How to convert and retain customers (Podcast)

This podcast gives you a complete insight on how to improve your customer conversion rate and how to retain more customers in your web store. Enjoy.

Why this podcast?
This podcast is based on a successful Danish podcast by SEO Expert Thomas Rosenstand and myself (Benjamin Gundgaard) about conversion rate optimization. The Danish podcast has been listened to by thousands of Danish listeners and many has thus asked for an English version – here it is, enjoy. (Read more about the podcast below).

Why listen?
Thomas Rosenstand is interviewing me about how to convert and retain customers in your web-store. We are discussing many aspects of conversion rate optimization and customer retention, based on collaborative filtering and other techniques. When you have listened to this podcast I trust you will be bubbling with tons of ideas and methods on how to optimize your web store.

Meet Thomas Rosenstand
Thomas Rosenstand is an acclaimed SEO expert. He and his company – Concept Interest – has been in business with SEO since 1999. Today Thomas resides in Florida where he is the CEO of the Concept Interest subsidiary Ciaps, Inc. Ciaps Inc. provides world-wide SEO services and it is the creator of the only software in the world, that can scan and detect duplicate content issues on a website: DCFinder.

Meet me, Benjamin Gundgaard
I am an E-commerce expert with 12 years of experience on conversion rate optimization and customer retention, founder of CustomerSense and author of the “Sell more online” book (available in English next year). I have consulted companies such as GE, TUI, Deloitte and many more. I have helped my clients improve their customer conversion rates with 15 – 300%, which amount to millions of $.

About the podcast

Below is a description of the main themes in this podcast.

The customer’s first impression 
When a customer visits your website the first time, in 50 milliseconds only she decides whether she likes your website or not. Her brain undergoes an unconscious mental checklist of questions such as:

• Do I like the design?
• Does the design seem trustworthy?
• Do they have the product I’m looking for?
• Where do I start?
• Does it seem easy to use?

Since most people are busy and constantly bombarded with information, our brain carries many unconscious decisions during a normal day. To filter out irrelevant information, the brain quickly decides if a customer should dig into a website or not.

A big part of this first impression is determined by your design and the signals the design sends to the subconscious mind of the customer. If you create a good first impression, the amount of customers who only view one page on your website, and subsequently disappear again will be low. It is thus an efficient way to lower your “bounce rate” and improve your customer conversion rate.

I have achieved 15 – 100% revenue and customer conversion rate increases together with my clients, simply by changing the design of a website –  so trust me, it means a lot this first impression.

Search and you may find
Approx. 50% (in average) of all customers goes directly to the search box (if you have one) on your website to search for the product they want to buy. You must thus be able to suggest products that match what the customer is typing in the search box (type ahead) and you must also help them find alternatives if they carry out erroneous searches.

As approx. 10% of all e-commerce web site searches contains typos, it has a vast commercial value to help the customer find the right product, even if the customer has made a “mistake”. When the customer gets a search result, she must furthermore easily and simply be able to both sort and filter the list of products. These are key search features that will help improve your customer conversion rate.

Do your product pages sell?
Approximately 10% of all visitors do not buy a product simply because they basically do not get enough information about the product at the product page. Furthermore, 87% of all young people aged 18-24 will not buy a product if they cannot read other customers’ product reviews.

Did I add the product to the cart?
As basic as it may sound, 5-10% of all customers leave an e-commerce websites because they are unsure if they have added the product to the shopping cart or not. To avoid this, you can send the customer directly to your cart when the customer clicks the “Add to Cart button.” If, however, your website sells to B2B customers, other “add to basket” alternatives may work better. Both solutions will help improve your customer conversion rate.

No forced login!
Between 30-50% of all customers disappear from e-commerce websites if they are forced to create a login. It makes sense. Imagine if you shop in an offline store, and a store representative forces you to become a customer at the counter. Wouldn’t you just leave the store then? I would!

70 – 80 % leave your shopping cart
More and more customers enter 2-3 e-commerce websites simultaneously to compare prices and delivery terms. In average, 70 – 80% actually leave your shopping cart because of this type of comparison shopping, because they are not ready to buy or because they can’t find information about delivery terms, security, etc. The shopping cart thus is one of most critical pages and features, when you want to improve your customer conversion rate.

50% are lost during the checkout flow
50% of all customers who click the “Checkout” button in the shopping cart, never completes the checkout flow. The main reasons for this is poor usability and uncertainties about delivery and payment terms. Due to this, even simple improvements in your checkout flow will help improve our customer conversion rate.

If you find some of these main themes interesting, you will learn much, much more buy clicking the play button at the top of this page. Go grab a cup of coffee or tea, sit back, relax and learn a lot – enjoy.

(Oh, and do comment – did you like it?).