Of course you track the ROI for your online marketing. But how, exactly, do you track it?

Does your tracking extend beyond the first purchase? In other words, are you tracking the lifetime value of a customer acquired through each campaign? In my experience, sometimes the campaigns that provide mediocre short term ROI can provide the best customer lifetime value.

The problem with much of our web analytics software, specifically Google analytics, is that they fail to provide an easy way of tracking customer lifetime value. This is a tragedy, and sometimes causes us to make faulty decisions based only on short term analytics data. If you’re not currently tracking customer LTV, talk to your developers about getting a system in place ASAP.

Take a moment and visit your product supplier’s websites. Odds are they have a “Find a Store” page. Are you listed there? If not, kindly “suggest” they fix that before you pay your next invoice. 

Every product has a story, but it’s rarely told. Why was the product made? Was it inspired by a tragedy or light bulb moment in the inventor’s life? Think of the last time you told someone about a product you’re passionate about. There’s a good chance you started with the backstory.

It’s the same reason we love hearing about how stars became famous. It’s the journey that makes them interesting and worth repeating. It gives the product meaning and purpose, and makes you feel like you’re buying more than just an “it”, you’re entering into the story.

If you don’t know a product’s story, talk to those who developed it. Convey any information you can to the customer to help create a meaningful back-story.

How much is an email subscriber worth to you? The answser might change your perspective on how hard you try to grow your list. Try this quick calculation:

[Total sales from email in the last 12 months] / [Avg number of subscribers over the last 12 months] = [Avg annual value of a subscriber]

I recently ran this his calculation for a retailer, and we came up with $5 per subscriber. Just think of that, every time a visitor signs up for your list, that’s $5 in future sales. Knowing this, how aggressively do you promote your list?

All too many product pages require their customer’s to have a good imagination. For example, product images convey the product alone with a white background. Not exactly awe-inspiring. Online shopping can be devoid of context when product images aren’t shown in use. Lifestyle and contextual images help create mental ownership by giving specific examples of use.

Don’t require your customer to have a good imagination. Paint a picture for them. How will it look in context, in their hands, in use?

Most retailers have yet to crack Facebook. For many online stores, a Facebook page makes an interesting novelty, but meaningful sales are still forthcoming. While there’s no magical formula, retailers that I’ve seen succeed with facebook understand the principle below:

Focus on the newsfeed, nothing else matters

That is, don’t waste your time with bells and whistles on your Facebook page such as tabs or apps. The vast majority of users who like your page will return to your page (and many never went there in the first place). I’m even highly skeptical of Facebook store apps, simply because you still have to drive traffic to them, and there’s not really a benefit to customers shopping through Facebook yet.

Instead, focus on the content you publish in the news feed. This is where the money is. How engaging are your posts? How successful are you at driving traffic to your site through your page? This is where you efforts should focus.

For some retailers, making their product categories clear in their navigation can be tricky. Some verticals, like apparel, have inherent confusion with issues like sizing. Carters gives us a nice example of how to educate customers about their clothing line within their nav. Notice how they clarify the sizing below each of their 3 top level categories (baby, toddler, kid):