It's not uncommon for enterprises to set lofty goals that are often impossible to achieve without an immense amount of cost and/or effort. The problem with creating these types of goals is that employees quickly get discouraged when they are not met, and often times stop focusing on the goals altogether.
Although digital teams won't be inspired by a goal that is unlikely to happen, they will invest energy and resources into reaching realistic goals. It is important to keep in mind, however, that every business's goals are different, and should be made based on recent and relevant data. Read below to discover five examples of achievable goals that ecommerce retailers can make for 2015:
Goal 1: Decrease shopping cart abandonment by 3 percent in six months.
Shopping cart abandonment is a difficult thing to stop, especially since some reports suggest 67.45 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned. While there are many ways to reduce this metric, some of the most impactful strategies include being transparent about shipping fees prior to the checkout page, ensuring customers that your site is safe by displaying security badges, offering a variety of popular payment options, and providing guest and/or single page checkout. Each one of these strategies minimizes friction at checkout and can make the difference in a consumer's decision to complete their purchase or abandon his or her cart.
Goal 2: Increase email open rates by 2 percent in three months.
Data from MailChimp reveals the average open rate for emails sent by ecommerce merchants is 17.35 percent. To improve upon this number, email marketers should test their email subject lines to see what resonates the best with their audience, as well as segment subscribers in order to deliver more personalized campaigns (e.g. consumers who signed up in the last 14 days or shoppers who have yet to purchase from the brand).
Goal 3: Grow Facebook likes by 5 percent each month.
It is easy to become complacent with your Facebook strategy, but there is no better time to refocus on this channel's growth than the beginning of a new year. In 2015, retailers can make Facebook audience growth a priority by launching social contests, spending some money on Facebook advertising or by simply promoting their presence on the social network in other channels, such as on their Twitter feed, within email marketing campaigns or inside brick-and-mortar stores.
Goal 4: Increase conversion rates by 0.3 percent in four months.
One of the most difficult metrics for Internet retailers to increase is conversion rates, as there are many factors that can impact the conversion process. In fact, ecommerce conversion rates are notoriously low, with data from Monetate revealing that the average conversion rate on desktops came in at 2.65 percent in Q2 2014. To get this metric closer to 3 percent by the second quarter of 2015, retailers should be testing every aspect of their sites in the first quarter and beyond. Doing so will provide them with the data needed to optimize their sites for better performance the rest of the year.
Goal 5: Increase site traffic by 5 percent in six months.
The best way for retailers to increase revenue is by increasing the amount of traffic coming to their ecommerce site. Doing so provides retailers more opportunities for conversion. Fortunately, there are many strategies retailers can implement to increase traffic, such as blogging, being active on social networks and advertising through channels like search, mobile and social.
