9 Simple High ROI Shopping Cart Abandonment Prevention Tactics

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How are you handling your shopping cart abandonment?

The first step is for you to track and recognize how many shoppers are leaving items in their carts without finalizing the purchases.

If you’re not addressing it, you’re missing out on sales.

Take a moment to ask yourself how you can improve the customer experience.

Is there a problem with your conversion funnel?

This is a basic visualization of how companies create conversions.

First, the consumer becomes aware of your brand, products, or services.

Next, they have a need or want that sparks interest in something more specific.

Once the consumer knows what they want, they consider the purchase.

Adding a product to their shopping cart definitely qualifies as the consideration part of this conversion funnel process.

They are just one step away—or even one click away—from finalizing the sale.

So, what’s the problem?

Let’s take a look at a conversion funnel with some holes in the process:

If customers are getting all the way to the shopping cart, I’m willing to bet you don’t have a problem with your homepage or product service page.

What about your contact page or customer service information availability?

It’s possible the customer doesn’t feel comfortable finalizing the purchase based on the provided information about your business, reputation, warranty, or return policy.

But again, they’ve already made it to the checkout page with items in the cart.

So, I think this is another unlikely scenario.

The issue has to be in the final step of your conversion process.

I’ll show you some techniques that will minimize shopping cart abandonment on your platform and increase your conversion rates.

1. Recognize that customers are price sensitive

Your prices may be deterring the consumer from finalizing their purchase.

Look, I get it.

Obviously, you’re trying to make a buck.

I’m not telling you to start giving everything away.

You should be making a healthy profit on each transaction.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some numbers:

Unexpected prices are the number one reason why customers are abandoning shopping carts.

So, the initial price of your item might be okay.

But the added charges are turning customers away.

Some examples of these extra charges may include:

• Sales tax
• Shipping
• Processing fees
• Any other hidden charges

Is there a way you can eliminate some of these?

Here’s an idea.

Maybe you can take on the shipping fee.

Instead of putting that burden on the customer, you can adjust the original prices of your products to account for the shipping charges.

Will the customer end up paying more?

Yes.

But it’s not an unexpected charge.

You’ve got to find a middle ground.

Based on the graph above, the price was a factor in three of the top four reasons why people abandon shopping carts.

Try to keep your prices competitive while still generating a nice profit.

You may end up making slightly less money each transaction, but it’s worth it if you can increase the transaction rate.

2. Make sure your website and checkout procedures are secure

In the last five years, 46% of Americans were victims of credit card fraud.

That’s an alarming number.

Americans are the targets of nearly half of all the credit card breaches worldwide.

Consider these numbers for a second.

Have you had a credit card breached?

Do you know someone who’s been a victim of credit card fraud?

This is a legitimate concern for people.

Your customers may have had a bad experience in the past, and that is making them hesitant about online purchases.

The purchase process on your website needs to be secure.

You are responsible for your customers’ credit card information.

Don’t be the reason for their accounts getting hacked.

Take the proper security measures and place the corresponding badges on the checkout page, similar to the graphic above.

Make sure your website is secure.

Is your website running on an HTTPS connection?

Look at the example from Dick’s Sporting Goods:

See the secure sign?

It makes the consumer feel more comfortable at the checkout page.

Personally, it’s a red flag for me if I don’t see this while I’m shopping.

I won’t be entering any of my personal or credit card information on a web page that’s not secure.

Quick side note: notice Dick’s offers free returns on its apparel?

I wanted to point that out as well. It makes the customer feel better about the checkout process.

A secure website and checkout process need to be a priority for your ecommerce store.

3. Allow your customers to check out without creating a profile

Obviously, you want customers to have an account with your company.

It’s a great way to track their behavior and keep them informed of special offers and promotions.

However, you shouldn’t be forcing people to create a user profile just to make a purchase.

Why?

1. It’s an extra step. People are in a rush, and you want the procedure to be quick.
2. They may have a fear of getting unwanted emails, text messages, or junk mail.

If your website doesn’t have a guest checkout option, you’re making a mistake.

Here’s an example from Lululemon of the guest checkout option:

It’s a really clean checkout page.

There are two clear options.

Returning users can easily sign into their accounts, and customers without an account can proceed without creating one.

This ensures you aren’t losing sales.

Here’s the thing, though. In order to complete the checkout process, the customer still needs to enter their information.

You’ll have their name, email address, location, and other information.

Once the sale is final, you can entice them to create an account.

All they need to do is create a password.

You already have everything else in your records, so they don’t need to submit information twice.

Here’s a great example of what this should look like:

Give the customer a reason to create an account.

Refer to the image above.

What’s the customer getting in return?

• Option to track the order
• Exclusive discounts

But they shouldn’t be forced to create a profile just to make a purchase.

Make sure that’s optional.

4. Accept a wide range of payment options for the customer

What kind of payment options are you accepting?

Visa only?

You don’t accept Discover cards?

I understand.

Certain credit card companies have higher processing fees than others.

Accepting transactions from PayPal or similar platforms could be even more costly.

By not accepting certain payment methods, you could be turning customers away.

