We have just released the 100th episode of our podcast, Drive and Convert. It’s been an incredible four-year journey, packed with actionable insights, industry trends, and plenty of laughs along the way.

But here’s the thing: the world of optimization doesn’t stand still. What held true four years ago might not mean the same thing today. And that’s okay! At The Good, we embrace evolution. We’ve grown alongside the industry, constantly learning, refining our perspectives, and even admitting when we were, well, wrong.

So, for this edition of the Good Question, I wanted to do something special.

We’re taking a deep dive into past podcast episodes, revisiting old predictions, analyzing how our thinking has evolved, and sharing the latest, most up-to-date advice we’ve gleaned from experience. It’s a retrospective, a celebration, and a chance for you to unlock even more optimization wisdom.

All of these episodes are also available on our website or your favorite podcast streaming platform.

What I Said: Benchmarks are bullshit

What I Learned: Singular benchmarks are still bullshit…but sophisticated, multi-KPI benchmarking can provide great value

Okay, let’s talk about benchmarks. You’ve probably heard someone at The Good say something like benchmarks are bullshit. 

And here’s the thing: I still stand by my core message–blindly chasing industry averages or competitor performance is a recipe for disaster, or worse, mistakes. The logic was sound because once you reached that benchmark, you wouldn’t stop optimizing, right? It just meant you had a new, higher bar to chase.

But here’s where I want to clarify some of the thinking. Benchmarks, despite their limitations, still offer valuable insights. They can expose industry trends, identify potential areas for improvement, and even serve as a starting point for setting your own goals. However, the key lies in using them holistically and strategically.

You can’t build a bridge to your goals with benchmarks alone. So, how do we build a robust, data-driven bridge to optimization success? By taking a holistic approach. Here’s the new perspective:

1. Benchmarks are guidelines, not goals. They offer a starting point, not a finish line. Use them to understand industry trends, but tailor your goals to your unique audience, business objectives, and conversion funnel.
2. Dive deeper than a single metric. Conversion rate is important, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Look at other metrics to paint a complete picture of your website’s performance.

What I Said: You should test everything.  

What I Learned: You should validate your decisions.

We are guilty of preaching the “test everything” mantra. Over time, that has evolved into a more thoughtful and realistic approach to optimization.

I still believe in data-backed optimization, but “A/B testing everything” isn’t always the answer. It can be slow, expensive, and sometimes unnecessary. That’s why we’ve adopted more diverse strategies, including rapid testing.

What’s the difference? Instead of A/B testing every hypothesis, we use research and quick experiments to validate optimization opportunities. This allows us to:

• Move faster: Save months-long A/B tests for big opportunities and use quicker tests to get results when we need to make fast, user-tested decisions.
• Minimize risk: Validate or invalidate ideas before investing in full-scale changes, saving time and money.
• Continue being data-driven: We still use data to guide our decisions, but we gather it through various methods, not just A/B testing.

But keep in mind that just because rapid testing is faster, it doesn’t mean that it’s cheaper. You still need to invest in research and expertise, but the return can be even higher.

So, what does this mean for you? Ditch the “A/B test everything” mentality and embrace a strategy that incorporates all of the kinds of research and testing available to you. It’s a more efficient and data-driven way to optimize your website and achieve your optimization goals.

What I Said: Amazon’s checkout process will shape how other brands design their checkout experience.

What I Learned: Amazon focused on two other initiatives.  

Back in Episode 14 of Drive and Convert, I played a fortune-teller, predicting the future of CRO. But my crystal ball may have been dusty. One prediction I made was that Amazon’s checkout would revolutionize the way we buy online.

Amazon didn’t change the game; they changed their focus. Instead of checkout domination, they doubled down on “Buy with Prime” and “Amazon Pay.” This move crushed standardized third-party checkouts like Bolt and left PayPal scrambling.

But credit cards have demonstrated surprising staying power. While Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay offer slick one-click options, credit cards are continually used for their widespread acceptance and familiarity.

So, who won the checkout war? The consumers–with a plethora of secure, speedy payment options. While I was wrong about the Amazon takeover, the overall checkout experience has undoubtedly improved.

Predictions are tricky, especially in the ever-evolving world of optimization. But the silver lining is that Amazon’s focus has shifted towards better user experiences and customer empowerment, which is always a win.

Continuous Learning, Continuous Improvement

As you can see, ideas evolve and predictions can go awry. But the beauty lies in embracing this continuous learning journey.

The more ways we look at optimization, the smarter our solutions get. By acknowledging change and embracing new perspectives, we unlock better strategies for you.

Much like optimization, learning is also a journey, not a destination.

Dive into all 100 episodes of Drive and Convert on our website or your favorite podcast platform. Each episode is packed with actionable insights, industry trends, and maybe even a few more confessions along the way.

What have you changed your mind about or evolved your thinking on recently?

The post How Is Optimization Changing, And What Should I Do About It? appeared first on The Good.

Just because a shopper fills their shopping cart and initiates checkout doesn’t mean they will complete the purchase. In fact, 70% of checkouts are ultimately abandoned. There’s plenty of opportunity to lose a sale if you don’t optimize this part of the customer experience.

What does a great checkout page look like? In this article, we review our favorite checkout page designs. We explain why we like them and how they could be improved.

What Makes a Good Checkout Design?

Your checkout page represents a critical moment where your shoppers become customers, so it deserves your thought and attention.

The best ecommerce checkout designs are simple, clear, and intuitive. They give shoppers all the information they need to get through checkout quickly, easily, and securely. The process should be clear of distractions, disruptions, or points of friction.

Your checkout page should inhabit all of the qualities of good visual design. The aesthetics of the page should support efficiency, accessibility, and a good user experience. It should use principles like hierarchy, scale, and contrast to make the page easier to use.

Furthermore, the best checkout designs are optimized for conversion. You should measure the page’s performance, experiment with new ideas, and implement new optimizations regularly.

To learn more about improving your page, check out our guide on optimizing your checkout page. We also recommend reviewing our guide on mobile checkout design and our primer on form design principles.

The 10 Best Checkout Page Examples

The following are some of our favorite checkout page examples. Use these as inspiration to design and optimize your store’s checkout page.

1. Infinite CBD

What we like:

Infinite CBD uses a common two-column checkout design that’s clean, simple to follow, and looks good on mobile devices. The contents of the cart are available, but not in the way. The minimal checkout form asks for just the right amount of information to keep the checkout process simple.

There aren’t any non-checkout elements to disrupt the transaction. It also uses good visual design to separate the shopping cart and payment details fields from the primary form. The call-to-action is obvious, but slightly gray until the form fields have content. The checkout progress indicator at the top is a great tool to keep customers oriented.

What could be better:

We’d like to see more payment options, like Google Pay or PayPal, as well as a way to save progress in case customers want to come back. The page could also use some trust symbols and badges to inspire confidence and a minimal header without so many distracting links.

2. Allbirds

What we like:

Allbirds is built on Shopify, which means it uses Shopify’s checkout flow. Naturally, Shopify knows what they’re doing when it comes to checkout optimization. This checkout design is stripped-down, minimal, and clean. There’s no header, footer, or menu full of links to distract the customer.

We like the alternative payment options at the top of the page that lets customers skip to checkout without dealing with the form. They smartly grayed out the coupon field until a value is inputted so it doesn’t confuse customers from clicking the “Continue to Shipping” call-to-action.

What could be better:

This is the first page of a multi-page checkout design. For such a minimal checkout design, the multi-page checkout process could probably be consolidated into one. However, it’s good that all three pages use the same layout so there’s no confusion.

The breadcrumbs that indicate progress should be more obvious. It’s not apparent right away that this page is not a one-page checkout.

Finally, there’s very little branding because it’s a Shopify site. This isn’t a huge problem, but you don’t want your site to feel like every other store. Some light branding would be good for the user experience.

3. Samsung

What we like:

Samsung has a unique checkout design. Unlike many pages that make all of your fields visible, Samsung only shows you what they need at the time.

For instance, you won’t see any billing address fields until you select a payment method. If you select an express checkout option, you won’t see any fields at all. This makes the page remarkably simple because there’s only one choice to make at a time.

This checkout design assumes you want to checkout as a guest and offers an option to sign in. Guest checkout capabilities are a great way to expedite the process.

Cart contents, taxes, shipping, and delivery data are clear and transparent. The “Chat with an expert” link opens a live chat window. This is a great way to resolve last-minute objections or friction.

What could be better:

While the header has been minimized properly, the footer is packed full of links that could distract customers from completing the transaction.

When the page loads, the four colorful buttons make it seem like Samsung only offers four payment methods. The “Pay with a card” option deserves similar attention. At the very least, it should be grouped with the other payment options so it doesn’t seem unrelated.

