Category: Growth Academy

This Category includes articles with educational content to help businesses grow and succeed

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Growth Academy

5 Stages of Customer Awareness

5 levels of Eugene Schwartz
The 5 levels of Awareness is a concept invented by Eugene Schwartz, a genius marketer and copywriter.

Introduction: Leading your Customer from “Total Ignorance” to “Problem Solved”

Picture that, at its best, advertising seamlessly enters the conversation of their customers.  It’s not disjointed, it’s not ill-timed, and it provides a solution to a problem they’ve maybe considered… or might be totally unaware of.

Here enters the difficulty of effective marketing: each customer you reach out to may be at a different level of “customer awareness.”  Does the customer already know you exist, and they are in the process of comparing you to competitors?  Or are they so behind the 8-ball that they don’t even know they have a problem? 

Inspired by marketing guru Eugene Schwartz, this blog post explores how properly framing the “five levels of customer awareness” brings precision and personalization to your customer outreach.  It is essential to make sure you don’t come across as “spammy” or “pushy” while marketing your services online.

Different Segments of the Audience Require Different Messaging

We’ve made clear in previous posts that custom audiences are essential for honing your online ad campaigns.  However, we haven’t yet discussed that the level of “product awareness” everyone has may vary wildly.  You don’t want to send the same ad to a customer regular as you do to someone who has never even considered your solution to the problem.  It will either come across as pushy, repetitive,  or go directly over their heads.  Below are the five stages of customer awareness listed out:

1. Unaware:

  • The customer is completely unaware or unable to frame their problem.  You can help by providing educational, entertaining, and engaging content to make them aware of the issue!

2. Problem Aware

  • The customer now knows there’s a problem, but are stuck or too busy to consider solutions.  Emphasize the priority of the issue and how they could minimize their stress by considering a solution!

3. Solution Aware

  • Here is the transition point.  You tell the customer that your store has the proper solution to the problem you framed earlier.

4. Product Aware

  • Now, the customer is fully engaged with solving their issue… but they haven’t decided between you and other competitors.  You need to expand on your product’s benefits, and why buying from your store will exceed their expectations.

5. Most Aware

  • These are customer regulars who appreciate genuine outreach and “special offers,” like VIP coupons and the sort.  Because they have a proven track record of buying from your store, feel free to sweeten the deal for them!

Real-Life Example of Ad Messaging Through the “5 Stages of Customer Awareness”

Let’s stay you’re a hair styling company selling unique, all natural hair products.  The customer, using the same cheap hair products for years now, is totally unaware of the damage being done to their hair.  So, you start your targeted ad campaign with the following intent:

A. Make customers aware of the problem with the chemicals in certain hair products – such as sulfates, parabens, or formaldehyde.  The Ad banner could read, “Chemicals in common shampoos could be doing damaging your hair and health!”
B. Offer a solution.  It could read, “How to pick the perfect hair products for your type of hair”
C. Now it’s time to push your e-commerce site!  The ad banner reads, “Check out our website for the most healthy, nourishing products for each hair type!”
D. At this point, the customer’s cursor is hovering over “click to buy” – You may want to offer these folks a deal-sweetener to close the deal.  This could include free shipping on their first purchase or maybe 10% off.

Conclusion: Organizing your Custom Audience Based on the 5 Levels of Awareness

For some business owners, organizing custom audiences based on their awareness is a bridge too far.  It seems overly complicated, bogged down in details, and out of reach.  Designing specific ad banners catering to each level of awareness is quite the undertaking – but it is the key to boosting sales to your e-commerce store.  To have to marketing message resonate with buyers, you need to show a dynamic evolution in your customer outreach.

So, try a free demo from Ad360!  We can help analyze your target audience based on their awareness, generating custom ads tailored to each stage of the process.  We’ll provide support on how to organize and run the promotions step-by-step, funneling your audience from totally unaware to loyal customers 😊

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Growth Academy

The End of Google Universal Analytics

End of Google Universal Analytics
Google announces on March 16, 2022, that they would be sunsetting Universal Analytics.

