How to get the best customer return from your website 

 SeeWhy, Inc., the company that boosts website conversion with real-time remarketing has launched  “Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Converting Websites,” a free eBook that identifies the 10, top-converting ecommerce sites and the strategies they use to drive website conversion.  

With the top 10 ecommerce sites converting, on average, roughly 10 times as many visitors into customers as the typical site  -23 percent vs. 2-3 percent - the research offers valuable insight into the Internet’s most successful conversion practices and the tactics used by the ecommerce teams behind them. “Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Converting Websites” is available now as a free download.

“Most readers will find the report a great surprise because its findings fly in the face of conventional wisdom,” said Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy. “Conventional wisdom emphasises SEO and streamlined conversion and shopping cart processes  - reduce the number of steps, offer guest checkout, and the like  - to optimise conversion rate. 

But the top 10 conversion leaders don’t care about one night stands; they want long term relationships. Still, they convert about 10 times as many visitors as the average ecommerce site. Their secret, quite simply, is their focus on long-term relationships with their customers, and that cardinal rule drives all of their activities.”

The top 10 converting websites is based on Nielsen data for six months, ending in November 2009. In order to qualify, a website needed to achieve a minimum of 5 million unique visitors per month. Conversion is measured based on the ratio of site visitors to purchasers in a given session.

As a group, the top 10 have not focused on short checkout processes, and the majority do not offer guest checkout. In fact, four out of the top five (and six out of the top 10) force users to create a full account before a first purchase. Instead, the top 10 have effectively taken a contrarian approach to conversion that includes the following tenets:

• A customer is for life, not just a session – The top 10 are optimized for repeat purchases, not for the first purchase. They make it easy for returning visitors to purchase. And they drive visitor numbers via traditional direct marketing (email and catalogue).
• Superior search and selection - The top 10 have invested in slick merchandising, making their sites easy to browse and pleasurable to shop - especially for unplanned purchases.
• Lifetime remarketing -All of the top 10 use remarketing vs. 25 percent of companies in the ecommerce sector. Done well, remarketing is perceived as good service by customers. As a result, recommendations, suggestions and relevant content delivered through email, get very high open - and very low unsubscribe - rates.

Nicholls said, “When we set out to study the top ten converting websites, we expected to find short shopping cart processes, guest checkouts, and highly tuned websites focused around getting the sale. But we didn’t. Instead, we found companies focused on lifetime customer value, seeking to thrill shoppers with a superior experience and to make it incredibly easy to purchase again. Moreover, we found companies willing to sacrifice a small proportion of initial sales lost as a result of their desire to capture user data. Because once captured, they use details very effectively to remarket to website visitors, driving highly qualified buyers with intent to their sites.”