And yet, like the magical boy with the scarred forehead, post-purchase emails are incredibly powerful.

You might not be worried about post-purchase emails because you’re getting new customers at lightning speed. Great! You have a good customer acquisition strategy. But what’s the point if those customers don’t come back? There is only a 5-20% chance of a new consumer buying from you, whereas loyal customers are five times more likely to repurchase.

The good news is that post-purchase emails and follow-ups have a significantly higher open rate than standard promotional emails. Post-purchase emails have a 40.5% open rate. Meanwhile, common marketing emails only reach half this number, with an average open rate of 20.94%.

Despite these statistics and the fact that it is seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain customer relationships, many companies send a receipt and little else. This is unbelievable, and misses out on a huge opportunity to increase customer retention rates and convert new buyers into recurring customers.

In this article, we’re going to outline the 6 post-purchase emails that will boost your conversions, nurture customers, and result in repeat sales.

1. Order confirmation is the first post-purchase email

The first email should always be the confirmation of purchase. When people click “Buy”, they want to know that everything worked. That they didn’t just send money into the ether of the internet, never to hear from it again. Confirm that their order was received and that someone on the other end is doing something about it.

At the risk of stating the obvious, ecommerce involves significantly more trust than face-to-face transactions. A customer is handing you their credit card number with the assumption that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain. They want assurance that you’re not operating a scam out of an internet cafe in Nigeria.

An order confirmation should be sent as soon as the payment clears, letting the customer know:

1. That their order went through.
2. When it will ship and how to track their shipment.
3. How they can access their receipt.
4. Who to contact if there’s a problem.
5. What they should expect next.

As soon as you order from Crocs, you get something like this:

Crocs makes it clear that your order was successful and gives you a way to double-check the information. They also provide the customer the option to cancel their order early on in the post-purchase process. Further down the email, there is a link leading to FAQ’s and customer support. They leave little room for questions or doubts and prepare the customer for other follow-up emails.

You can use the order confirmation email for upselling or cross-selling, but you need to be careful about this. If you launch into product pitches too quickly, you can sacrifice trust and come across as only caring about revenue. Tact is the name of the game in the confirmation email.

Whether you cross-sell or not, your primary goal in the confirmation email is assurance. You want your customers to have assurance that everything is working as it should. Setting the expectations of the customer, as ProFlowers does, can be an outstanding way of building trust.

2. Follow up with a shipping confirmation

The shipping confirmation email allows you to update the customer on the status of their order, continue to build trust with them and nurture your relationship with them.

When Fitbit sends a shipping confirmation email, they use it as an opportunity to insert humor and personality:

They also use the email to remind the customer of how they can continue to track the progress of the order, ensuring they don’t become worried about the order being lost.

This confirmation email from Adidas is extensive and provides excellent information for the customers:

The shipping confirmation order is also an opportunity to provide advice before the product arrives.

The email also includes the following:

• A way to contact the customer service team
• Links to important information such as returns & refunds, FAQs, delivery time, and payment
• A recommended section to promote other items
• A CTA to download the app

Similar to the order confirmation email, the shipment email is intended to nurture customers to the point where they implicitly trust you. You want them to know that you’ve got their back and that if there are problems, you will handle them.

3. Check in on the shipment in your third post-purchase email

Approximately one week after their shipment should have arrived, you want to check in to make sure everything arrived when it should and how it should. Ask questions like:

• Did it arrive on time?
• Did it arrive in good shape?
• Did you have any issues after it got there?

Take this example from Laird Superfood’s post-purchase flow. They inform the customer when their order has been successfully delivered and confirm if the customer did receive the package. They insert a bit of humor in the message, but ultimately, they provide a way to contact customer support so that customers can share their concerns if there are any real problems.

We’ve all had packages arrive late, banged up, and even containing the wrong item. We’ve also experienced the annoyance of trying to get an unresponsive company to fix the problem. It’s incredibly frustrating and almost guarantees that we’ll never do business with them again.

This email doesn’t need to be particularly complex. It should simply say, “We really value you and wanted to make sure everything was okay.” If there was a problem, you want to be proactive in resolving it.

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4. Request a review in the fourth email

When you are researching an item online, what’s the first thing you do? You look at the reviews. You want to know whether the product is good or will fall apart two months after your purchase.

Positive reviews can lead to more sales, while negative reviews can kill a product.

Reviews can also give insight into ways you can better serve your customers. If a customer leaves a poor review, it gives you the opportunity to fix the problem and keep the customer from becoming angry.

A review request email asks the customer to leave a review of the product or to rate the experience they had with you. To show your appreciation, you can offer them a gift or store credit. This will not only strengthen the trust and positive relationship, but it will also encourage them to come back for future transactions.

This email from Hollister is a perfect example of a request review. They offer customers a chance to win $100 in store credit in exchange for the review and already included a CTA button that the customer has to click, making the process very enticing, straightforward, and clear for the customer.

Ideally, this email should be sent after enough time has elapsed for them to try the product for a few weeks.

The review email can also include:

1. A reminder to customers about the great product or experience you provided, usually using an image.
2. Honest and upfront information about how long the survey will take.
3. A description of how the review or results of the survey will benefit the customer.

When asking for a review, do everything possible to minimize the number of clicks necessary. As Chris Hexton says:

“Clicks-to-wow” is a way of describing the number of clicks a customer takes from their first interaction with your email to the moment they achieve the goal or hit the “wow” moment. In most cases, reducing the “clicks-to-wow” will increase conversions.

Link to the exact page where the review is entered to minimize the number of clicks.

User-generated content is a great way to attract new customers and build more trust with existing ones.

Don’t be shy to ask your customers to show you some love on social media if they are happy with their purchase. Gathering customer reviews in a feedback request email can help you glean insights about customer behavior and preferences, but having customers promoting your marketing campaigns.

Think of this as yet another check-in email. If a customer didn’t like your product, you want to know why so you can fix the problem. If you don’t fix the problem, you’ll lose the customer and potentially lose more customers over the same problem.

5. Make a post-purchase offer or replenish reminder in your fifth email

Your fifth email should be a post-purchase offer to promote items that complement or upgrade the item that the customer ordered. If the items are food, health supplements, or necessities, you can even send a reminder to the customer to replenish their stock after a certain period of time.

Think about it. They already purchased the product, and assuming the review results were positive, you know they liked it. This is the perfect opportunity to get them to re-order the product or purchase a similar product.

The conversion opportunities here are huge. A 5% increase in customer retention can also increase the profits of your company by 25-95%. Additionally, existing customers are more likely to test new products and spend 31% more than new customers.

You’ve already spent the money to acquire a new customer. You could spend the same time and effort to acquire another new customer or much less time and money to keep the same one.

This fifth email is crucial for customer retention. When a customer re-orders, they become that goldmine that is the repeat customer.

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6. Encourage customers to join a loyalty program

To further convince your customers to buy from you again, you can include relevant content, such as a loyalty or rewards program, that will entice them to make future purchases.

By including information about the rewards you offer in your post-purchase flow, you can encourage customer loyalty, boost sales and improve customer satisfaction. Loyalty programs are key in building long-term relationships with your customers.

In fact, according to Forbes, adding a loyalty program to an ecommerce platform can increase average order value by 319%!

Starbucks has a very effective rewards program that encourages people to buy more drinks in exchange for stars, eventually allowing them to redeem free coffee or food – and who doesn’t want that? They make sure to include a comprehensive list of benefits in their email to further encourage frequent customers to take part in the loyalty program.

Don’t Waste Post-Purchase Emails

A post-purchase email sequence is a terrible thing to waste. You have a unique opportunity to convert a new customer into a recurring customer, and once that opportunity passes, you have to work doubly hard to get it again.

These email sequences aren’t particularly difficult to create. Most email marketing services, such as Klaviyo or MailChimp, can accommodate them. It simply takes a little bit of time and creativity.

Post-purchase emails are hugely underrated and can become one of the most powerful tools in your digital marketing toolbox. They can increase your revenue, boost your customer engagement, and actually reduce overall marketing expenses.

Isn’t it time to stop giving them the Harry Potter treatment?

The post 6 Post-Purchase Emails That Convert And Retain appeared first on The Good.

• The difference between cross-selling and upselling, and how each increases AOV, CLV, and customer satisfaction
• 7 ways to successfully cross-sell and upsell throughout the shopping journey
• Tools and examples to help you create your own cross-sell vs. upsell strategy

What if you could elevate the customer experience and generate extra revenue at the same time?

Cross-selling and upselling offer an antidote to one-time buyers by serving relevant upgrades and complementary products that increase both average order value (AOV) and customer satisfaction.

What is the difference between cross-selling and upselling?

Cross-selling and upselling are two high-impact tactics merchants can use to generate more sales and improve the shopping experience. Here’s what they mean and, more importantly, how they differ from each other.

What is cross-selling?

Cross-selling is an ecommerce strategy that recommends complementary products to a shopper who has already made a purchase or has an item in their cart. For example, you might suggest a shopper add boot polish to their order if they’ve just bought a new pair of boots, or you might suggest batteries to go with a new camera.

Successful cross-selling campaigns include products that are highly relevant to the original purchase, and that will make a customer’s life easier. No one wants their new camera to arrive only to realize they don’t have the right batteries to use it.

Dollar Shave Club is a pro at cross-selling. When someone buys their first box, they’re invited to add complementary extras to their order, like shaving cream and cleanser.

What is upselling?

Upselling is a strategy used by retailers to encourage customers to upgrade their orders. Instead of recommending additional products, upselling invites shoppers to invest in a more expensive product or better version of the original item. For example, you might suggest a roller suitcase with added pockets and security or a kilo more coffee for $3 extra.

This cat food brand invites shoppers to upgrade their order to secure a discount. The customer gets a better product at a lower price, while the brand increases the value of the order.

Cross-sell vs upsell: The difference between upselling and cross-selling

It’s easy to confuse the two terms because they are very similar tactics. Both of them increase your profit but in slightly different ways. Upselling grows revenue by promoting higher-tier products, while cross-selling suggests more items a shopper could buy.

The key difference isn’t in how they work, though—it’s in their purpose. Cross-selling invites shoppers to purchase items they had no previous interest in buying. When they’re offered a complementary item or two (like batteries or boot polish), they might consider adding them to their order because it improves the experience of the product already in their cart. It will also likely make their life easier because they don’t have to go searching for the complimentary product they need.

Upselling, on the other hand, leverages the fact that a customer has already chosen a product and, therefore, must be very interested in buying it. You recommend the same product or service, but better. The customer has already shown a keen interest, so there is a chance they can be convinced to upgrade to better benefits and convert at a higher price.

Key differences between upselling and cross-selling:

• Cross-selling suggests additional products, whereas upselling suggests an upgraded version of the original product
• Cross-selling suggests products customers had no interest in buying before, whereas upselling suggests products that the customer has shown an interest in
• Cross-selling can be used post-purchase to encourage shoppers to come back, whereas upselling is all about upgrading the original order (no one needs to buy two iPhones in the space of two weeks!)

What’s the difference between upselling and downselling?

Downselling isn’t our main focus in this piece, but it’s worth giving it a quick mention so you can position it against the other methods. Unlike upselling, downselling suggests lesser-quality products that are cheaper to a customer who either can’t afford the original item or who has abandoned their cart.

Suppose a shopper has added a big tub of moisturizer to their cart but hasn’t yet checked out. You might get in touch a few days later offering a cheaper version, a smaller version, an incentive with purchase, or a complementary item that’s less expensive.

Downselling is common in subscription models. Customers can get a cheaper rate if they commit to a longer subscription, but those who don’t want to spend that much money can choose a smaller subscription level at less value.

The benefits of cross-selling and upselling in ecommerce

• Increase AOV: If a customer adds another item to their order or upgrades to a more expensive version, you automatically boost your AOV.
• Increase revenue: If the majority of customers spend more on their orders, your overall revenue will increase. Cross-selling accounts for 35% of Amazon’s revenue.
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV): The probability of selling products to existing customers is 60-70% higher than selling to new customers. Serving complimentary products or add-ons is convenient for shoppers and will keep them coming back.
• Increase ROI: The higher your AOV and CLV, the better your ROI will be against your cost of acquisition.
• Increase product awareness: Cross-selling and upselling introduce customers to products they might otherwise not have come across.
• Improve customer experience: Suggesting related products personalizes the shopping experience and establishes a level of credibility.

How to upsell and cross-sell across the funnel and reach customers at every step

Cross-selling and upselling can lead to fruitful things for online retailers, but the key is to do it tastefully and organically. The last thing you want to do is paralyze new shoppers with too much choice or recommend irrelevant items that might turn them off.

“When you buy something and click on the buy button, you are at your most euphoric moment,” says Jordan Gal, CEO at Carthook, an upselling tool for Shopify stores. “That’s a good time to make an offer. If you can set up your offer in a way wherever it’s beneficial for both parties, then everybody wins.”

There are three key points in the sales funnel where you can effectively cross-sell and upsell:

1. Pre-purchase: Promote cross-sells and upsells on the product page before a customer has added to their cart
2. During purchase: Promote cross-sells and upsells during the checkout process or when a customer views their cart
3. Post-purchase: Promote cross-sells and upsells after a customer has made a purchase, either via email, SMS, or when they return to your online store.

Get cross-selling and upselling right, and you can enjoy increased revenue and happier customers in no time at all. Here are some tips for successful cross-selling and upselling.

1. Offer product bundles

Product bundling is one of the easiest ways to expose customers to new products. Grouping together similar, complementary products not only gives shoppers the chance to try out other products in your catalog, but they’ll be willing to pay more because they’re getting additional items.

For example, if you sell beauty products, you might create a bundle for oily skin or anti-aging that brings together some of your best products that are cheaper to buy together but more expensive than buying one product on its own.

Take a leaf out of 3 Wise Men’s book. The clothes brand encourages shoppers to mix and match items and create their own personalized bundles.

2. Build a great post-purchase experience

The customer journey doesn’t end when a customer has placed an order. Now is the perfect time to recommend relevant, complementary products and remind shoppers about other items in your inventory.

“If you don’t offer anything post-purchase, you won’t make any money post-purchase,” says Jordan. “But if you do, roughly 20% of those customers will buy. You’ll make more revenue, have a better average order value, a better return on ad spend, and a lot of your shoppers will be happy for it.”

Put together a five-email sequence that introduces shoppers to other products that might benefit their original purchase.

For example, you might suggest a toner to go with the cleanser they’ve just bought, or a matching hat to go with their new scarf.

The key is to make it personal: Use purchase data you have available to cherry-pick the most relevant products to serve to customers.

KiwiCo encourages shoppers to upgrade to get a free book with their next subscription box.

3. Suggest bulk orders

Nobody likes running out of their favorite face cream, coffee, or snacks. Suggesting shoppers buy in bulk is a good way to increase AOV and secure long-term brand loyalty while you’re at it. This can be particularly effective if you have a shipping threshold. According to NRF, 90% of online customers claim that free shipping motivates them to purchase more, while 65% of buyers said they typically look for free shipping thresholds on items they plan to buy before adding to their cart.

For example, if you have a free shipping threshold of $50, encourage shoppers to upgrade or add items to their order to reach that threshold.

Birchbox offers a juicy discount and free shipping when customers spend over $125.

4. Pitch a subscription

One of the most effective ways to secure recurring revenue is to promote a subscription model—who doesn’t want their favorite coffee or wine delivered to their door every month?! If a customer regularly buys the same product or has shown an interest in several items, encourage them to sign up for a subscription.