Introduction: Google Announces they are sunsetting Universal Analytics

E-Commerce business owners beware! The previous generation of Google Analytics – Universal Analytics or UA in short – will soon be sunset, Google announced today.  What is still the most widespread version of Google Analytics used in e-commerce websites will become unusable starting July 1, 2023. This means that it’s only a matter of time before everyone is using Google Analytics 4 (aka GA4). GA4, which was first introduced in July 2019, comes with many changes.  The data analysis is more granular, user-friendly, and up-to-date on privacy controls.  We’ll get into some of that below while to explain the significance of this announcement!

Before we do, it is important to note that, for existing business owners, historical data cannot be transferred over from Google Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4.  However, there is no need to get worked up – universal analytics will be sunset only next year, meaning business owners can learn to leverage the perks of Google Analytics 4 alongside their Universal analytics account in the meantime.  That means as you “learn the ropes” to leverage GA4, you can continue using your existing Google Universal Analytics account.

That being said, business owners will want to migrate sooner rather than later to Google Analytics 4 – learn about some of the key feature updates below!

Integration with All Device Across Web & Mobile

First, it’s important to note that Google Analytics 4 will streamline and consolidate user data from both web and mobile platforms.  Google’s new system will empower business owners to track user data across each device they use, painting a more complete picture of user behavior.  

Business owners used to need a Firebase and Universal analytics account to share data, but GA4 brings all the customer data from mobile and web under one roof.  Multiple data streams – all from different devices and web apps – can be viewed together seamlessly. 

No More Cookies

We know they sound cute, but user cookies are a key weakness in user privacy.  At this point, they are basically archaic, and tightening user privacy laws will make cookie tracking technology obsolete within the next few years.

Google Analytics 4 gets out in front of this issue by preparing for this “cookieless world.”  All data, while connected to a web ID for the user, is completely anonymized.  Powerful software fills in the gaps when you are modeling user behavior, meaning businesses can still predict customer behavior effectively while not jeopardizing their personal data.

 If you rely on third-party data to collect user info, it is time to get acquainted with Google Analytics 4.  It will allow you to continue gathering valuable user data without endangering their privacy or coming across as an “invasive” online company.

Everything is an Event

While Google Universal Analytics struggled to patch together a coherent picture of user behavior, Google Analytics 4 treats every user action as an “event,” creating a constellation of user data that clearly tells a story through their online behavior. 

Before, business owners had to essentially infer parts of user data because the data simply was not streamlined or categorized together.  You had to pick through different data streams, identify the same user, and manually put together a picture of the user’s online behavior.  With Google Analytics 4, every single event is tracked and stored in the same system. 

For example, imagine a potential customer first checked out your site on a Facebook mobile ad.  Then, after getting home from work, they visited your online website from their computer, where they “signed up” for an account and e-mail alerts.  After that, later in the evening while browsing on their phone, they receive an email with a “special deal” and decide to download your business’s app to formally place their first order.  Google analytics 4 would trace that entire series of decisions, recording each as a unique “event” that illustrates how users are discovering and utilizing your online business!

Furthermore, these user events are organized to provide advanced analysis reports and helpful data visualizations that far exceed the power of Google Universal Analytics.  Purchase probabilities, funnel reports, custom audience segment overlap, visualizations of user activity down to the “per minute” detail are just some of the features business owners can now leverage with the release of Google Analytics 4.

Conclusion: Ad360 Can Help Businesses Migrate to GA4 & Fully Leverage New Features

Clients of Ad360 will receive support transferring data and migrating to the new Google Analytics 4 interface.  While the new Google Analytics interface does look different, remember it serves the same purpose: helping online businesses increase sales and thrive in the e-commerce ecosystem.

This is a significant step forward in data privacy and user data analysis, and we are so excited to be at the forefront of the upcoming Google analytics revolution!  If you want support when learning how to best leverage the new features of Google Analytics 4, reach out for a free call with Ad360 today!

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Growth Academy

Budgeting for Facebook Ad Success

Facebook-ads-budget
Budgeting for Facebook Ads Success

Introduction: A Dollar Spent, 10 Dollars Earned

Return on Ads Spent (ROAS) is a key metric for companies advertising online.  Businesses may have budgets of different sizes, but many of the core elements of running the campaign remain the same.

