From Passerby to Customer (phase 1: coming)

In this article we will discuss the "coming" phase of the Ecommerce Performance Model. This phase focuses on bringing attention to your website or web shop. We discuss drivers that play a role in attracting visitors. The article concludes with a number of examples of performance indicators that occur in the "Coming" phase.

Measuring is (not always) knowing

Anyone who is in online retail is probably familiar with the phenomenon. We can measure so much that we don't really know anymore. We are, as it were, drowning in the amount of data at our disposal. A webshop owner faces the challenge of knowing how to use the right data to measure success and which follow-up steps are necessary.

Many online retailers read out how many people came to look and what percentage end up buying. With this we then apply a flat calculation because if you want to sell more you simply generate more traffic.

It's also hard to choose with so many measurement points. Is it the number of visitors, number of sales per visitor, how long a visitor is on your website, the conversion to your shopping cart or the final checkout and clickstreams.

For that reason Vicus developed the E-commerce Performance Model to bring clarity and priority to this sea of data. It is not a software solution that processes mountains of data to provide easily digestible management information. The model allows you to look at the online purchasing process of a webshop and identify the critical moments that contribute to conversion. The E-commerce Performance Model is primarily a model for setting goals and for determining together how these goals are measured and which instruments can be used to influence these parameters.

Abortion risk becomes partial conversion

Because Internet users are experienced consumers, stopping by doesn't simply guarantee more sales. This is certainly true online. We use all sorts of means to convince the visitor to pay a visit to the webshop.

The E-commerce Performance Model leans on the dynamics of the old retail laws and in that sense is "old wine in new bags. For example, a shoe store sells much more shoes when the visitor has tried the shoes on. The strategy of a shoe store is therefore to let you try on shoes, something that used to be seen as an intermediate step before one could checkout. Now that intermediate step is an important success factor for the final sale and became an important goal within the sales process.

In online sales, we also look at these kinds of intermediate steps that a visitor must make before he wants to become a customer. What actions create a greater willingness to buy on the part of the visitor so that he makes that next step? Intermediate steps in the E-commerce Performance Model is a transition from one phase to another: from coming to look, from looking to choosing, from choosing to buying and finally from buying to coming back.

These intermediate steps are also the abandonment moments within the online purchasing process, which we can capture and visualize in a sales funnel. Vicus uses the JourneyFunnel as a sales funnel with which it follows prospects and at the same time customers at the drop-off points. The JourneyFunnel Model thus provides a somewhat broader view of your e-commerce activities. The funnel is almost always funnel-shaped because potential buyers drop out during the process.

Within e-commerce, that funnel tapers even more because we are dealing with the online consumer. Online consumers shop around more and are much more intentional about their purchase and also have high demands on the information that reaches them. The online consumer needs this information to cross the next threshold to make the next step. If this information is not available, they will not buy.

In each step of the E-commerce Performance Model it is important to identify those elements that enable the conversion to the next phase. These elements must be measured and continuously improved based on the results.

Drives that generate visitors

Coming is the first phase of the E-commerce Performance Model where we want to attract visitors to our web shop. We seek the attention of the consumer or business buyer and conduct both online and offline campaigns with the necessary creativity and budget to generate traffic to our webshop. Important drivers in these campaigns are value proposition, brand awareness and findability.

Value Proposition

Maybe it sounds like an open door, but attracting visitors to a webshop starts with a good offer. What do you actually have to offer potential customers? Without a good proposition, you will not attract an audience because you are not fulfilling a need. And one must feel a need to go looking.

Familiarity

Another driver in the Coming phase is familiarity. The idea is that when your brand is often seen, consciously or unconsciously, recognition occurs. When visitors recognize your brand spontaneously, it creates trust in your brand and increases partial or final conversion.

There are many ways to work on your brand awareness. Both the conventional approach and advertising on various channels such as social media, display advertising or search advertising can create the desired exposure for your brand. When you advertise you show your brand in a targeted way to a specific audience. Your brand must of course fill a need and be recognizable as such. People should spontaneously think of the brand when they see the need. Only then will people spontaneously search for it and find your site.

A less targeted approach is to optimize your website or webshop for display within search results. The objective is to appear as relevant as possible to search queries that correspond to your brand. Everyone who enters a search query with relevance to your brand has a chance of seeing your brand within the search results.

Findability

Another important driver in the come phase is findability. Almost every question (and need) of the online consumer starts in the search engine. In the past 10 years e-commerce in the Netherlands grew very fast thanks to the trend of online shopping. The recent global pandemic only accelerated the growth of e-commerce. It is therefore important that your webshop is well visible in search results. And with so much competition within the search results, it is important to be found for the right keywords.

This allows you to advertise or optimize for better findability. The most well-known disciplines are search engine advertising or search engine optimization. Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is the purchase of a spot among the search results with a search advertisement. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the optimization of your webshop in technology, incoming links and content.

Although most of the violence comes from search engine optimization and search engine advertising within search engine marketing, user generated content such as reviews, recommendations and local findability also deserves attention. Besides search engines you can also advertise and optimize for marketplaces and on social media channels.

Search results today are also matched with the location from which the search is made. If you search for plumber then you will most likely be shown plumbers from the area. This is a specific form of findability that you can optimize for and advertise on.

Performance indicators

What are (critical) performance indicators?

Performance indicators measure the performance of processes. They provide insight into the results. Critical performance indicators measure precisely the essential variables by which you measure whether you are on track with respect to your objectives. KPI is the abbreviation for critical performance indicator and the English term is key performance indicator. In short, as a web store you set yourself targets and with critical performance indicators you measure whether those targets have been met.

The E-commmerce Performance Model and kpi's.

The E-commerce Performance Model focuses on making performance visible so that, on the one hand, people think about where to go and then measure and visualize how they are doing. This model does not define the objectives or metrics, but addresses the measurability or performance indicators.

So when performance indicators are essential to success we call them critical performance indicators (Key Performance Indicators). Performance indicators only really mean something if they move. If one week or month is significantly less than the previous one, there is something wrong somewhere. A development over time says much more than an absolute number.

In the Coming phase, visitors may come to the website desired or unwanted. Now the task is to captivate the casual visitor and persuade them to look around the website. Analysis of the click paths, bounce rates and session length reveals the extent to which visitors are interested. In the table below you will find some examples of critical performance indicators you can use within the "Coming" phase.

So it's not about opening a can of critical performance indicators and using them for your website and webshop. It's about understanding the journey of your customers and how they progress in their decision to buy or drop out. Within this customer journey you identify indicators for partial conversions and make them measurable in performance indicators.

Summary

In this article, we discussed the first phase of a customer journey and used the e-commerce perfomance model for

• Recognizing partial conversions;
• Using drivers to attract visitors;
• naming some examples of critical performance indicators.

The next phase of the customer journey and in the E-commerce Performance Model is the "Watching" phase. We then delve deeper into the retention of visitors on our website and webshop.

Below is an overview of articles by phase in the E-commerce Performance Model:

• From passerby to customer : coming
• From passer-by to customer : watch
• From passer-by to customer : choosing
• From passer-by to customer : buy
• From passer-by to customer : coming back

Also interested in the critical performance indicators for web shops and where you use them within your customer journey? Perhaps you already use performance indicators, but do they measure the right things for your webshop? Feel free to contact us to discuss this.