Not only will this guarantee regular revenue, but it will improve the customer experience by ensuring shoppers are never out of their favorite products with repeat purchases.

Native offers customers the chance to get money off if they subscribe instead of making a one-time purchase.

Offering a post-purchase subscription has been incredibly effective for Kettle and Fire. The brand wanted to expose shoppers to its range of flavors, so the team created post-purchase upsells and cross-sells.

“The first iteration, we had just one upsell and one down-sell… and that gave us a 41% higher revenue per visitor,” says Wilson Hung, the Director of Growth. For the checkout conversions, over the course of three iterations, we’ve seen an increase of over 140%.” The brand now has a 10% higher AOV.

5. Recommend a complementary product

The simplest way of cross-selling is to recommend a complementary product or suggest products that other, similar shoppers have bought. You can do this on the product page, the checkout page, or post-purchase.

Amazon has made a huge chunk of its revenue using this model—but make sure you’re only recommending complementary products and not random items that come out of left-field.

Aesop includes complementary products on each product page.

6. Leverage cross-sell and upsell tools

It would be a real drag if you had to manually dig into customer data to promote relevant products. Luckily, there’s a handful of powerful apps and tools that you can plug and play for successful cross-selling and upselling campaigns.

These are some of our favorites:

• OrderBump: Create hyper-targeted promotional offers for your customers both before and after they’ve made a purchase for a personalized shopping experience.
• Selleasy: Choose from different types of cross-selling and upsell offers, like the “frequently bought together” bundle, a cart page upsell funnel, and discounts with countdown timers.
• Vitals: Includes many cross-selling and upselling features, like volume discounts, product bundles, and buy-one-get-one-free options.
• Rebuy: Personalize the shopping experience based on previous purchases, customer location, and products in the shopping cart. You can also add recommendations and offers at different points throughout the funnel.
• Honeycomb: Create post-purchase thank you pages with upsells, generate relevant cross-sell offers, and offer shoppers free gifts with additional purchases.

7. Test, test, and test some more

Not every cross-sell or upsell tactic will work for every brand. As with anything, we recommend testing different offers at different points throughout the sales cycle to see what works best with your audience.

Run A/B tests of pre-purchase, post-purchase, and during-purchase cross-sells and upsells, try out subscription options, and play around with your shipping threshold to see where the sweet spot is. The aim of every great cross-sell and upsell campaign should be to benefit both the brand and the customer. It should be a win-win, providing a better experience for customers and increasing your revenue, AOV, and CLV at the same time.

Get started with cross-selling and upselling

If you haven’t already started testing cross-selling and upselling options in your store, you might be leaving money on the table.

Experiment with the different tactics we’ve laid out here, but remember: the most important thing is that you find a strategy that resonates with your target shoppers.

The post How To Leverage Cross-Selling And Upselling For Increased AOV  appeared first on The Good.

Why is that?

Marketing teams tend to measure success in terms of sales revenue. That’s as it should be. You’re in business to turn a profit. When you focus on total sales, though, you value your new customers just as much as repeat customers. That picture of customer value entirely misses one huge point: Customer acquisition costs far outweigh customer retention costs.

Every dollar you invest in getting one new customer to place an order could contribute to delivering ten or more repeat sales – if that same dollar was invested in tactics aimed at improving customer retention and brand loyalty.

Any top-notch salesperson will tell you the real job starts after the first order is placed. The sales path is more accurately described as a circle leading from hearing about you to listening to and believing you, to placing an order – then on to helping get the word out to others and purchasing again and again.

What is customer retention?

Customer retention refers to the rate at which customers stick with your brand over a certain period of time. The higher your customer retention rate is, the more existing customers you have coming back for more.

Customer retention rate is a particularly crucial metric for ecommerce brands today since shoppers have so many choices. It’s easy to jump ship to a competitor when they’re a dime a dozen. But, if your retention rates are high, it shows you have a loyal customer base and in-demand products.

How do you measure customer retention rate?

Like most ecommerce metrics, there’s a handy formula to work out your customer retention rate:

(Number of customers at end of the period – number of new customers acquired during the same period) / number of customers at the start of the period x 100

If you had 300 customers at the end of your chosen period, acquired 150 new customers during that time, and had 400 customers at the start of the period, the formula would look like this:

(300 – 150) / 400 x 100 = 37.5%

This is a pretty standard percentage since the average customer retention rate for ecommerce brands hovers around 30%.

Why customer retention is important in ecommerce

Customer retention rates track both new and existing customers to determine how likely a shopper is to stick around. It highlights how good you are at acquiring new customers, but also how many existing shoppers come back–which indicates high customer satisfaction levels and an enjoyable customer experience.

There are several reasons why customer retention is important for ecommerce brands:

• Increase ROI: Acquiring new customers is great, but it’s cheaper to convert existing customers (and they’re likely to spend more with you), which increases your ROI on ad spend and other marketing efforts.
• Boost customer loyalty: Returning customers are likely satisfied with the service you’re offering, otherwise they wouldn’t come back. Increasing customer retention rates means giving shoppers a reason to come back time and time again.
• Acquire new customers: When shoppers come across a brand that has a devoted fan base, they’re going to want a slice of the action. High retention rates show potential buyers you care about them and the experience they have with you.
• Reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC): When you have high retention rates, you don’t need to spend as much on getting new customers because your existing customers purchase from you on a regular basis.
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV): Higher customer retention rates indicate a high number of returning customers, which means the amount you make from a single customer over their lifetime with your brand significantly increases.
• Promote word-of-mouth marketing: Returning customers are more likely to recommend your brand to their friends and family. This is one of the most powerful and effective marketing strategies you can put in place.
• Focus on growth: It’s extremely difficult to grow and scale your business if the majority of your efforts are focused on constantly acquiring new customers. If you consistently need a large volume of new customers to keep revenue coming in, you’ll never be able to dedicate the necessary time and resources to growing your business.

Increasing customer retention rates ensures that revenue continues to flow even when you’re not actively seeking out new customers. This, in turn, allows you to focus on expanding into new markets or increasing your product offerings while maintaining a high ROI and satisfied customers.

Customer retention also relies on really understanding your customers so you can provide them with excellent, personalized experiences. The better you know your shoppers, the easier it is to market to them, communicate with them, and, ultimately, sell to them. Plus, high retention rates are a sign you’re doing things right. No one’s going to keep coming back if you sell subpar products that are a constant disappointment.

Customer retention strategies in action: 9 ecommerce examples

1. Implement a customer loyalty program

Loyalty programs reward your most loyal customers–simple. By offering incentives to shoppers that come back, you’re encouraging them to continue purchasing from you.

Sephora’s loyalty program is revered in the beauty industry. Shoppers can get different types of incentives on different occasions, but the program is also tiered so the more loyal a customer is, the more they can get.

2. Send SMS and email marketing win-back campaigns

Getting customer email addresses and sending them follow-up campaigns post-purchase can win back existing customers. Use insights from their past purchases and interactions with your brand to send personalized product recommendations and offers.

Brooklinen sends a personalized product recommendation to existing customers with the chance to claim free shipping.

3. Identify high-converting customers

Pinpointing who your best customers are will show you who exactly you need to treat like VIP. Find out through your sales metrics who’s bought the most from you and who continues to purchase on a regular basis. You can create a unique audience segment of your best customers and share exclusive content and offers with them.

4. Tailor user experience

Customer expectations are high. Shoppers expect brands to understand their unique wants and needs and serve personalized experiences based on that.

Drunk Elephant offers specific audience segments the chance to claim free shipping.

5. Get customer support involved

Your support team has deep insights into the frustrations and challenges your customers face. Speak to them to get useful customer feedback that you can implement to make the shopping experience more enjoyable.

6. Follow up immediately with new customers

First impressions are crucial. Show new customers you value them by hopping straight into their inbox when they make a purchase. This is a critical moment in cementing the brand-customer relationship.

Elf Cosmetics follows up with new shoppers as soon as they place an order. The email includes an incentive if they refer a friend.

7. Create a referral program

Talking of referral programs… encourage shoppers to recommend your brand to their friends and family in exchange for a special offer.

Shaving brand Harry’s asks new customers to tell their friends in exchange for a free product.

8. Stay in touch and go the extra mile

Standing out today means going the extra mile. Stay in touch with customers, maintain a connection, and don’t forget the little things. Dog food brand Chewy is a pro at this. It’s renowned for sending heartfelt cards and paintings to its most valued customers.

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9. Constantly learn more about your customers

Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to customer retention. Collect data from analytics, dig into heat maps, and carry out user testing to identify where there’s friction in the customer journey and how you can improve it. Use advanced tools yourself or engage an optimization partner to help.

How to improve your customer retention rate with DXO

The beauty of Digital Experience Optimization (DXO) is that it enables you to increase your overall retention rate without resorting to techniques such as discounting (which cuts into your bottom line and hinders growth).

By helping to create a seamless, pleasant shopping experience, DXO does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to boosting repeat conversions and maximizing your ROI. Specifically, DXO enables you to:

• Identify your most profitable customers: DXO starts with a deep dive into your website data. Using specific tools like analytics and heatmaps, you are able to identify which segments of your customers are generating the most revenue. Once this is done, you can then double down on those segments, seeking to raise conversion rates by improving the user experience.
• Identify your most profitable channels: In addition to identifying your most profitable customers, DXO also helps you determine which channels are driving the most revenue. Which is performing better: email or PPC? How effective is your social media strategy? What’s the conversion rate for Facebook ads versus PPC? DXO enables you to determine which channels are generating the most revenue and then double down on those channels.
• Adapt to the preferences of your customers: Ecommerce is constantly changing, and what worked last year probably won’t work as well this year.

Essentially, DXO allows you to see where the preferences of your customers are changing and then adapt appropriately.

For example, you may see that the conversion rate on a particular page has dropped 20 percent in the past year. Using proven DXO techniques, you can dissect the data to determine why the conversion rate is dropping and what you might do to fix it.

• Determine why customers aren’t converting in the first place: To state the obvious, if someone doesn’t initially convert on a page, there’s no chance of repeat conversions. Hence, a low initial conversion rate translates into an even lower repeat conversion rate. Using DXO, you can determine what is keeping people from making an initial purchase. Analytics may reveal that your navigation menu is too confusing, causing people to become lost as they try to navigate your site. Or user testing may show that your checkout process is too cumbersome, leading to an abundance of abandoned carts. Once you’ve identified these issues, you can then take steps to increase your first-touch conversion rate.
• Maximize your existing retention efforts: DXO is like steroids for your existing customer retention efforts, creating a virtuous cycle. Customers come to your site and, due to your DXO efforts, convert at a relatively high rate. When they come back to your site, due to email marketing or retargeting, the repeat conversion rate is also relatively high because of the DXO techniques you’ve employed.

In a sense, it’s like compound interest that keeps building on previous investments. DXO boosts both your initial conversion rate and the conversion rate of repeat customers.

Now is the time to focus on customer retention

Take a close look at your current sales and marketing strategy. How much of your budget and marketing activities are specifically devoted to current customers? How much do you know about your most loyal customers? How often are you calculating customer retention, and what are you doing to cultivate better retention?

The process begins with awareness.

Once you’re convinced that the way you treat current customers will govern growth and you’ve found the holes in your present approach to customer experience optimization, the next steps will become evident.

We’ve found the best answers to the retention challenge are best described by the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Give your customers the same world-class attention you want to receive when you order something online. That starts by looking at your business from the buyers’ perspective to improve customer engagement and dramatically reduce customer churn.

The post 9 Strategies To Improve Customer Retention (The Key To Ecommerce Growth) appeared first on The Good.

What is a Product Recommendation? 

A product recommendation is exactly what you think–a recommendation for a product. 

Have you ever made a selection at a local store, based on a product recommendation from the owner or a sales clerk? Has a product recommendation from a friend or family member ever been the deciding factor in your choice of which product to purchase?

Celebrity endorsements (paid or unpaid), advice given by a current user, “Best 10” lists on blogs – all of these mentions, and more, leverage the power of product recommendations. Looking for the best dried flower bouquet? Look no further than product recommendation lists on Google. 

As an ecommerce manager, though, you don’t have to wait for someone else to recommend a product to your customers. You can make product recommendations while the prospect is in the process of shopping on your website. Personalized product recommendations can work to improve the user experience as well as the conversion rate of your site.

In this article, we’ll reveal some of the most effective ways we’ve found to deliver product recommendations to your customers. The information we provide here will help you sell more products more often.

Guaranteed.

How Do Ecommerce Product Recommendation Engines Work?

An ecommerce product recommendation engine is a piece of technology that displays recommended products to shoppers throughout your store. It uses machine learning to get smarter and show increasingly relevant products to shoppers based on their interests and previous browsing behavior. 

While it’s possible to manually implement rudimentary “also-liked” recommendations on your ecommerce site, product recommendations best practices call for the deployment of a ‘product recommendations engine’.

There are three basic approaches used to configure the underlying algorithm:

1. The content-based filtering method analyzes customer data on the likes and dislikes of each user (cookies allow tracking over multiple visits), then makes recommendations based on the browsing history of that user. The idea behind content-based filtering is that if you enjoy a certain item, you’ll likely also enjoy a similar item. An example of a content-based filtering system would be if you were listening to Pandora and consistently ‘liked’ downtempo jazz music. The filtering system would take that information and begin recommending similar music to you based on the songs you preferred. 
2. The collaborative-filtering method incorporates data from users who have purchased similar products, then combines that information to make decisions about recommendations. The advantage to this filtering method is that it is capable of making complex recommendations on items such as music or movies without having to ‘understand’ what the item is. This method of filtering operates under the assumption that users will prefer recommendations that are based on purchases they made in the past. Here’s an example: If customer A likes a specific line of products that customer B also likes (assuming they have similar interests), then collaborate-filtering would assume that customer A would like other products that customer B purchased and vice versa. 
3. A hybrid method combines the content-based and collaborative-based methods to incorporate group decisions but focuses the output based on the attributes of a specific visitor. An example of a hybrid filtering system would be how Spotify curates its personalized ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists. If you’ve ever listened to a personalized Spotify playlist, it’s shocking how accurately they’re able to recommend songs based on what you like. The secret behind how they pull this off is through a complex hybrid filtering system that aggregates data on your listening habits as well as similar users’ listening habits, to create a playlist of unique songs that align with your personal taste. 

All three methods use machine-learning algorithms to fuel the process and provide personalized product recommendations. While the mathematical principles behind each are elaborate and complicated, the application to your online store doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Source

Why Are Product Recommendations Important? 

Is the product recommendations process really worth the trouble? Isn’t the incorporation of machine learning a bit beyond the scope of all but the largest ecommerce websites?

Those are the types of questions we often hear. There are times when it seems the high-tech movement is going too far, and machine-learning algorithms are a prime example of that complaint.

Given the potential benefits, though, the argument often settles itself. When a tool proves itself sufficiently valuable, the question moves from “Why?” to “How?”.

• Research conducted by Barilliance in 2018 concluded that product recommendations accounted for up to 31 percent of ecommerce revenue. On average, customers saw 12 percent of their overall purchases coming from products that were recommended to them. 
• A Salesforce study of product recommendations concluded that visits where the shopper clicked a recommendation comprise just 7 percent of total site traffic, but make up 24 percent of orders and 26 percent of revenue. 
• The conversion rate for visitors clicking on product recommendations was found to be 5.5x higher than for visitors who didn’t click.

• As online shoppers become more used to personalization, they equate it with professionalism – meaning your site needs to bump up to keep up.
• An Accenture report says personalization increases the likelihood of a prospect purchasing from you by 75 percent.