You might think that everyone has one of the credit cards you accept, but that’s not always the case.

Give the consumer lots of options.

Do you accept Apple Pay?

There are nearly 86 million iPhone users in the United States.

Last year, Apply pay transactions grew at a 50% rate.

These numbers show alternative payment methods are trending upward.

Don’t fall behind the curve.

If you’re accepting only one or two payment forms, it could be the cause for your shopping cart abandonment.

The customer gets to the checkout process only to discover you’re not offering their preferred payment option.

5. The process needs to be mobile friendly

Is your website mobile friendly?

Is the checkout procedure optimized for mobile devices?

It needs to be.

Research shows 84% of smartphone users have experienced a problem completing a mobile transaction.

And 40% of users will go to your competitor after an unsatisfactory experience on your mobile site.

What do these numbers tell you?

People want to shop on their phones.

Here’s some additional information about mobile users:

Nearly 5 billion people have a mobile device across the world.

Of course, not all these people are your potential customers.

But a large chunk of them could be.

Don’t alienate people from shopping on their mobile devices.

It’s estimated that half of ecommerce transactions take place on mobile platforms.

That number is only going to grow.

If getting to a laptop or desktop is the only way for your customers to shop, it could be hurting your sales.

Make sure your checkout procedure is optimized for mobile devices to decrease your shopping cart abandonment rates.

6. Don’t let your competitors steal your customers

How unique is your product or service?

Chances are, you don’t own the space outright.

You have plenty of competition.

It’s not always easy to compete with the big players like Amazon or Walmart.

Earlier we looked at a graph that said 36% of shoppers abandoned a shopping cart because they found a better price elsewhere.

If your prices are higher, that needs to be justified.

Make sure your quality and service are outstanding.

Your customer needs to understand this.

The website needs to load fast.

Don’t make the process too complex.

We know that 25% of shoppers will abandon their shopping carts if the navigation is too complicated.

They will go to your competitors instead.

Be aware of how your competitors are operating.

It’s always helpful to use competitor analysis tools to improve your traffic.

7. Send an email reminder if a cart is abandoned

Okay. So you may not be able to prevent everyone from abandoning their shopping carts.

Even if you decrease the abandonment rate, you won’t get that number down to zero.

Where do you go from here?

Don’t give up just because a customer abandoned their cart.

If you have their information, reach out and send them a reminder.

Here’s a great example from Saatchi Art:

This email accomplishes a few things:

1. reminds the customer of their shopping
2. creates a sense of urgency
3. offers an extra incentive

The reminder alone may be enough to get the customer to finalize their purchase.

But if it’s not, it creates a sense of urgency by saying “high sell-out risk.”

We’ll get into some more detail on this method shortly.

It also provides an extra incentive by offering a 10% discount.

Earlier we discussed that customers are price sensitive.

They may have abandoned the cart for financial reasons.

Giving the consumer a discount will show them you care.

That promotion may be enough of a reason for them to finish the checkout.

8. Use A/B testing to simplify your checkout process

How long does it take the customers to make a purchase on your site?

Every extra click they have to make gives them a chance to second-guess their decision.

You can run an A/B test to see which checkout procedure is more successful.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Here’s the checkout progress bar from Crate & Barrel:

It’s a quick checkout process.

• Shipping info
• Payment info
• Place order

Three steps and done.

Here’s an example from another website:

Their process is six steps.

That’s double the number of Crate & Barrel’s process.

If you have a long checkout system, I suggest you shorten the process significantly.

Still not convinced?

Run an A/B test.

Use your current system as the control group and a shorter version as the experimental group.

See if you notice a difference in your shopping cart abandonment statistics between these two groups.

9. Create a sense of urgency

Earlier I mentioned that Saatchi Art created a sense of urgency with their abandonment recovery email.

FOMO—the fear of missing out.

You can do this on your checkout page as well to reduce cart abandonment.

Some customers are just browsing.

New customers most likely won’t buy something on their first visit to your website.

But you can give them an extra incentive to finalize their purchases.

Create a sense of urgency.

• “Limited quantity remaining”
• “Sale price expires at midnight”
• “14 people booked this flight in the last 24 hours”
• “9 other people are looking at this room right now”

I’m sure you’ve seen phrasing like this before while browsing online.

Hotels and airlines do this all the time.

Act now, or miss out.

You can incorporate this psychological strategy into your checkout process to minimize cart abandonment.

Conclusion

Shopping cart abandonment is a problem for your ecommerce website.

You’re not alone.

It’s not too late to make changes to your checkout process to prevent future cart abandonment.

Follow the advice above to keep your abandonment rates low while increasing your conversion rates and revenue.

Customers are price sensitive. Don’t hit them with any unexpected charges.

You need to accept multiple forms of payment while also making sure the payment procedure is completely secure. Customers won’t shop on your website if they think their credit card information is at risk.

Don’t force shoppers to create a customer profile to check out. Instead, offer a user account as an option after they complete the process.

Make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices. If not, your customers will go to your competition.

The checkout process needs to be short. You can run an A/B test to play with different options and formats.

Create a sense of urgency to avoid cart abandonment: if the customer doesn’t act now, they may not be able to get this product in the future.