4. Bed Bath & Beyond

What we like:

As a retailer of more than 50 years, it’s no surprise that Bed Bath & Beyond has an effective checkout process. The message at the top about earning rewards is a great way to make customers feel like they’re getting a little extra. It also encourages opening an account.

The visual design is excellent. Dividing each section with background colors creates separation, which makes it easy to follow. Instead of slogging through a long form, it feels like less work. The progress indicator is simple and reassuring and there are no distractions in the header and footer.

“Email for order tracking” and “Phone for delivery contact” is superb copywriting. Now those details feel like they’re part of the transaction and not for marketing purposes.

“Get text alerts for your order on your mobile” is a great little feature to keep your customers engaged and build an SMS-based relationship. We also like that the “Details” link by the shipping cost opens a popup with valuable shipping information. This prevents the customer from leaving the checkout to learn about shipping.

What could be better:

There’s no way to contact support or get answers to any last-minute questions. This is unfortunate because Bed Bath & Beyond probably has enough customer support resources to do this well.

We don’t like that you have to visit the second page to input your payment information. This could probably be squeezed into the first page to create a one-page checkout experience.

Bed Bath & Beyond should definitely have some trust symbols or badges from reputable security services, the Better Business Bureau, or similar.

5. Bellroy

What we like:

Bellroy’s three-column checkout page deviates from the typical checkout style, but it’s still an intuitive checkout process. There’s a lot to like about this page.

• Express payment at the top gives customers a chance to skip the rest of the page.
• The three numbered columns create an easy-to-follow flow.
• Choosing shipping options first means there are no surprises when it’s time to pay.
• The checkout form is about as minimal as it gets.
• The call to action is clear, bold, and interactive.
• There are lots of powerful conversion-pushing elements, such as “secure checkout,” “3-year warranty,” “global delivery,” “30-day returns,” and “award-winning service.”
• The FAQ at the bottom of the page is a brilliant way to overcome objections.

What could be better:

There is a lot of information on the page, so it would be great if the form dynamically updated to hide anything irrelevant as you went through the process. For example, once a shipping option is selected, hide the rest of the information in that column so the customer isn’t distracted.

6. Xero Shoes

What we like:

Xero Shoes’ checkout page includes a few powerful elements. The “5,000 miles sole warranty” is a nice touch. We tend to consider the quality of our shoes more than other apparel, so it’s smart to reassure customers that the products will last.

We also like the bit of social proof in the bottom right corner. “53,000+ reviews” is quite the endorsement! They also choose a good testimonial that’s appropriate for all kinds of customers.

What could be better:

This is the first page of a three-page checkout flow that could probably be consolidated into one. There’s no mention of shipping fees or taxes here, but those fees are added on page two. Surprise fees are the top reason people abandon checkout, so that information should appear earlier.

7. B&H Photo Video

What we like:

Like many stores with robust product lines, B&H’s site is quite busy. They like to push upsells of similar products, bundles, accessories, and warranties, but they are smart to strip all of that away for their checkout experience. As you can see, it’s quite simple.

Normally, the lack of tax and shipping information would be a detriment. However, B&H uses some clever copy to indicate that more information is needed before these fees can be calculated. This way the customer knows that fees may appear later in the checkout flow.

We also like the use of a secondary call-to-action style for the “Select gift options” button. Customers know it’s clickable, but not the primary method forward.

Furthermore, the large “Secure checkout” heading, live chat link, links to information pages, and customer support phone number are great ways to make customers feel more secure.

What could be better:

We’d like to see more detail about the cart checkout items at this stage in the checkout to remind the customer why they’re buying in the first place. There should also be some optional payment methods available.

8. Peloton

What we like:

Peloton’s checkout design is another example of a clean, minimalist page that only uses design to facilitate usage. We like that the checkout form in the left column has a reasonable flow: email address, shipping options, and payment.

Using upsells at this point in the process is complicated. In most cases, this is not the place to ask customers to make more purchase-related decisions. In the case of Peloton, however, an upsell makes more sense since they’re selling a warranty for an expensive item.

We also like the minimal header and footer, the live chat link, the presence of the shopping cart contents, and the estimated delivery address field. The “30-day home trial” reminder is a great way to make customers feel more comfortable about their purchases.

Finally, the financing payment option is very smart. Plenty of customers would prefer to pay over time for products this expensive.

What could be better:

This checkout page design would do well to include some social proof. Peloton products are expensive and many of them require significant commitments. It would be helpful to read some comments or reviews from past customers about their positive experiences. It would also be good to see an endorsement from an expert, such as a doctor, physical therapist, or personal trainer.

9. ASOS

What we like:

This is a well-designed checkout flow. We like that everything is on the same page, but ASOS uses an accordion-style checkout to make the second and third steps (delivery address and payment information) inactive until the user completes the first step. This is a fantastic way to create a simple flow and avoid overwhelming customers.

The “Click and collect” tab is an excellent addition. It gives customers the option to get their orders faster and avoid shipping complications or delays.

In the payment details section, ASOS offers multiple ways to pay, including financing. All of the options are hidden behind tabs so the customer is only presented with those requirements when they select an option. This keeps the page clean and simple.

Furthermore, ASOS uses a stripped-down header and footer to limit distractions. They also keep the shopping cart contents present so the thing the customer wants is always within sight.

What could be better:

We’d like to see a trust symbol or badge that indicates a secure purchase. The page could also use some information about the shipping methods and returns policy.

10. Happy Socks

What we like:

Happy Socks has a unique checkout flow. Instead of using a standalone page, the entire checkout process happens in a slideout sidebar. The style fits nicely with Happy Sock’s branding.

We like the two notifications at the top of the sidebar. One notification warns that they can’t deliver to P.O. boxes, which helps avoid future friction if someone enters a P.O. box number. The other notification shows how far the customer is from free shipping. This is a great way to improve the average order value.

We also like that the shipping fee is apparent from the beginning. This ensures there are no surprises later. The payment screen offers multiple payment methods. Overall, the checkout flow is fast and easy to follow.

What could be better:

Our major concern about Happy Sock’s checkout design is only that it may be too different from most online stores. Customers generally don’t expect to complete the entire checkout process in a sidebar, so they may find this confusing. You don’t have to do things the same way as every other online store, but fighting customer expectations is hard. Hopefully, Happy Socks has performed some research as to whether their customers find this confusing.

Experiment, Test, and Optimize Your Checkout Design

We’ve shown you some of the best checkout page examples on the web, but that doesn’t mean you should reproduce them for your site.

Build a checkout page that satisfies the unique means of your business and your customers. Make changes and test the results. Create a cycle of iteration that slowly improves your checkout design’s performance over time.

Furthermore, look beyond your conversion rate to your real goal: revenue. Some changes (like adding upsell offers) might decrease your conversion rate but boost your overall revenue. These kinds of smart tweaks are worth experimenting with.

If you’re struggling with your checkout process design, we can identify what’s stopping conversions, where customers get confused, and how to improve.

Hundreds of millions in revenue generated with our strategic optimization programs.

But don’t take our word for it. Hear about the amazing results from 15+ years in business, straight from the source.

SEE HOW

The post 10 Of The Best Checkout Page Design Examples to Inspire Your Own appeared first on The Good.

Stockouts are frustrating for businesses and customers alike. Both sides lose when an item isn’t in stock.

For the business, it’s like completing the perfect pass, only to watch the receiver drop the ball before crossing the goal line. The customer was ready to buy. Your marketing and conversion optimization worked, but you failed to manage your operations. 

Your customers lose too. You’re leaving your customers with a negative impression of your brand and ruining the reputation you’ve built as being a reliable company to purchase from. 

The average out-of-stock rate for ecommerce businesses is about 8%, and it rises to 10% for promotional or discounted items. But it wouldn’t be that high if every ecommerce business had an effective strategy for dealing with out-of-stock events. 

In 2021, out-of-stock products were top of mind for retailers because of a global shipping crisis. 38.8% of small businesses have experienced supply chain delays due to the pandemic. As of October 2021, approximately 200,000 shipping containers remain unloaded on the west coast of the U.S. due to pandemic-related gridlock. COVID-19 has disrupted the entire global supply chain, including manufacturing, transportation, and last-mile logistics. 

But out-of-stock events aren’t limited to global pandemics. They can happen at any time for a variety of reasons. 

In this article, we’ll help you understand stockouts and how they affect your business and explain what causes them. We’ll also explain how to avoid out-of-stock items where possible and recover from them when they happen. 

What is a Stockout?

A stockout (or an out-of-stock event) is when a specific item is unavailable at the point of purchase when a customer is ready to buy. 

