Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | Conversion Optimization (2)

Checkout pages are often seen as an afterthought, since most of the purchase decisions have already been made prior to reaching this step. But it’s here that the customer actually commits to the purchase, and will either follow through – or head for the door.

“The customer is always right” is one of the most overused quotes for customer service. It’s hard to say where this quote originated from, but some sources indicate that it could be traced back to 1909.

Allegedly, a London department store founder used this quote to assure his customers that they would get good services in his store, which would make the saying more than 110 years old today. This says something about how vital customer service is for businesses to survive and grow.

Ecommerce owners typically focus on the design and interface of their websites to encourage customers to move down the purchase funnel. However, the eCommerce checkout process is ultimately where visitors will convert.

The eCommerce checkout process refers to the steps a customer will take to fill a shopping cart and complete its purchase. A good checkout process will have a clear flow and enable seamless buying with minimal friction.

Buyers with intent may enter the checkout flow but may not[...]

The direct-to-consumer model has taken the spotlight in the last half of the decade, with new DTC eCommerce stores inundating the market weekly. Now, entrepreneurs have more control than ever over how they communicate, how they manufacture their products, and what customers say about their brand.

Creating an outstanding product is a challenge that many businesses take on lightly. Even though there are plenty of challenges along the way, it’s in your best interest that the product delivers what it promises.

That’s why usability testing is such a great process. It helps you set up an incredible foundation for your product. It’ll help you eliminate all the unforeseen issues that could appear on launch.

An estimated 88% of users admit they are less likely to return to a website after a negative user experience. This should be reason enough for businesses to start focusing on boosting their website’s UI/UX. Several factors can lead to a bad user experience – from slow page loading times to a site’s lack of mobile responsiveness. This is why it is imperative to user test your eCommerce website to prevent cart abandonment and improve your conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Selling online is no new trend. Overall, the eCommerce industry has seen commendable growth rates in the years before the pandemic. However, after 2019, it's become impossible to ignore eCommerce's significant growth.

A company's lifeblood is its customers. Without them, you don’t have a business, but rather an expensive and time-consuming hobby. Keeping customers happy and coming back even after they made a purchase should be each company's top priority. Yet, many businesses overlook the importance of customer retention.

Why is retaining customers so vital to a business’s success?

The answer lies in a customer’s lifetime value.

The ways in which consumers interact with the world of eCommerce is as changeable and varied as the consumers that engage with it. Rapid growth in digital technologies and mobile spaces is continually morphing to meet the demands of a multifaceted market base. But this growth has also created a unique challenge where immediate and continuous testing is vital.

Whether your conversion rates are low, average, or high, there’s always room to optimize better. But without the right methodology, you risk making changes that push your conversion rate in the wrong direction. If you don’t make changes in a controlled way, you won’t even know which change affected your conversion rate.

Cart abandonment online is a serious problem for retailers and online store owners. Not only do people abandoning their carts leave you, as the store owner, feeling seriously frustrated, but they dramatically reduce the amount of revenue your business brings in. In fact, most conservative estimates reveal that more than 70% of all sales are lost online because of cart abandonment. Some estimates on the higher end believe the actual number of sales lost because of shopping cart abandonment is[...]

Selling online can be very fruitful. However, for one reason or another, you may feel like you aren’t taking advantage of every opportunity. This triggers an age-old question: How do I improve my sales?

While this question can be answered in a number of ways, some methods are better than others when it comes to effectively improving your online sales. Here are some of the best practices to increase online sales in 2021.

Customer churn is a serious problem for all businesses, all of the time, but you need to pay it particular attention when there’s a global pandemic-induced economic recession going on.

You work hard to acquire new customers, so why would you let them slip through your fingers as soon as you’ve succeeded? Especially when consumers everywhere are tightening their belts and closing their wallets. You want to do all you can to hold on to your existing loyal customers.

Is your online store getting loads of traffic, but that traffic isn’t translating to paying customers? Your store may be suffering from a low conversion rate. This can feel disappointing to any online business owner, and for good reason. After all that work bringing traffic to your store, you now have nothing to show for it.

But don’t worry – there is a solution. In fact, there’s a multitude of solutions that may help your business.

Over the years, business owners and marketers have been[...]

Getting visitors to your site is tedious, expensive, tiring, and all in all — extremely difficult. But it’s even harder to see them leave without making any kind of action.

It is said that, in 2020, eCommerce had grown in one year at the rate it would have in three years. Sure, having more traffic is great and it seems easier to make more sales when you have a traffic influx. But that is just one part of the success formula.

There is no need to point out that increasing your conversion rate[...]

If your products are not easy to find, you’re losing customers in real-time.

According to Marketing Charts, 46% of shoppers say they go shopping online just for browsing.

Almost half of your traffic comes to your website, hoping that you’ll show them the right product for them.

What this means is… Are you optimizing your website for the people who still don’t know what to buy?

No matter the industry, success in the business world comes down to a company’s ability to serve and deliver value to the consumer.

To deliver this value, the team needs to understand their customers as best as they possibly can.

From their “on-paper” demographic information and their personality traits, to their personal and professional goals, to their tendencies and behaviors as a consumer, truly knowing your customers is the key to attracting, engaging, and retaining a loyal audience (and,[...]

Every company wants to be able to understand their customers. Insights and analytics help you to make more informed business decisions. But sometimes it isn’t as easy as just looking at and interpreting the numbers. Different consumers behave differently and eCommerce websites that only cater to one type of consumer can suffer in the sales department.

In this article, we have compiled the most common types of online shoppers and how you can specifically target each one.

This year has seen the shift away from physical retail to online shopping accelerate by approximately five years, which means two things:

1. More people are shopping online than ever before.
2. More people are selling online than ever before.

Online retail has become incredibly competitive, making it more crucial and challenging to attract, convert, and retain customers. And, if you’re still using last year’s abandoned cart and customer recovery strategies, they’re now vastly out of date.

Do you track micro conversions inside your business? It’s likely that you’re tracking big conversions. You know the ones I mean: completed customer forms and product purchases.

But what about the micro conversions that lead to those form completions or product sales? Tracking smaller conversions can actually tell you where your sales funnel needs the most work in order to become more effective.

Now, you’re probably wondering what smaller conversions you should track. That’s a great question!

In[...]