How Old-School Catalogs Help Drive Up Online Sales
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Tags: catalog, conversion rate, internet marketing, online marketing, top ten converting websites conventional wisdom ecommerce
I recently received an email from Internet Retailer promoting a piece of research which suggests that online shoppers that received a catalog in the mail spent on average 163 percent more than those that didn’t.
One hundred sixty-three percent? That’s a big difference.
This prompted me to go back to the research SeeWhy did into the Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Converting Websites, which revealed that 9 out of 10 of the top converting websites in the U.S. also have catalogs. These companies have visitor–to-sale conversion rates averaging 23 percent, compared with an industry average of 2-3 percent. However, this cannot be attributed solely to having a catalog.
Most online marketers strive to maximize their website conversion rates. When setting out on this path, the usual starting point for conversion rate optimization is data. Now, I’m a data-driven guy who lives in the analytics world, but it’s important to remember that conversion rate optimization is about getting more sales online.
It’s not about data, web analytics reports, conversion funnels, website tuning or anything else. These are all tools at your disposal to help you optimize your conversion rate, and it is important not to become overly fixated on the tools, but to focus on the goal: drive more online revenues. It’s not about whether the checkout button should be in green or on the right hand side.
So take a step back for a moment, and look afresh at your website. Think about your buyers—who they are, what they are like, and in a moment of escapism, become one. Visualize how they arrive at your site, where they come from, who influences them, and what makes them visit you online.
Sooner or later, we all realize that the quality of traffic to a website is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rate optimization. One hundred thousand visitors per day that never buy may make your high-level visitor stats look good, but they throw off the rest of your metrics and do nothing for sales. An extra 1,000 visitors per day that convert will make all the difference. This doesn’t mean that high traffic volumes are bad, but the higher the quality of traffic arriving at your site, the greater your chances of converting visitors to sales.
The mainstay in driving quality traffic to websites for many years has been email, and increasingly for many ecommerce sites, traffic referred from their other website on Facebook. But catalogs? How very 1980’s.
Yet all the evidence suggests that customers love to browse offline and purchase online. In fact, research conducted by the USPS and Comscore (see below) found that catalogs doubled sales and increased website traffic for both existing and new customers.
This is one of the primary reasons why the big direct marketing companies consistently have high converting websites. Visitors that arrive at their websites are not cautious and in need of convincing because they have probably already been warmed up by an old-fashioned direct mail campaign and a catalog that arrived in their mailbox. They also have a very strong repeat purchase culture. While many marketers are fixated about new visitors, many of the top converting websites are focused on getting the second, third and fourth sale.
The purpose of this blog was to get you to step back from your website conversion problem for a moment and look holistically at your business, your customers and how to reach them. Hopefully it’s helped.
Many ecommerce companies could benefit not only from catalogs, but by thinking more holistically about their market and integrating communications across the full spectrum of channels in order to drive better quality traffic. And therein, their conversion rate will climb.
Without changing their checkout button to green or moving it two inches to the right.
This is a great post. Love the content. I was just contemplating putting together a back to school catalog for one of my sites. You have confirmed my thoughts.
Hi Terry
Thanks for the kind words. Let me know how it works out.
Charles
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This is a great article! This had never occurred to me but it makes lots of sense. People like to browse a catalog, and then buying what they have found online. My question is, does it necessarily have to be an old-school physical catalog? What if you could create an online catalog experience that replicated (but was in fact superior to) the experience of browsing a physical catalog?
Hi Dan
That’s an interesting idea – if anyone has any data on online catalog to sales conversions please share I’d love to find out how well it works.
One other though: browsing offline and buy online (BOBO)is a growing trend, not just for catalogs but also based on in-store browsing. There are lots of opportunities for marketers to grasp here, though often difficult to do due to the organizational silos in many retailers.
Charles
Dan & Charles -
I expect that a study of online catalogs would show a bump in productivity, but the real impact of an “old-school” print catalog is its interruptive value in the mailbox. It’s a key differentiator from other non-push media.
Old school catalog descriptions open my mind to options that usually would be missed. Frequently visit stores to discover that quality is poor or the functionality will not work. Many times at better online catalogs can drill down to technical specifications, check repair parts availabity and in some cases warranty information in detail. The overall experience allows the store to order online with free shipping and will be notified when available. This integration saves a lot of time and returns which will occur in a heart beat with me, Mark.
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The department I work in here at Premier Farnell have been so impressed with the Interactive version of our paper catalogue (with Dynamic pricing)that it has now been made available throughout Europe as an Ipad application.
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Very interesting blog, was a great read. Thx
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