Stockouts shouldn’t be confused with general product unavailability, which is when demand for a product is so high that all retailers run out. Out-of-stock events refer to instances where one retailer in particular struggles with supply chain issues or poor inventory management.

A study by the IHL Group found that retailers miss out on nearly $1 trillion in sales per year because of out-of-stock items ($144.9 billion in North America alone). Shoppers encounter out-of-stock events as often as every third shopping trip. 

According to research by Adobe, shoppers saw over 2 billion out-of-stock messages online in October 2021. Electronics suffer the highest out-of-stock levels, followed by jewelry, apparel, home and garden, and pet products.

What Causes Stockouts?

Before we can talk about minimizing and fixing your out-of-stock events, it’s important to understand why they happen. 

Inaccurate item counts

A common reason retailers are out-of-stock is when there’s a disparity between the amount of inventory a business thinks it has and the amount it actually has. The website thinks there’s one more item on the shelf, but when the picker arrives to grab it, he finds that section empty. 

What causes these inaccuracies?

• Human error – Someone miscounted at some point. This is common during busy seasons or when items are transferred to/from fulfillment houses.
• Technical errors – Software caused an error at some point, perhaps due to a synchronization delay or data center downtime. 
• Shrinkage – This refers to product lost due to theft or damage.

Poor demand forecasting

In some cases, out of stock events are caused by unexpected surges in demand. As a retailer, it’s your job to anticipate these surges and order/create products as necessary. This is especially important for your most popular SKUs. 

Poor cash flow management

If you don’t have enough cash to replenish your inventory, you simply can’t buy it. This is a significant problem that deserves your immediate attention. You might need some outside funding or better payment terms with your vendors. 

Logistics challenges

Unless you are dropshipping, you can’t stock products if they never physically arrive at your facility or your fulfillment house. Your shippers and vendors could fail to send your products on time. Or they might send the wrong products, creating delays and logistics headaches.

In many cases, inventory management issues due to logistical problems are outside of your control, such as the current supply chain crisis. If your products are sitting on one of those unloaded containers, your inventory is unreachable. 

Poor stock replenishment

Stock replenishment is the practice of ensuring that you always have products to sell to customers. Someone in your organization (it may be you) needs to track the inventory, compare it to your demand forecasting, and order more as needed. 70% to 90% of stockouts are caused by poor shelf replenishment practices.

Careful attention to stock replenishment is especially important in the era of omnichannel selling, where you need to track inventory across multiple platforms.

How Do Customers Perceive Out-of-Stock Events?

The best way to answer this question is with empathy. You’ve been on the receiving end of stockouts before. You need something, and you need it now… but finding it in-stock turns out to be a tough proposition.

How did you deal with the situation?

• Did you find the product at another store and buy it there?
• Did you backorder the item, settling for getting it later?
• Did you decide you could live without the item after all?
• Did you switch to a replacement product that could fill the gap?

Which did you choose? And how did you react?

• Did you leave a negative review for the store?
• Did you rant and rave a bit before calming down?
• Did you swear to never shop with that seller again?
• Did you take it in stride and not let it get to you?

Nobody likes stockouts. At best, they are disappointing to the eager buyer. At worst, they hurt sales and create irate customers. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. There are a variety of effective ways to deal with out-of-stock products that increase revenue and boost customer satisfaction.

How to Avoid Stockouts in Ecommerce

Like many challenges in ecommerce, it’s easier to take proactive steps to avoid stock outs, rather than respond to them when they occur. Let’s go over some ways you can avoid out-of-stock events.

Step 1: Anticipate your demand accurately

Obviously you can’t see the future, but it’s critically important that you forecast your inventory needs correctly. 73% of retailers struggle with this, but you must figure it out. 

Image: Supply Chain Dive

Anticipating demand starts by recognizing events that would create sudden surges. The end-of-the-year holidays are obviously important, but if you review your sales data carefully, you will probably notice spikes with predictable causes. For instance, a shoe store undoubtedly notices a bump in sandals sales at the beginning of summer. 

Furthermore, it’s important to get a firm grasp of your lead time. Lead time is the delay between placing an order and receiving it. This value is different for every product and supplier, so you’ll want to ask detailed questions and then measure what actually happens. If a supplier can’t meet their delivery estimates, consider looking elsewhere. 

Image: Corporate Finance Institute

Step 2: Reconcile inaccurate inventory counts

Syncing your inventory requires two things: Reliable technology to manage your numbers and clear, simple processes for humans to follow. 

Don’t be cheap with your inventory management software. Use tech that integrates with everywhere you sell (your ecommerce store, your Amazon store, your POS system, etc.) and your warehouse or fulfillment center. 

Then create procedures for your team to follow that expect human error. New stock should be counted twice, organized immediately, and labeled appropriately. Coach your team to look out for stock discrepancies so they can bring the matter to your attention immediately.

Step 3: Consider your safety stock carefully

Safety stock is the additional quantity of a product you keep on hand to prevent an out-of-stock situation. Basically, this stock is insurance against a surge in demand as it reduces the likelihood that you’ll run out of something before you can replenish your inventory. 

Let’s say you are an ecommerce retailer for musical instruments and you sell 200 guitars every month. While it’s reasonable to purchase two hundred guitars every month, you will want to have some extra on hand to account for sudden demand peaks. You might, for instance, plan to keep 225 guitars on hand at all times. (This is a very basic example. There are several theories of calculating safety stock.)

Step 4: Automate stock replenishment

An easy way to keep your inventory levels up is to automate the process. Create an automated workflow that places an order for more products once you reach a certain level. 

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is helpful here. According to RFID Journal, retailers can improve inventory accuracy by 30% and reduce out-of-stock situations by 50% with automation with RFID tech. It allows you to track entire shipments, find items quickly, reduce cycle count time, and auto-reorder products when they get low.

Step 5: Partner with backup suppliers

Your suppliers can have stockouts too. Your manufacturers can experience their own delays. When there’s a supply chain crunch, everyone feels it. So it’s a good idea to have backups in place in case one of your preferred partners can’t meet their obligations, especially for your most popular products. 

Furthermore, consider keeping a dropshipping partner on standby. If your preferred supplier drops the ball, you can send your orders to the dropshipper for them to fulfill. 

Step 6: Account for logistical problems

As a retailer, you don’t have much control over how your suppliers ship products to you. The best thing you can do is make yourself aware of the logistics process so you can respond in the case of problems.

Work with suppliers and logistics partners that offer advanced shipping notifications. These notifications keep you abreast of your shipment’s position and timing, providing they offer notifications at every touch point. If you don’t see your order moving through their usual process, you can make inquiries or plan for delays. 

For example, these are some advanced shipping notifications from Infoplus, a warehouse inventory management application. Notice how every shipment is tracked throughout the entire journey so the ecommerce business knows 

How to Recover From Out-of-Stock Events

The good news about stockouts is they are 100% predictable. Stockouts will happen. Your strategy for responding to them will determine what happens next. 

Here are some common ways brands handle stockouts:

• Take the order anyway, then alert the customer about delayed delivery
• Pull the out-of-stock item from the catalog until it is back-in-stock
• Let the customer know the item is out-of-stock, and suggest related items
• Take a backorder from the customer and ship when the item is available
• Offer to alert the customer when the item is back-in-stock
• Do nothing… Just ship the item when you get it and hope nobody notices

All these tactics for handling stockouts mean well, but the most effective method involves a few of these and some extras. With a few steps, you can make sure you’re keeping many of those potential customers engaged, and turning a potential negative situation into a positive customer experience. 

1. Don’t delete out-of-stock product pages from your website

Removing and then re-adding a product on your ecommerce website when it’s out-of-stock can be detrimental to your SEO. Deleting a page that has backlinks or receives organic traffic could cost you valuable link equity, and will likely end up sending potential customers to a 404 page. 

Additionally, redirecting out-of-stock pages to the homepage of your website is another common mistake. This creates a user experience headache for customers and hinders your ability to collect the user’s information to send out a back-in-stock notification. 

Overstock does this perfectly. Notice how they leave the page intact, but add a clear “out of stock” label beneath the product’s price where shoppers are guaranteed to look. 

2. Collect an email for when it’s back-in-stock

Replace your Add-to-Cart CTA with clear and positive notification text. Consider A/B testing specific CTA language to see what resonates most with your customers. With permission, you can also use this email for subsequent promotions and other brand emails.

Buck Mason is a great example of how you can collect a customer’s email for the purpose of sending a back-in-stock notification, without being intrusive. If you click on an item that’s currently out-of-stock, the “Add-to-Cart” CTA immediately changes to read, “Notify me when available.” It’s a simple and effective way to elevate the user-experience of your site and keep customers happy. 

