How can products improve order conversion rates?

I'm back. Since I joined the new company in June, I have been busy with the operation and construction of new projects, and I haven't updated the article for nearly three months. When you see this update, I am very grateful for your support.

In three months, I once again experienced the joys and sorrows of developing a new business, from conception to verification, adjustment, improvement, and modeling over and over again. I was so exhausted during this period that my head hurt whenever I picked up a pen.

Now that the business model is running smoothly, I have also begun to turn my attention to user-oriented work, such as attracting new users, increasing daily active users, and stabilizing retention. Therefore, I will share these processes with you one by one in the future, which is also a review and accumulation of my work. In this article, I will talk to you about my thoughts and actions in improving the order conversion rate.

1. A general new user conversion process: low-priced traffic package-external channel delivery-user transaction

Our product is an APP that is half tool and half e-commerce. In the early stages, users must first purchase the product before they can better experience the functions and value of the APP. (Not a sex toy)

Therefore, our idea at that time was to do it like e-commerce, and create a low-priced SPU package as a "traffic hook" and put it out for sale. Whether it was through exclusive gifts for new customers or price-cutting promotions, we hoped to use "discounts" to attract users to place orders.

But the conversion rate is not as good as expected. At this time, we are very puzzled. Why is there no conversion despite the cheap price?

We began to conduct phone calls to these users. I also searched online for some articles on improving conversion rates in the hope of gaining some inspiration. I also consulted some colleagues in the e-commerce industry.

For example, during phone follow-up visits, we found that most users had seen the ads placed by Douyin, but generally speaking, they did not need them for the time being or were just paying attention to them. After consulting with operations colleagues in the e-commerce industry, they gave us suggestions on the overall layout of our mall and on adding comments.

Well, in the next two weeks, we will revise the design of the mall, make the overall layout more unified, optimize the products in more detail, and manually add comments to the main recommended packages.

But the conversion remains indifferent. This is very painful, and it causes us to start rethinking the issue of transformation.

2. A self-refined new user conversion process: cognition-recognition-subscription

By chance, I saw a process vocabulary about user conversion (cognition-recognition-subscription; I only remember that it was a promotional video of a video lecture by a big shot in the industry. I tried to find it again, but tried my best). Although I only had a vague understanding of it in the promotional video, it seemed to give me a sense of clarity, so I began to break it down according to this thinking.

Here I divide users into "target users" and "potential users" groups; it is also easy to understand. The target users are those who need your product immediately, and the potential users are those who need it but not now. They may have already purchased competing products or may have other alternatives temporarily, etc., and it takes some time to transition.

After sorting out the groups of people, we design different content scenarios based on their different psychological demands, and break them down step by step.

Cognition: When users experience or see your product and the materials you put out for the first time, can they understand what you do or what you want to express? This is very important.

To be honest, when we first released the TikTok materials prepared by our classmates and the team reviewed them for everyone to see, we didn’t quite understand where the pain points were and what they wanted to express. We all know that there is an "aha moment" in product experience. Based on the average user visit time, you need to allow users to complete a good experience in a maximum of one to three minutes, rather than just opening it and leaving.

Recognition: Back to the business page, no matter where the user clicks in, the three most important parts are presented: the header image, comments, and the business details page. The business page requires you to act like a salesperson and persuade customers to place orders.

Unlike the pure e-commerce industry, the product details page may just display the details of the product; as I mentioned earlier, our previous approach was to learn from e-commerce companies to create product details pages, but when we came back to dig deeper into the needs, we realized that we are half e-commerce and half tool, so the product details page also needs to show that after I buy it, I don’t just take it home to use, I also need to use it in conjunction with the APP, so I split it into three points: a reason, a motivation, and an offer incentive to give to users.

One reason : the request is made. It is also easy to understand. My product is very beautiful, so how can it make you "good" and meet your needs in different scenarios; social needs, psychological needs, three major characteristics and eight advantages, it's up to you.

One driving force: value packaging. Reasons alone are not enough. Since the conversion rate was poor before, you can compare the value: compare with similar products in other markets, product advantages: combining with the APP can provide a better experience, can help you become better and more professional, etc. (Extension: I have recently been reading two books about how to use goal achievement theory to help users grow, which will be discussed in the following article.)

An offer incentive: When you buy the product and use it together with your use, I can also give you something else, such as participation in activities, free points, etc.

By analogy, for potential users, I also start from these three points and provide different content scenarios and statements to create business details pages. Because I don’t like long articles, in order to control the length; the article is just to share "mine", hoping to help you get a point from another perspective, and then think about how my product can be done? Just like how I broke down the six words "cognition, recognition and subscription" and how they helped me; you can completely sort them out and start again, and don't be bound by anything.

3. Design an underlying operation channel: traffic-carrier-conversion-retention

Based on the above, we once again adjusted the product header image and the business details page; I realized that the conversion rate was poor, so maybe we really need to optimize the business details page content one version at a time. When I was writing this article, I saw someone sharing "How to make customers perceive value?" I will not comment on the content of the article "Here are 5 methods". I think perceived value is the key to achieving user recognition.

But do you think it ends here? Now that the details are connected, let's look back and sort it out from a global perspective to make the work clearer.

We can first draw a picture like this and think about the underlying channel of operation work from a global perspective: What are my traffic sources? - What is the carrier that carries the user? - What are the tools for converting users? - What makes users stay?

This is an open-ended question. If it is a new product, the initial business/functions are relatively simple and linear; it is relatively simple to run through a user stage through the core business process. If it is a large-scale product, each function may be worked on by a small team, and the team can also have such a set of models. It can be cross-cutting, or you can have a new task, such as attracting new customers; you can also design multiple such models separately through different channels.

The source of traffic is easy to understand. It refers to the channels for acquiring product users. Each channel can be taken out separately to draw a model diagram. For example, if the e-commerce business acquires mothers through the maternal and child channel, then its conversion method is different from that of student users acquired through the student channel. For example, if it is a tool product, it may also need to give two carrying functions in the final retention method. I will summarize it from a global perspective here and will not break it down into details.

The carrier is the tool that carries users, such as APP, mini-programs, channel stores, etc. For example, if your business involves the e-commerce sector, and you place advertisements through Douyin, there is no need to guide users to the APP to place orders and purchases. You can directly link to the store; therefore, the carrier tool of the Douyin channel is the store rather than the APP.

The conversion tool is what your operational conversion activities are after the user comes in? For example, e-commerce companies offer preferential prices for new customers, full refunds for orders, etc.; each company definitely has one or more conversion tools/activities that it promotes.

If the conversion doesn’t work, try the method above.

Finally, there is retention. After you convert users, during the period of time that users use your product, for example, if they buy a course once, until the course ends, or a monthly video pass, until one month later, you can use retention tools to retain users. It can be a community, a service, etc. You should guide users to experience the entire product more. For operations, purchase is only the first step taken by users.

4. Build a ladder for the underlying channels of operation

To implement the entire model, we need to take one step at a time. This is not easy, we will talk about it next time~

Author: Mao Li

Source: Maoli