Successfully setting a daily Facebook ad budget, testing different ad sets, and engaging the target audience multiple times are all key to growing your Shopify sales.  A little marketing planning can go a long way here, so make sure to have a blueprint in place before you begin!

Setting a Daily Budget

First off, Facebook ads provides an option of setting a “daily” or “lifetime” budget – we’d opt for the daily budget while starting out.  It provides a chance for more flexibility as the promotional campaign developers.

An amazing feature of Facebook ads is that Shopify businesses do not have to “break the bank” to reach their audience – even $10/day is enough to have your ads be sent out across the 2.7 billion Facebook users!  If you consider yourself a “Small-to-Medium” sized store at the moment, aim for a daily budget between $10-30.  Your ads will be seen, and the data collected from their performance metrics will be invaluable in how you further develop the campaign.

Test Ad Sets before scaling up

When framing your Facebook ad campaign, remember it’s not just one ad banner you are sending out your entire audience!  Remember from our post on Facebook custom audiences that effective Facebook ad campaigns segment their audiences based on key factors (e.g. – demographics, location, interest).  For each custom Facebook audience, you likely will roll out a different “ad set.” 

Each ad set is specifically targeted to one of your custom audiences, and from there, you can try different versions of the ad as a form of A/B testing.  For example, you may have three ad sets prepped for three distinct custom audiences.  Within each ad set, you roll out two versions to see which one better drives engagement and boost traffic to your store!

Better to Reach an Audience of 100 10 times than 100,000 people Once

Finally, please note it’s better to concentrate your ad sets to smaller audiences you can reach multiple times, rather than blasting out a single ad to larger audiences.  Marketing research has shown that customers need to see your ads 7-8 times before they consider purchasing something from your store. 

Thus, it’s more efficient to have a small audience you show multiple ads to rather than a broad audience who briefly see your ads only once.  Facebook ads breaks up these factors into awareness, consideration, and conversion.  You may have also heard of concepts such as AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) that conceptualize how customers are funneled to drive sales to your store. As you scale up your ads, remember the average customer needs exposure to your store’s promotion multiple times.  Otherwise, your ROAS will suffer.

Conclusion: Who can Help Analyze my Facebook Ad Data?

After running a Facebook ad campaign, setting a daily budget, and releasing your various ad sets, it can feel confusing how to make sense of the data collected – that’s where Ad360 steps in!  We specialize in analyzing your customer data and subsequently optimizing future campaigns.  Better ads mean more sales, so please reach out to try a free demo by Ad360 today!

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Growth Academy

3 marketing techniques to increase revenue

3 marketing techniques to increase revenue
Proven techniques used by Netflix and Apple used to increase revenue.

Welcome to Ecommerce Success by Ad360, the channel where we share tips, news, best practices to help business owners be happy, productive, and successful!

In today’s video, we’re reviewing a website shared on Reddit.

Firstly, they are doing a lot of things right! The website is beautiful, the content is great, the brand feels personal and relatable, and the products are beautiful!

In the video, we review the website, explaining how the business owner applied e-commerce website design best practices to make an efficient store.

Secondly, we review a free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool from Google to evaluate the page performance score. This matters increasingly as Google search engine results are now ranked partially based on the page experience (including loading speed).

Lastly, the video introduces 3 marketing concepts which are proven to increase revenue considerably, and which we believe could be hlpful for this website:

1/ Value & pricing ladder

2/ Price anchoring

3/ Compromise effect

Ssuccessful companies like Apple or Netflix use these marketing techniques to increase the average order value and their sales.

3 Marketing TECHNIQUES to INCREASE revenue

If you’d like us to do a more in-depth analysis of your advertising setup / targeting options / campaigns data, please book a free consulting call with Ad360’s team.

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Growth Academy

Deal with Custom Audiences in Facebook

Custom Adueinces in Facebook Ads
Use Custom Audiences with Facebook Ads

Custom Audiences = Complexity Explosion

In our previous article reviewing the basics of Facebook Ads, we touched on the importance of building custom audiences with Facebook’s features. 

Age, gender, location, and Interests can all be modified for custom audiences… and… well… the sheer number of combinations that can be made from these factors alone is remarkably complex.  Even the term for its growing sophistication takes your head for a spin… combinatorial explosions.  Sheesh. 