We like Ellysage’s take on this as well. They ask you to select a specific size for your notification, probably in case one size returns to stock faster than others. 

When we worked with Snow Peak, we discovered a major problem: Due to high demand for their products, their site was consistently showing items as out-of-stock. Customers were frustrated and routinely deserting their orders. All-in-all, their conversion rate was low. 

As part of our Digital Experience Optimization Program, we gave Snow Peak customers a way to get notified when items returned to stock, putting them first in line to be able to purchase, and turning out-of-stock items into future revenue. This resulted in a 108% conversion rate increase.

“I think the high demand for our product makes it go out of stock a lot,” says brand manager Russell Borne. “And what we’ve been able to implement with The Good was a feature to allow the customer to say ‘notify me when this is back in stock’ and that has been one of the most effective ways to grow revenue.”

3. Be clear about the expected return date

If you are able to provide an expected date of return, it can help to give your consumers more to consider when browsing your site. This is most helpful when you have shorter out-of-stock windows as it will capture visitors who are willing to wait a little bit, but is also helpful for longer wait times in order to show goodwill and build trust.

This product page is upfront and honest with customers about when the item will come back in stock. These notices, however simple, reassure customers that they won’t be waiting for an indefinite amount of time if they place an order. 

4. Share related products

At this point on your product page, it can be an effective tactic to share related products. This will capture sales from consumers who are less concerned with some of the details of the out-of-stock product. Related products not only help you save a sale when something is out-of-stock, but they can help increase your average order value.

That Overstock page we showed you also includes a smart related products section below the out-of-stock item. 

5. Utilize back-in-stock emails

Once you have their email address, your key tool to recover revenue from out-of-stock items is the “back in stock” notification. Customers who’ve opted to receive a back-in-stock notification are more likely to convert. 

Your overall site wide conversion rate might be 2% but when you’re emailing those who’ve already expressed an interest in the product, that conversion rate increases significantly.

Relate to the customer immediately. Sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Make it absolutely clear that you appreciate the business. Include the brand and product in the email subject line. In the body of the email, we recommend including an image and mentioning the brand and product name again. 

You can also include a reminder of why they are receiving the email, clearly explain that it’s back-in-stock, and include a very clear CTA that brings them to the exact product in the store.

This Homage email is a perfect example. They remind the customer of the item they saved, show a picture of it, and offer a clear call-to-action. 

6. Utilize SMS and push alerts

SMS text is quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach customers on their mobile devices. Providing customers with the option to input their mobile number instead of an email address may be an even more impactful way to notify customers that an item is back-in-stock. 

Research shows that SMS open rates reach as high as 98%, compared to average 20% of email communications. Additionally, it only takes around 90 seconds for a person to respond to a text message and 90 minutes to respond to an email.

7. Make it personal

One final step you can take that may potentially improve your conversion rate further is to personalize the back-in-stock email. If you can, collect the user’s email address and their name so you can send them a more personalized email when the item does get restocked. If the user has an account with your website, include saved items in the back-in-stock email to increase the likelihood that they’ll click-through on the email and return to your site. 

Huckberry gives customers a way to add out-of-stock items to their wish list. Once those items are replenished, they receive an automated email notification. 

8. Consider bonuses for out-of-stock items

You can include bonuses on orders of out-of-stock items. Free shipping, a discount coupon, or similar offers can help drive those conversions. Additionally, offering something “extra” to your users will increase their motivation to sign-up for a back-in-stock notification. 

Make sure to include these bonuses in your back-in-stock emails. Include a bit of scarcity/urgency to convince buyers to purchase right away. 

9. Find your own innovative solution

Sometimes the solution to stockouts must be more clever than simply getting more product or prompting the customer to buy later. You may need to dig through your analytics to find the root of the problem and an innovative solution.

A great example is our experience with Fully. As the world transitioned to work-from-home, sales boomed and they had a problem keeping their products in stock, especially their iconic standing desk that requires a longer lead time than usual. 

We boosted Fully’s conversion rate by nearly 6% (a 75:1 return on investment) by adjusting their product filters. The new filtering structure helped users become more familiar with the brand and find additional products that meet their needs, rather than defaulting to the flagship product.

Going Beyond to Keep their Business

Stockouts are painful events for retailers and customers. The retailer fails to make an otherwise guaranteed sale and the customer has a poor experience. Out-of-stock items are simply a lose-lose for everyone. Nobody wins. 

As a retailer, it’s your job to avoid stockouts as much as you can. But when they happen (and they inevitably will), you’ll need to reframe your response in order to recover those sales and create a positive experience for your customers. 

If you are experiencing ecommerce challenges beyond out-of-stock issues, make sure to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send you weekly ecommerce insights to help grow your business. 

The post How to Rescue Out-of-Stock Revenue and Grow Your Ecommerce Business appeared first on The Good.

The faster the checkout process, the better–but it’s also about removing any potential friction: does the customer have to create an account? Or is that just another unnecessary step towards the end goal? Hint: it’s probably the latter, since creating an account is more of a bonus for the merchant than the shopper. 

When shopping cart abandonment rates are so high (currently sitting at an eye-watering 69.8%) it’s important to do everything you can to keep the checkout experience slick and friction-free. It’s near-on impossible to shave your abandonment rate down to a big fat zero, but there are definitely some tactics you can put in place to help customers relax at the end of a long journey. 

Don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered. 

Why is a fast checkout process important? 

Did we mention how high cart abandonment rates are right now? 

Depending on the industry, you could be losing almost 70% of people who put something in their cart for reasons that are easily rectified. 

Maybe they got distracted. Maybe you tacked on additional fees they weren’t expecting. Or maybe they found a better option elsewhere. 

When a customer is in “buy mode”, they’re ready to buy. They basically have their wallet out, cash in hand, and are ready to throw their money at you. Don’t make it difficult for them to do that! The quicker you can whizz them through the checkout, the more seamless the journey becomes and the fewer chances there are for shoppers to back out. 

When you have a robust and well-oiled checkout process in place, you can:

• Increase conversions by removing any friction and potential sticking points
• Attract repeat customers who had a great experience the first time they bought from you
• Create happier customers who enjoy buying from you 

The key components of a checkout page design 

It’s easy to relegate your checkout page to an afterthought–after all, customers have made it this far, so why wouldn’t they just continue until the end? 

But in reality, this is the most crucial, make-or-break moment of the sales cycle. If a customer gets frustrated or confused, they’re going to ditch you quicker than you can say “enter your card details” and find a brand that provides them with a better experience.

Before we look at how you can improve your checkout experience, let’s recap the must-have elements of a decent checkout page design. 

1. Summary page

Customers can get a quick overview of everything in their cart and continue on to checkout by clicking a “proceed to checkout” button or something similar. 

2. Login, sign up, or guest checkout 

Shoppers can either log in to their account if they already have one, create a new account from scratch, or checkout as a guest. 

3. Billing and shipping information 

Customers can enter their billing information and delivery details. This is where any shipping fees or extra costs are tacked onto the total. 

4. Preview order

Before a customer hands over their money, they should have a final opportunity to preview their order and see the total pricing. 

Optimizing the checkout experience: the limitations of popular platforms 

One of the biggest concerns for shoppers is safety when buying online. 

Giving their payment information and other personal details to online stores they might never have bought from before can be daunting. In fact, 92% of consumers are worried about purchasing from unfamiliar websites, but they’re also frustrated by slow page load times when their card information is involved. 

While most popular platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce offer a handful of different security measures, it’s often up to a retailer to explain how they keep customer data safe. This often means integrating a third-party security tool or displaying safety badges. 

It’s not just security that’s a problem. Speed is so important for shoppers that 50% are much less likely to buy something if the checkout process takes more than 30 seconds. The easiest way to condense the process is to offer single-click checkout. If it’s good enough for Amazon, it’s good enough for smaller ecommerce brands. 

Reducing the number of clicks a customer has to take to complete a purchase reduces the number of opportunities they have to back out or rethink their purchase. But it’s also annoying to have to go through multiple steps when you just want to buy something–particularly if a consumer is shopping on the go via their mobile device which can make going back and forth between checkout stages clunky.

The problem with current platforms is that it’s difficult to combine both speed and safety. Brands that are able to connect the two while still providing an excellent experience will come out on top. 

On top of this, popular ecommerce platforms tend to have a standard checkout process that all brands must use in one form or another. While this makes it easy to implement a checkout process in minutes, it doesn’t necessarily allow for creativity and optimization. 