Studies increasingly show the value of product recommendations and the critical role they play in personalization strategies. Recommendations not only lift conversion rates, but they also help deliver an improved user experience to keep visitors coming back and can boost the average order value. 

Once an ecommerce manager is convinced of the benefits of a product recommendation engine, the next step is to determine product recommendation best practices and configure the product recommendation algorithm accordingly.

21 Tips for Ecommerce Product Recommendations 

Your ecommerce site will lend itself to some of the following tips, but not to others. We’ll list the kinds of tactics we’ve seen our clients effectively implement. You choose the ones that seem most applicable to your own business. 

1. Display Products Based on Browsing History

Displaying a list of suggested products based on the visitor’s browsing history (“Recommended for you”) is an often-used and effective type of product recommendation – to add deeper impact, personalize with the shopper’s name. 

This beauty brand recommends products based on the shopper’s skin type and eye color. 

2. Use “Frequently Bought Together” Recommendations 

If a bundle of items is regularly bought together, there’s usually a good reason for it. Maybe shoppers tend to buy a pack of batteries alongside a new flash light, or perhaps they purchase plant milk to go with their coffee beans. Suggesting products that are often bought together not only gives customers value (because who wants to be left high and dry without batteries for their flash light?), but it increases the average order value (AOV) at the same time.

3. Use Product Recommendation Engines to Personalize Your Email Campaigns

Integrate product recommendations into your email marketing strategy by sending personalized emails to your customers with product recommendations based on their recent purchase history. Tarte uses products that a customer has shown interest in to serve up relevant recommendations for other product lines. 

4. Introduce Shoppers to New Items 

“Featured recommendations” and “Recently viewed” suggestions can introduce shoppers to items they wouldn’t have thought about searching for. This can be great inspiration for new customers who don’t necessarily know the kinds of products you stock or who are looking for a starting point. 

5. Save Potentially Lost Sales

Providing access to the shopper’s browsing history can help save sales that may have been lost had the customer not been able to relocate an item earlier viewed. The last thing you want is a customer to leave your site because they can’t find the awesome bamboo lunchbox they were originally interested in. 

TC Straps details the items a shopper has recently looked at so they don’t forget. 

6. Show Products “Related to Items You’ve Viewed” 

In particular, display this type of product recommendation on product pages to help encourage users to add additional items to their cart.

7. Provide Social Proof 

“Customers who bought [this item] also bought [that item]” recommendations provide social proof and peer-generated recommendations of relevant products the user may be interested in. 

Amazon is the king of this, showcasing products that similar customers also bought to spark additional purchases. 

8. Point to New Products 

Alert viewers of products that have been updated by generating “There is a newer version of this item” notices. 

9. Personalize Product Recommendations 

Personalize recommendations by showing items related to previous purchases (“Since you already own this, you may also want this”). As well as using information about past purchases, you can also personalize recommendations based on other items a customer has shown interest in and other attributes, like their hobbies, skin type, or hair color. 

10. Feature Best-Selling Items For Each Brand 

Show your most popular products from a range of brands for indirect social proof and as a way of adding confidence to the purchase. Recommending best-selling products on the homepage has shown to be a highly-effective tactic for hooking your user’s attention as soon as they reach your site. 

11. Generate Product Bundles

Group together items that are frequently purchased together and offer a special discount to customers who purchase all items in one transaction.

12. Show Bestsellers Across Different Categories

Introduce shoppers to new product lines in categories they may not have previously looked at by showcasing a range of bestsellers from across different categories. 

13. Make Sure Recommendations Are Relevant and Timely

Catch shoppers while they’re actively in buy mode by ensuring recommendations land at just the right time (i.e. don’t promote seasonal products at the wrong time of year!). 

14. Keep Popular Products Highlighted

Adjust your recommendations to keep popular products highlighted and to provide additional viewing opportunities for lower-selling items (20 percent of your items will provide 80 percent of your sales).

15. Showcase Your Highest Rated Items 

Try injecting some social proof into your product recommendations by displaying items that have the highest customer reviews. This brand recommends relevant products with high-star ratings at the “Add to Cart” stage.

16. Know Your Visitors

The more you can personalize product recommendations, the better. Segment audiences based on demographic information as well as psychographics, like their interests, lifestyle, and challenges. You can then base your recommendations on their most pressing pain points or needs. 

17. Cross-Sell Relevant Products Via Recommendations

Provide product recommendations when items added to the cart require accessories (fishing reels need fishing line, flashlights need batteries, shoes often require socks). This brand recommends coffee accessories to go with the items in the cart. 

18. Use Product Recommendations to Upsell

Use product recommendations for moving the buyer up to a more fully-featured version of the one currently being browsed (upselling). Here, customers can upgrade their order at the point of sale. 

19. Get Seasonal With Your Recommendations

Use product recommendations to remind the shopper about upcoming holidays or other special events.

20. Never Stop A/B Testing

 Your product recommendations engine isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it function; add it to your testing regimen for conversion optimization. The more you tweak and measure it, the better your results will be. 

21. Offer Product Pairings On the Cart Page

Before your customers move into the checkout process, you have one last opportunity to present them with product recommendations. If you opt to use this tactic, make sure the products you’re offering don’t distract users from completing the purchase. Cross-selling related items that complement the items already in their cart is the best approach here.

How to Display Product Recommendations Throughout the Sales Cycle 

Not all customers are in the same spot. Some have their wallet out ready to purchase, while others are still mulling over their options. As a result, they require different types of product recommendations depending on where they are in the sales funnel.

Someone who is ready and raring to buy will want highly-targeted recommendations while a shopper that’s not as far through the funnel might want to see a variety of suggestions to see what tickles their fancy. 

Here are some ways you can present product recommendations on each page to drive the most sales and create an enjoyable customer experience.  

Homepage: “Most Popular” and “Recently Viewed” 

Your homepage is one of the first pages visitors will land on. This is essentially a springboard for all different kinds of customers–both existing shoppers who have typed your URL directly into their search bar and brand new customers who have navigated to your site from a Google search or a social media ad. 

Implementing the “Most Popular” product recommendation strategy works best here because you can showcase your bestsellers to new shoppers and remind existing customers what sets you apart. You can get granular here, too, and create a dynamic homepage for returning customers so that the recommended products are those they have shown interest in before, like their recently viewed items or a product that’s relevant to their latest purchase. 

Category Pages: “Most Popular” 

Products can get lost in category pages, especially if you have a large inventory. Avoid shoppers missing out on your bestsellers by promoting your “Most Popular in Category” products on each relevant category page. This introduces existing shoppers to a fresh range of products in the category but also sparks inspiration for new shoppers who are just beginning to browse. 

Product Pages and Cart Pages: “Bought Together” and “Similar Products” 

If a shopper is on a product page or has added an item to their cart, chances are they’re interested in that product–or, at the very least, similar products. Use the “Bought Together” and “Similar Products” strategies here to upsell relevant items or cross-sell products that complement each other. 

Our Tip: Test Product Recommendations Across Your Site

We recommend testing out different product recommendation strategies on different pages to see which ones are the most engaging for your audience. You might find that sharing your bestsellers on the homepage doesn’t get you the results you want, and instead, you get more conversions by recommending recently viewed products or a personalized selection of items based on previous browsing behavior.

Product Recommendation Q&As: Everything You Need to Know 

Understanding how product recommendations fuel the sales cycle is important, but it also helps to know how you can make the most of them and where they can best be implemented. 

How Can Product Recommendations Be Improved? 

Product recommendation engines use machine learning to get smarter. If shoppers consistently click on a recommended product in a certain category or continue to buy a certain item, the AI will soon learn that those products are the most popular.

In addition, the engines can use previous data to serve personalized recommendations to each individual customer based on the product pages they’ve visited and spent the most time on, as well as their past purchases. 

How Do You Write a Product Recommendation?

You aren’t tasked with writing product recommendations–the AI technology does it for you. The only thing you need to worry about is writing the product titles and descriptions so they match your brand voice and resonate with your audience. 

What Are Personalized Product Recommendations? 

Personalized product recommendations use existing customer data to serve shoppers’ relevant suggestions. This data can include product pages a shopper has visited, items they’ve added to their cart, previous purchases, and any first-party information they’ve shared, such as their lifestyle, interests, and hobbies. 

How Effective Are Product Recommendations? 

The stats above show that product recommendations can be incredibly effective when implemented well. The key is to put the right kind of product recommendations at the right points in the sales cycle. For example, share your bestsellers on the homepage to attract both new and existing customers, but share personalized recommendations on the “Add to Cart” page or at checkout. 

The #1 Reason Why You Should Get Started with Product Recommendations

Strategic marketing plans vary from company to company. Tactics that fit one business often aren’t a wise move for another business. Implementing a product recommendation engine, however, is something every ecommerce manager should seriously consider. 

Here’s why: your competitors will soon enough. And the advantage gained from applying product recommendation examples like the ones given above is significant. 

If you’re looking for a simple and highly effective way to improve personalization for your ecommerce store, product recommendation engines may be an investment worth making. Beyond simply getting your customers to add more items to their cart, you’re providing them with a better overall shopping experience through customized recommendations for products that they otherwise might not have found on their own. 

Here at The Good, we’re committed to working with companies to improve user experiences. If you’re seeking actionable ways to improve the shopping experience of your site, get in touch.

The post 21 Ecommerce Product Recommendation Tips (That Increase Conversions) appeared first on The Good.

• How to turn your one time customers into brand loyalists through an engaging loyalty program
• Understand the importance of loyalty programs in a growing ecommerce business
• The structure and format of winning ecommerce loyalty programs from top brands

The surge in online shopping, the rise of small ecommerce businesses, and the constant change of consumer preferences are just a few of the reasons ecommerce sales landed at a whopping $4.9 trillion in 2021. 

And the industry isn’t stopping there with sales expected to rise to $7.4 trillion by 2025. 

While these numbers promise a bright future for ecommerce businesses, they also pose a competitive threat. 

Along with growing sales, there are a growing number of ecommerce businesses. So, it’s more important than ever to provide an excellent customer experience that converts and retains.

While sales and discounts are the go to strategies for brands looking to attract lots of customers fast, these are also the tactics that decrease your perceived brand value and total revenue (we could go on and on about why discounting is bad for your brand). 

What’s better? 

A consumer-centric ecommerce loyalty program—a must-have for ecommerce businesses. The loyalty programs of today don’t just focus on small incentives and discounts, but delve deeper into experiential rewards like personalized gifts and upgrades that keep the customers happy and returning to the brand.

Why ecommerce loyalty programs are important for your business

With compelling rewards, discounts, personalized offers, and exclusive deals, it’s no surprise that 84% of customers say they’re more likely to engage with a brand with a loyalty program. 

Simply put, ecommerce companies with loyalty programs are offering a better experience for shoppers. And because they are building a better experience for their customers, they’re also improving key business metrics like Average Order Value and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). 

When you invest in shopping and brand experiences that retain customers, it pays off.

Here are just a few of the benefits your business might see from offering an ecommerce loyalty program:

• Understand what your customers want and retain them: Loyalty programs will give you first-party data about what customers like, don’t like, and what they’re most likely to engage with. You can use this data to provide experiences better suited to their needs and boost retention in the process.

• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV): A well-designed loyalty program can create a customer experience that keeps shoppers returning to your site, therefore increasing CLV. It gives them new reasons to return and continue shopping. 

CLV is crucial to have a thriving ecommerce business. Having a decent to high CLV allows you to reinvest those higher margin earnings into driving new customers who later convert into loyal customers and drive the flywheel.

-Jon MacDonald, CEO, The Good

• Turn customers into brand advocates and reach new audiences: Influencer marketing is a superpower in the ecommerce industry because 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations to make purchase decisions. However, turning existing customers into advocates is even better. With a loyalty program, you can easily identify your best customers through data and purchase history. Offer incentives for referring their friends or group gift ideas when they shop together or meet certain thresholds. You’ve kept a brand loyalist happy and gained a new customer. 

How to implement a loyalty program that converts

Over 52% of customers will join a loyalty program for a brand they regularly buy from. How can you leverage that engaged audience? 

Here’s a step-by-step guide to building a loyalty program that drives results:

1. Define your goals and conduct customer research

No marketing strategy can be successful without objectives and goals to define the direction of your project. So, begin by defining your goals for the loyalty program.

Try setting SMART goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. For example, instead of saying, “We want to increase customer retention,” say, “We want to increase customer retention by 7% by the end of the 3rd quarter.”

Once you have your goals established, turn your thinking to your customer base. 

To design a loyalty program that provides a great experience, you must understand and address the customers’ needs and preferences. 

If your loyalty program doesn’t appeal to your audience, it will likely end up as a bust. The whole point of the program is to entice customers to keep coming back, so if you fail to tailor the rewards to your audience’s needs, they won’t engage. Unattainable rewards will also quickly turn off your customers, and could actually increase turnover through frustration and annoyance. So, it’s important to understand the best ways to engage and retain them through data-driven practices.

-Co-Owner and Chief Marketing Officer, Nolah Mattress

Here’s how you can gauge the customers’ interests, needs and preferences:

• Ensure you have a CRM system in place, along with channels that help you gather customer contact information like lead magnets, newsletters, checkout processes, inventory waitlist, etc. This will allow you to maintain an opt-in customer list that you can use to carry out research.

• Use customer behavior tools like Hotjar’s heatmaps, session recordings, and exit-intent surveys to understand how your customers currently interact with your site and to find inspiration for your loyalty program. 

• Create a customer research survey and attach an incentive like first access to the loyalty program to gather more information about what your customers might value in your loyalty program. 

2. Choose the best loyalty program for your business

Once your goals are established and customer research has been analyzed, your next step is to decide on the format of your program.

Here are a few of the options, and accompanying examples, to get the creative juices flowing:

Point-based

If you visit Starbucks regularly, you probably already know what a point-based loyalty program looks like. 

It allows customers to collect loyalty points when they perform specific actions like making a purchase or sharing about their experience with the brand on social media. At different milestones or point values, participants unlock rewards. 

Most points programs are free and have a low barrier to entry. While this attracts more signups it usually means point accumulation – and rewards redemption – takes time.

The XPLR Pass by North Face, an activewear and outdoor gear brand, is an excellent example of a point-based loyalty program. 

It was voted one of America’s best loyalty programs and offers a point on every dollar spent. When customers collect 100 points, they get a $10 reward. 

ButBut what makes the program really special is the way they tailor additional rewards to the interests of their members. For example, among more common rewards, participants also get early and exclusive access to gear and special opportunities to field test equipment and return it if it doesn’t meet their outdoor exploration standards. 

North Face knows that their most loyal shoppers are dedicated to spending time outside… and they want the best gear to do it. So XPLR pass works to make that experience just a little bit better.

Tiered program

This program type rewards customers differently based on their loyalty to the brand. 

As customers spend more money and complete specific tasks, they move up the tiered ladder. The higher they go, the more exclusive and bigger benefits they enjoy.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider is a successful tiered loyalty program. Customers earn points on every dollar spent and move between three tiers—Insiders, VIB and Rouge. 

Sephora still allows non-spenders to opt-in to the program for exclusive discounts and deals. But as loyal beauty insiders spend more, they’re rewarded with better savings, discounts, free shipping, and more. 

Paid/subscription program

The paid loyalty program charges a one-time fee that grants customers access to additional perks. Similarly, in a subscription-based loyalty program, customers are charged a recurring monthly/quarter fee instead of a one-time fee.