But no worries – this blog post takes a deeper dive into the complexity that comes with building multi-factor custom audiences on Facebook.  While each essential for succeeding with a modest marketing budget on Facebook, so all Shopify business owners, take out a piece of paper and #2 pencil!  This analysis goes “all in” on the complexity of creating custom audiences for Facebook

Why Are Custom Audiences So Important for Facebook Ads?

The first point to note:  you need to build multiple custom audience combinations for marketing success on Facebook.  It’s a response to the sea of 2 billion users out there, being exposed to ad banner after ad banner as they scroll down their news feed. 

Think of it like this – if you had the time and resources to create a unique, tailor-made ad for each individual customer, sales would increase infinitely. So long as the data-gathering methods are clearly stated, consumers vastly prefer customized ads to overly generalized ones. Because you can create up to 500 custom audiences on Meta, we suggest taking full advantage of that by creating more custom audiences, not less.

Now, here’s where the concept of “combinatorial explosions” comes in – curating an individual ad for anything over a few customers is impossible.  That would mean creating a “custom audience” of one, potentially thousands of times over.  What if you are trying to reach a customer base of 50,000?

The Basics of Building Custom Facebook Audiences

After clicking “custom audience” on Facebook ad’s interface, there are four broad categories you can break the “audience factors” into:

Data source

Helps you target potential customers based on how they have engaged with your online store so far.  Have they visited the site already?  Specific web pages?  Have they spent a substantial amount of time browsing?  And are you pulling from web traffic, Facebook page engagement, Instagram, or some other data source?  Remember, these customers may be in varying stages of the “AIDA” framework (awareness, Interest, Desire, Action).  Therefore, breaking down your custom audience by analyzing their story through data points will inform how to further engage them to increase sales.

Demographics

Pretty straightforward – are you aiming for male, female, or nonbinary audiences?  What age brackets?  For example, if you are selling cheap vintage tees with a female cut, you are likely targeting women ages 16-35.  Overall, demographics are a key component of creating effective custom audiences that drive sales.

Location

Aiming to reach the entire USA is far more costly than trying to reach a single state or region.  So, make sure to tinker with different location settings based on your customer data.  If you cast too broad a net, you’ll dilute the ability to keep engaging with that customer base; it will become too cost-prohibitive.

Interests

This is where things get interesting.  Stacking and layering interests is key to creating target audiences.  As you narrow down and tailor each custom audience, you can add interests that create a fuller picture of the users you are trying to reach.  Most importantly, focus on the fact you can target individuals with “Interest A or Interest B,” as well as, “Interest A and also Interest B.”  Both serve very different functions, as explained below!

“Stacking” or “Layering Interests” – Be Specific as Possible to Increase Ad Effectiveness

Specificity is crucial to have your ads compete with larger-budget businesses.  For example, you could adjust the settings to advertise only to males 18-34 on the East Coast who have an expressed interest in sports or sports apparel

Even more, you can “stack” or “layer” interests to bring laser-precision to your custom audiences.  Using the example above, interest stacking could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel or have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages!

In contrast to “stacking,” interest layering more effectively narrows down your target audience. You could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel and also have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages!  Effectively “layering” interests for your custom audiences mean each ad creative will be tailor-made for different segments of your audience.  The more layers, the more precise the audience.  You can also exclude certain segments of these audiences to make the ad campaign’s target outreach even more efficient

Depending on the size of your business, the “sweet spot” may be anywhere from 50,000 to 1 million+  Just remember… the budget goes up the larger audience you have!  On modest marketing budgets, it’s better to reach an audience of 1,000 with multiple ads to drive engagement, rather than reach an audience of 100,000 just once.  The latter will be breezed over by users, driving no traffic nor sales to your store.

Conclusion: Deal Better with the Complexity of Custom Audiences thanks to Automated Software

Figuring out which custom audiences to create, based on which data sources, demographics, locations, and interests, becomes an exercise in compounding complexity.  There are hypothetically hundreds to thousands of effective custom audience combinations for your store, and knowing which ones optimize your store for sales success is a full time job, if even possible.