Even if someone abandons their cart, it’s not too late. Send them an email to remind them about the product.

You can also offer a discount or promotion as an extra incentive to finalize the sale.

How will you implement these methods on your ecommerce checkout page to minimize shopping cart abandonment rates?

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How to Marry Your SEO & Content Marketing Strategies by @alextachalova

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Find out how you can marry SEO and content by using the right keywords to give yourself a competitive advantage.

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The Unusual Branding Strategy That Made This SEO Company a Success

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Clayton Johnson of The HOTH shares insights on link building, content, and how the industry has changed over the years. 

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How to Create a Content Upgrade That Will Automate Your List Building

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I am a big champion of the power of email marketing.

There’s no better way to build a community and nurture a relationship with your audience.

It’s hands down the most authentic way to prime your prospects, sell them your work, and grow your revenue.

So, when a powerful list-building technique comes along, I get excited.

After all, a thriving email list is the foundation of email marketing.

I’m sure you’ve noticed this, but I’ll point it out anyway.

Content upgrades are what’s hot right now if you want to accelerate the growth of your email list.

Take a guy like Bryan Harris, for instance. He sees a conversion rate of 20-40% on blog posts with content upgrades.

He now averages almost 80 subscribers a day.

That’s amazing!

Blog posts typically do not convert as well as landing pages because they’re not designed for that purpose.

The point of a blog post is to educate, entertain, and inspire. There’s too much going on to get someone focused enough to sign up to your email list.

Content upgrades have changed that completely.

You can now transform your blog posts into powerful list-building assets. All you have to do is uplevel your posts with a targeted free resource.

Don’t worry—I’ll show you how.

First, let’s define a content upgrade.

What is a content upgrade?

It’s a type of lead magnet you give your audience in exchange for their email addresses.

The typical lead magnet, like an ebook or an email course, stands alone.

It is not attached to any specific piece of content. It has its own thing going on.

A content upgrade is unique to a piece of content.

It’s usually tied to a blog post. But there are other types of content you can uplevel with a free resource.

Webinars, podcasts, and videos are examples.

The point is to enhance the value of your content with this additional resource.

As you can imagine, there are several ways to achieve that.

You can create a resource that helps readers implement what you just discussed. An action sheet, workbook, or toolkit are excellent examples.

You can give away something that saves them time, like templates or cheat sheets.

The ultimate strategy is to create something that will help them delve deeper into the topic.

This is where you give additional strategies, tutorials, case studies, etc.

Your options are endless.

Let’s look at some examples.

CoSchedule published a post “How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing.”

The content upgrade?

A content repurposing guide and infographic:

If you read this post and were interested in implementing this content repurposing technique, you’d sign up for this upgrade in a heartbeat.

And that’s why content upgrades are so powerful for growing your email list.

They offer something you can’t say no to: value.

I’ll give you more examples later. For now, let’s get into how you can create your content upgrades.

Step #1: Identify your top-performing content

Can’t you just create content upgrades for your new content?

Yes, but it’s not where you should start.

If you haven’t created upgrades, you should first capitalize on the traffic you’re already receiving.

This is the fastest way to see results.

You can identify your top posts with Google Analytics or Buzzsumo.

If you have GA fired up, go to the Reports section and click on “behavior.”

Go to “site content” and then “all pages.”

You’ll find the website pages with the most traffic.

You can also find this info directly from your WordPress dashboard if you have GA set up there.

Buzzsumo is even simpler.

Plug in your site URL and press “Go.”

You’ll find the posts with the most social shares.

Record these in a spreadsheet. They’ll serve as your targets for your new content upgrades.

These are for finding your top blog posts, but the same can be done for your podcasts, YouTube videos, webinars, etc.

Step #2: Find the gap in your content

To deliver that extra value, you need to pinpoint the gap in your content.

Otherwise, your upgrade won’t be worth opting in for.

Select one of your top content pieces found in the first step. Go through it from top to bottom, and consider the following questions.

Q. 1: What problem does your content solve?

If you’ve created something of quality, it should solve a problem.

I understand not all content is instructional or how-to, but the question remains.

Think about what knowledge you’re trying to deliver and what purpose it serves for your audience.

Let’s look at this post.

My goal is to give readers the fastest and easiest strategies to grow their email lists.

If I were to create a content upgrade for that post, it would:

• be easy to implement
• deliver on the promise of being fast
• help you gain more subscribers

This may sound futile. But without going through this exercise, your content upgrade can flop.

When I talk about types of upgrades later, you’ll understand why.

For now, figure out what your content is trying to accomplish.

And your job will be half done.

Q. 2: What’s missing?

You know the goal of your content piece.

Is there a strategy you didn’t mention? A tool required to implement your tactics? Something that fulfills the goal but was not covered in-depth or at all?

Find the gap between the objective and what your content does.

Q. 3: How can you expand the value?

Think of what could’ve been included to make your content more valuable.

You want an upgrade that accomplishes the same goal you established earlier, but with an extra kick.

When people consume new information, they’re thinking of the ways they can implement it for a positive result.

Your audience wants to achieve that outcome better, faster, and cheaper and with more precision, less error, and less effort.

