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What’s with the infographic?
Our president, Eric Dean, is a fan of using the “funnel” to describe online sales. It seems that we can’t get through a single meeting without him whipping out a dry erase marker to draw another funnel (as if we need the visual after the 100th funnel!). For as much as we make fun of him, however, the funnel has become his mantra – and, by extension, the company’s mantra - for a reason: it makes sense.
Take a look at the graphic above. At the top of the funnel, you have visits, people who are checking you out and perhaps thinking about purchasing. At the bottom, you have those that have completely converted or purchased. The top of the funnel affects the bottom and people tend to drop away at each step. Using the funnel helps not only to quantify your online health, but it also allows you to pinpoint where you are having issues and then take proactive measures to combat them.
The findings
Good news! Things are looking up. Web visits (or those thinking about purchasing) increased by 7% year over year, and retailer logins increased by an astonishing 41%. So, more people were visiting, but even more retailers were logging in to check out pricing, see past purchase data, or even better yet, make a purchase.
As expected, this increase in logins led to a 37% increase in online sales. Even more interesting, the average order size also increased by 10%. With the sagging economy we’ve seen for the last few years, that average order size had been down. This increase marks a significant turnaround for the industry.
In addition, we noticed that the companies we were analyzing not only kept pace with predicted mobile trends, but actually increased at a faster rate. According to a Pingdom study, as of May 2012, mobile website traffic – ecommerce or otherwise – contributed to about 8.6% of all North American internet traffic (Pingdom, 2012). As shown in the Whereoware e-com brief, however, in Q1 2011, 5% of traffic to these clients was mobile; by Q1 2012, this number had risen to 12%. This meant that mobile web traffic in our e-commerce brief increased by an average of 207% between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012, well above the North American average of 69%. Clearly, if you’re not optimized for your B2B mobile customers, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity!
The takeways
Start working the e-commerce funnel. Gather your stats and compare. Are your logins lagging behind the benchmark? If so, start thinking of tactics to encourage logins. Marketing, design, development, and mobile should all work together to create a seamless, holistic shopping experience for B2B customers. Reassess your efforts and make that happen!
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