This program works because: 

• You’re happy that the membership fee keeps customers loyal. For example, why would they order from a new food delivery app if they pay a monthly fee and get free delivery with your app that has a loyalty program?
• Your customer is happy that the fee is cheaper than what they would spend on multiple purchases. For your loyal customers, the amount they’re spending is nominal compared to what they would spend without the accompanying rewards. 

Amazon Prime is a great example of this. A Prime membership offers free two-day delivery on your orders. Currently, 148.6 million Prime members in the US alone pay $14.99 per month, registering over $25 billion in subscription fees.

Partner or community based program 

A slightly complex yet interesting loyalty program involves partnerships with similar brands to offer combined incentives and rewards. For example, a clothing brand can partner with an accessories or footwear brand to provide discounted product bundles and other incentives as part of the loyalty program.

Similarly, you can build a community-based program where the brand connects customers with other like-minded customers who can fulfill and complete tasks together to unlock incentives while networking. 

3. Decide your rewarding criteria

Your loyalty program will fall flat if you don’t decide which customer behaviors you want to reward, your rewarding criteria, and what kind of benefits you’ll offer. 

While you may feel like you need big and complicated rewards to incentivize customers, that’s hardly ever true. It’s best to start with a simple reward and simple criteria – and then add complexity as you grow the program.

“The Fragrance World’s loyalty scheme is quite new, however we’ve got great returns on the incentive to invite friends. A customer refers a friend, and both get £3 off their next order. We have customers who have referred over 10 friends with an AOV of £25 (£250), this could cost us around £50-£70 for PPC but was cheaper to acquire these customers through the loyalty scheme by offering a small incentive.”

-Katie Johnson, Founder,  The Fragrance World

Here are some actions you can reward, apart from a purchase:

• Referring a friend
• Sharing about your brand on social media
• Signing up for the newsletter
• Giving a product review 
• Customer anniversary or birthday
• Reaching a certain threshold in purchases

It’s also important that you don’t just chase discounts and free shipping as the only incentives in ecommerce. Go for experiential rewards like one round of free clothing alterations, free dry cleaning service, pick and drop for a brand event, sampling for a new product launch, etc. 

You want to incentivize your customers not just by saving money but also by improving their brand perception and shopping experience, so they continue buying from you.

4. Invest in a customer loyalty software

Managing a customer loyalty program across countries, currencies, and devices isn’t an easy feat. You need a solid ecommerce customer loyalty software to organize and streamline your process for customers and your employees.

These tools record purchases—specifically made by loyalty program members—calculates their point accumulation, allows them to buy and redeem those points, and offers interactive tools to make the process even more fun for the customers. Yotpo is a good option to start your exploration or check out G2s customer retention software resource.

Finding the right software will help you put the process on auto-pilot, so you can focus on delivering the experience.

As a bonus, this software will also give you insights around repeat purchases, your best customers, most popular incentives, and feedback so you can iterate on your loyalty program.

5. Begin experimenting and tweaking

Once you’ve got your ecommerce loyalty program up and running, it’s important to check your progress and how customers respond to your rewards and incentives system.

You can use your loyalty program software to gather data and combine it with your online store data to assess what’s working and what’s not. While there are many metrics you can evaluate, here are three to start with:

• Customer churn rate: The rate at which people stop being your customers is the churn rate. If you’re running a paid loyalty program, you also want to look at the rate at which customers stop renewing or downgrade their subscription with you. This will tell you if your loyalty program effectively retains customers or needs improvement.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is a customer experience metric that suggests how likely a customer is to recommend your brand on a scale of 1-10.

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV):  CLV is one of the most important factors determining loyalty program success. It tells you how much customers are spending, how frequently they’re shopping and how long they stay in your program. It indicates the longevity of a customer relationship, and a high CLV suggests customer satisfaction and retention.

Ecommerce loyalty programs are here to stay

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to build an ecommerce loyalty program that drives more sales. It’s important to tailor your loyalty program to your customers’ needs with personalized experiences that bring them back for repeat purchases.

Start small, keep a close eye on your data, and iterate—all while placing the customer at the center of your program. 

The post How To Build Ecommerce Loyalty Programs That Improve Customer Retention & Experience appeared first on The Good.

There is a reason our team is never quick to recommend an in-depth competitive analysis as a part of the research process. 

Let me explain. 

As ecommerce conversion rate strategists, we offer data-backed testing ideas for your website. These concepts are born from qualitative and quantitative customer research specific to your brand. We dig through the information and come up with small changes to your website that result in big financial gains. 

We’ve learned over a decade never to blindly implement the same things your competitors have on their websites. Why? You might be seeing a test or even worse, you might be seeing a site feature that is draining their margins. 

If you follow the same best practices as everyone else without doing your own analysis, you will never take your brand to the next level and you might even bump it back a few.

In this article, I’ve collected five of the common site features that our research clearly shows are conversion killers.

1. Pop-ups: Degrade the user experience, attract low-value subscribers

At The Good, we’ve run thousands of live user testing sessions on our clients sites and one of the most common things we hear is disdain for the multiple popups that hit them when they first enter a site. 

These pop-ups are typically lead generation campaigns, aimed at building email lists. They fail because the web practitioners running them don’t make an effort to see things from their customer’s perspectives. 

Most analytics platforms report that anywhere from 60-85% of your website visitors are new-to-file, i.e. they have not visited your website before on that device or browser. 

If practitioners actually cleared their cookies and viewed their website from the new visitor perspective, they would probably be annoyed too. 

Sites often open with: 

• Cookies policies
• Chat widgets
• Email popups with a discount

And this is before customers are even introduced to the products.

It can be a terrible first impression, and when paired with discounts gives the perception of a discount brand. Imagine Tiffany’s or Hermes offering 10% off in a popup as soon as you land on the site. Brands that protect their value won’t do it, and neither should you.

Can you imagine the same thing happening in a store? If customers could only see the window display and not be let in without deciding right away if they want to exchange personal information for a discount?

And as the final straw, in exchange for the discount (and poor user experience) you are getting low quality and unqualified email addresses. For a startup or small brand that is paying per subscriber through their email platform, the open rate and click-through rate will be abysmal. Pop-ups will build a list full of burner emails specifically used for discounts. 

2. Discounts: Margin drain, attract budget shoppers and tire kickers

The discount pop-up can contribute to another common site feature that makes our list of conversion killers: discounting. 

Once a customer is trained to believe there is a 10% discount waiting for every burner email address they share, they are never going to be willing to pay full price. 

In 2020, we saw real hardship for brands that relied heavily on discounting as a strategy. They had become overly reliant on the boon cycles that discounts offered and accepted the serious lulls between sales. 

But, when at the start of the pandemic nearly every brand was also offering discounts there was no differentiator for their brand and their customers were even more price-sensitive than usual. It left brands that discount heavily in a bad position. 

Similar to the first conversion killer mentioned, a lot of brands with strong recall are selective about the way they offer their discounts. 

Take Glossier, for example. They have a robust referral program but rarely do blanket sales. Instead, they reserve their discounts to endear themselves to industry folks and promote word-of-mouth recommendations. 

There are so many alternatives to discounts that build brand loyalty. Here are a few examples:

• Referral programs
• Points or loyalty programs that offer meaningful items to VIP cohorts
• Free gift with purchase
• Free or reduced shipping for order minimums
• Expedited shipping for priority cohorts or VIPS
• Bundle or bulk discounts

These all attract those customers you really want: people excited about your product. Avoid people who are comparison shopping and only looking for the best deal. 

3. Generic CTAs: Shop Now isn’t helpful, Shop Men’s Pants is

According to Baymard research, contextual language is much more helpful than generic wording. For example, a menu that says “Shop” is far less helpful than one that says “Men’s Pants” “Work Boots” and “Protective Clothing.” 

Generic CTAs can actually be extended far beyond just the button. 

So, what we’re really talking about here is something known as “information scent.” Can a user glean from the copy and context of your site, what is on the other side? 

If not, users develop a hunting and pecking behavior. They click an item, and when it turns out it’s not useful or just not what they needed, they have to start over. They end up having to click multiple times. 

To make sure we avoid this behavior, we sometimes challenge ourselves at The Good to remove the images from a website and see if we can still tell what the site does or sells. 

The best websites have a clear value proposition, a high-information scent menu, and clear CTAs meant to guide users to either an overview or a clear product category. 

Causing misfires or forcing users down an unhelpful path because of bad CTAs or poor information scent wastes their time and expels their attention… clear conversion killers.

And your user’s time and attention are too precious to waste.

4. Features vs. Benefits: Using your language, not your customer’s

Now here is something I wish they taught in all design schools because the people creating products are usually so focused on what it does, rather than what the customer gets out of it. 

You need to speak in the language of your customers. 

Let’s paint a picture of this point with an iconic example from Apple and the release of the original iPod. While there were other music players out there, many said things like “1 Gig of storage.” Apple, on the other hand, said “1,000 songs in your pocket.” 

The difference is that competitors talked about the capacity in a way that was meaningful to insiders but still took some calculation for the average consumer to understand. Apple told us what that meant to the user with human and non-abstract language. 

When we audit a website, we are always paying attention to the little moments where users are required to translate. Technical spec charts aside, the goal is to communicate to a user in a way that means something to them, rather than touting minute, indecipherable differences.

5. FAQs: Where good content goes to die

Only a small portion of users ever make it to FAQ pages, usually around 1%, so hiding important details here is not advisable. 

Here are a few ways you can incorporate FAQ information in the proper locations across the site:

• Sizing questions: Address these in size guides that are easily accessible from product pages
• Shipping questions: Communicate shipping costs and expected delivery windows early in the process so you don’t give shoppers sticker shock or lose a time-based order like a birthday or anniversary gift
• Trust-building: Weave trust indicators throughout your site with social proof on the home page or secure checkout badges as customers enter credit card information

Companies use FAQs to share information that should be communicated much earlier in the funnel. To reach the 99% of customers that don’t make it to the page, share information on the path of the customer journey rather than out of the way in a buried list.

The opposite of conversion killers: site features that boost conversions

Ok, so now you know 5 of the most common site features that are actually conversion killers. What about site features that boost conversions?

The best way to find this out is to talk to your customers and talk to our team at The Good. We can help you comb through your site’s data and conduct personalized research to find out what site features will boost conversions on your website. 

If you’re looking for a place to start, check out our Digital Experience Optimization Audit and let’s get to work!

The post 5 Common Site Features That Are Actually Conversion Killers appeared first on The Good.

How customer care responds, and how quickly they do so, will have long-term consequences on your customer relationships and their lifetime value.

Some companies see customer care as a cost center; a necessary price to pay for operating a business. This is an unfortunate point of view because customer care is anything but.

As the first point of contact for your prospects and customers they wield enormous influence over your revenue. If they’re friendly and helpful they’ll build and sustain your customer base. They’ll convert prospects into first-time buyers, and build loyalty over the long haul.

But a deep product knowledge and a sunny disposition aren’t enough to make a customer care rep succeed. With thousands of prospects visiting your ecommerce site, social media pages and affiliate networks daily, you need to empower the customer care team with the tools and workflows that will allow them to step up to the task. Yes, it will require investment on your part, but they’ll pay dividends long into the future.

Here are some tips to help your customer care team become rock stars.

Recognize Customer Care as the Revenue Generator it Truly Is

Think of your customer care reps as your “just-in-time heroes” who swoop in to rescue sales when prospects are at their wits’ end. You lose sales when a customer doesn’t know if a product comes in pink or will be delivered in time for someone’s birthday. These sales heroes are the secret sauce behind numerous conversions.

If this surprises you, take the time to quantify the benefit your customer care team delivers to your bottom line. You can do that by tracking:

• Chat-to-sales conversion rates
• Number of sales generated by an agent through various interactions
• Average order value generated by an agent

Conversely, research has shown that 79% of consumers will take their business to a competitor within a week due to poor customer service — and this competitor is too often Amazon.

Once you see how critical customer care is to your revenue, consider offering incentives in the form of performance-based bonuses to their compensation packages of your agents. But take care not to overdo it. Customer care succeeds when the customer feels the team member is on their side.

Checkout: It’s Where You Need to Be

Checkout is a make-or-break moment for conversions. Are there hidden costs I don’t know about? Do I need to pay extra to receive the package on time? Can I change the delivery address if I need to after the package has shipped? These are the types of questions that give shoppers pause, and stifle conversions.

Your customer care team can win the sale (and nervous shopper’s long-term loyalty) by coming to their aid. For instance, present the opportunity to chat live with a customer care rep to people who sit on the checkout page for a set period of time. Inaction is a sure sign a shopper has questions, so offer the assistance they want and need.

Follow-up with automated messages that explain delivery time, and your return and exchange policies for added assurance.

Respond to Inquiries at Lightning Speed

Responsiveness has always been a key criteria to customers, but it’s even more so as of late. According to an Accenture survey of more than 25,000 consumers across 22 countries, the pandemic has changed the consumer in fundamental ways.

50% say companies “disappointed them by not providing enough support and understanding of their needs during challenging times.” That’s up from 14% in the days before the pandemic hit. 75% say they expect companies to address their changing needs during difficult times. They’re also less likely to prioritize price and quality than they once were, elevating service and personal care.

The way to win the loyalty of the post-pandemic consumer is to respond to messages at lightning speed. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you do just that.

For instance, macros (aka pre-written texts) make quick work out of answering routine questions such as, “my product arrived damaged, how do I get a replacement?” or “do these tees run in the wash?”

Moreover, you can automate the responses customer care team members send, but still deliver a highly personalized experience to the recipient by using a combination of pre-written answers and integrations with other data sources.

Let’s say a customer purchases a pair of jeans and emails a standard question (“when will my order be shipped?”) to your customer care department. With a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can leverage macros to insert their first name and order number into your standard response that explains your fulfillment process and set your helpdesk to automatically reply to her.

In fact, you can integrate virtually any data source with your helpdesk platform to personalize the experience. Just take care to ensure that all pre-written messages are in your brand voice so she knows that the message is coming from a person, and not a machine.

By the way, this workflow of pre-written messages, populated with personalized data (AKA macros) is suitable for all channels, including chat, social media, email, as well as for all types of questions.

Embrace Omnichannel Support

Today’s consumers shop from multiple devices and channels, and naturally expect the ability to request and receive customer care from all of them, including social media, email, SMS, live chat, and phone. Don’t disappoint them; if you do you may lose the sale. Worse, you’ll lose the ability to earn their long-term loyalty.

If a customer asks about your returns policy on Instagram, answer in that channel. Ditto for direct messages on Facebook, SMS, email and so on. Which leads us to the next tip.

See Your Customers For Who They Are: Multifaceted Shoppers with a Question They Want Answered 

A shopper can begin a conversation on Instagram, and continue it on live chat from a brand’s website the following day. To make your customers feel as though you’re truly listening, link all of their interactions into a central location that the customer care team can easily access. 

This integration will enable you to deliver personalized messages across every touchpoint, including automated ones. To get a holistic view of the customer, adopt a helpdesk platform that can centralize all of a customer’s interactions, regardless of how they contact you. This will allow your customer care rep to see the big picture — and spare the customer from “starting all over from the beginning” with a description of their issue.

Get Personal (It’ll Prompt More Sales)

We can’t state this frequently or forcefully enough: Customer care is an underutilized driver of revenue. That’s a shame, because when loyal customers have a question, their first point of contact is customer care. 