Therefore, we recommend deploying automated software provided by Ad360 to bring laser-precision to your custom audience curation for Faceboook Ads.  Not only do we specialize in analyzing user data for promotional campaigns, the time saved going through it yourself will be a massive burden lifted from your shoulders. 

Concluding, Ad360 offers a free demo to help optimize your Faceboook ads and custom audience curation. We’ll handle the complexity of combinatorial explosions for you 😊  Cheers, and happy selling!

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Growth Academy

Boost your Shopify Store with Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads for Shopify
Boost your Shopify store sales thanks to Facebook Ads

Simple, Bold Strategies to Boost Sales with Facebook Ads

Introduction – Reach a Sea of Two Billion

While Gen Z may complain that Facebook is “lame” now, or “Meta” as we should be calling now, that is far from the truth when it comes to using Facebook Ad campaigns.  2 billion users is nothing to scoff at, and Facebook has built a remarkable ad platform to help Shopify business owners reach a wider target audience.

This blog post examines how Facebook ads are unique from Google Ads, as well as how targeting potential customers based on interests – rather than preferred keywords – could be the keystone to increasing your sales!

The Basics: Account Setup & Goals

First things first, you need a Facebook business account set up with an ad account in place.  Once you have Pixel (Facebook’s answer to Google Analytics) activated, connect your Shopify store!  You can do so by downloading the “Connect Meta” app on Shopify.

Next up, pick the “goal” of your ad.  If you were in the military, this would act as the primary objective – we’d recommend starting with “boosting traffic” or “conversions” to start, but Meta lists 11 different objectives here.  Depending on where you feel your target customers are in the “sales funnel,” you may want to simply bring awareness, get views, generate leads, or drive engagement.

Target Audiences: Time to Pick your Lane

Perhaps the most important decision for any ad campaign is designating your target audience.  Facebook allows you to segment customers into the following classifications:

1. Age

Self-explanatory.  Are you targeting the Gen Z or old folks?  Picking a specific age demographic usually helps your ad campaigns effectiveness and efficiency in driving sales.

2. Location

Again, straight-forward.  You can narrow down what region of the world you are placing your ads.  With Ad360’s software supporting your Facebook ad campaign, you can narrow down the search to a single city block!

3. Interests

This is where Facebook Ads can differ significantly in their function from Google ads.  Because Facebook collects profile data on all 2 billion+ users, setting customer interests can focus on their hobbies, interest categories, page likes, searchable keywords, Facebook usage, or online buying history. 

Pick hobbies listed on the Facebook Ad dashboard that align with your product (e.g. – a basketball player is targeted with Nike shoes ad).  Interests listed in their “Information about me” (e.g. – a fashion lover is targeted by a vintage clothing site) can also be important to consider when optimizing your ad placements for maximum sales growth!

“Stacking” or “Layering Interests” – Get as Specific as Possible to Increase Ad Effectiveness

Specificity is crucial to have your ads compete with larger-budget businesses.  For example, you could adjust the settings to advertise only to males 18-34 on the East Coast who have an expressed interest in sports or sports apparel

Even more, you can “stack” or “layer” interests to bring laser-precision to your custom audiences.  Using the example above, interest stacking could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel or have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages!

Interest Layering more effectively narrows down your target audience; it could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel and also have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages! 

In short, effectively “layering” interests for your custom audiences mean each ad creative will be tailor-made for different segments of your audience.  The more layers, the more precise the audience.  You can also exclude certain segments of these audiences to make the ad campaign’s target outreach even more efficient.

Conclusion: What to Do if Facebook Ads Feels Too Technical or Overwhelming

In conclusion, there are a lot of moving variables that factor into your Facebook ad campaigns.  Straddling this granular level of detail over several social media platforms can definitely make your head spin.  If you feel you could use some support analyzing and bringing all your different ad channels under one roof, reach out for a free demo by Ad360 today!  We’ll make it our mission to optimize your next Facebook ad campaign for success 😊

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Growth Academy

Google Ad Secrets for your Shopify Store

Google Ads for Shopify
Improve your results on Shopify with Google Ads

Introduction – Being “Seen” on Google Search

With 8.5 billion searches executed a day, Google Ads are a primary promotional tool for Shopify owners.  However, it’s not as easy as “1, 2 3,” to suddenly begin boosting traffic to your store and converting sales with Google ads.  In fact, a large majority of Shopify store owners express a certain level of discontent when trying to optimize their Google ads efforts. 