That’s the purpose your content upgrade should serve.

What content do you plan to create in the future?

If you want to make upgrades a key piece of your list-building strategy, here’s what I recommend.

Don’t wait till after you’ve created your content to come up with an idea for your free resource.

Instead, strategize the future upgrade.

How?

Leave an open loop.

This technique uses the power of storytelling to get readers excited about your content upgrade.

Here’s what storytelling does to the brain:

How do you achieve that?

Briefly mention a tool, a topic, a relevant experience, or an action step in your article.

Don’t expand on it in your post. Just mention it, and leave the gap wide open.

This way you’re giving people a piece of the story—not the whole thing.

The objective is to hook your readers.

Then, create an upgrade that closes this gap. I guarantee you, people will sign up to your list just to get the inside scoop.

With this technique, you’re utilizing curiosity, a major persuasion factor.

Step #3: Select an appropriate type of content upgrade

Now that you know what content you’ll cover, it’s time to establish the form.

How will you deliver your content?

Many people don’t give it much thought. They believe the content is the end-all and be-all.

Not true.

Content and delivery go hand in hand.

Imagine you promise subscribers a quick win, and you deliver your content in a 30-day email course.

There’s nothing quick about a 30-day email course.

But that doesn’t mean this form isn’t appropriate for a different result.

Let’s say you promise advanced in-depth training, and you deliver it in a cheat sheet.

The email course would serve your audience way better in this instance.

It’s why I use it. It works.

You could also use a webinar.

Do you see how the type of upgrade you select can conflict with the actual content?

You want the two to work seamlessly.

Otherwise, your subscribers will feel cheated when they receive your resource.

The result?

They unsubscribe and never return to your blog again.

This is why I placed emphasis on establishing your goals in the beginning. It’s going to help you select the right type of content upgrade.

Here are the options available:

• email courses
• email challenges
• cheat sheets
• checklists
• planners
• ebooks or PDF guides
• resource kits
• case studies
• video series
• templates
• printables
• swipe files
• transcripts
• infographics
• workbooks
• audio files

These will give you enough food for thought.

Ensure you select the form that aligns with your content and its goals.

Step #4: Design your content upgrade

You’ve got your content figured out. You’ve got your delivery method aligned with the content.

This is where you might have some problems.

Or maybe not.

Designing a lead magnet can be time-consuming and challenging for some people. For others, it’s a breeze.

Here’s the thing.

It doesn’t have to be overwhelming for anyone.

Even if you don’t have one technical or creative bone in your body, you can do this.

And if you don’t want to, you can outsource it for pretty cheap. That’s why sites like Fiverr, 99Designs, and UpWork exist.

For those who want to handle it themselves, here’s how.

First, I’ll tell you my favorite tools:

• Canva
• Beacon
• Google Docs
• Word or Apple Pages

That’s it.

The best part? These are free to use.

Here’s an overview of how you can do this.

Step #1: Outline the content for your upgrade in a Google Doc or Word document

Whether you’re creating an ebook, ecourse, or cheat sheet, write out the most important points.

This will serve as a skeleton for your content upgrade.

Step #2: Expand on your outline

Flesh out your main points. I like to use dictation to get through this faster. This way, you can just speak about your topic and let the tool do the typing.

Go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there are no errors.

Step #3: Use Canva or Beacon to create a beautiful layout

You can also do this with Google docs.

You can copy and paste images, icons, create tables, and highlight text to create a sophisticated design within a simple document.

Then, download your document as a PDF.

But if you want to step up your design, Canva and Beacon are the best choices.

Step #4: Create an image of your content upgrade

This is so you can place it within your blog posts or on a landing page. One of my favorite tools to do that is Skitch.

I use it to take a snapshot of the individual pages of the content upgrade. Then, I overlay them in Canva to create an image.

Like this:

Step #5: Create a compelling call to action image to place within your blog posts

Again, you can use Canva to do this.

Here are some examples:

Here’s another:

It doesn’t have to be fancy.

You can use a feature box like this:

Step #5: Set up the delivery of your content upgrade

At this point, you should have all the assets created for your upgrade.

The task now is to set up delivery.

Step #1: Host the file in WordPress or with your email management software

Some email systems, like ConvertKit, allow you to host files. This makes it super simple to deliver them to subscribers.

The alternative is to use your WordPress account.

Go to your dashboard, find the “Media” tab and “Add New.”

Upload your file.

You’ll receive a downloadable URL (“file URL”).

Anyone with the link can now access your content upgrade.

Step #2: Set up a follow-up email in your email management system

This is what you’ll use to deliver your content upgrade. Place the link you got in Step #1 within your email.

At this point, you can set up a system to segment subscribers.

Let’s say someone opts in for a content upgrade on list-building. You can tag them to be transferred to a separate list designated for people interested in this particular topic.

Most email software allows for segmentation.

When you segment subscribers this way, you are better able to deliver emails aligned with their interests.

It keeps them engaged and your unsubscribe rate low.

Step #6: Promote your content upgrade and watch your list grow

The only thing left to do is to promote your content upgrades. The goal is to get them in front of as many eyes as possible.

