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E-Marketing Tips From the Front Lines
Cultivating repeat visitors on your site. What separates great B2B sites from the rest? Content key to building lists.
From AICPA Custom Media Solutions

Repeat Visitors More Likely Than New Visitors to Purchase Online

When it comes to making a purchase online, repeat visitors are eight times more likely to click the order button than new visitors, according to new data from WebSideStory, Inc., a San Diego-based provider of digital marketing research and analytics. During the first three months of 2006, repeat visitors to business-to-consumer e-commerce sites had a conversion rate of 12.61 percent, compared to just 1.55 percent for new visitors, according to the WebSideStory Index, a statistical barometer that features techno-graphic trends culled from the millions of daily Internet users that visit web sites using the company's award-winning web analytics solution, HBX Analytics.

“While it has long been known that repeat visitors make better customers than new visitors, this data shows exactly how much better,” said Ali Behnam, senior digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory. “For marketers of e-commerce sites, this data further drives home the importance of building customer loyalty online.”

Customer loyalty is particularly important in the computers and electronics category, where repeat visitors were nearly 16 times more likely to make a purchase than new visitors with conversion rates of 23.12 percent and 1.49 percent respectively. By comparison, visitor loyalty was less important for shoppers at apparel sites, where the conversion rate for repeat visitors (7.56 percent) outranked the conversion rate for new visitors (1.37 percent) by less than 6 times. “This makes perfect sense as consumers are more apt to buy clothing on the spur of the moment than a big-ticket item like a computer or television, which requires much more research,” Behnam said.

Conversion Rate — New vs. Repeat Visitors
Q1 2006

Source: WebSideStory

What Separates Great B2B Web sites From the Average Ones?

“Most B2B sites emphasize internally focused design, don’t answer customers’ main questions or concerns, place barriers in the way of prospects who use the Web to discover [vendors/solutions providers] to place on their short lists,” said Web interactivity guru, Jakob Nielsen, principal at Nielsen Norman Group in a recent trade magazine interview. “These sites haven’t recognized that the Web has turned the tables on relationships between companies and their customers, with most online interactions demand-driven, where you either give people what they want or see them abandon your site for the competition.”

What makes a B2B site great? Nielsen says is a site that’s “more forthcoming with information for new users in the early stages of research.” Sites often deprive users of needed information by an overly confusing navigation structure or by presenting overwhelming and convoluted content, he says.

What key trends are you seeing in B2B sites right now? “Busy business people have stopped saving brochures and advertisements because they assume they can look up the equivalent information on the Web.” One of the first actions most people do when considering doing business with a company is looking up its Web site. Guess what happens when a company’s site inadequately communicates the credibility of a vendor.

Ways to improve a B2B Web site? Most need a complete overhaul, with an emphasis on what customers tell them in user testing. A quick fix he recommends is a good “About Us” page and “good overview pages for each product category.”

Content Is Key to Building E-Lists

E-Mail marketers should mix promotional and editorial content, according to Stephanie Miller during last month’s MediaPost's E-mail Insider Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. Miller, vice president of Return Path, said this "news you can use" approach boosts the perceived integrity of marketing emails in the minds of both recipients and ISP monitors — its two most important constituents. By making marketing emails into mini-newsletters, Miller said, these small additions can yield substantial results in CPM and ROI.

"It's really about a little bit of content — three or four sentences," Miller remarked, pointing to a successful email campaign by Hold Everything, which sells home accessories for storage. "It changed it from a promotional email to something that is worth taking a few seconds to read ... A little bit of content can go a long way."