On Yumbles your brand and products get put in front of thousands of relevant customers every single week. We also offer plenty of additional marketing opportunties throughout the year to help boost your exposure (see here).
However, if your Yumbles "shop" is not in good shape then despite all this great exposure, you could be significantly limiting your sales.
The Customer Journey/ Funnel
In ecommerce, we talk about the customer journey or "funnel" - which are the steps buyers go to from first seeing your product to completing their order (a conversion). This is a topic that we cover in more depth in our Selling Online - The Recipe for Success Webinar.
At every stage of the customer funnel you lose some customers. So your conversion to orders is actually determined by many stages, and there are several factors about the set-up of your Yumbles shop that influence each stage.
STAGE 1 - Appearance in product results pages
If we ignore for now the exposure you get when we feature you in our marketing emails, social media or on the Yumbles homepage, most typically buyers will first come across your products in the category pages on Yumbles, search pages on Yumbles, or in our Google shopping feed.
So the key factors that influence how many customers are first exposed to your products on these pages are the following:
- How targeted your product is. We categorise products according to strong relevance to the category. A birthday gift box will almost inevitably feature in Birthday Gifts. Likewise something called a vegan hamper will appear in Vegan Hampers. Consider the categories on Yumbles and where you want to target and create listings accordingly.
- Keywords. Search results, both on Yumbles and in our Google shopping feed, are reliant on the presence of keywords in your listings. Keywords are the terms (not necessarily singular words!) that people search with to see products like yours e.g. "Keto snacks" or "Organic Chocolate Bars". Generally for your products it is worth identifying around 5 or more keywords that are most relevant that you want to target. Be specific e.g. "paleo bread" rather than "bread". Most importantly - your product listing titles must have the primary keyword you are targeting for that product. Then make sure the rest of your listing has the other important keywords in both the description and tags.
- Values. On Yumbles the Values specified in your listings are a list of product attributes. They serve several important uses on Yumbles but one includes the fact that they power filters for buyers so if you haven't selected relevant values for your products then they won't be appearing in all search results.
- Product Availability. An obvious one but often forgotten as admin. Keep an eye on your product quantity levels - once they reach 0 your product will show as Out of Stock and be pushed to the very back of all category pages and search results. Also, if you've left it late to list your seasonal items you're obviously missing out on exposure when buyers are looking for items like yours. Keep an eye out for the listing deadlines for seasonal items in the marketing calendar.
As mentioned, the other way to maximise that first exposure is to feature in our marketing, see this guide for more on that.
STAGE 2 - The buyer decision to view product details
If you have done a good job at optimising the factors that influence stage 1 of the customer funnel then your product has achieved great exposure to relevant customers looking for products likes yours. Next in the funnel is what % of those customers then choose to take a closer look at your product details page (vs. selecting another product).
The % of customers who pass this stage depends on the following 3 factors that buyers look at:
- Product photography. Does it catch their eye and look appealing alongside other products? Is it clear what the product is from the photo? Does the product shown match the name of the product and what they are looking for? If not, a very low % will look any further than that.
- Product Listing Name. Is it clear from the title what is being sold? Does it match what the customer is looking for? Does it sound special?
- Price. Does it match the customer's expectations and also seem reasonable from what appears to be being sold? For this last aspect - if you are selling an item in quantity make sure from the listing name that is clear otherwise it may look like a very expensive unit price and immediately deter a closer look.
STAGE 3 - Buyer decision to Add to Basket
So by this point if you've done a good job at stage 1 and stage 2, there should now be a large number of customers viewing your product details pages. Let's say 1,000 customers were exposed to your product in phase 1 and a really healthy 80% (800) decided to take a closer look - so you now have 800 people viewing your product details page.
So now you really want as many of those 800 people as possible to click "Add to Basket". Here are the key factors that help determine that:
- Product Photography. Online buyers continue to rely on the product photography heavily to make their buying decision. At this stage they want to be sure what they are getting. Can they see the product fully? If it comes with different options/ variants - can they see those? Can they see how it comes packaged (really important if a gift)?
- Description. Are they clear what they would be getting? And why it is special? Are all their likely questions answered like shelf life if it is perishable, and product weight?
- Options are clear (and all there!). If your product has choices for the buyer to make like perhaps the size of the box, or flavour choices, then you want to make sure you have created the options for every choice, and that they are clearly labelled. Always use PREVIEW to make sure it is super clear.
- Reviews. Such an important factor in the buying decision process online. If you don't yet have Yumbles reviews then get in touch with us if you have external reviews on other platforms - we will import some for you.
- Shipping options and timescales. On Yumbles we clearly communicate your delivery timescales to buyers on the product details page. If your timescales are too long/ or past the date the customer needs them then obviously they aren't going to proceed. Online buyers do increasingly expect fast delivery of between 2 to 3 days, and often for gifting next day delivery and/ or the ability to choose a guaranteed delivery date is relied on as an option. A key thing to watch out for is when it comes to major events like Christmas and Easter, just be sure your timescales show where possible that you CAN deliver in time for the event at least for all the peak days of the campaign. The peak days of the gifting campaigns are probably later than you'd think - see here for more info. Remember - you control your delivery timescales from your settings here.
STAGE 4 - Buyer decision to complete Checkout
Good news, so in our example where we started with 1,000 people being exposed to your product in category pages, search results and such, and then 80% (800) who liked what they saw and decided to click to view your product, you then had a fantastic conversion of 40% (320) who clicked on Add to Basket.
So the final stage that determines what % of those 320 actually complete checkout is influenced by the following:
- Shipping Charges. We consistently find that online buyers are happy to pay for premium product but not for shipping. Call it the Amazon Prime effect. Consistently a charge of £5 or more sees significant drop off at checkout. For certain items even a lower charge of £4 can be notably prohibitive. Of course, the costs you incur to ship need to be covered. We recommend considering this cost as just another cost of sale and seeing where to allocate that cost, possibly some into your product pricing to offset the charges shown at checkout.
- Shipping Timescales. Not all buyers spot your timescales on your product details page so some may reach checkout and then choose to abandon their purchase if they don't see the timescales they are hoping for. See our advice on Shipping Timescales above.
If you have done a good job of these two final factors generally you would expect to see around 40% complete this final stage (checkout abandonment is common). Likewise, where the above factors are issues we can see just 10% or less complete this final stage.
So in our numerical example your shipping charges and/ or timescales alone could be meaning your sales potential at this final stage of 128 orders drops to 32 orders or less instead - so quite a loss.
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