Place them prominently within blog posts. Do it several times.

When you share your content on social media, let people know there’s an additional free resource that comes with it.

A good way to promote your upgrades is to repurpose them. It’s not necessary to create a new resource for each piece of content.

If you’re covering the same topics, your upgrades will be relevant to other content you create.

Conclusion

If you really want to take your list-building up a couple of notches, content upgrades are a must.

They enhance the value of your posts and give your audience a reason to hop on to your email list.

In some instances, content upgrades are more powerful than stand-alone lead magnets.

Why do people shy away from them?

It can appear to be time-consuming and complicated.

In some instances, that’s true.

But if you follow the steps in this article, you’ll have everything you need to quickly and painlessly create content upgrades.

Why not transform every piece of content into a list-building asset?

That’s the kind of transformation that impacts your bottom line. Try it out, and watch your email list numbers go through the roof.

Do you have any tricks for creating high-converting content upgrades?

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Most SEOs Prefer Using Ahrefs to Monitor Competitor Backlinks [POLL] by @A_Ninofranco

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Which tools do SEOs prefer for monitoring competitor backlinks? Find out how our Twitter community answered our latest poll question.

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Agency Partnership Solutions: Page One Power’s White Label Individual Link Product by @pageonepower

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This post was sponsored by Page One Power.  The value of links has remained one of the few constants in the SEO industry, even as search matures into one of the most important channels in digital marketing. But link building is the least controllable element of SEO and can be time-intensive and frustrating without dedicated resources. This is especially true if you’re working with multiple clients who lack links. Outsourcing is a difficult prospect – you need a partner you can trust, who delivers consistent and quality work. Finding the right link building solution can be a painful experience. What

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What You Need to Know When Partnering With a Link Building Agency by @lorenbaker

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Learn how you can get the most out of your link building agency partnership and achieve SEO success.

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4 Important Competitive SEO Data Points You Should Always Watch by @joshuacmccoy

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Consistently watching your visibility, indexation, links, and attention will help you gauge whether you're remaining competitive in SEO.

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How to Hack Retention Rate and Get Customers to Stick Around

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Retention, huh?

It’s like interviewing for a job and getting to the last stage of the interviews — just to realize it’s not going to happen.

We spend money on getting people to our website, visitors spend eight seconds on the page and 98% will never return.

Boy, that hurts

It is especially painful for SaaS businesses because of their lengthy sales funnels and high acquisition costs.

Awhile ago we decided to gather data on how to attract visitors, move them down the marketing funnel and make sure they love using our tool.

But before we get into the details, let’s go through what retention rate optimization is and how data can be helpful in improving it.

What is Retention Rate Optimization?

Retention rate optimization is the process of improving the rate of customers returning to use your services.

It sounds like something you should be doing, right?

In numbers it looks like this:

1. If 100 people land on your site, on average 2-3% percent will “convert” — i.e., do whatever you want them to do.
   1. In our case, it’s 8% of everyone who takes the free trial.
2. So, if we want eight people to try our free trial we have to get 100 to land on our page.
3. The retention rates of different industries are hard to predict, but, in our case, we are generally able to keep these eight people for a month. Aftwerward this will happen:
   1. 4 to 5 people will unsubscribe.
   2. But 3 to 4 will try our paid plans, from which only 1 to 2 subscribers will keep paying for more than a month.

This means that only one or two people out of 100 will keep paying to use our services. So naturally, improving this number became a big priority for us.

This is where retention rate optimization comes in, trying to boost your profit on every potential customer who lands on your page.

Now it’s time to explain the path we took.

Behavior Analysis

First of all, you have to try to understand your customer’s behavior:

1. Why did they leave after trying the free trial?
2. Why did they leave after trying the paid plans?

The best way to test your assumptions is by simply by talking to your customers via emails, calls, live chats or Skype calls. Anything will do.

One low-key method we tend to use is Hotjar’s Poll. To set it up you simply implement a small code snippet — similar to setting up Google Analytics — and set up the question sequence.

It looks like this: the question is triggered few seconds after you visit a page.

Ask simple, open-ended questions and soon you will have a lot more insight into why your customers do what they do.

Let’s get Ready to Monitor Data

Have you ever heard the statement, ‘Numbers don’t lie’?

Trust numbers more than you trust anyone. Period.

Google Analytics won’t cut it in delivering the insights into customer behavior you need. You will need funnel and event data monitoring software to help to visualize your events.

In this case, Kissmetrics is the perfect tool for this job.

The metrics these kind of tools offer is what one might need to investigate customers’ behavior.

Setting it up is a bit more technical than with Google Analytics because you have to assign tracking to every event you want to monitor. This will take some time if you don’t have developers at your disposal.

What’s great about behaviour analytics’ tools is that they offer easy-to-schedule demo calls, in case there is something you struggle to understand.

Once everything is set, let’s see how we can use this data to improve your retention.

Improving the Onboarding Process

In general, users who have tested different features of your tools can be retained for longer than those people who haven’t tried such tasks.

Designing user onboarding shouldn’t be left to gut feeling. Instead, make sure to tailor it to the features your users find the most useful.