One even said, “It’s at the point where I would pay someone to do my Google Ad campaigns if they know what they are doing.”

… Well guess what!  This blog provides the 360° view on how to organize Google ad campaigns to maximized sales.  There is a way to compete with retail giants with Google ads, so long as you are razor sharp in establishing your target audience, network, and keyword phrases.  Read below to learn how to approach your Google ad campaigns for increased sales and Shopify success!

Basics of Setting up Google Ad Campaigns

To start, let’s establish that Google Shopping ads reach over a billion users, and 75% of shoppers regularly use Google products when browsing online.  While starting a Google Ad campaign does cost money upfront, it is a worthy investment if you can establish a strong marketing strategy beforehand. 

First, you need to establish a location and network – what region are you trying to reach with your ads?  The Entire USA?  A region like the West Coast?  A single state, city, or neighborhood?  Precision here will save you money, so make sure you know exactly who you want to reach

From there, Google has multiple networks to run ads on, but we’ll focus on search engine ads and Google Display ads to provide the basics.  Simply put, search engine ads are the “promoted results” that appear at the top of the page when users conduct a search.  With the right keywords, your products will be displayed right alongside giants like Wal Mart and Amazon.  That way, shoppers are exposed to your store, appearing as just a viable option as any!  The exposure from promoted search ads drive sales for Shopify stores, so they are worth considering.

The second major network are Google display ads, which appear as those little banners or sidebars that pop up while users search the web.  In other words, a potential customer may be looking up news or their favorite content from a Google search, and the display network is smart enough to follow them and, should you place a bid, display your ad across the internet for searches that originated with Google.  The Google Display Network reaches 90% of all internet users around the world so… yeah.  Worth checking out to increase your Shopify store sales 😊

Keywords, Keywords, KEYwords

It takes a bit of vision and research, but picking the right keywords for each ad campaign is a crucial step to optimizing their success.  Every business and niche product has a different set of keywords, but it’s best to ask, “What are most likely the words and phrases people type in when looking for a product like mine?”  Conduct market research from there to make sure you align your keywords with what likely customers type into the Google search bar.

Generating Quality Ad Banners

After conducting the necessary market research, it is time to tap into your inner graphic designer, and create a quality ad.  While they understand their product intimately, a lot of Shopify store owners struggle to make their brand stand out or “pop” off the page through ads.  Be aware that Ad360 provides instant ad banner generation with its software.  We extract the products and pricing directly from your Shopify store, providing over a dozen options to pick from.  That way, you can run effective A/B testing to see which banners best increase sales to your store!

Conclusion: Delegate Google Ad Campaigns to Free Up Time

Now, making sense of your store’s Google analytics readout can be quite a chore and very time-consuming.  Ad360 makes it our businesses to evaluate customer data & google analytics for you!

That way, you can focus on quality products and service, while we handle maximizing the Return on Ads Spent (ROAS) for your store.  If you are interested in delegating these Google Ad Campaigns, reach out for a free demo by Ad360 today!

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Growth Academy

Make Sense of Bounce Rate To Boost Sales!

Bounce Rate
What is the Bounce Rate on your website?

Introduction – Bouncing Across the Web

When you browse the web, consider how quickly you can navigate to a page, decide in a fraction of a second, “Mmmm… no.”  Then, you repeat the same bouncy activity on a new site, hopping webpage to webpage until you finally find a landing page that catches your attention.

… What about all those pages you bounced through without a second thought??  What if your business ends up like that?!!?

That is why analyzing your online business’s bounce rate is so important!

This blog covers the basics of bounce rates, the percent of visitors who navigate from your site after seeing only one page.  We’ll cover how to frame your bounce rate among other key analytics, as well as marketing strategies to reduce the bounce rate.  Reduced bounce rate = increased sales, so it’s worth a quick look!

Bounce Rate: A “Bird’s Eye View” of Your Site Activity

It’s best to think of bounce rate as a general “top-down” web metric.  While bounce rates do not tell the whole story of your site, they do give an interesting perspective on how many folks click through your page without thinking twice. 

