing. No matter what direction you go or how much traffic you receive, your conversion funnel is going to determine how fast you make a profit.

I agree with Ray-pp that you should consider Account Creation as a mini goal - use these people to start email marketing (FREE!) to so that you can lure back people who were already interested. Also, you can use this list to target people with facebook ads later (there's an upload email addresses feature! ). After you work these people over and start making more Real Conversions from your email marketing, then you can start to feel more comfortable about investing back into PPC.

[DeanAndrews]

Thanks for the heads up on Session Cam Amelia, not see that one before. I have used a similar service before namely ClickTale but that got a bit pricey.

The setup was easy, I did ask a few question and the support was awesome so first impression are good (starting to sound like I'm affiliated, I'm not just like it when I receive a good service)

[edward-may]

Thanks again, Ray-pp, I have definitely take on your advice here.  I'm glad you went through the registration process thanks for your feedback.  I will report on this information, im going to make changes to this process, and as said previously we have had around 17-25 people sign up, just no cc info.

I notice some of my competitors do this 1,2,3 process really well just by using better user interface, and I notice others use a registration process that requires you to select the psychic first, then they have you choose an offer in step 2 then proceed with credit card details, i also note that they do have an option to revisit the home page, so I'm definitely seeing this now that you pointed this out.

Thanks again, will update shortly

[edward-may]

Hi Jasmine,

Lol thanks so much for your advice, and your compliment haha!

I'm currently re-working the home page, as Iv noticed alot of our competitors are quiet content heavy... which makes sense, I suppose we went for more of an user friendly type situation. So currently I am reverting back to our old design, with how it works instructions, clear testimonials and feedbacks, psychic readers are featured on the home page.

With regards to conversion rate optimization, I'm investing in PPC, and the problem is we had no idea about converting this traffic in any particular way until we went through the tests.  So now we are working on retargeting, emails, and a change in the registration process.  Is there anything else you would recommend?

[JasmineA]

Awesome!

The only other thing that you might want to look out for is what page you're sending the PPC traffic to. Sometimes this traffic requires a lot of selling and effort to convert, so I would suggest having PPC specific landing pages that provide an offer and half of the conversion that you need on one page.

I'm sure there are many places where you can find that information, but I trust this source: http://unbounce.com/landing-page-articles/the-anatomy-of-a-landing-page/

Hope that's helpful on your journey!

[CommT]

I'm glad it's proved useful for you! Like you, if I find a service/product beneficial I will say so! We definitely find Session Cam incredibly helpful.