Once you can track events and see the impact your onboarding has on user retention, you can then form a set of assumptions. These assumptions should then be tested to see if iterating your onboarding can improve your retention rate.

Retention rate analysis

We discovered that people who used a key feature of our tool have a retention rate of 20.1%.

This key feature was also the first step of our onboarding.

The second step was to connect our tool to Google Analytics. As it turned out, people who did add Analytics stayed for an average of 12 days, with a retention rate of 7.69%. Compare this to the 1.69% retention rate for people who skipped this step.

We kept exploring the actions people took using our tool. Interestingly, people who used the disavow feature were much more likely to return — this cohort’s retention rate for 12 days was stunning 10.2%.

We had a 24% retention rate increase just by suggesting a few spammy backlinks to disavow.

Once you spot opportunities like this, your assumptions must be tested to see if seemingly useful changes actually deliver the expected outcome.

Imagine the impact if all of your customers would have the same experience as your “star” customers who make the most of your handy features.

From Free Trial to Paid Plan

Once you know the precise likelihood of people sticking around after performing action X, you can assign a value to this activity.

For example, ProdPad gamified their 14-day free trial by giving extra “free days” for each action people performed on the page.

This makes a lot of sense. Any free days you give to your customers are useless if they don’t use them to do things which will make them stick around.

You can even take this one step further. Investigate which actions increase the chance of people switching from free trials to paid plans.

Have a look at the data on activities which improve conversion rates between steps in your funnel. In this case, it’s customers moving from free plans to paid plans.

We discovered that people who linked Google Analytics to our service were 32.5% more likely to use paid plans, compared to those who didn’t link.

This is what we found using the same correlation for the cohort that used our disavow tool:

The disavow tool is seemingly so crucial to our retention rate that it more than doubles the conversion rate from free to paid plans.

Once you start seeing this kind of data, it’s then time to test to approve or disapprove your assumptions.

Improve Your Marketing Funnel

There are different ways to test your assumptions. Here are two:

1. Involving your software team to adjust your onboarding and gamify your free trial
2. Using Facebook ads

Obviously, the second option sounds a lot easier, right?

Easier means faster to test and that’s what we like.

After each interaction with a business, we internet users usually get bombarded with upgrade or discount offers. Indeed, it’s a shame not to help your users find their way back to you — and take the action they for some reason avoided.

Setting up Facebook for retargeting ads

Facebook offers amazing retargeting capabilities, allowing you to target any specific action that a specific group of people took.

First, clearly lay out the actions people can take on your site. Once you know the impact these actions have on retention you can make sure people use your tool to its full capability.

What’s more, I will show you how to display ads after almost any event taking place while people use your tool.

First, let’s start by setting up the tracking. We will need to implement two things:

1. A Facebook pixel — here’s the guide that will walk you through it.
2. Event tracking — here are the codes to implement for facilitating event tracking.

Creating Audiences

Once that’s done, we need to define the specific cohorts (audiences) which we wish to guide further down the funnel.

Every event that occurs on your site is tracked by Facebook’s pixel and people who fall into specific categories can be shown specific ads.

We know our highest retention rate came from people who had used the disavow tool. Moreover, we know there were quite a few people who didn’t do that.

To start, head over to Facebook’s business manager, (1) then to Ads Manager (2), and finally, click on Audiences (3).

There you will be able to create cohorts or “custom audiences” (1). Next, create a custom audience based on “website traffic”.

Then you will have to define the event. In this case, we want to target people (1) who visited in the last 30 days (2) visited Linkody’s “dashboard” (3). Specifically, the ones who didn’t use (4) the “disavow” tool (6) in this period of time.

Make sure to exclude the other groups of people. There is no need to show ads to people who have already done what you will be asking them to do.

Showing Ads for the Right Audience

Now you can reach out to this cohort.

Show your customers the benefits of performing a particular action. Teach them what this feature can do for their business.

These people have most probably not grasped exactly how useful your tool or service is — the exact reason why others love it so much.

A great way to educate people about this is with video guides or blog posts. Film a walk-through or write a how-to guide describing the benefits of taking this action.

Then head over (1) to the Ads Manager (2) and create an ad of your choosing.

Next, select the ad’s objective: I suggest choosing between traffic (1), engagement (2), or conversions (3).

Then, all you have to do is select the custom audience you created before.

Done!

Now all you have to do is check if your retention rates are improving.

This will help you to quickly prove or disprove the assumptions you made before.

Go Ahead and Optimize your Retention

This guide can help you to get the best return out of the money you’ve already put down. So why not go ahead and test it to see if you, too, can boost your profits.

To quickly recap what we went through:

1. Talk with your customers and ask about their biggest pain points.
2. Track events on your site and analyze the retention rates to see which activities have the biggest apparent influence in keeping visitors engaged.
3. Test your assumptions about the events which lead to the highest conversion rate.
4. Create cohorts in Custom Audiences on Facebook and set up ads to educate people about your product.
5. After about a month, check to see if there are any improvements in retention rate, analyze this information and see what you can improve.

One thing to note is that this is just one test. In most cases, retention optimization will be an ongoing process.