FREE EBOOK

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The Guide To Optimizing Your Checkout And Post-Purchase Experience

How Swiss Gear increased conversions by 14% with an optimized checkout experience

Outdoor adventure brand Swiss Gear was struggling to generate conversions and boost its revenue. It found that many of its customers were shopping on the go from various different travel locations around the world, and therefore demanded a fast and easy checkout experience (which, at the time, they weren’t providing). 

With the help of The Good’s Digital Experience Optimization Program, they identified who their target market was and the points of friction in the buying process–including during the checkout experience.

By optimizing the checkout process and making it mobile-friendly, Swiss Gear was able to dramatically decrease their cart abandonment rate and keep customers coming back even in the off-season. This led to a 14.1% year-on-year increase in conversion rate, a 20.1% increase in AOV, and a 132.7% increase in online year-on-year revenue. 

How to optimize your checkout experience 

Now you know why optimizing the checkout experience can lead to an explosion in conversion rates, happy customers, and a quicker sales process, it’s time to hone yours to start getting those results. 

Here are some top tips for getting started. 

1. Reduce form fields

The fewer steps a customer has to take, the better. No one wants to be greeted with an endless form that asks for their firstborn’s name and the kitchen sink. 

Think about what information you really need and stick to that. According to research by the Baymard Institute, 18% of shoppers have no problem abandoning their cart if the ecommerce checkout process is too long or complicated. 

Mejuri keeps its form fields to an absolute minimum. 

2. Offer guest checkout (or social sign-in) 

Everyone’s inbox is crammed with new promotions, brand launches, and *LAST CHANCE SALES* emails. So much so, that adding yet another brand to their inbox can be the final straw for a shopper–not to mention creating an account and remembering a new password can be a real headache. 

Avoid this by offering a guest checkout option that requires minimal information or take it one step further and let shoppers log in using their socials. 

Field Notes offers customers the chance to checkout as a guest. 

3. Cater to international shoppers

The great thing about online shopping is it can be done from anywhere in the world. 

You might be based on the sunny shores of California, but your products can be snapped up by people in Australia, Japan, South Africa, and elsewhere. However, if you want to make international shoppers feel comfortable buying from you, it’s important that you provide a localized experience.

This means offering prices in their local currency, translating the ecommerce checkout process into their own language (40% of Europeans will never buy products in a language other than their own), and being sensitive to cultural differences. 

Stance translates its checkout and uses local currency for international shoppers. 

4. Display trust signals 

Security is paramount for shoppers today. They want to know their personal data is kept safe and that their credit card information won’t be compromised in any way. In fact, one survey revealed that 17% of shoppers have abandoned a checkout flow this year because they “didn’t trust the site with their credit card information”. 

Instill a sense of safety in your customers by displaying trust signals like safety badges, credit card logos, and a clear privacy policy that explains exactly what you do with their data. 

Brosa displays two security badges to give customers peace of mind. 

5. Show checkout progress

If you’re going for a multi-page checkout experience, keep shoppers in the loop with a real-time progress bar. This shows them how far through the process they are and how long they have left. It’s a simple tactic, but it builds trust and keeps the momentum going. 

Warby Parker shows customers where they’re at in the checkout progress at the top of the screen. 

6. Autofill customer information

It can be a real drag typing in your personal information over and over again on the same site. These days, shoppers almost expect you to make things easier for them by remembering what they’ve told you in the past and using that to speed up the checkout process. 

If you can, autofill key information so the customer doesn’t have to tire out their fingers typing it in again. It’s a no-brainer that this speeds up the checkout process because it eliminates the need to fill out endless forms and reduces the chance of shoppers providing incorrect information. 

7. Make it mobile-friendly

More than half of all online shopping now comes from a mobile device, so if you’re not making mobile-first a priority, you could be missing out on a huge chunk of sales.

Ensuring your online checkout process is slick on mobile means: 

• Offering different payment options so shoppers can choose their favorite
• Auto filling form fields 
• Reducing the number of form fields
• Including prominent CTA buttons including a fast checkout button 
• Providing a one-click checkout option
• Simplifying the information you show on screen 
• Allowing shoppers to log in using their socials 

8. Clear CTAs

Customers will struggle to make it through the checkout process if they don’t know what to do next. CTAs guide them in the right direction and improve the flow of the checkout experience.

Think about making your CTAs stand out with contrasting colors, larger fonts, and placing them in prominent places on the screen. Some brands have success providing floating CTAs so that customers can see them at all times, wherever they are on the page. 

Allbirds has a stand-out CTA that pops up when a customer adds an item to their cart. 

9. Multiple payment options 

Different shoppers prefer different payment methods. By limiting the options you offer, the more you limit the shoppers you appeal to. If someone can’t pay the way they want, there’s a high chance they’ll go elsewhere (and never come back). 

Consider offering all different kinds of payment options, including credit cards, PayPal, Stripe, and digital wallets, like Google Pay and Apple Pay. 

Brooklinen offers express checkout payment options. 

Increase conversions and reduce abandoned cart rate with a fast checkout

The checkout might be the last stage in the sales cycle, but it’s the step that leaves a lasting impression. If a customer has a bad experience or it takes too long for them to checkout, there’s a high chance they won’t come back and shop with you again. 

This is why it’s crucial to streamline your checkout process and make it as fast as possible. Consumers today expect a quick and easy purchase process, and tapping into their needs will dramatically reduce your abandoned cart rate and increase conversions. 

The post How A Fast Checkout Experience Can Improve Your Conversion Rate appeared first on The Good.

In fact, many stores now attract more mobile traffic than desktop traffic, and this is only going to increase. But mobile users are fickle. They add to their cart until it’s bursting at the seams and then, *poof*, they disappear into the sunset because the checkout was confusing, they were hit with last-minute fees, or the shipping time was much longer than they were willing to wait.

Whatever the reason for abandonment, it can be fixed. Capturing this new wave of mobile shoppers means optimizing the mobile checkout experience and removing any moments of friction or frustration. 

Mobile checkout optimization is more important than ever

While stores are enjoying a huge influx of mobile traffic, they’re struggling to convert those numbers into sales and revenue. Typically, mobile conversion rates are around half of desktop conversion rates despite the disconnect in traffic. 

And it makes sense – when on a desktop, you can navigate backward and forwards quite easily, see everything on one page, and generally feel a bit safer handing over your cash. If you want to reap the rewards of high mobile traffic, the key is creating a mobile checkout that’s right for the device.

Shoppers want less clutter, reassurance around privacy and safety, and clear information about shipping. This guide will highlight some critical mobile checkout best practices, both pre-and post-checkout that will tackle buyer objections and create a seamless shopping experience. 

Demystifying mobile checkout best practices 

As an organization, we try not to overemphasize the value of “best practices.” They can be a great target for young, emerging brands. After all, they are called best practices for a reason – they tend to work pretty well.

When you’re first starting out, or when you’re not quite big enough to support a dedicated expert, team, or outside authority to help with optimization, best practices are an acceptable substitute. They allow you to check a lot of the right boxes with a modest resource investment and a reasonable level of confidence in your results.

However, best practices will only take you so far. That’s because best practices are often promoted heavily in podcast episodes, webinars, and articles (just like this one!), which means they quickly go from “best practice” to “common practice.” When this happens, applying best practices usually devolves into becoming the fastest path to mediocrity.

So, if you’re just getting started with optimization and you’re ready to dedicate time and attention to your mobile checkout experience – kudos to you! You’re making a smart choice.

But you should know that, while the recommendations we share in this article are a solid foundation, they aren’t necessarily optimized for your business, products, or customers. To get the very best results, you’ll still want to plan for an intentional research, testing, and optimization process down the road.

Great! Now that we’re aligned on expectations, let’s take a look at what you should be aiming for in terms of mobile conversion rate and then we’ll start sharing strategies that can help you get there.

What is a good mobile conversion rate? 

According to a recent study, the average ecommerce mobile conversion rate is 1.1%. It might seem like a minuscule amount, but if you’re getting huge swathes of traffic it can really add up. Even the top 20% of stores only generate a 2.7% conversion rate, while a modest 3.9% would put you up there with the top 10% of brands. 

The goal is always to get your conversion rate as high as possible with your desired audience. At the end of the day, a good conversion rate is one that is always improving.  

14 mobile checkout best practices that dramatically increase conversions 

1. Make the checkout button stand out

The last thing you want is shoppers with a full cart leaving your site because they can’t find the checkout button. We’re not saying you need to make it an all-singing, all-dancing show with flashing colors and a 90s style glitter background, but it needs to be visible. 

Some ways you can do that include: 

• Using contrasting brand colors
• Implementing a floating checkout button 
• Having the cart button visible at the top of the page at all times 

Most importantly, keep the checkout button above the fold to avoid shoppers having to scroll endlessly to find it – or, at the very least, make it sticky at the top or bottom of the screen. 