Deep integrations between your ecommerce store and helpdesk can help you personalize your responses based on a customers order history to drive revenue and delight customers. Let’s say a particular customer favors a specific designer or line of products that you carry on your site. Alerting them that “New Arrivals Are In,” is a great way to personalize the message, and prompt more sales.

Consider adopting a helpdesk platform that can detect the intent of a customer correspondence and automate your response. Machine learning goes a long way in assessing the intent of customer inquiries, and can cover a lot of ground, including:

• Product questions (e.g. requests help choosing a product or finding a replacement budget hat)
• Product or experience feedback (e.g. “I love the new site redesign, but where did you put the cheese I’ve been buying for the past five years?”)
• Shipping and status questions
• Requests for refunds, or product exchanges
• Product exchange Requests
• Reports that an order was received damaged
• Request to cancel an order

And many others. When combined with macros, your team can respond to a query however it’s sent (email, customer care form, SMS, social media) and in your brand’s voice. Be sure to follow through by enabling the customer care rep to deliver on the promise made (e.g. issue a promised refund; send a replacement) without ever leaving the helpdesk platform. 

Your brand can also track intent for the express purpose of creating personalized experiences. Let’s say customer comments that he loves your new earbuds, you can auto filter that comment into social leads, and have your customer team reply with a code “just for you.” 

Technology has obliterated the silos that separated sales from telesales from customer care. Brands had little say in the matter; those changes were brought on by consumers who bring their own expectations to the purchasing experience. Today’s consumers want expedited answers, and if they don’t get them they’ll take their business elsewhere. Don’t think of this as a challenge; consider it as an opportunity to demonstrate that your brand cares about your customers and their level of satisfaction with each and every interaction. 

The post How to Turn Your Customer Care Team into a Veritable Revenue Generator appeared first on The Good.

Then they set it and forget it. 

This might be why a whopping 85% of consumers say less than half the emails they receive are useful. Ouch. 

Retailers and marketers are missing out on big opportunities to deliver value, start conversations, stand out from the crowd, and improve conversion rates here. “A confirmation email, particularly post-purchase, is the perfect opportunity to deepen the customer relationship and earn their loyalty,” says Ami Williamson, ecommerce copywriter and quiz funnel creator.   

How do you seize that opportunity? 

That’s what we dive into below. We’ll define what we mean by “confirmation emails” in an ecommerce setting and explore why they deserve more than an email template. Then, we’ll cover the fundamentals behind effective confirmation emails, with plenty of examples for guidance.

Here’s what you can expect to learn:

• What is a confirmation email?
• Why are confirmation emails important to marketing?
• 3 types of ecommerce confirmation emails
• What to include in your confirmation email design
• Effective confirmation email examples
• Confirmation email FAQ

What is a confirmation email?

A confirmation email is a transactional message you send to website visitors and customers. It verifies a completed action, a bit like a digital thumbs-up. It’s also a relational email. It intersects a prospect’s or customer’s journey with your brand, so it’s a key opportunity to build trust and rapport with the recipient. 

Why are confirmation emails important to marketing?

While our inboxes are fairly flooded (something like 319 billion emails are sent every day), we’re still spending a good deal of time there. Five hours a day, in fact.

Your customers are hanging out in their inbox. And, if you do a few things right, they’re also opening your confirmation emails.

Here are four big opportunities you have when they do. 

1. Start a one-on-one conversation with your prospects

Transactional emails, correctly presented, aren’t seen as spam by either regulatory guidelines or by the people who receive them.

Because of this, all types of confirmation emails enjoy exceptionally high open and click-through rates. They experience an average open rate of 42.51%, a click-through rate of 18.27%, and a conversion rate of 10.34%. Keep in mind the average open rate for marketing emails is only around 15-25%, with the average click-through rate hovering around 2.5%. So, folks are opening your confirmation emails way more than your average emails. 

This gives you a unique opportunity to start conversations. For example, you could ask recipients why they chose to buy in an order confirmation email (hello customer research!). Or, ask them to self-segment in a subscription confirmation email, the way Brightly does below, so you can deliver more personalized emails in the future.      

2. Touch base with prospects at critical points in the consumer lifecycle

If someone just subscribed to your email list or rewards program, they’ve expressed interest. If they’ve just made a purchase, they’ve chosen to spend their hard-earned money with you. At either point, they’ve made a significant step in their journey with your brand, and you now have the chance to build rapport. 

“If you’re wanting repeat customers, you can start by focusing on making sure their first order is a positive experience,” Ami Williamson points out. “Teach them how to get the most out of your products — happy customers are more likely to come back, tell others and less likely leave a negative review.”

3. Track valuable data for better engagement

There’s a good deal of valuable quantitative and qualitative data you can pull from the confirmation emails you’re sending. 

For example: 

Quantitative:

• Subject line performance
• Day of week open rates
• Click rate
• Conversion rate
• Read time 
• Revenue per subscriber
• Subscriber lifetime value 
• Forwards 

Qualitative:

• Any responses, including clarifying questions, frustrations, or “yay, can’t wait!” anecdotes. 

On the quantitative side, this data can help you optimize your send times, segmentation, open rates, and more so you get better at sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time. 

On the qualitative side, these responses help you understand what the customer is thinking or feeling at that journey stage, where you can improve your emails (are they frustrated because you left out key information?), or identify customers you can interview for deeper insights. 

4. Boost conversions with well-timed CTAs

Confirmation emails are also a chance to boost sales. Your audience is actively engaged, so they’re also primed for conversions. 

“Confirmation emails are triggered by your subscribers’ actions AND intent, so by default, they’re HYPER personalized, HYPER relevant, and sent at the exact moment your subscriber is LOOKING to engage with you,” explains ecommerce email consultant, Nikki Elbaz. “You really couldn’t ask for a more magical mix — and the numbers show it.” 

So, while you do want to think carefully about how you add in conversion prompts, such as upselling or cross-selling related products, confirmation emails are a good place for well-timed call-to-actions (CTAs) — as long as you’re providing your new customer with all the essentials they are expecting first.

5. Stand out in a crowded marketplace with an exceptional experience

“Why make a bland impression when you can make an incredible one?” asks Samar Owais, email strategist for ecommerce businesses. She recommends, “Surprise and delight your customers in unexpected places — and everyone expects a bland confirmation email. It’s one of the easiest and most underrated ways a brand can stand out.” 

For example, Nuggs packs a load of delight into their confirmation email with just a few changes to the default Shopify confirmation template. Lianna Patch, owner of Punchline Conversion Copywriting, explains normally these templates just say “‘We have received your order. We will notify you when it’s ready for processing.’ and it’s such a missed opportunity — especially if you want to stand apart with your brand.” Her confirmation email from Nuggs did something delightfully different. 

Remember, a great customer experience builds an effective moat for your brand. And since confirmation emails are one of the initial experiences a prospect or customer has with you, they’re a great place to start building a best-in-class experience. “Confirmation emails are often the first email your subscriber/customer sees after taking an action you wanted them to take,” reminds Owais, “…the least you can do is reward that conversion with a great email experience.” 

3 types of ecommerce confirmation emails 

Confirmation emails, as the name implies, confirm the consumer or retailer took some kind of action. Three actions that commonly trigger a confirmation email in ecommerce are: 

• A visitor subscribes to your mailing list. When a visitor on your website signs up to your mailing list or loyalty program, they’re sent a subscription confirmation email. 

• Someone buys something from you. When a visitor completes a purchase on your website, they’re sent a purchase confirmation email. This email typically summarizes important order details and answers any questions the customer may have about the order.  

• You ship the item. Once the product has shipped, you’ll send the customer a shipping confirmation email to notify the customer that their purchase is on its way.  

There are other types of email confirmations, of course. If you run webinars, you’ll send registration confirmations, and if you’re a boutique hotel you’ll send booking confirmations, but those are a bit less common. The three above are the ones most every ecommerce brand will deal with. 

Here’s how to design all three of those in a way that builds rapport and improves conversions. 

What to include in your confirmation email design

Every confirmation email should include at least these items and best practices: 

• Relevant information
• Right expectations
• Clear next steps
• Human writing
• Brand-specific elements
• Skimmable structure
• Optimized subject lines
• Mobile-first design 

And, depending on your brand and the email’s content, you may also want to include:

• A celebration
• A well-timed call-to-action

Here are each of those bullets in more detail. 

Optimized subject lines: Get their attention ASAP

We’re starting with this one because your recipient will need to open the email to see anything else on this list. 

Here are some guidelines from Mailchimp for optimizing your subject lines and email open rates: 

A few more data-backed tips here:

• Make sure it’s obvious the email is from your brand. Fun fact: the #1 driver for a recipient opening your email is “recognising the brand” closely followed by the subject line. So use something recognizable, and stay away from “no-reply” email addresses. 
• Get personal — emails with personalized subject lines are 50% more likely to be opened. Remember that “personalized” goes beyond using the recipient’s first name. It also means accounting for the recipient’s past interactions with your brand, expressed preferences, and customer’s status (seasonal shopper vs. year-round).
• Do something different. Subscribers should still be able to recognize what your email is about, of course. But that doesn’t mean you have to use the same subject line as everyone else. Lianna Patch took me inside her inbox and highlighted a few brands who break the mold well here. These brands use a clever loading bar (Nuggs) or on-brand copy (Natural Dog Company) to stand out in their subject lines. “The ones who get lost,” Patch explains, “are the ones that just say ‘Thanks for your order’ and include the order number.” 

Relevant information: Include what’s necessary

Once the recipient opens your email, the content must be immediately useful. Make sure your email serves the customer before anything else. This means including all the necessary information in a clear, succinct way. 

What information is necessary and relevant? 

If you’re sending an order confirmation email, you’ll want to include at least the following:

• Confirmation the order went through
• Explanation of how it’ll ship and how they can track it
• Image of what the customer purchased
• Information about who contact if they have concerns 
• Maybe: A cross-sell using Klayvio or Privy (if it’s appropriate)

If it’s a shipping confirmation, include these items: 

• Shipping update
• Expected delivery/date range
• Tracking information
• Maybe: Additional resources, such as tips that’ll help your customer use the product when it arrives

If you’re sending a subscription confirmation (say, to marketing emails or a newsletter), you’ll want to keep context in mind: DMA and Pure360 found 48% of consumers subscribe to brand emails for discounts and offers, 43% subscribe because they’re already a regular customer, 40% sign up because they want email receipts, and 40% sign up for a loyalty program. (You don’t have to be a math quiz to realize most customers sign up for multiple reasons.) 

So, first deliver on why the customer signed up. Then also consider including:

• A warm welcome 
• Any incentive they signed up to receive
• A clear and prominent button for double opt-in (if you’ve set that up)
• How to unsubscribe (no one likes feeling trapped)
• Maybe: a prompt to self-segment (e.g. are they interested in promotions? Tips? Community advice?) 

Right expectations: Start on a good foot 

“My favorite confirmation emails are the ones that tell me what to expect next,” says Samar Owais. “Unfortunately, that’s where most brands fall short. If shipping’s gonna take longer than usual, tell me in the order or shipping confirmation then tell me how to check in with your customer service.” Owais says this proactive approach is a key way to build trust. “Set my expectations so that I don’t turn into a dissatisfied customer. Let me know that you care about me receiving my order. Make it easy for me to trust you.” 

Remember, consumers are protective of their inboxes, and they (much like you) don’t have the patience for emails that add more noise than value. If you want them to keep opening your emails, delight them. 

The best way to delight your recipient? Start the conversation off with whatever they’re most concerned about, then confirm the action that they just took. From that point, you can transition into any educational or lead nurturing information you want to include in the email. 

Make a good first impression, and subscribers will be more likely to keep you in their inbox.

Clear next steps: Tease an upcoming email 

Ever felt like you’ve been left in the dark — you’re not sure what’s coming next…or when? It’s an uncomfortable feeling for anyone. And it’s a feeling your visitors don’t ever have to experience if you’re intentional about what you put in your confirmation emails. No matter what type you’re sending, tell recipients what emails are coming next. Promotions? Shipping? Tips for using the product or earning rewards? Spell it out.  

Check out how Roark outlines clear next steps well in their order confirmation email. Immediately after confirming the customer’s purchase, they say: “We will send you another email as soon as it ships.” 

Of course, this is a bit more straightforward in purchase and shipping confirmation emails where you know for a fact which email the customer will receive next. 

Subscription confirmation emails can be a bit trickier, especially if you don’t have a set welcome sequence (which, by the way, is a good thing to put together). Even so, consider at least telling the subscriber what types of emails they can expect going forward, the way Wine Enthusiast does below. 

Human writing: Write like a human, not a car salesman 

People connect with people, so you want to make sure the copy in your email sounds like it came from a person, not a robot. 

Casper, for example, does an excellent job of sounding human in many of their emails, including the one below. Phrases like, “But not too bright, it’s bedtime after all” and “Here’s what you’ll get…” all sound like phrases you’d use in everyday conversation with a friend. 

Brand-specific elements: Keep all elements on-brand

From colors and font, to the logo and voice, make sure your brand concept is evident in every email you send…including confirmation emails. Never use the stock design provided by your email or marketing automation platform. Every email should look, sound, and feel like “you.” 

For example, Lianna Patch walked me through a confirmation email in her inbox from cadence, a DTC company selling self-care organizers. Check out the header of their confirmation email. 

In-line with their brand, cadence keeps the copy here all lower-case. Also worth noting is the way cadence reminds Patch of her impact (in a human voice, too — bonus points!). She explains, “they’re reminding me I’ve not only ordered something for myself, I have contributed to the good of the world in some way — and in this case two ways.”

Skimmable structure: Make it easy to digest

Prospects don’t brew a tea, grab a blanket, and settle in to read to your latest email line-by-line. Far from it. Assuming they open it, they’ll quickly skim the content to see if it’s interesting. This means you have seconds to earn the reader’s attention. Don’t overload them with information right off the bat. Make the confirmation email easy to read, and remember to keep the information focused on them, not on you.

A good way to do this is with short blocks of texts. Icons can help as well. Check out how Brooklinen uses both to succinctly highlight brand benefits in their subscription confirmation.

Mobile-first design: Make it phone and tablet friendly 

According to Litmus, recipients opened 39.9% of emails on mobile devices in 2020. So yes, your emails need to be mobile-friendly. To make sure they are, always test your emails on a mobile device — either by sending it to yourself or an employee or by using a testing platform such as Litmus. Never assume an email will look as good or perform as well on a small screen as on a big one.

Friendly celebration: Confirm milestones with rewards

This could be as simple as a well-chosen gif, a bit of illustrated confetti, or a great big HURRAH. Or it could be something more concrete such as a reward or discount (remember there are plenty of ways to discount without taking a percentage off!)

Also, keep in mind you don’t necessarily have to craft a new reward for every confirmation email. You may be able to reframe valuable services you already offer instead. For example, Glossier reminds subscribers of several perks (free returns, consults with editors) the brand offers. Framed up nice and tidy in a welcome email, these feel like a reward for signing up with the brand. 

Call-to-action: Promote your products or invite participation

Lastly, you may want to consider adding an appropriate CTA to your email. 

Just remember to choose carefully here. 

Nikki Elbaz warns, “it can be super tempting to stuff in allll the things into your confirmation email — because you know it’s getting eyeballs.” But this can do more harm than good. She cautions a too-stuffed email will result in higher rates of inaction — not at all what you want. Instead, she advises “take a look at your typical customer journey — and offer the most common next step at the confirmation email’s ONE call to action.” 

For example, check out how Bite welcomes subscribers with a “here’s how you’re making a difference” email and one, clear invitation to shop. 

