Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | Conversion Optimization (2)

Analyzing data isn’t new. Investopedia’s definition of the term states that “data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data to make conclusions about that information.”

While your first reaction might be to imagine algorithms and complicated number-crunching, successful businesses have been using data analytics for hundreds of years.

Ecommerce remains a rapidly growing but competitive market. With US online retail sales expected to top $1.02 trillion in 2022, more and more businesses are looking to either shift to online sales or to supplement their physical stores with an online presence.

Creating awesome products and content is only half of the battle. To get your customers to actually buy your products, you need to share them with your audience on their preferred platform at exactly the right time.

But what can you do if your emails, social media, or SMS messages are getting lost in the sea of marketing promotions lying unread in your customer’s inbox? Well, there’s another option that you can try — web push notifications.

In the world of eCommerce, it’s become much harder to stand out as a credible seller. Amidst a plague of false advertising and broken promises, you’re out there trying to portray yourself as an honest and reliable seller.

Praising yourself, your product, or your service might seem the obvious thing to do, but it’s a strategy that’s been tried for decades.

So why not let your customers do the talking for you?

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?