This is a guest post by Bob Lang, leading up to our January 24th Webinar at 11 am PST with ConversionIQ on how to increase conversions. ConversionIQ, a ecommerce conversion rate optimization agency, will be teaching merchants how to increase conversions on their websites, and we’ll be talking about how to use Google Shopping effectively and how to increase conversions there.
Bob Lang has over 20 years experience managing multi-channel businesses. For the past 5 years he has been focused on helping other businesses optimize their on-site revenue performance. Earlier with HiConversion and now with ConversionIQ he has worked with 100s of small, medium and large enterprise ecommerce teams to improve conversions by doing in-depth analysis, gaining insights and validating results using a broad range of optimization tools.
Testing Symantec’s Norton SSL and McAfee’s Secure:
ConversionIQ has done dozens of trust mark optimization tests for Symantec’s Norton SSL and McAfee Secure customers. As part of our testing methodology we integrate tests with client’s Google Analytics to gain insight into variation impact on specific traffic segments. This very useful when evaluating confidence elements like security trust marks because their impact varies dramatically between visitor segments.
In most cases, the security mark has a very small impact on returning customers who have been on the site recently and has a dramatic impact on new visitors who have not already established a trust relationship with the site. Depending on your new vs returning visitor ratio, it is easy to under estimate the value of messaging your site’s security.
Security marks not only impact willingness to purchase but we are seeing a strong influence on purchase amount (average order value or AOV). When skeptical visitors are persuaded to make a purchase it is not uncommon to see a small decrease in average order value as newly converted customers tend to be more conservative on their first purchase. We are seeing just the opposite when testing security marks. More often than not we find lift in both conversion rate and AOV for new visitors.
In a recent McAfee Secure trust mark test with an Internet Retailer Top 200 supplement supplier we measured a 3% lift in conversion rate for all traffic and a 12% lift in conversion rate for new visitors. Another McAfee Secure test with a major off road parts supplier measured a 6% increase in average order value for all traffic and a 23% increase in AOV for new visitors.
The Norton Secured (SSL) trust mark also showed a strong influence on buying behavior. A recent Norton test we did with US Cutter, a supplier of vinyl cutting supplies, measured an 11% increase in revenue per visitor for all traffic but when we segmented for paid traffic we found a 53% increase in RPV.
If you would like to learn more about optimizing your conversion rate and revenue per visitor sign up to attend ConversionIQ and CPC Strategy’s joint webinar on January 24th at 11am PT: How to Increase Conversions Using Google Product Feeds.