What else could you prompt readers to do?

Here are several ideas:

• Tell the elevator pitch version of your brand story/mission and invite readers to dive into a more detailed narrative 
• Introduce your team and tell their impactful stories
• Share positive reviews/testimonials from customers who also bought that product to get them excited
• Proactively address common FAQs
• Reassure recipients about refund and return policies, especially for items like apparel
• Educate them on how to use the product once they get it in their hands
• Invite them to opt-in to your loyalty program or another exclusive group
• Give new subscribers a special reward (maybe a coupon or free shipping)

With a little creative thought and a good deal of customer understanding, you’ll identify several ways to keep the conversation going and your customers coming back for more. Just remember not to sacrifice the details of the order confirmation for the sake of marketing. Focus on delivering value to the customer first, then ask if there’s a way to deliver additional value through a non-salesy promotion, referral invitation, participation in a rewards program, or many other options. The confirmation takes priority.

Okay, that wraps up all the elements you’ll want your confirmation email to include. Now, let’s look at a few examples of brands putting these elements into action. 

Effective confirmation email examples

Here are four winners who’ve applied email confirmation fundamentals well.

Warby Parker’s purchase confirmation email

Warby Parker has one of the best post-purchase email sequences out there. They keep it simple and focus on delivering plenty of value to the customer. 

• Type of email: Purchase confirmation 
• What they do: They start by providing the necessary transactional information for the order, then they provide a link to their FAQ page for any questions about shipping or returns. They end with giving customers the final order details as well as a link to track the package. All wrapped up in friendly copy, a skimmable structure, and an on-brand design. 
• The extra mile: Note the valuable cross-sell for contacts, tucked in at the bottom. The peppy “Here it comes!” header up top is a fun and celebratory variation of the standard “thank you” as well. 

Welly’s confirmation email sequence

Welly – a DTC brand that sells first-aid products – also has a great purchase confirmation email.

• Type of email: Purchase confirmation
• What they do: They lead with a friendly celebration and clearly remind customers of the delivery date at the top of the email. From there, they move on to the order summary and total transaction amount (complete with a product image!). They also clearly state how to get in contact with customer service if you have any concerns. 
• The extra mile: At the bottom of the email, they provide answers to a variety of common questions that might arise around the order. This proactive move likely reduces the number of emails the support team receives. Plus, tracking these clicks could tell Welly what customers are most concerned about in this stage. 

Bonus: After the order confirmation email, Welly also sends follow-up emails to notify customers when their product has shipped, and when the package has been delivered. 

Dollar Shave Club membership confirmation email

Dollar Shave Club also checks all the boxes with their membership confirmation email.

• Type of email: Purchase confirmation 
• What they do: They start the email off by building excitement around the purchase and providing important transactional information. They finish the email by showing customer account information, as well as a way to get in touch with their customer service team regarding any questions or concerns they may have regarding their order. 
• The extra mile: They emphasize their referral program, and offer the customer a $5 credit toward a future purchase if they get a friend to sign-up for the shaving club. This is a great addition to the confirmation email we rarely see utilized by subscription services, and it’s a huge missed opportunity to capitalize on the post-purchase excitement that customers typically feel immediately following a purchase. 

Chipotle registration confirmation email

When you give Chipotle your email, they make it easy to keep engaging with them.

• Type of email: Subscription confirmation 
• What they do: On-brand design, clear next steps, expectations about future rewards, and an easy-to-skim structure. 
• The extra mile: Customer-centric and human copy through-and-through. From “there’s a lot of deliciousness in your future” to “you’ll be the first in line for tasty deals,” Chipotle re-emphasizes all the perks their subscribers receive. This is a phenomenal way to reassure subscribers they’ve made a great choice. Remember: Explore the existing customer journey your visitors take and provide only the most relevant links once you confirm the customer’s initial action.

Note: If you’re looking for more confirmation email examples, make sure to check out ReallyGoodEmails – a website that offers a library of 6,000+ emails to reference for inspiration.

Confirmation email FAQ

Still have a few lingering confirmation email questions? Here are some common ones and their answers. 

Will adding in a CTA get me in trouble with CAN-SPAM or GDPR?

Not if you don’t overdo it. Here’s what CAN-SPAM says:

It’s common for email sent by businesses to mix commercial content and transactional or relationship content. When an email contains both kinds of content, the primary purpose of the message is the deciding factor. Here’s how to make that determination: If a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line would likely conclude that the message contains an advertisement or promotion for a commercial product or service or if the message’s transactional or relationship content does not appear mainly at the beginning of the message, the primary purpose of the message is commercial.

While GDPR isn’t as clear on the topic (yet), the assumption is that those requirements will be in line with CAN-SPAM. Check the GDPR website for up-to-date info.

And by the way, when we say, “don’t overdo it,” we mean don’t force your customer into an option or pitch a sale in a spammy way. Take a cue from Fullscript and the way they add a compelling but subtle subscription reminder into their purchase confirmation email. 

Should I A/B test my emails? 

If you have a large enough audience for the test to be statistically significant, go for it. Just remember to run small experiments where you vary one element at a time, so you know what works. For example, adjust only the subject line, the featured image, OR the CTA. If you adjust all three in one go, you’ll have no idea which change resonated the most with your audience. 

How do I send a confirmation email?

This will vary according to which email platforms you use. Most allow you to set up email campaigns, workflows, series, or triggers based on common actions. 

For specifics on sending confirmation emails with your email platform, check out their help docs, tutorials, or resource center— that’s where you’ll find the best and most up-to-date guidance. 

What about an email confirmation page? 

Whether or not this is a good idea depends on what you’re confirming — and how the visitor signed up. 

For example, if the visitor entered their email into a pop-up or form on the side of one of your landing pages, you may not want to interrupt their journey by whisking them off to a new and separate “thanks for signing up” page. It’s enough to show this in-line. 

This is the approach Outdoor Voices takes when you subscribe to their email list in their footer. When you enter your email address, add your birthday, and hit “sign up now,” they display a simple confirmation message where the form used to be. 

But if your visitor has just made a purchase, a thank you page is an important (we’d even argue necessary) part of their post-purchase journey. 

It’s a great place to suggest bulk orders, pitch a subscription, or mention related upsells with CartHook. You could also use it to reduce any purchase anxiety the customer might be feeling. Good ways to do this include highlighting any charities you and the customer’s purchase support, emphasizing the exceptional work environment you provide for employees, or showcasing other happy customers. 

Confirmation Emails: Your Brand’s Advantage

Your confirmation emails don’t have to be dry and transactional, but they do have to deliver value to the customer and help them happily continue their journey. And there are many opportunities to turn a bland template into a strategic advantage for your brand. 

“The one email that your subscriber is most likely to open — are you gonna send them a generic template?” Elbaz asks. “Or are you gonna use that opportunity to build loyalty and move them through the customer journey faster?” 

When you look at things from that angle, the answer is easy. 

P.S. Need help driving more conversions with your emails? You might consider scheduling a free landing page teardown where a member of our strategy team will provide you with actionable recommendations for how to improve the customer experience of your website.

The post Your Confirmation Email Starter Kit: Strategies, Best Practices, and Examples appeared first on The Good.

I recently tried a large do-it-yourself (DIY) renovation. It involved stripping and refinishing an 8-person dining room table, painting and sealing chairs, and, oh yes, a bit of reupholstery. The Pinterest posts said it would take “just a few steps” and I could “even do it during naptime.” 

One month, $250, a pile of second-hand tools later, and I was sitting on the garage floor feeling way out of my league. I was covered in dust from the sander, splotched from days of stripping away old stain, and speckled with bits of polyurethane. 

And I wasn’t even close to done with the PREP work, let alone the refinishing.

Painting walls and switching out cabinet hardware were home improvements I could manage.  But this? This, I decided, was the kind of project better left to the trained carpenters of the world. 

For ecommerce store owners, true conversion rate optimization is a bit like that project — you can try to do it yourself, but it’s going to take longer, be more expensive, and deliver a less impressive outcome than hiring a professional.

Yet at the same time, this doesn’t mean you can’t make other important upgrades that improve life around the house. In fact, as a store owner, there are plenty of conversion rate improvements you can make to improve your customer experience on your site and see higher conversions in return. 

This playbook outlines how to identify and take advantage of these improvement  opportunities with your existing resources. I won’t promise you can do it all during nap times, but I will guarantee you won’t wind up covered in sawdust or sitting discouraged on the garage floor.    

Here’s what’s ahead:

• Why CRO is worth your attention but hard to DIY
• The difference between CRI and CRO
• 3 steps any ecommerce store can take to identify issues
• How to skip straight to a list of prioritized, high-impact improvements

Why conversion rate optimization is worth your attention (but hard to DIY) 

With so many competing business needs — Accounting, Product Development, Marketing, Logistics, Customer Support — it’s worth asking why conversion rate optimization (CRO) is worth your limited time and energy to begin with. 

Some quick math will help. Let’s say you’re getting 30,000 site visitors a month, you average order value is $50, and your conversion rate is 2%. If you bump that up that conversion rate just one percent, you’re going to add $15,000 a month in revenue.

If you increase your conversion rate from 1% to 3%, you’re going to double your monthly revenue from $30k to $60k. 

Pro Tip: This screenshot is from a tool that we built to help our clients understand the value of ecommerce CRO. You can enter your own details and play out what life might look like when you implement the recommendations in this article. Onward!

Increased revenue is at the heart of better ecommerce CRO, but that’s not all it impacts. In our 11 years of experience, we’ve seen taking steps to improve your conversion rates also has attractive secondary benefits like:

• Improved customer acquisition and retention
• Increased brand exposure
• Reduced customer service workload
• Reduced customer churn 

Which is why, for modern ecommerce brands, having a CRO program is no longer a competitive advantage — it’s table stakes. If you’re not investing in it, you’re going to get left behind. 

What all goes into conversion rate optimization?  

Before we get much deeper into CRO, let’s clear up what it is and isn’t. Plenty of tools claim they help with it and there’s no shortage of consultants who claim they’re good at it. You’ve likely heard the term before. 

However, they’re not always talking about the same thing we are.

Conversion rate optimization isn’t: 

• Plugging in a few tools and hoping they work
• Using your gut to tweak parts of the website
• Fiddling with 50 shades of blue for buttons
• A passing marketing fad 
• Only focused on cart and checkout
• Optional for brands who want to succeed
• A one-person show 

True conversion rate optimization is: 

• Iterative
• Data-driven (changes aren’t made on hunches) 
• Reliant on a scientific process
• Concerned with high-impact areas
• About making your site work better for customers
• Improving a variety of conversion points, including sales
• Table stakes for ecommerce companies 
• Dependent on a team of experts

Meaning, true ecommerce CRO is a scientific process, not a checklist. It’s more like the Scientific Method you learned in High School biology than the tried-and-true recipe from a Chrissy Tiegen cookbook. It includes audits, assessments, hypotheses, tests, and analysis. It’s getting 1% better every day, week, and month, and seeing compound growth. When done right, it always builds exponentially and generates a high ROI. 

However, it’s also intensive; one person can’t tackle it on their own. 

Why you need more than Iron Man to take on ecommerce CRO

Brands often come to us and say, “Hey, I have one staff member who’s a conversion optimization specialist, but the needle just isn’t moving the way we want it to.” 

That’s because not even an Iron Man type genius can single-handedly craft a full CRO program;  one person can’t be an expert in every area that’s important for true CRO. Rather, these brands need The Avengers — an entire team of experts with unique super-skill sets all working together to rid your site of sub-optimal customer experiences. 

This is why Amazon’s conversion rate optimization team is over 100 people. They have the equivalent of a tiny town focused on nothing but optimizing the Amazon experience and looking at every data point. They have: 

• data scientists to spot trends
• conversion strategists to come up with ideas
• test developers to build out variants
• experts in user testing to see how customers respond

…all working full-time to get customers where they need to go as quickly and easily as possible. Any one of those individuals wouldn’t get Amazon very far on their own. But as a team, they’re able to do some pretty amazing things. 

Now, if you’re running a small ecommerce store, your reaction at this point might be a growing sense of overwhelm — “if Amazon has 100 people, what on earth could I do in a few hours a week?” True, there’s a lot that goes into a full-fledged ecommerce CRO gameplan (it’s why we’ve been in business for 11+ years!) and you can’t do it all yourself. 

But this doesn’t mean your brand is sequestered to the shadow of Amazon and other retail giants. 

There’s another path you can take. When you’re starting out, you can work on conversion rate improvement. That’s something any ecommerce company, of any size and maturity, can focus on right away.  

Improvement vs. Optimization — and what it means for smaller brands

Full-fledged conversion rate optimization, stretching from the first impression to the post-purchase journey, isn’t something one person can DIY; conversion rate improvement, on the other hand, is. 

Sound like splitting hairs? 

It may look like a linguistic trick, but there’s a conceptual difference between conversion rate improvement and conversion rate optimization:

• Conversion rate improvement is using a variety of tools, best practices, and a bit of the scientific method to improve conversions and traffic. It’s suited for smaller ecommerce brands and sites with under 50,000 unique monthly visitors because it doesn’t rely on statistical significance. 
• True conversion rate optimization comes after improvement. It relies on the scientific process and a team of experts. It’s best suited for ecommerce brands that have 50,000 unique visitors a month and product-market fit. That’s because you need a lot of traffic to see statistical significance (high confidence test results aren’t luck or chance) in your experiments. 

Put another way, Improvement is the street smaller brands take as they travel toward optimization. 

With improvement, you can start collecting the data you’ll need to do true ecommerce CRO when you’re ready for it. In the meantime, you’ll also:

• Gain a better understanding of your customer
• Move closer toward product-market fit
• Start seeing a sustainable return on ad spend 
• Work toward statistically significant traffic (so you can take on optimization)

Below is how you get started with conversion rate improvement. You begin by gathering better data (just below) and then using that data to run smarter tests on your site (further down). 

Let’s start with gathering better data.

3 ways you can gather better website data this week

When you have more time than money, you want to start with tools that let you collect rich data about your visitors and customers 24/7/365.

Why?

You’re inside your business day in and out. This makes it nearly impossible for you to know what it’s like to experience your site as a visitor. You’re “inside the jar,” so to speak, and can’t read the label from where you sit. You need quantitative and qualitative data to help you do that.  

There are three ways to gather that data:

1. Track your site data with a suite of Google Analytics reports — don’t worry,  we’ll show you which ones.
2. Implement user engagement tools to figure out where visitors are getting stuck or confused. 
3. Talk with your customers first-hand to see things from their perspective (remember, you may use your product, but you are not your customer). 

You’ll want to do all three of these, so let’s unpack each one. 

1. Track your site data with 5 Google Analytics Reports and features 

Many ecommerce store owners have Google Analytics (GA) set up, but they rarely touch it once it’s running. We get why. 

If your day job is founder and not analyst, the Google Analytics dashboard can be about as overwhelming as climbing behind the wheel of a Boeing 747; the screens and buttons clearly do something, but it’s less obvious what and why it matters. 

Luckily, there are five features and/or reports you can use to find signals in all that noise: 

• Enhanced Ecommerce
• Goal Flow report
• Users Flow report
• Channel Groupings
• Custom alerts

These will help you see what’s happening on your site in real-time, as well as create a timeline of data you can look back on in the future (high-five to your future self!). Below is an overview of each report, plus links to more details and setup guides. 