For optimizing your online store and increasing sales, it’s worth paying attention to a fundamental metric like bounce rate.  Just remember it is only one piece of the Google analytics puzzle, so there is hope for your business even if it currently has a high bounce rate!

Key Steps to Improve your Bounce Rate & Increase Sales

With that said, below are key steps you can take today to improve your bounce rate and boost customer sales.  Review to improve your online marketing savvy:

  • Page load time

Starting off with a straightforward one here – your webpages should take no longer than 2-3 seconds to load!  Why? Over half of visitors will bounce after a 3 second delay.

Run a quick test yourself on a device outside your network to see how quickly your site loads.  You may to compress site data, reduce site redirections, streamline Javascript/HTML  code, improve server infrastructure, or use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to help boost up your page load time.  User Google’s pagespeed tool linked here to check your load time!  Sometime as simple as reducing the size of images on a page can improve its speed, so make sure to check your page load time out!

  • “Let your webpages breathe”

Remember the example in the intro – browsing the web is usually a passive activity.  Your site must cater to the visitor, not the other way around.  If the webpage they land on is cluttered, they’ll say, “Oh geez, I don’t what I’m supposed to look at,” and move on. 

Thus, it’s best to break up your webpage info. Do not be afraid of having some blank space in between content!  In fact, it “lets the user up” to breath and gives them a second to process your site’s presentation.

  • Use heat map analytics to see exactly where visitors’ eyeballs are first drawn

Heat map analytics can be a useful tool for showing exactly where visitors are drawn to most on your webpage.  The heat map will “light up” orange/red, informing you where their eyes are first drawn to.  Knowing that key info helps you reconstruct the user experience from their point of view.  Doing so is a surefire way to increase your online sales!

  • Cut down on excessive widgets and sidebars

Having key widgets or sidebars helps bring a helpful dynamic element to your site.  However, some businesses use them to the point it overtakes and distracts from the actual content!  Moreover, added sidebars could also contain Javascript or HTML errors that cause issues for users. Tactfully employ widgets, as they will potentially sap your customer’s attention away from placing an order.

  • Give each webpage a central focus that funnels visitors to a sales deal

Help visitors keep their eye on the prize!  Each webpage should contain a healthy balance of content and “call to action” buttons that funnel them along to the checkout page.  In other words, make sure each webpage brings it back to your “bread and butter” for increasing sales.

  • Clear, easy search bar that covers all your pages

The best-performing websites have an easy-to-use, fluid search bar that searches all content within the site.  Think of it like constructing a “Mini-Google” that helps visitors sift through all the products and pages you have available!  The quick the search bar loads as the user types, the more likely they are to purchase products and boost your sales.

  • Optimize mobile versions of your online store for increased sales

Some Shopify owners think they are all set after setting up a “desktop” version of their site… but remember we live in the Instagram Era.  You neeeeeeeeed to craft a mobile-friendly version of your store that effectively condenses your webpages down to a phone screen.  This is why successful businesses research creating a separate “app version” of their product.  They want to streamline the mobile user experience to boost their sales!


Conclusion – Ad360 is Here to Help Reduce your Bounce Rate!

If you feel implementing any of the above-mentioned ideas sounds too time-consuming, reach out to try a free demo at Ad360 today!  We offer a free evaluation of your website’s metrics, providing concrete, actionable marketing solutions for your site.  That way, you can be happy, productive, and successful while you increase your sales online 😊 Cheers, we hope that you enjoyed this breakdown of bounce rates!

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Growth Academy

Starting with $0 and 1 product on Shopify

Several persons recently asked us what Shopify themes they should be using and how much it would cost them.

In particular, one person was wondering which theme would suit well a single product store.

The great news is that Shopify has a wonderful Theme store, with themes of all kinds. Regardless of your industry, product, or type of business, we’re sure you’ll find several that you’ll like 🙂

There are nice themes for all sorts of tastes, with varied aspects and designs. Some themes need to be purchased for a once-off fee, but there are Free themes available as well!

In particular, there are 6 great free themes that use the latest architecture called v2.0 Online Store themes. These 6 themes are definitely a great place to start!

