Going Beyond Ads: Why Investing in Conversion is Crucial for E-commerce

Paid advertising continues to be a sore point for many eCommerce businesses, especially with increasing competition online on virtually all channels.

In 2021, paid search cost-per-click traffic increased by 41% year-over-year. Meanwhile, total ad spend increased by 28%. One would expect this to result in improved traffic from both sources — instead, Google's paid search traffic declined by 10%. 

For a small to mid-sized business, the average pay-per-click ad campaign costs about $10,000 per month while the average conversion rate for an eCommerce website across all visitors is only 2.86%. And when businesses both large and small hit pause on their ad spend in 2021, most saw no change in sales numbers or business outcomes.

It's a mistake we've seen retailers make on more than one occasion. They put the cart before the horse by pouring their budget into advertising and awareness without looking at the other side of the coin. The return on investment of such efforts is rarely a success by any metric. 

The simple truth is that paying for traffic in any capacity, whether through search or PPC campaigns is meaningless if your website fails to convert. Paid ads still have a place in digital retail. However, expending your budget on them without also investing in conversion will inevitably be a waste of both time and money. 

Why Conversion Optimization and Paid Ads Go Hand-in-Hand

Consider the following analogy.

Seeking to increase awareness, a small outlet store spends tens of thousands on radio ads and billboards. Before long, people all over their city knows who they are. Unfortunately, anyone who opts to visit this retailer is met with an unpleasant surprise.

The storefront is run-down. The products are nowhere near their promised quality. And the store only carries items for an incredibly narrow demographic of people. 

The majority of visitors ultimately leave without buying a single item — if they even enter the store at all. 

When you put all your eggs into the basket of paid traffic, you're functionally doing the exact same thing as the outlet store described above. Certainly, you might draw more leads. But how many of those leads actually convert to paying customers?

Unless you want to keep pointlessly throwing away your money, you need to change your approach. Before you launch your next PPC campaign or pay for your next sponsored placement on the search engine results page, we highly recommend the following: 

• Make the checkout process as seamless as possible. 
• Ensure your website performs optimally on all devices, especially mobile. 
• Streamline your site's user interface. 
• Include product reviews. 
• Simplify your support process.
• Implement a generous return policy on all products. 
• Allow users to leave reviews on purchased items. 
• Secure your website with SSL and HTTPS. 
• Improve your product listings. 
  

That last one is where small and mid-sized merchants often run into trouble. It may be that they lack the budget to provide quality product photos. Perhaps they sell luggage, apparel, or home decor, all items for which the digital purchase process is sub-optimal.

But it doesn't need to be. There's another avenue for optimizing your product listings, an incredibly compelling option that many of your competitors have likely yet to explore. Augmented reality. 

The Power of Augmented Reality to Convert 

Shifting your budget from paid traffic to conversion through augmented reality is about more than simple metrics. It's about providing a better overall experience to your audience. Wrapping AR functionality into your product listings allows customers to visualize their prospective purchase in an unprecedented fashion, while also improving the quality of your product photography. 

Product imagery, after all, is every bit as important as interactivity to the shopping experience. It's why our platform can also create photorealistic lifestyle images from your product photos. It's ideal for a business that lacks the budget to hire a professional studio for each image, or even one that simply wants to save on costs. 

As for interactivity, customers can see how a piece of jewelry would look on their person. They can place a new couch in their living room so they have an idea of how it fits with their decor. They can compare the sizes of various pieces of luggage, and even see if their belongings would fit. 

In case you aren't yet sold on the value of such an investment, have a look at the impact Tangiblee's resource-light AR has had on the conversion rates of our clients: 

• Luxury retailer MCM Worldwide experienced a 201% increase in conversion rate and a 204% increase in revenue per visit. 
• Bag and apparel outlet The Little Green Bag reduced its return rate from 40% to 20%, and improved its conversion rate by 68.4%. 
• F. Hinds Jewellry, a UK-based retailer founded nearly two centuries ago, saw a 31% increase in user engagement and increased conversions by 19.1%.  
• eCommerce furniture outlet HipVan reduced returns by 15%, improved conversions by 7.97%, and increased revenue per visitor by 9.1%. 

How Tangiblee Can Boost Conversions Where It Counts

It’s no secret eCommerce is becoming increasingly competitive. Being successful today requires more than a strong brand and great products. 

You need to create a personalized eCommerce experience that supports your customers through all stages of the customer journey. 

Tangiblee makes all of this possible by enhancing customer confidence. Instead of having to decide whether or not they like a particular product based on photos that may or may not be relevant to them, a customer can directly interact with the product. They can see whether or not a purchase is a good idea before they check out. 

It also has a minimal impact on overhead and site performance. Implementation is simple, requiring only a single line of code. And prices are customized based on a business's specific needs, meaning you'll never have to worry about overspending. 

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Are you looking to turn your product catalog into an interactive experience that improves both organic and paid conversions? Book a demo today and see why top brands trust Tangiblee.