Enhanced Ecommerce 

This is the mother lode of ecommerce analytics information. Once you activate this, you’ll be able to dive into:

• Overview and product performance: revenue data and conversion rates, average order value, and refunds. 
• Shopping analysis: how often and how long each page is viewed, what products customers add or remove, abandoned cart data, and completed transaction info.
• Product list performance: information about which pages and features drive the conversions you want to see. 
• Advanced perks like tracking internal promotions, affiliate codes, and coupon codes

Plus, once you have this up and running, you’ll be able to answer questions like:

• What is my average order value? 
• Which products are becoming more or less popular? 
• Which product pages lead to the most conversions? 

For more guidance on Enhanced Ecommerce, check out this help doc from Google and our in-depth guide: 

• Google’s guide to Enhanced Ecommerce
• Our guide to Google Analytics enhanced ecommerce

Goal Flow report

The next thing you’ll want to look into is Goal Flow reports. In Google Analytics, a goal is an activity the visitor completes, such as making a purchase, submitting a survey, or signing up for a mailing list. The Goal Flow report shows you whether your visitors are achieving those goals. 

Looking at this report will help you answer:

• Where are visitors starting to work toward a goal? 
• Where are they getting stuck once they’re on their way? (If customers are stuck, so is your revenue.)
• Where are they abandoning a path or circling back for more info?

For example, a Goal Flow report might show you lots of people are adding items to their cart and starting the checkout process, but most of them drop off before completing their purchase. 

From there, you might explore ideas like: 

• Is my payment form broken? 
• Does my payment form have too many unnecessary fields? 
• Am I offering enough payment options? 
• Should I consider offering monthly payments instead of 100% up front?

These ideas can form hypotheses and determine what tests you run to see if certain improvements get more people to complete their checkout going forward. (More on that whole process later.) 

For help setting up goals and navigating the Goal Flow report, check out these help docs: 

• Google’s guide to goals
• Google’s guide to the Goal Flow report
• Our user’s guide to Goal Flow reports

Users Flow report

While the Goal Flow report looks at how visitors march towards a specific goal you’ve set up, the Users Flow report looks at how visitors move through your site at large. This makes it a good complement to the Goal Flow report. 

Most founders operate as if their visitors go from the homepage, to a category page, to a product page, to their shopping cart, to checkout, and to a thank you page.

In reality, visitors might:

• click a facebook ad and land on a product page
• then click on a related product and explore that
• then check out a blog post and then click on a product reference in that blog pots
• then click to explore your bundles or a subscription offering
• and ultimately leave without purchasing.

There are an infinite number of possible interaction paths your visitors can have with your site, but the User Flow Report will show you the most common (and probably unexpected) ones.

Think of it this way: if you’re looking at a real-time map of an amusement park, the Goal Flow report traces the path a family takes from a roller coaster to the gift store, while the User Flow report looks at how everyone mills about the park in general.

With the User Flow report, you can answer questions like:

• How many of my visitors are coming from each traffic source (social media vs. blog vs. affiliate sites)?
• How much traffic is coming from my email campaigns? 
• How many page views are individual pages getting? Which are most and least active? 

For more help navigating the Users Flow report, check out these pages:

• Google’s guide to the Users Flow report 
• Our guide to Users Flow report
• The poetry of User Flow: The Straight Path to ROI

Channel Groupings

Not every visitor who lands on your site is the same. Some are curious window shoppers who clicked over from the Instagram ad, some came from your email list and know exactly what they want, and some are researching a specific type of product and found you through Google. 

Where these visitors come from shapes how they shop and engage with you. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what that looks like? 

Channel Groupings can pull back the curtain. In GA, a default channel groups all the traffic coming from a specific medium.

For example, “Organic Search” is a default channel, and it groups all the traffic you earned from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Likewise, “Social” is a channel, and it groups the traffic you earned from Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. 

Custom channels allow you to create unique groupings so you can drill down into those lumped channels even further. For example, that Facebook ad you want to run next week. 

This will help you answer questions such as:

• How much traffic is my Facebook ad driving to my site?
• How many visitors are coming from organic searches?
• What percentage of my visitors are referred by a specific partner? 

For guidance on custom Channel Groupings, check out this help doc: 

• Google’s guide to Channel Groupings

Custom alerts 

Chances are, there are a few metrics that really matter to you right now. Custom alerts let you track those very-important metrics and any activities that relate to them. 

Not only does this save you time digging through the various (and seemingly endless) screens in GA, it can alert you to troubling scenarios (e.g. a Facebook ad stops working) so you can fix it ASAP instead of days later.   

Plus, with custom alerts, you can answer questions like:

• Has my traffic significantly spiked or dropped this week? What about this month?
• Have any of my conversion points jumped today? 
• Have customer returns increased or decreased substantially this week?

To set it up custom alerts for your important metrics, check out:

• Google’s guide to creating and managing custom alerts
• Our user’s guide to custom alerts

Those are the five places we recommend you start. Now, If you’ve poked around GA much, you know there are many more reports and features stashed all over the place. But remember, the goal is to highlight meaningful signals and tune out the noise. Start with these 5 reports and features to do exactly that. 

2. Track user engagement with heatmaps and related tools to improve ecommerce CRO

Google Analytics is going to help you see what is happening on your site. GA tells you about the numbers — how many visitors, how many sessions with at least one product added to cart, which products are gaining in popularity, etc.

To understand the people behind the numbers you’re going to need a few more tools. 

That’s where user engagement tools come in. These tools help you see what visitors notice, click, and get hung up on when they visit your site. Meaning, they help you color in what you notice in GA and identify high-priority improvements with more confidence.  

If you’re new to user engagement tools, one of the best places to start with is a heatmap. 

Heatmaps use colors to show you where people are clicking, hovering, scrolling, and/or focusing their attention on specific pages. They’re useful for understanding what customers are noticing and where they’re getting stuck.

Tools that offer heatmaps 

• Hotjar: One of the most accessible and powerful tools out there, Hotjar helps you see what visitors see (via heatmaps), record real visitor behavior on your site, and survey visitors based on what they do. Hotjar has some usage limitations on its free plan, but they are generous enough to get you started. If you like it and want to collect more data, you can upgrade for just $39/month. 

Other options for heatmaps include: 

• CrazyEgg: Access heatmaps, website recordings, and click reports. CrazyEgg offers a free 30-day trial and then pricing starts at $24/mo. 
• Clickheat by Dugwood: A slim tool that gives you a heatmap with hot and cold click zones. It’s not robust, but it’s free thanks to open-source software. 
• Inspectlet: With this tool, you can record up to 1,000 sessions per month (see every mouse movement, scroll, and click) and receive heatmaps…all on the free tier. That’s hard to beat!
• Feng-GUI: This AI tool simulates the first 5 seconds of someone interacting with a page or design. Starting at $67/month, it’s the most expensive heatmap option we’ve listed. A big difference with this tool is it’s predictive, meaning it simulates how visitors will engage instead of collecting data from actual visitors.

If you’re already using a heatmap tool and looking for other ways to gather engagement information, check out these additional options.

Layering insights: other tools that de-mystify visitors’ experiences 

• Fullstory: Fullstory collects “an ocean of interaction points” and then makes sense of them for you. They emphasize helping you see the entire customer experience and exactly where you need to improve. This is one of the most powerful tools on the list — and also one of the most expensive. There’s a free 14-day trial but then you’ll need to contact their team for business pricing. 
• Surveys: Some of the tools above, like Hotjar, let you run surveys. When you’re not sure why customers are getting stuck or why they’re there in the first place, surveys can help you figure that out in the customer’s own words. (Note: We have even more survey tools listed over on our top 80 usability testing tools.)

Pick one or two of these powerful tools, then spend one hour each week reviewing the data alongside trends you’re seeing in GA. You’ll quickly: 

• Identify a list of improvements you can make for higher conversion rates
• Gain a better understanding of what visitors want and are trying to do (which will help you with product-market fit)
• Figure out how your traffic sources behave and which ones are high-value (so you can drive more of that kind)
• Build a culture of understanding customers and prioritizing meaningful data

3. Interact with customers first-hand — they’ll fill in any remaining gaps 

In addition to GA and user engagement tools, there’s one more way to find out how your visitors experience your site and what you need to fix — talk with them. 

Why bother?

Well, it’s true you can record sessions in tools like Hotjar. These recordings let you see every scroll, pause, navigation choice, and click.

But there is nothing more frustrating than watching someone hit your site, explore around, add a product to the cart, fill out all of the form fields, get to the last step, and then back out without buying.

You’re sitting there screaming “WHYYYYYYY?!” at the screen. The session recording doesnt tell you — it’s just a recording. 

Now, imagine if you were still right next to that person and you could say, “Hold on a second. May I ask why you’re considering walking away after all of the steps you’ve taken? What’s holding you back?”

Powerful stuff.

That’s what customer interviews (and user testing) do for you.

In a recent Drive and Convert podcast episode, our CEO Jon recommended a simple way to do the customer interview piece: 

• Go to your local coffee shop with your laptop.
• Find someone waiting and say, “Hey, can I buy you a coffee if you give me five minutes of your time?”
• Ask the person to complete a task on your website while they wait for their coffee. (Don’t sell them on your brand or product — that’s off-putting. Just ask them to do a task on the site.)
• Watch what they do and ask them non-leading questions about the steps they take.
• Thank them for their time and hand them their coffee.

If you repeat these steps for an hour or two and get roughly five people to do this, you’ll walk away with a laundry list of improvements. 

The idea is you’re seeing how someone who’s never been to your site before navigates it. You’re not trying to get them to purchase; you’re simply watching what they do and seeing where they get stuck. 

A great guide for running this type of thing is a book called The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It outlines what questions to ask so you get helpful feedback instead of the mom-ish response, “Oh yes honey, it’s lovely. This is the most usable website I’ve been on all day.” (Flattering but useless.) 

Bonus: If you have a customer service team, do this whole coffee shop thing and talk with your service crew. They’re interacting with your customers all day and can likely rattle off all kinds of persistent complaints and issues they hear. So, set up a reminder to check in with support each month. Or, if you’re still running support yourself, tag feedback in your software as “website improvements” so you can quickly find those when you’re ready.

So you have all this data…what next for ecommerce CRO? 

Between GA, user engagement tools, and facetime with site visitors, you’ll quickly amass a laundry list of items you could to improve. That’s great — you’re making progress! 

But it can also feel overwhelming because now you’ll need to:

• Identify which changes are high-impact
• Prioritize the changes that could make the biggest difference
• Figure out how to test those changes 
• Keep doing that each week

This where the scientific method comes in. 

How to turn a laundry list of issues into more conversions 

To turn the problem areas you identified above into improvements that boost conversions, you’ll want to use the scientific method (yes, that thing you first heard about in 5th-grade science) to hypothesize, test, analyze, and improve. 

This is a much more structured and effective approach than the default spaghetti-on-the-wall method (aka making gut changes willy-nilly and seeing what sticks). 

In most cases, a scientific approach will look like: 

• Define high-impact issues that are hurting your conversions
• Examine the quantitative and qualitative data you’ve collected around those issues
• Create a testable hypothesis (one you can disprove with results)
• Form a structured testing plan (define what, who, how, when) that tests the hypothesis
• Analyze the results (Did you disprove your hypothesis? Gather support for it? Hard to say?)
• Learn from your test and identify where to go next 

The one exception is when you have an issue that’s obviously, detrimentally broken. For example, if the “add to cart button” isn’t working, don’t formulate a structured testing plan — fix the darn thing asap!

But for other scenarios where you think you have an issue and suppose you know a way to solve it, use the scientific method. 

 Here’s an example of how this could play out for an ecommerce store:

Define a high-impact issue 

Let’s say you’re looking at your Goal Flow report. (Remember, this shows how a visitor progresses toward a specific goal, or completed action, you want them to accomplish.) The goal is “checkout complete” and the expected way customers complete this goal is: Product Page → Shopping Cart (Shipping) → Shopping Cart (Payment) → Confirmation Page (Thank You Page). 

You’re reviewing that flow, and you notice there’s this huge cascading red waterfall off the checkout page. Meaning lots of customers are adding products to their cart, but few of them are actually completing their checkout. 

Examine the data to get a clearer picture of the issue

The quantitative GA data tells you there’s a dropoff, but you’re not sure why. So you turn to qualitative data in your user engagement tools to see if you can get a clearer picture. The heatmaps show customers are spending a lot of time hovering over shipping costs. On top of that, some quick research tells you something like 50% of customers abandon cart because extra costs are too high. You may have a culprit. 

Create a testable hypothesis

Based on the data, you come up with the following hypothesis:

• Customers who are ready to purchase are leaving the cart page because shipping costs are much higher than they expect. If your brand lists shipping costs earlier in the flow, cart dropoff rates will improve over the next 2 weeks because the shipping costs are no longer a surprise.

Form a testing plan

To test your hypothesis, you could switch where you mention shipping costs and keep an eye on those dropoff rates. But remember, you won’t have enough data to see statistically significant results. Any improvement could be due to luck or chance. (A big reason why A/B tests aren’t a good option here.)  

One alternative you may want to consider is running user tests to see how users navigate and your current path to checkout. For example, you could sit down with a few coffee shop visitors and ask them to purchase an item from your store and then pause them at the very end of the checkout process and say ‘At this point, would you be comfortable completing your purchase or not? If not, what’s holding you back?’

Keep in mind, you only need roughly 5 users to uncover 80% of usability issues and we’ve found that at just 3 users, we start to see patterns between sessions. For a deeper dive into running this kind of test, check out our 3 part series on how to conduct high-impact user testing:

• Part 1: Thoughtful panel selection
• Part 2: Formulating tasks and questions
• Part 3: Analyzing the results

Another alternative to A/B testing is adding surveys or a chatbot to your cart page, either in a subtle bottom right corner bubble (“hey, can I ask you a question?”) or in a pop up that appears when the customer moves toward the exit. What customers tell you in these surveys/conversations could be useful data. 

Hojar is a great option for adding these types of surveys:

Choose a good time to test

When you pick a time period to run your test, keep your other business activities in mind — they could skew or influence results. For example, if you’re testing a checkout modification and you’re also running a Facebook ad campaign with a “Free Shipping on all orders” offer, that will skew the results.

Ideally, you want to run most of your tests during “calm” periods where things like big ad campaigns, website redesigns, product launches, etc. aren’t a concern.

Analyze results

After two weeks of user testing, surveys, and/or watching GA, you pull up everything you’ve gathered. At this point, you’ll either:

1. Have evidence that supports your hypothesis. E.g. users in user testing all cited scary shipping costs and drop off rates improved quite a bit when you explicitly listed shipping options earlier on.
2. Have evidence that disproves your hypothesis. E.g. users in the user testing all cited issues other than shipping costs — like an incredibly confusing interface, or the page takes  f o r e v e r  to load  — and dropoff rates haven’t improved with upfront shipping costs.
3. Have no conclusive evidence one way or the other. Not ideal, but it happens. 

Figure out where to go next 

Where you go from here largely depends on the type of results you saw: 

• If your results support your hypothesis, you could keep the change and move on to your next high-priority improvement. 
• If your evidence didn’t support your hypothesis, you can form a new one based on the results you did see or revert back to the original version 
• And if you didn’t gather conclusive evidence, you could repeat the experiment, run it longer, or try a variation. 

However your experiment turns out, remember you’re not looking for silver bullet solutions; you’re looking to get 1% better every week, month, and quarter. The goal isn’t running through a one-time checklist. 

The goal is continuous improvement so you earn enough traffic to step into a full, expert-led ecommerce CRO program and see even bigger gains down the road. 