In addition to being beautiful and performant, the v2.0 Online Stores by Shopify are very flexible and adaptable, making them good choices for single product websites. Indeed, you want to compensate for the lack of collections by adding more info and context around your brand and product benefits. 

In the video below, we’re reviewing the Dawn, Taste, and Sense themes with the angle of how to adapt them for a single product website and we’re showing at the end of the video a concrete example of a great single product website.

Starting on Shopify with $0 and 1 product – using Themes v2.0

If you’d like help setting up a store, or want a more in-depth analysis of your advertising setup / targeting options / campaigns data, feel free to book a call with Ad360!

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Growth Academy

4 Keys to Unlocking SEO on Shopify

SEO for Shopify
SEO tips for Shopify e-commerce stores

And why it’s VITAL for Sales Growth!

In part III of our “Search Engine Optimization” series (part I and II linked here), we distill the top 4 “keys” to boosting sales with SEO.  Here, you’ll find the breakdown of actions you could take today to increase your store’s visibility on search engines like Google – and they aren’t complicated!  SEO may not be rocket science, but it does take strategic, effective marketing strategies on your part.

Read below for the 360 degree, step-by-step guide to learn the practical application of SEO strategy!

1.      Favicon design

Favicons are those little picture designs that appear in the corner of your website tab. Some popular ones are the multicolored “G” when on Google or the red “play button” icon on Youtube. 

These little guys may seem unimportant, but they carry a lot of weight for SEO ranking!  Simply put, they provide brand awareness, credibility, and customers an easier way to recognize your site.  Even if you have incredible goods in your store and provide top-notch service, customers subconsciously judge you right away if you don’t have a favicon like other sites. 

Picture a dilapidated, old storefront – looks like a tornado just hit it.  Even if the goods inside are amazing, and the store owner is a peach of a guy, chances are you won’t go in!  It looks too worn-down on the outside. You make a snap judgement to move on. 

That’s exactly what will happen to your store without a favicon!  Get one designed asap to increase sales to your Shopify store.

2.      Descriptive heading tags for well-organized site categories

We’ve mentioned in an earlier article the importance of descriptive heading tags to better organize your site’s web pages. Here’s why that is so essential.  Not only do users feel better browsing, Google’s “crawl” software won’t get confused indexing your site.  The clearer the web page headings and the better classification of your info, the more SEO-friendly Google will consider your site… and you will be rewarded with a better ranking 😊

Sometimes, these headings are referred to as “H tags.” Make sure to keep your ducks in a row when building the content on each page.  It should always start with a clear, descriptive, but not-too-wordy title!  That’s a major key to growing your Shopify sales.

3.       Detail meta and product descriptions

On top of good headings, remember that breaking up your info with easy-to-read product descriptions is essential for SEO best practices.  If you have any product listed on your site unaccompanied by at least a few lines of descriptive text, you are doing your online business a disservice!

Make sure you remember that new potential customers browsing your site (as well as Google’s web crawlers), are not experts on your industry like you.  If you can find a way to give them good information, segmented into different tabs on the product description, you give yourself the best chance to land on the first page in Google rankings. 

4.      Research backlinks through Google Search Console

This final key may be the most difficult to implement, as it involves some pretty serious market research: backlinks.  Backlinks are essentially hyperlinks that connect your site to another.  Consider when you look for, say, a new toaster online.  You find a site that lists the “top 10 toasters,” and there are hyperlinks leading to each option – those businesses successfully have been “backlinked,” linking them to more web pages across the web and increasing their visibility.

Now, when starting off green, finding the right sites to reach out to for a backlinks “shoutout” can seem pretty daunting.  So, we recommend starting by checking out Google Search Consoles information on backlinks here.   Make sure to check out what backlinks competitors have, and from there, you can begin your own marketing campaigns to increase the number of affiliate sites that offer a “backlink” to your Shopify store.  More quality backlinks, more sales for your Shopify store 😊

If you feel you would benefit from some SEO expertise to set up your store for success, reach out to try a free demo from Ad360 today!  We can provide a free consultation to evaluate how effective your SEO practices are, and what we can do to bring you up the Google ranks 😊  Cheers, we hope you enjoyed the 4 keys to SEO success!