Happy optimizing and let us know if there is anything you need help with!

About the Author: Helvis Smoteks is an SEO-mastering, content-smithing marketer who spends his days at Linkody helping SEOs monitor their backlink data.

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How to Vet a New Marketing Channel in 3 Days or Less

if you were going to build some dirty Lane she were going to need some bodyguards or you might be fighting Penguins

I get this question a lot.

“What marketing channel should I focus on?”

There are many make or break decisions in business. This is one of them.

The thing is, I can’t give you a cut and dry answer.

The nature of your business matters. So does the audience you wish to target.

What I will do instead is give you a method for figuring this out for yourself.

If you’re starting a new business, this decision is critical. Focusing on the wrong marketing channel can set you back months and maybe even years.

If you’re expanding into a new market, selecting the wrong channel can also have massive ramifications.

You’d be putting your existing operations at risk for a new channel that may not pan out.

Just take a look at all the challenges marketers have to overcome:

You can imagine that each channel comes with a unique set of difficulties.

This speaks to the importance of vetting your marketing plan before you set it in motion.

There’s too much at stake.

In this article, I’ll show you how you can evaluate your options and narrow down the best choice quickly.

You don’t need more than three days to get this done.

But first, I have a bit of wisdom to share.

Resist the urge to diversify

You know that voice in your head that says you need to be everywhere at once? That fear of missing out if you don’t at least try everything?

It’s a diversion. Resist it.

It is imperative that you focus on one marketing channel.

At least in the beginning.

You’ll shortchange your success if you spread yourself thin.

Here’s why:

• You’ll have less impact. If you’re focusing on several channels, you’re not doing everything you can to excel in any one of them.
• It will cost you more. Testing and thriving with a multichannel approach costs way more than you may be willing to spend. If you want an organic and cost-effective approach, stick to one channel.
• You’ll never actually know where your strength lies. Jumping from channel to channel means you won’t truly know the impact of one particular strategy on your business.
• You’ll remain at the heels of your competitors. That’s not where you want to be, is it? You want to be ahead, and the way to do that is to establish dominance in your market.

Now, don’t misunderstand me.

I’m not saying you should go all in on one channel and forget the rest.

But multichannel marketing is complex. Only 30% of marketers are confident they can deliver on such a strategy:

That’s not a lot.

What I’m advocating for is starting from a position of dominance.

Put your energy into one strategy until it succeeds. Then, piggyback on that success to achieve wins in other areas.

Does that make sense?

The steps in this article will be geared towards helping you place a bullseye on the ONE channel that will serve you best.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s begin.

Step #1: Know your options

The first thing you want to do is brainstorm all your possible options.

This isn’t something you have to conjure up out of thin air.

You can connect with your target audience and spread your message in many different ways.

Better yet, each channel has several subsets that you can zone in on.

Here’s a good representation:

Many of these overlap. Some have even morphed into each other.

It can get confusing, quickly.

For example, some people consider SEO to be one marketing channel.

But I can’t imagine a world where SEO and content marketing aren’t intertwined. You can’t do one without the other.

The same goes for social media and paid advertising.

They’re different channels. But there’s a convergence.

Let’s imagine you decide to focus on Facebook as your primary social media platform. It would be unwise to not experiment with Facebook Ads.

Considering that Facebook has developed one of the greatest ad products out there, you’d be underutilizing the full power of the platform.

Marketers agree. Almost 57% plan to increase their social media ad spend.

I say all this to make a simple point.

While you may zone in on one channel, you’ll see lots of overlap you shouldn’t ignore.

Go where your audience takes you.

Let’s look at some of your options.

Content marketing

This is about creating and promoting material relevant to your target audience.

Content marketing is central to your success.

It’s been reported 90% of businesses market using this channel.

It means that no matter what strategy you use, content will be a part of it.

You can narrow your content down to blogging, guest blogging, podcasts, webinars, email, etc.

Social media marketing

You can use social media as your platform to get noticed, build authority, and grow a community.

You can also use it to drive traffic to your main site.

Or you can do both. It’s effective either way.

Paid advertising

Much of marketing is organic and will take time to generate results.

Paid advertising is one way to accelerate that.

The downside is, you have to pay to play.

Facebook ads, other social media ads, print ads, PPC, and direct response fall into this category.

Public relations  

PR is about building relationships and capitalizing on the optics of your business.

It can be both online and offline. Press releases, conferences, events, interviews, and sponsorships are a few examples.

As you can see, you have no shortage of options when it comes to marketing.

I’ve given an overview of the main ones, but you are not limited to them.

Step #2: Choose the channels aligned with your business goals

You now have an idea of what’s available to you.

It’s time to make a list of all the channels that will serve your business.

Start with your business goals.

Some marketing channels are better suited to achieving a particular goal than others.

Goal setting is a flexible thing. You can make changes as your business evolves.

This means that the marketing channel you use right now may not be viable in the future, once your business progresses.

Consider what stage your business is in and what your goal for the next 90 days is.

According to Jay Abraham, there are only three ways to grow a business:

• Increase the number of customers
• Increase the frequency with which a customer buys from you
• Increase the amount that a customer spends on a purchase

Your business goals should serve one of these three phases of business.