Judy’s checkout button is displayed in contrasting colors to the other buttons. 

2. Provide a guest checkout option

Not every consumer will want to hand over all their personal information to you (especially if they’ve never done business with you before). Avoid potential hesitation at this point by offering a guest checkout option that requires very few details from the customer – namely, just their email address to confirm their order and their shipping address to deliver the product. 

60% of US retailers offer a guest checkout option that doesn’t require shoppers to fill out a profile and join the mailing list, while 14% of shoppers list “no guest checkout” as their number one reason for abandoned carts. Give people what they want and let them buy without signing up. 

Glossier’s guest checkout option takes front and center stage on the checkout page. 

3. Allow shoppers to use Google or social media

Alternatively, give shoppers the option to checkout using their social profiles or Google account. This makes it easy for shoppers to come back and see their past purchases without having to fill out a load of redundant forms. 

It’s also great for you, too, since you’ll be able to remarket via social ads to customers that have given you their social media information and personalize their experience based on their general shopping habits. 

Newegg lets customers log in as a guest, or with their Facebook or Google accounts. 

4. Keep it simple 

The KISS mentality (Keep it Simple, Stupid) is definitely one of the mobile checkout best practices. Phone screens have very little space for frivolities, and you want to keep the attention of the shopper on the most important elements – the buy button and the checkout button. 

Get rid of unnecessary information and clutter, and make sure there’s plenty of white space to offset any text and images. 

Take it one step further and apply a minimalist approach to the checkout experience. Only ask shoppers to provide information you really need to process the order and keep form fields to a minimum. 

Fabletics keeps its checkout page incredibly simple and clutter-free. 

5. Be clear about the shipping information

Pushing surprise costs on shoppers is a surefire way to erode trust and ensure they don’t come back. Instead of surprising shoppers at the end with excessive delivery fees, make sure you’re upfront and honest about them from the start. Is it going to cost an extra $5.95 to deliver? Say it! Will they be able to unlock free shipping when they spend a certain amount? Shout about it! 

Get creative like DTC sock brand Bombas and add a progress bar that tells shoppers how far they are from unlocking free shipping. Not only does this keep them updated, but it can also drive up the AOV as people push to claim free shipping. 

6. Show off your safety badges 

Security is key when shopping online. Many consumers who are new to the whole buying online thing are wary about handing over their credit card information to brands they’ve never heard about before. In a recent Ipsos survey, almost half expressed distrust of online shopping. 

Give hesitant buyers peace of mind by adding security badges and safety protocols to your site to show what measures are in place to protect their privacy. SSL certificates are a firm favorite for mobile checkout best practices, as are safety badges provided by your hosting company. 

Apple promotes its security with a locked padlock against its URL – something a lot of secure brands choose to do. 

7. Incorporate a progress bar

Lengthy and complex checkout processes are a turn-off for shoppers. The whole point of online shopping is that it’s convenient and easier than walking into a store and hand-picking a product. 

The clothing brand BlackMilk includes a progress bar that shows consumers where they are in the buying process. They can quickly and clearly see what section they have completed and how much further is left to go. 

8. Offer different in-app payments 

Apple Pay now has 507 million users around the world, and research suggests that by 2022 a third of US shoppers will use it to make purchases online. 

Providing payment options that customers prefer, such as Apple Pay, PayPal, and Klarna will make buying from you a no-brainer. Plus, in-app payments mean customers don’t have to leave your ecommerce store and can usually buy with one simple click. It takes the friction out of the process and eliminates the increasing chance of a customer abandoning their shopping cart if they have to fill out endless fields for their credit card information. 

Whipping Post clearly states the payment options customers can use when they add items to their cart.  

9. Maintain a hierarchy of product information

Coming face to face with a screen packed full of text and information can be overwhelming for a shopper. Keep things simple by creating a hierarchy of product information, starting with the need-to-know stuff, like what the product actually is, and providing either bulleted lists of secondary information (like benefits and features) or an accordion menu that provides further reading if shoppers wish. 

Drunk Elephant features dropdown menus that shoppers can explore if they want to find out more information about a product. 

10. Make use of floating buttons

It’s easy to “lose” a checkout button or a buy button if it’s buried on a page somewhere. Shoppers might find themselves scrolling up and down to find it or navigating back and forth between pages which can be frustrating and make the shopping experience longer than it needs to be. 

Make it easy by adding floating buttons to prominent pages. This might be a floating “buy now” button on a product page that stays stuck to the screen while the customer reads the description, or a floating “checkout” button that remains in place throughout the entire shopping experience.   

Haus wines has a floating “add to cart” button that sticks around when a shopper scrolls up and down a product page. 

11. Auto-fill information where possible 

A consumer on a shopping spree doesn’t want to get held up typing in the same information over and over again – in fact, this can be detrimental for sales since you want to capture people who are in full-on buy-mode. 

If someone has bought from you before or you can use a plugin that auto-fills important information like address and email address, do it. This reduces the touchpoints a customer has to go through to make a purchase and eliminates several moments of potential hesitation. The quicker a shopper can buy, the less time they have to talk themselves out of the purchase. 

Drunk Elephant allows guests to autofill checkout forms based on information saved on their phones. 

12. Offer upsells to increase AOV 

While the checkout flow needs to be smooth, it’s also a great opportunity to pitch other products to customers and increase the AOV. Upsells can boost visibility on your product line and build trust with customers as they start to feel like you “get” them (but only if the upsells are relevant!). 

Take Allbirds, for example. They have a “you might also like” section inside the shopper’s cart that promotes relevant products. Here, they’re promoting a pair of trainer socks that someone buying a pair of trainers might want or need. 

Post-purchase mobile checkout best practices

Once checkout is complete, you have a chance to really secure your relationship with a new customer. Instead of dropping off the face of the earth, keep the connection going with these best practices. 

13. Send an order confirmation

You can lose a lot of trust with customers if you don’t send an order confirmation. Remember, they’ve just handed over their hard-earned cash, and proof of their transaction is crucial to maintaining their comfort levels with your brand. 

As well as sending an email, you can also create a “thank you” page that customers are directed to when they make it all the way through an ecommerce checkout. This can include their order number, subtotal, an order summary, a personalized message, and a little dose of your brand personality. 

Sephora directs shoppers to a thank you page that confirms their order and offers them a little incentive. 

14. Keep customers updated on the delivery timeline

Stay connected with your customers right until they receive their orders. Send regular email updates and let them track their order via your mobile ecommerce site – just generally keep them in the loop so they don’t start panicking about where their product is. This also cuts down on the number of customer service tickets you’ll receive asking “where is my product?”, so it’s a win-win situation for everyone.  

Mobile checkout examples that convert

Easton Baseball increase mobile revenue by 659%

Easton Baseball was keen to grow its mobile conversion rate but didn’t know where to start, so they went through The Good’s Conversion Growth Program that identified a series of UX improvements the brand could put in place. The results showed that the majority of their customers were arriving on-site via mobile, but they weren’t converting. As well as making the product selection process easier, Easton Baseball improved the checkout experience to increase the path to purchase. 

The checkout now includes a floating, stand-out “add to cart” button, upsells at cart level, and a guest checkout option. 

Since implementing these best practices, the brand has seen a 659% increase in mobile shopping revenue, not to mention far happier customers. 

Klean Kanteen increase mobile revenue by 80%

When Klean Kanteen came to The Good, their website wasn’t mobile-friendly, had a poor user experience, and wasn’t optimized for conversions. After a detailed audit, the brand implemented a number of mobile checkout best practices to optimize the buying process which led to an 80% increase in mobile revenue. 

The mobile checkout experience now includes eye-catching “checkout” buttons, clear shipping information, and a guest checkout option. 

Reduce your cart abandonment rate on mobile 

Ready to improve your mobile conversion rates and capture the new wave of mobile shoppers? The Good’s Digital Experience Optimization Program identifies areas of improvement and helps you implement improvements to drive more sales and create a slick, friction-free buying process. 

The post 14 Mobile Checkout Best Practices to Increase Conversions and Build Trust appeared first on The Good.

When elite marathoners cross the finish line, they don’t high-five the best sign holder (“Remember, you paid for this!”), wipe their brow, and chug a self-congratulatory beer. 

Astoundingly, many of these best-of-the-best runners keep running. They have an entire cool-down process that starts just minutes after they cross the finish line, and they have that process for several reasons:

• Nearterm, they know plopping down down feels good for the first 30 seconds, but it only leads to a jaw-grinding level of soreness over the next 24 hours
• Longterm, a cooldown helps the athlete recover quickly for their next race; how they treat themselves 24 hours after finishing has a big impact on their next performance

Sure, they may grab a frothy pint later (nothing wrong with that!) — but not until they’ve set themselves up for continued success. While novice runners promptly collapse at the finish line, the best see it through a cool down. 

