Conversion and Brian Gavin Diamonds

Conversion, or the accomplishment of a “desired outcome” (Reed College of Media, 2017), is a crucial metric and a necessity for all successful online marketing efforts. Each conversion made by a website visitor propels a business forward to reaching its grander online goals and satisfying its business objectives. The building block metrics and those of visitor characterization, visit characterization, and engagement, while important in their own right, are useful to analyze because they help a business optimize its conversions, or push its bottom line. These macro conversions are crucial to measure, but micro conversions must be considered as well. According to Kaushik (2008), there are some people who “refuse to be converted online” and are more interested in pursuing goals that are not related to the business’ macro conversions (e.g., researching products to buy offline). By analyzing micro conversions, or other meaningful events not necessarily linked to purchasing, etc., a business can measure its success in all areas and learn more about the goals of its users. While there are many different types of desired outcomes for businesses’ online endeavors, analyzing visitor purchase behavior leading up to and after conversions can help optimize the online experience for both the user and the business.

      Brian Gavin Diamonds, a jewelry company focused on creating custom engagement rings, made an alarming discovery regarding roadblocks to its conversion rates (“Case Study: Brian Gavin,” 2014). The company had been using Google Analytics since 2009 but, because of the ever-evolving nature of online shopping, decided to take advantage of the new plug-in, Enhanced Ecommerce, after it was released in the summer of 2014. This tool walks through the customer’s path to purchase and provides insight that allows a business to segment “high-intent to purchase customers” and analyze the precipitating circumstances that lead them to abandon their shopping carts before completing a purchase (Jung, 2014). Because 95% of its sales were made through its website, the retailer wanted to use these tools to gain a better understanding of customer behavior down the online purchasing funnel before redesigning the site. Ultimately, Brian Gavin Diamonds wanted to know how a user’s navigation of the site led to the decision to make or not to make a purchase (“Case Study: Brian Gavin,” 2014).

                                                         (Brian Gavin Diamonds, n.d.)

      Specifically, Brian Gavin Diamonds wanted to analyze pre-purchase behavior and cart abandonment to reconfigure the guest check-out process in order to drive online conversions. Enhanced Ecommerce showed that in one month alone, guests had abandoned over $500,000 in merchandise in their shopping carts, and the jewelry retailer wanted to identify and eliminate this roadblock to sales conversion. This trend “translated into a missed opportunity to engage those customers at a critical time – when they were making purchase decisions” (“Case Study: Brian Gavin,” 2014). With the help of Enhanced Ecommerce, Brian Gavin Diamonds was able to analyze the popularity of the current features on its site and eliminate options that were taking up valuable space on the pages leading up to customer checkout. It also reconsidered its categorization navigation as well. According to Cromwell’s State of eCommerce Report (2016), 25% of ecommerce guests who abandon their carts feel that navigation is too complicated and 12% are overwhelmed by a complicated checkout process. By identifying and remedying these common issues, the retailer experienced a 60% increase in the number of customers who worked through the checkout process up through the payment page (“Case Study: Brian Gavin,” 2014).

                                       

                                                                 (Cromwell, 2016)


      By prioritizing the particular metric of conversion, Brian Gavin Diamonds was able to find specific examples of undesired customer behavior and redesign elements of the website to drive users to follow through on their purchases and increase the bottom line for the company. While high conversion rates (whether they be purchases, online registration, subscription to marketing emails, etc.) are always a goal for companies, focusing on the granular details of this metric paid off for Brian Gavin Diamonds and prepared the retailer to offer a better user experience as well.

References

About Enhanced Ecommerce. (n.d.). Google Analytics Help. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6014841?hl=en

Brian Gavin Diamonds. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.briangavindiamonds.com/

Case Study: Brian Gavin Diamonds sees 60% increase in customer checkout with Enhanced Ecommerce. (2014). Google Analytics Solutions. Retrieved from
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//intl/pt_ALL/analytics/customers/pdfs/brian-gavin.pdf

Cromwell, D. (2016, August 12). 2016 State of eCommerce: Cart abandonment and recapture statistics. Eystudios.com. Retrieved from http://www.eystudios.com/2016/08/2016-state-ecommerce/

Jung, M. (2014, November 5). Brian Gavin Diamonds sees 60% increase in customer checkout with Enhanced Ecommerce. Google Analytics Solutions. [Blog]. Retrieved from https://analytics.googleblog.com/2014/11/brian-gavin-diamonds-sees-60-increase.html

Kaushik, A. (2008, March 26). Excellent analytics tip #13: Measure macro AND micro conversions. Occam’s Razor Blog. Retrieved January 15, 2017 from
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/

Reed College of Media. (2017, January 10). IMC week 1 lesson [Blackboard lesson]. Retrieved from ecampus.wvu.edu

Web Analytics Association. (2007, August 16). Web analytics definitions. Retrieved on October 13, 2012, from: http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitions.pdf