IS IT MY PICKUP LINE? OR AM I JUST DULL???

If you're spending money marketing your retail site, but not getting the sales to justify your marketing investment and grow - this post is for you.

Maybe it's your pickup line. Maybe you're just dull. Or, maybe, you're trying to romance the wrong customer.

So what's your problem?

Sometimes it takes a lot of detailed metrics and focus to figure out exactly where the problem lies. Sometimes a quick analysis can point out the major areas of concern. Here's a few things to check for:

• Extreme variance in results of different marketing campaigns. If shoppers coming from organic search (for example) are converting at a much higher rate than other campaigns, it's typically a sure sign that you're either after the wrong customer (advertising in the wrong place) or that your pickup line (your ad marketing message) in the poorly performing campaigns is not kindling a romance with your potential customer. If the poorly performing campaigns are also getting poor ad click-through rates - it's probably your marketing message.
  

• Poor ad click-through rates. If ad viewers where you're advertising aren't clicking through, it's your ad message (your pickup line), or you may just be advertising in the wrong place.
  

• Very few page views per shopper. If your average shopper is making less than 3-4 page views, you're not engaging them well. If your ad click-through rates are high, then you've probably got the right shopper and pickup line - you're just engaging them with your merchandising effectively. However, if you notice that some ad campaigns have a much higher average page view count, then you may be targeting the wrong customer with the poorly performing campaigns.
  

• Lots of page views per shopper, but poor conversion to cart. If you're experiencing high page views per shopper (more than 6) but less than 5-6% of shoppers are creating shopping carts - your pickup line is working...you're just dull! Either shoppers are having a hard time finding the product they're looking for (bad merchandiser, go to timeout!) or they're finding many options that might be the right one...you're just not creating an impulse to buy, or a strong enough value proposition to close the sale. Bad merchandiser, go to timeout!

You'll find plenty of content in the Basics of Good Merchandising and the e-Retail Marketing sections of my blog to help you along the way. It can get very complex, and if you don't know where to start - we can help you!