Unfortunately, many ecommerce store owners take the novice approach; they run a marathon getting customers to purchase and fall on their face at the order-confirmed finish line. This is understandable — it’s hard work earning a first-time sale!

But, like the less experienced runners who skip post-race recovery, that collapse is also short-sighted. It leads to plenty of painful aches, such as the squeeze you feel when traffic dries up or ad prices jump. 

There’s a better option: 

Savvy store owners, like the elite marathons, know what they do immediately after a first purchase has a big impact on performance — boosting metrics like average order value, customer lifetime value, and overall store revenue. 

What is the post-purchase experience?

The most useful definition for post-purchase customer experience is the activities, messages, and brand interactions that a customer experiences after purchasing a product or service from you.

This typically includes communication elements (Ex: email and SMS messages) as well as physical elements (Ex: unboxing) and behavior-based elements (Ex: customer service conversations). This guide gives you a step-by-step playbook for building a “best in class” post-purchase experience that will accelerate your business growth.

This journey has several points, and optimizing each one will create a compounding effect. The more you improve the post-purchase experience and prime repeat purchases, the more dramatically you can accelerate your business growth by increasing customer lifetime value and lifting overall revenue (more on how below). 

Plus, this is something you can set up one time that will run continuously. Meaning, the long term gains are exponential compared to the time invested up front. 

So, how exactly do you start optimizing and start benefiting? 

This guide shows you. 

We’ve broken out each piece of the post-purchase experience, outlined how you can improve it, and tied in what optimizing this journey can do for your brand. 

Here’s what’s ahead: 

• Why post-purchase is a huge missed opportunity
• Turning a simple “thank you” into more revenue
• The six emails of the post-purchase experience
• Four key metrics you can impact 

Why post-purchase experience and optimization is a huge missed opportunity

Profitwell looked at just under 700 subscription companies and discovered something a bit unsettling — the price of acquiring new customers is on the up-and-up. 

Compared to five years ago, the costs of getting a new customer on board is up nearly 60%. 

New customers, while crucial, take an increasingly enormous amount of time and energy. In contrast, it’s much easier to get existing customers to complete an additional purchase, and they often spend more money than new customers. The lauded Marketing Metrics textbook states existing customers are 60-70% likely to make a repeat purchase whereas new customers are 5-20% likely to make an initial purchase. 

Additional research by Bain indicates that the longer a customer stays with you, the more their average order value increases with subsequent purchases. In apparel, a customer’s fifth purchase is 40% larger than the first, and repeat customers spend 67% more in months 31-36 with a brand than in month zero-to-six. 

Our own data from July-September 2020 shows similar findings. When we looked at 13 ecommerce retailers in the home goods, shoes and clothing, and consumables sectors, we found repeat purchasers (who make at least two purchases):

• Account for 54.93% of overall revenue
• Account for 47.14% of overall transactions
• Have a 27.62% conversion rate compared to the 2.01% sitewide average
• Have an 57.87% higher average order value compared to first-time customers. 

So, we’ve established that repeat customers are easier to convert and tend to be more valuable over time. You may be asking yourself, “well then, how do I get more repeat purchases?”

We reached out to Kristen LaFrance, the head of Shopify’s Resilient Retail series, for advice:

“In ecommerce, you don’t have the same face-to-face sales interaction that you would in a retail setting, so you have to take care of some of those steps post-purchase, when you finally have a direct line of communication with the customer.

So that period between when someone gives you their money and when they actually receive the product is critical for forming a strong relationship. Educate them, address their questions or concerns, get them excited to rip open that box when it hits their doorstep. That’s what makes the difference between an okay experience and a great one – and that’s what’s ultimately going to make the difference between an okay customer and a great one.”

In other words, the best way to increase repeat purchases is to deliver a world-class customer experience right after a customer makes their first purchase. You know, that time where you’re probably sending an order confirmation email, a shipment tracking email and…that’s about it?

The reason has to do with consumption patterns. “When someone initially makes their purchase,” Kurt Elster, Shopify Plus Expert at Ethercycle, told us, “they are very likely, in the very near future, to make another purchase. When we buy stuff, it kicks off consumption cycles.” 

For example, you buy a phone and need a phone case. You buy running shoes and need a great outfit to hit the pavement in. That’s why Kurt advises, “As soon as someone makes a purchase from you — and maybe they even need to buy the same thing a second time — give them the opportunity, prompt them, give them the excuse.” 

When Kurt says as soon as someone purchases, he means it. 

The very first thing your customer sees post-purchase — that unassuming thank you page — is a great place to start laying the groundwork for the next purchase.

Turning a simple “thank you” into more revenue   

Take a minute and think about where you upsell customers. If you’re like most brands, you do this throughout the purchase process (e.g. on the product page) as well as in cart. 

Let’s pause right there. While upselling in cart sounds like a great idea, it’s probably killing your conversions. 

The problem is, many brands assume online checkout works like brick-and-mortar checkout. Meaning, they stash high-margin add-ons — brand equivalents of candy bars or lottery tickets — near the online “counter” to encourage customers to buy just a few more things and improve that average order value. 

But here’s the thing: online checkout isn’t like brick-and-mortar checkout. 

• Storefronts can have 5min+ wait times: In a store, checkout line items are there because you’re waiting on the customer in front of you. You’re held up by a five-family tornado (“did we only grab 1 pack of diapers?!”) or the coupon lady (“the Kleenex should be two for $1.50”), and you need to kill time while you wait. So you browse the shelves 10 inches from your nose. Maybe you even give yourself a break of that KitKat and pay for the wrapper at the register (no judgement). Those shelves serve a distinct purpose; they’re there to capture your idle attention and reorient your perception of waiting.  
• Online stores have zero wait time: But online, you’re not experiencing this wait time. There’s no one holding up the line ahead of you. You have one goal, and that’s to get through checkout as quickly and easily as possible. In this context, upsells may not be a welcome distraction. They’re not something to do while you wait; they’re roadblocks to a seamless checkout experience.

Keep in mind, customer experience drives conversion rates, so adding friction to the customer’s experience may also negatively impact conversion. Meaning when you upsell in cart and throw a roadblock in the checkout flow, you could actually hurt conversion rates. 

So, what can you do instead? 

The thank you page: a better place to upsell 

Most brands neglect the small but mighty thank you page. Given 100% of customers visit this page, it’s a shame so many of them are plain, templated, or only convey bare-bones information. For example, Debenhams’s page below:

While confirming the customer’s order went through is absolutely a good idea, there’s so much more you can do here: alleviate post-purchase concerns, engage excited buyers and, yes, even upsell. In fact, upselling on your thank you page is much more effective than upselling in cart. 

Jordan Gal, founder of Carthook, explains why: “Right after your customer buys something, they are at their most euphoric point, they are at peak happiness, and that is a good time to make an offer. And if you make that offer in a way that is beneficial to both parties, all of a sudden everyone wins. Your customer gets a complimentary product that enhances their experience and increases happiness or satisfaction, and you benefit from not only that additional happiness factor, but also a higher order value for almost no additional expense.”

Need a bit of data to back that up? Carthook has driven over $180 million in additional value for its merchants through post-purchase experience upsells. 

So, the customer is already committed and primed for action when they reach your thank you page. Once they’re there, you can effectively upsell them a few different ways:

1. Suggest bulk: Perhaps the customer could use four more light bulbs or two more pairs of socks. Especially for items the customer will buy over time anyways, a bulk option at a bundled rate or no extra shipping fees can be enticing. 
2. Pitch a subscription: If the item is something a customer uses and replenishes regularly (e.g. skincare products), suggest an automatic renewal option. 
3. Recommend complementary products: Remember what Kurt said about consumption cycles? If the customer purchased shoes, perhaps they need a pair of socks. Or if they purchased a king bedspread, perhaps they need new pillows and a bed skirt. Use your thank you page to suggest helpful related items the customers may have forgotten about. 

For example, when you order a log splitter from Log Splitter Direct, they suggest earplugs and a branch cutter — handy items if you’re felling a dead oak out front. They do this via email, but you can list equivalent items for your brand on your thank you page: 

If you’re wondering, “yes, but how?”, the tool we mentioned above, Carthook, is one answer. Carthook allows you to show complementary products or subscriptions on your thank you page and prompt, “would you like to add these to your order?” Aside from offering additional value to customers, this helps you improve that average order value without adding friction to the checkout flow. 