If you’re still at the first stage, your goals might be brand awareness, lead generation, and customer acquisition.

If you already have a list of buyers, your goal might be to increase sales.

What if you already have a reliable stream of sales?

There’s no such thing as too many sales, but your goal at this point might be to maximize profits and retain customers.

Here’s what most businesses are prioritizing:

These may or may not apply to you. Just focus on what your business needs at the moment.

This way, you don’t set goals that aren’t yet attainable.

By extension, it ensures you don’t waste time and resources on a marketing channel that won’t serve your business well.

How do you select a channel that’s right for your business goals?

Before you even start testing, do some elimination.

I’ll give you a few examples, and you’ll have to apply this knowledge to your business.

Let’s say your goal is brand awareness.

PR, social media, content marketing, and even paid advertising can be used for this purpose.

The easy solution?

Eliminate the channels that would be less efficient.

For instance, paid advertising won’t be the most useful for brand awareness.

But for sales or lead generation? It can crush it! (If you know what you’re doing, that is).

Take a look at some of the business goals that apply to the content marketing channel. It will give you an idea of what to aim for:

It’s also important to take into consideration what feels the most organic for your business.

If you’re selling something like hoverboards or bicycles, would blog posts serve you the best?

Not likely.

These products are lifestyle-based. You’d be better off using a visual channel that will allow you to provide an experience to potential customers.

Immediately, social media comes to mind.

Then you begin to narrow it down to Instagram or YouTube.

This is a logical process that won’t take you more than an hour to figure out.

You don’t have to find that one channel yet. Just eliminate what won’t work, and rank your remaining options.

Step #3: Narrow down the list by going where your audience is

At this point, you’ve got a few options. It’s time to prioritize.

This one is easy. Find your potential customers.

A marketing channel can serve your goal, but there are many platforms you can focus on.

If your customers are not hanging out there, you’ll be wasting your time.

Note:

The point of this article is not to find you a slam dunk marketing channel right away.

That would take testing and experimentation.

The goal here is to help you validate your chosen channel. This way, you know it’s viable before you start testing it.

Here’s my best advice for finding out where the attention is:

• SEO is a great place to start
• competitive research is a must
• you can’t go wrong with social media

Let’s look at each of these.

SEO

A majority of online interactions begin with a search engine (mostly Google).

The first step is to evaluate the SEO landscape by searching for keywords in your industry.

You’ll find out what your audience is searching for and how often.

This is not just essential for finding out what’s happening online. Let’s say there aren’t that many monthly searches for your keywords.

You may want to focus on an offline channel.

Or you may decide this is a gap you can take advantage of.

You won’t know until you do some basic keyword research.

A simple tool like the Google Keyword Planner will work.

Type in your keyword to get search volume data.

Competition research

If you want to know where your customers hang out, find your competitors.

First, identify the competitors.

A simple Google search will do the trick. The biggest players are those who rank on the first page of SERP.

Once you’ve got a solid list, use a tool like SimilarWeb for your research.

Enter your competitor’s website and press enter:

You’ll find a range of data. Pay attention to “Traffic source:”

For Quick Sprout, the highest traffic source is search.

Naturally, my primary marketing channel would be SEO and blogging.

Direct is a close second, but it’s a bit trickier to figure out.

It represents people who type in your URL directly. It doesn’t tell you where these people first came into contact with your business.

The next step is to check out the individual breakdown of each traffic source.

You can see where referrals are coming from:

Since SEO is my dominant traffic source, I’ll pay particular attention to my top organic keywords:

You can also see which social media platform is the most popular. Mine is Facebook.

Social media

I like to take social media research a bit further.

The tool to use is BuzzSumo.

Type in your competitor’s domain. You can also search for a keyword:

You’ll see all the top performing content on the site and which social platform generated the most shares.

Using SimilarWeb, we saw that Facebook was Quick Sprout’s top platform.

BuzzSumo tells the same story:

If you want to take this a bit further, you can go to these individual platforms and do some sleuthing.

Check out the groups with the most members, listen in on the conversations, and get a feel for what your audience is focusing on.

When you go through this process, you may find you have two or three reliable options.

Which do you select?

I have three criteria.

Cheap. Fast. Easy.

You want to pick a channel that won’t cost you too much, if anything, to get started.

You also want a channel that doesn’t have a steep learning curve. Otherwise, you may spend too much time and money trying to figure it out.

Lastly, pick the channel that will allow you to make the most headway, quickly.

You must pick one, so use these criteria as the final litmus test.

Conclusion

Selecting a new marketing channel is a tall order.

It’s important you take some time to validate a potential channel before you focus on it.

Marketing requires time, which can easily be wasted on ineffective strategies.

It also requires cash.

It means you’d want to see a solid return on both your time and money investment.

The surest way to secure an attractive ROI is to vet potential marketing channels first.

You can then test and double down on what’s working.

Most people don’t go through this process of validation and testing.

As long as you keep experimenting and tweaking your strategy based on your results, you’ll have a significant advantage over your competitors.

What is your most effective marketing channel?

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