Introduction
There is a clear distinction between traffic, leads, and conversions in eCommerce, but what do they all mean? If you are just getting started in eCommerce, it is essential to understand these terms and what they mean for your business.
Traffic, leads, and conversions are distinctly different aspects of sales. We will look into what they are, and what makes them different. We have also included ways to improve your traffic, leads, and conversions. We will also speak about the important role they play for every eCommerce store, starting with traffic –
Website Traffic
Website traffic is where it all begins. Simply put, traffic refers to the number of visitors your site has received. This can be from a variety of sources, like search engines and social media.
Around half of all traffic comes from organic Google searches. Website traffic generally consists of both window shoppers and serious buyers, and depending on how well your site is designed, you could be swayed to purchase the first visit.
Having healthy website traffic coming into your site is a good sign that the market is responding positively and showing interest in your products and services. If you have noticed a drop in the amount of traffic your website is receiving, you may need to look into ways to generate more traffic to drive to your eCommerce business.
Since every sale starts as a visitor on your site, there are many things you can do to make your visitors more likely to buy. This will be discussed below when we discuss conversions and how to optimize them.
How do you generate more traffic?
There are many things you can do to generate more traffic coming into your eCommerce store.
- Search Engine Optimization.
- B2B Marketing.
- Social Media Marketing.
- Advertising.
- Sharing your website.
- Producing quality content.
Doing these things should put you in a better position to bring in more visitors to your website. While not every visitor will make a purchase, it helps to send more traffic to your store as a first step to increasing your sales and revenue.
Now that we understand traffic, we can move on to leads, what they are and how they are generated.
Website Leads
A lead is different from website traffic. While all leads are website traffic, not all website traffic is a lead.
Specifically, a lead is someone who has shown genuine interest in your products and services. They have done this either by reaching out to you on your website, filling a form or getting in touch via live chat.
When it comes to website leads, you definitely want to pursue quality ahead of quantity. Mulling through a large list of lower-quality leads can bring about lower conversion rates than higher-quality leads that are much more likely to make a purchase.
Not only this, but dealing with badly-targetted, low-quality leads can reduce your company’s overall performance and lead to wasted time, effort and resources.
Choosing targetted leads for your particular offerings can make it easy to score conversions and improve your overall revenue.
How are leads generated?
Nearly 85% of B2B marketers think that lead gen is one of the most crucial content marketing goals. Leads can be generated in multiple ways. For this article, we are only looking into generating leads from your eCommerce store. Depending on how well you do this, you can receive plenty of quality, interesting leads that are likely to result in a sale.
Some of the ways that leads are generated are –
- Lead generation services.
- Form filling.
- Social media interaction.
Generating more website leads means a greater opportunity to help more businesses and individuals. It is also important to keep in mind that leads can take a considerable amount of time and resources to process.
Quality lead qualifying is an essential step in the sales pipelines of many companies around the world. Depending on how well you qualify your leads, you could drastically affect the bottom line of your eCommerce store.
Website leads often require constant support and additional information, so assisting them and providing your services with impeccable support is paramount.
Since we have read all about leads and how they are generated, it is time to move on to the next step. Conversions are a key part of businesses, and it is important to understand their vital aspects and how to increase conversions on your eCommerce site.
Website Conversions
In eCommerce, a conversion is when you have closed a sale and sold a product or service to a customer. The conversion rate of your store is the percentage of traffic that actually makes a purchase. It is a key metric for identifying how successful your store is and what percentage of your visitors end up buying your products.
Conversions come from interested leads that have been generated from the traffic coming into your site. Those leads that have successfully been served and have registered a sale are considered to be converted.
Conversions occur when your website traffic is interested in your products and opts to purchase on your eCommerce store. On most popular eCommerce engines, conversions are recorded and analyzed for future study. With this in mind, reviewing your conversion rates and customer demographics are important ways to improve the sales and revenue of your store.
While there is only so much you can do to increase the traffic on your eCommerce site, there are also other changes you can implement to improve your conversions.
How do you increase conversions?
On average, a typical website conversion rate is 2.35%. More conversions mean more revenue for expanding your business. However, increasing conversions is not as simple as making a few tweaks. Sometimes, it can require completely overhauling your eCommerce store or targetting a new set of audiences.
Experimentation goes a long way in finding what works best for your business, so do not be afraid to think outside of the box when it comes to increasing your conversions.
Many eCommerce store owners may feel like they have hit a glass ceiling when it comes to their conversions, but it does not have to be that way. Luckily, there are a variety of options for increasing conversions on your eCommerce site.
- Optimize your website for speed.
- Present a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate.
- Use Shopify Apps and extensions.
By implementing these measures, you should be able to effectively increase the conversion rate of your store. Remember, sometimes results can take a period of up to a few months to show. In which case, patience and constant review are necessary to gauge the effectiveness of your adaptations.
Rest assured, these tips should help you see an overall uptick in the number of conversions your site receives, and are definitely worth looking into.
More conversions mean bringing in increased revenue for your business, which can then be used for growth, expansion, and diversification. A healthy practice is to reinvest a certain percentage of your profits back into increasing your overall traffic, leads, and conversions.
In Closing
These are some of the most important things to know about the differences between traffic, leads, and conversions. While traffic refers to the visitors that your site receives, leads imply the individuals or businesses that are interested in your products and services.
Further, interested leads are considered to be converted once a purchase (or conversion) is made. There are many ways to increase the traffic that your site receives, including social media advertising, B2B marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and more.
Leads can be of varying quality, so it is always essential to only use high-quality leads from trusted sources, like your own eCommerce store. Higher quality leads are more likely to convert and improve your site’s overall conversion rate.
Besides this, there are steps you can take to improve your conversion rate. Optimizing your site for speed and navigation, making it easy for customers to find what they want, and using dedicated applications are just a few.