Wish you could skip straight to the ecommerce CRO ‘Action Plan’ and start making improvements?

While it’s a good idea to go ahead and have those GA reports and user engagement tools set up, there’s actually a way to skip digging through all the data and sussing out potential improvements for yourself. 

If your site is getting under 40,000 visitors per month, we offer a Conversion Growth Assessment and it takes all the guesswork out of where you need to improve. Meaning you get to skip the whole, “is this broken and worth my time?” and jump straight to, “here’s exactly what to change and why it matters.” 

When you sign up for an Assessment, within a week you’ll receive a:

• dedicated strategist
• detailed report identifying why your visitors aren’t converting
• prioritized checklist of items you’ll want to address
• 60-minute strategy session to talk through it all 

We’ll also follow up 30, 60, and 90 days after completion to check on results and see if you have any trouble implementing changes.

It’s an approachable way to work with our experts who’ve helped big brands realize 10x returns — on a small business budget. 

See how the Conversion Growth Assessment works.

The post How To Improve Your Conversion Rate When You Have More Time Than Money appeared first on The Good.

Discounting seems like a no-brainer way to increase site sales. You certainly don’t have to go far to find this tactic. 

The prevalence of discounting implies this is an effective way to convert prospects into customers.  

But here’s the truth: 

While discounting feels like a good way to improve your conversion rate and increase sales, it’s actually draining your margins and tarnishing your brand.

The fact is, discounting is all over ecommerce because it’s the easy button — not because it’s the best way to convert customers. 

Think of discounts as reaching for fast food every time you’re hungry. Over 35% of Americans (roughly 85 million) do this on any given day. 

Yet, you don’t have to be a nutrition expert to know regular fast food is bad for you. Sure, it’s convenient, effective (it curbs your hunger), and tastes good. But all this is deceiving; while you’re checking the box for short-term needs, you’re damaging your long term health. Worse, if fast food becomes a habit, that habit will put you in a bad spot down the road. 

Discounts are the large fries equivalent for your business. 

They are…

• Convenient: You can have them up and running in hours, if not minutes.
• Effective: They often drive a short-term boost in conversion rate and sales.
• Pleasurable: Who doesn’t enjoy seeing a spike on their revenue chart?

But once you start on them, they’re a hard habit to break. And they’re seriously damaging to your business’s long term health.  

How ecommerce brands SHOULD think about discounts 

First, a quick clarification. We’re not saying, “never have a sale again.” Rather, we’re saying it’s better to incentivize purchases by increasing the value your customer receives versus reducing the cost of your goods.

Here’s what I mean: 

Leading with price vs. value: the difference between discount pricing and promotions

The difference between discounts and promotions is more than semantics: 

• Discounting refers to direct dollar discounts or taking a percentage off your price. Discounts encourage the customer to look at price as the main (perhaps even the only) influence on their decision. Think a “10% off your first order when you sign up here” popup, such as the one Artifact Uprising employs:   

• Promotions are anything other than slashing the price. Promotions offer additional value to the customers — something they wouldn’t otherwise receive. Done well, this incentive can be more compelling than saving a few dollars. Think volume and loyalty-based perks that gift “something extra.” For example, the way Supply offers a free year of blades with a full-price purchase of their razor…plus free shipping and returns (talk about building trust and busting objections!):

Both promotions and discounts have a similar, two-fold goal: prompt the customer to take action and create urgency that motivates customers to act right now. 

But discounting leads with price and scoring a deal, whereas promotions (done well) lead with the value of your product. There’s a big psychological difference for your customers, which means there’s a big difference for your brand and revenue, too. 

We’ll get into promotion options later on. For now, let’s look at the long term effects discounts have on ecommerce brands. 

Six painful, long term effects of discounting your products 

Note that none of the effects below are short-term. These aren’t surface-level pains. They’re not like the headache you get from staring at a computer screen all day — they can’t be fixed with an Advil, glass of wine, and good book. 

Rather, they’re the latent pains. They start off imperceptible, but they grow into something that devastates your brand. They’re like the herniated disk (think headache x100) you get from years of poor posture at your desk — insidious, painful, and expensive. 

They’re also widespread: they impact your customers, reputation, and your financial health. 

Financial Effects

1. Draining your margins 

Discounts hack into your margins and reduce your total revenue. You bring in less profit compared to other incentives such as a free gift with purchase or free shipping over a certain threshold. 

Need proof?

Profitwell’s Patrick Campbell dug into data from 4,200 subscription ecommerce brands and found higher discounts at purchase correlate with: 

• Lower customer lifetime value

• Lower satisfaction scores
• Higher revenue churn

Whereas promotions such as a free gift with purchase correlated with higher lifetime value compared to percentage discounts. 

Customer Effects

2. Training customers to expect (and wait for) steep discounts 

Kohl’s always has a sale going on, and it’s usually between 10 and 40% off. But over time, these frequent discounts desensitize customers to the thrill of a deal. 

Customers begin ignoring the 10% and 20% off sales and hold out for 40% off sales. This means when you run frequent discounts, you actually work against the very thing you’re trying to do. Instead of prompting action and urgency, you train customers to sit back and wait. 

True, discounts work the first time because folks don’t want to miss the deal. But when you get on the “hamster wheel” of discounts, you start creating fake urgency. When there’s always another deal coming right behind the current deal, the urgency evaporates. 

Think about it: when was the last time you paid full price for an item from Michaels or Bed Bath and Beyond? 

Sometimes, this fake urgency comes in a more malicious form — think countdown timers for sales/offers that don’t actually disappear if you miss the window. For example, when we reviewed Native Deodorant (check out the podcast episode), we discovered a countdown timer on their site. Only, when you waited it out, you could still sign up for the giveaway. 

That kind of fake scarcity/urgency is gross, erodes trust, and damages your reputation.

Another fake urgency tactic shows up on checkout screens. Think an “only 3 items left in stock!” or a “this price is only good for 15 minutes” memo with a countdown timer.

If that scarcity is true, it can be crazy effective. But if it’s false, it’s gross and erodes customer trust. There are much healthier ways to drive genuine urgency. 

3. Attracting less-than-ideal customers

Brands attract 7 types of customers:

• Just Looking 
• Bargain Hunters
• Buyers 
• Researchers 
• New Customers
• Dissatisfied Customers
• The Loyal Crowd 

While it’s worth looking at how you can convert all types of customers, discounts disproportionately attract the bargain hunter crowd — the “no discount, no purchase” customers who only buy when there’s a substantial sale.

When you consistently use discounts to incentivize purchases, you make “Bargain Hunters”  a larger portion of your customer base. These aren’t bad customers per se, but they’re less profitable than the “The Loyal Crowd.” So, the more you discount and attract “Bargain Hunters,” the more you cut into revenue. 

When you train customers to expect discounts and disproportionately attract coupon-clippers, you fast-track your transition to a deal buster brand. You condition customers to think, “this product really isn’t worth what they usually charge.” And that’s a hard perception to reverse. 

4. Lowering customers’ perception of quality

As Jon noted on a recent episode of our Drive & Convert podcast, once you’re a discount brand in the eyes of the consumer, you’re forever going to be a discount brand. It’s just not something you can easily recover from. 

Other Long-term Effects

5. Falling into a race to the bottom

When you compete on price, you enter your brand in a race to the bottom. Because price cuts are the easiest thing for you to implement, they are also the easiest thing for your competitors to match. You do 10%, competitors do 15%; you do 20%, they do 25%. 

While you and your competitor might both win a pricing battle here and there, you’ll both lose the discount war.  

Keep in mind: 

Other brands are discounting, but that doesn’t mean you have to copy them. You’ve no idea how that tactic is working out for them behind the scenes. They may have higher top-line revenue, but there’s a good chance their profitability isn’t as healthy as yours. And the company with a better profit margin almost always wins. 

6. Putting a bucket under a leaky pipe 

Discounts do provide a temporary lift in revenue, which is why brands reach for them. But they’re a short term fix.

If you’re losing customers because of poor traffic quality, bad copywriting, confusing site structure, or a lack of social proof, a discount might help you catch some of those dripping dollars. But discounting will never address the root cause — a bucket can’t plug holes in the sales funnel. 

Discounts aren’t ALWAYS bad. Here are two scenarios where we recommend using them

As a general rule, discounts are harmful to your brand. But there are two exceptions where it makes sense.

1. Securing a high lifetime value customer with a breakeven sale

If you discount an initial sale to secure a high lifetime value customer at a breakeven price, that’s a win. This customer will more than make up for it down the road. 

For example, let’s say you sell a product that has frequent repeat purchasers. If your customers stick around for at least a few months, then, on average, you can afford to break even or take a slight loss on the initial sale. Over time, you’ll come out way ahead. 

Look at Quip:

Quip sells electric toothbrushes and flossers. They’re confident in their product and they know their customer lifetime value, so they include your first replacement brush for free. This gets new customers into a high-value replenishment plan quickly. 

Quip takes the financial loss on the initial replacement just fine because most customers continue using their product. Over the long haul, the automatic replenishment plan generates above and beyond the value needed to cover the initial loss.

2. A true, infrequent offer once or twice a year

The other time discounting your prices is acceptable is when you run a true, infrequent (less than 3x per year) offer. 

For example, Bare Performance Nutrition only runs two sales a year. The founder, Nick Bare, explains, “We pride ourselves on not being a huge discount brand and only run two sales each year —  Black Friday and 4th of July (each being 20% off site-wide).”  Fun fact: Bare is a veteran, so the July sale is tied directly to his brand’s origins. 

In scenarios like this, you’re introducing genuine urgency at a frequency that won’t train your customers to wait for a deal. And that’s why it works.

Caveat: If you go this route, factor in your customer’s expectations when you select your 1-2 yearly offers. Depending on your product, customers may expect discounts on Black Friday, Mother’s/Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or other notable times of the year. In these isolated scenarios, not having a discount on expected days can make it hard to compete or hit your goals. 

Real world example: using promotions instead of price discounts

We’ve seen promotions work firsthand. Recently, one of our Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) clients launched a limited edition product with a seasonal flavor and a reduced price.

So, this brand paired a reduced cost (not a discounted) item with a genuine urgency play (limited seasonal release). It was a smart move. 

Here’s what happened: 

• Average order value decreased slightly
• # of transitions went up 5%
• Average # of products per transaction increased
• Gross revenue increased by 9%
• Conversation rate increased by 0.5%

Overall, between 10 and 15% of total revenue for the quarter came from this limited release product. Other similar experiments you could run include:

• A bundle that includes a seasonal item at a reduced price 
• A reduced price on a seasonal item when the cart value exceeds a certain amount
• A “free seasonal item with purchase” offer when the customer hits a minimum cart value or adds specific products to their cart 

So, how do you move off discount pricing and start implementing healthier promotions like these? 

How to drop the scissors and move away from price cuts

When you’re used to running discounts, stepping away from them isn’t easy. Especially when it feels like they’re working, and especially when you’re reporting decent numbers up the chain. From that perspective, nixing discounts feels risky — even when you know it’s a smart long term play.

We get that, and we’re not recommending you cut your discounts cold turkey. 

Here are a few things you can do right away to take a healthier approach to discounts in the near-term, while also taking steps to wean yourself off of discounting over the long-term.

What to do right away: improve your existing discounts

1. Have one-time use discount codes

One time use discount codes help keep your brand off sites that aggregate coupons, like the one in the image below.  

Instead of having a universal discount code such as “FALL20,” use an ID that’s unique to each customer and only works once. 

2. Use link-based discounts

If you’re emailing out discounts, you can ditch the promo code altogether and opt for a link-based coupon. In this scenario, the customer doesn’t need to copy and paste a promo code. Rather, you deliver them (via the email link) to a checkout page with the discount already applied in cart. 

3. Hide the coupon field during checkout

Many brands show an open coupon field during the checkout process. But our A/B testing shows that, as soon as your customer sees this empty field, they want to fill it in. The implication is the customer isn’t getting the best deal unless they find that code. 

Once I see a box like the one below, I’ve left a checkout page plenty of times to hunt down a code: 

To ward off this behavior (and associated cart abandonment), hide this field by default. You could remove it altogether if you have no active discounts. Or you could display text that says, “Promo code” or “Referral code” like in the Sundays for Dogs example below. In comparison to an open field, this text only expands into a field when a customer clicks it. 

How to play the long game: move toward value-based promotions

To achieve steady, long term growth, you’ll need to move off price-centered discounts and onto value-centered promotions. Here are two ways to start doing that. 

Step 1: Review your promotions calendar

Pull out your promotions calendar and look at the next 3-12 months (whatever you have planned). Ask yourself what discounts you have scheduled and which ones you can swap out in favor of value-based promotions. Mark those. 

Step 2: Replace a bad habit with a better one. 

The best way to cut a bad habit is to replace it with a better one. As habit expert James Clear pointed out, “bad habits address certain needs in your life. And for that reason, it’s better to replace your bad habits with a healthier behavior that addresses that same need.” Otherwise, you’re poised to fall right back where you started. (Think fasting from Hulu only to binge on Netflix.) 

So, here are five promotions you can use instead of discounts to prompt action and create healthy urgency: 

• Free gift with purchase: Incentivize customers to make an initial purchase by offering them a complimentary gift, the way Thrive Market does in their new customer flow: 

• BOGO: Clear out inventory with a “buy one, get one” offer. You could do buy one, get one half off or buy one, get one free. 
• Free shipping: There’s a reason this is a key perk of the Amazon Prime program. And while it’s become a bit of an expectation thanks to Amazon, it’s still a compelling incentive — especially on bulky items, like furniture and mattresses, where shipping is usually an arm and a leg. Variations like free expedited shipping (e.g. 2-day over 5-day) or free shipping above a certain cart value (to protect your margins) are also effective.

One reason this works is consumers don’t like surprises. In 2020, a whopping 50% of shoppers cite “extra costs too high” (e.g. shipping) as the reason they abandon their cart. Offer free shipping the right way, and you’ll see higher conversions.

• Free returns: If customers are apprehensive about purchasing certain items, free returns can eliminate the fear of “but what if it doesn’t work out?” While this may increase your return rate, it’ll likely increase customer loyalty as well. Mattress brand Tuft and Needle pairs their free returns with a 100-night trial to persuade customers it’s no big deal if the mattress they choose doesn’t lull them to sleep:

• Loyalty programs: According to a Wirecard survey, 92% of consumers are swayed by rewards some or all of the time. So, reward loyal customers with a set of appealing perks that encourage repeat purchases. For example, how Mack Weldon offers tiered loyalty rewards. Their CEO, Brian Berger, explained to CNBC, “We have a permanent loyalty program. … And that gets us out of the cycle of having to think about promotions and retraining customers in a way we wouldn’t want them to behave.”

Keep in mind these five options aren’t even close to an exhaustive list. For more alternatives, such as product bundling and bulk promotions, check out these other resources from The Good:

• 78 tactics you can utilize to run winning sales promotions
• 10 tactics to drive ecommerce sales without discounting
• Top 7 ways to increase ecommerce sales (without discounting) 
• How to form great limited time offers

You don’t have to discount prices to improve your conversion rates 

Discounting isn’t the gold standard of ecommerce. It may seem that way because “everyone else is doing it.” But remember, that’s not because it’s a great business practice — that’s because it’s easy. 

Don’t be lazy; get creative with your incentives and lead with value, not price. You’ll improve your margins, strengthen your brand, and best competitors…all without slashing your prices. 

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The post Why Discounting Is Bad For Your Brand (And What To Do Instead) appeared first on The Good.