Of course, you don’t have to sell anything on your thank you page. There are plenty of other ways you can use it to reassure customers, build trust, and encourage loyalty. 

What else can you do with your thank you page? Seven more optimizations

Remember, when your customer hits a thank you page, they’ve just made a purchase. They’re feeling a range of emotions from squirming excitement (“I cannot WAIT for this to arrive.”) to gripping anxiety (“oh crap, was that really the right decision?”). 

There are plenty of ways you can engage these emotions to benefit both the customer and your brand. 

Reassure anxious purchasers

If you’re anything like me, you feel a tinge of buyer’s remorse on a monthly basis. This is especially likely when purchasing a high-ticket item, such as top top-dollar tech. 

However, there are at least three effective ways to alleviate that familiar pit-of-stomach feeling for customers: highlight the good causes the customer’s money goes towards, remind them of the awesome work environment their purchase supports, and showcase how happy other customers are. 

All of these are great ways to say, “Hey, don’t worry, you’ve made a really great choice here!”:

• Highlight charities or causes you support: Morning Consult surveyed 2,200 US adults and found “56% of Americans are attentive to ethical and political matters relating to companies they purchase from – Democrats and younger generations notably more so than their peers.” If you participate in 1% For Good or regularly donate to certain causes or charities, let customers know! Show pictures from mission trips or images of the actual people and communities who benefit from your support (e.g. the image from 31Bbits below). It’s an honest way to help the customer feel better about their purchase. 

• Talk about your employees, team, and work environment: Likewise, if your brand provides an exceptional work environment or is a certified B Corp (like The Good!), tell customers. Show team pictures and founder messages. The same Morning Consult survey found more customers value employee treatment than whether your items are in stock when they make a purchase.

This logic extends to how you source your materials, too. For example, Allbirds does a good job of highlighting animal welfare. Messaging similar to this is great material for a thank you page.

• Showcase happy customers: Lastly, a great way to convince customers they’ve made a great purchase is to show them how happy other customers are with the same or similar purchase. Incorporate user-generated content such as reviews, testimonials, or social media posts to assuage any lingering concerns. As a bonus, this may encourage customers to share their own positive experience with you as well. 
• Quantify the value: If your product is in the high-ticket category, consider showing the customer how they haven’t made a “for tomorrow” purchase, they’ve actually made a “for life” purchase. For example, they may have just spent $400 on shoes, but with that  lifetime guarantee they’ll never need to buy dress shoes again. A similar tactic would be to demonstrate how a $1,000 laptop they’ll use for 8 years is $0.34 per day. Plus, if they use it to launch that business they’ve been dreaming about, it could double their money (or more!). Help customers visualize the value and not just the price tag. 

Engage excited purchasers

For a customer that holy-moly-cannot-wait till their shipment arrives, there are a few ways you can stoke that fire.

• Promote original content: If you’ve produced something (blog posts, videos, etc) that will help a customer make use of their purchase, display it here! For example, if they just bought a bike, display content on bike riding, local trails, and how to join a cycling community. While this builds excitement, it also offers a form of reassurance — you’re helping customers see and believe they’ll use the purchase. 
• Address FAQ: If you’ve created FAQ content, re-purpose that here. Identify the 3-5 most common post-purchase questions and answer them before the customer asks. Often this includes information about purchasing or using the product or how to handle returns. This can reduce your support team’s workload while equipping the customer to use the item they’re excited about. 
• Include social share options: A small nudge may be all it takes for an excited customer to tell the world about their purchase. If so, social mentions will help you build brand awareness, attract more prospects to your site, and stockpile social proof. So give customers an easy, pre-written, and genuine way to brag about their purchase. 
• Referral sharing: Did you know 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over any other type of advertising? Empower excited customers to share their purchase directly with friends through referrals. For example, give them a pre-written email they can send instantly and include an incentive both parties can use on their next purchase. (Remember to get creative! This doesn’t have to be 10% off.)

Figure out what on earth purchasers are feeling

If you’re not really sure what’s going through your customer’s head at this point (Excitement? Regret? Hunger?), the thank you page is a great place to ask them! 

• Ask for feedback: Include a short survey that collects feedback on your customer’s buying experience. That sounds technical, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Nick Disabato, founder of a Conversion Rate Optimization agency called Draft, explained, “you put a survey field on your thank you page or order status page of your store that asks, `How did you feel about your purchase today?’ And that’s it. That’s all you ask.” Disabato uses Hotjar for this and mentions you don’t need to add an incentive — folks will fill it out on their own. 

Turns out, this is a surprisingly simple opportunity to identify friction in the customer experience (and remember, friction hurts conversions). Nick told us about several different scenarios he’s come across in his experiences. 

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The Guide To Optimizing Your Checkout And Post-Purchase Experience

For example, customers might: 

• Mention a bug. If so, you can fix it and improve conversions.
• Say they’re anxious and give a reason. This is a great way to identify and bust objections. 
• Express they “hope it worked.” This is a great opportunity to follow up with a customer interview. Get them on the phone and ask what led them to think the checkout didn’t work? What were they expecting? And what would make it more clear? 

This is seriously valuable information. Disabato emphasized, “You get a lot of insights and there are a lot of implications for it. Sometimes it’s cut and dry — this didn’t work, let’s fix it.” Other times, you uncover customer motivation that helps you optimize your product detail page. Either way, you’re figuring out what you don’t know and improving future customer experiences and conversions. 

Whatever you opt for on your thank you page, remember to A/B test your changes. One ecommerce site may have a winning thank you page that consistently generates repeat customers, but that same page may not work as well for another brand with a different target audience. Don’t just copy your competitors — you’ve no idea how their page is working out for them. 

Once you complete this step, you’ve dialed your thank you page, and reassured the customer they’re not only amazing — they’ve just made an amazing purchase. 

What opportunities are next?  

The six emails of the post-purchase experience 

After the thank you page, the customer’s post-purchase experience moves off your site and into their inbox. 

Narvar conducted a study of 1,543 shoppers between ages 21 and 65. They found 83% of the respondents expect regular updates about their purchases. Many brands give those updates, but the problem is, way too many of those brands use the off-the-shelf email templates and timings their ecommerce platform provides.

That’s a huge missed opportunity! 

How? 

Unbounce found customers open transactional emails at twice the rate of promotional emails. And that initial thank you email? Klayvio found its open rate is a staggering 67%!  For comparison, the average email open rate is 15-25%.

Turns out, customers are opening and reading post-purchase emails way more than anything else you send them. 

Which begs the question: Are you making the most of them? 

To find out, read through the six emails that amount to huge opportunities for post-purchase optimization below. Use this breakdown to audit the emails you’re currently sending and identify specific ways you can improve.

And, if you get the feeling this is a lot of work (it can be!), remember you can always carve out a day to set up and automate these emails using a tool like Privy or Klayvio. A bit of upfront work and then you’ll be seeing the ROI indefinitely. 

#1 – Order Confirmation

The order confirmation should be the first email your customer receives after purchase. It assures your customer their order went through, payment processed, someone’s working on it, and nothing got lost in an internet black hole. 

When to send it: As soon as payment clears. 

How to think about it: More than any other transactional email you send, this one gets crazy high open rates. It’s an opportunity to alleviate customer anxiety and doubt, set expectations for what happens next, and even cross sell…if you do it tactfully. 

Something else you want to keep in mind here is you’re setting a precedent. If this email is delightful and provides value to the customer, they’re more likely to open later emails you send, too. So, it’s important to get this one right. 

How to do it:  You’ll want your email to check at least the first four bullets below: 

• Confirm the order went through
• State how it’ll ship and how they can track it
• Mention who they can contact if they’re concerned
• Spell out what to expect next 
• Include a social share option 
• Pitch a cross sell using Klayvio or Privy 

Here’s a great example of the basics from Roark. They confirm the order, include a tracking link, reference customer service, and tell you what’s coming next (“we will send you another email as soon as it ships”). 

They don’t use this email to upsell or cross-sell, and that’s fine. 

If upselling is something you want to explore, though, here’s how to do it: 

On episode five of the Drive and Convert podcast, our CEO Jon MacDonald tells a great email confirmation story. He had just purchased a set of lights. On the thank you page, they asked if he wanted to add more. At the time, he didn’t. But when he received the order confirmation email, it reminded him, “hey, if you change your mind, you have four hours from when this email is sent to add a few more before we’re going to start packing up your order.” It gave him the option to, “Click here to add four more, eight more or twelve more.” 

When Jon chose four, he was whisked to his cart with an order number, new total, and no extra shipping (a nice incentive!). 

Ritual does something similar for existing subscription customers. The email below was sent to a customer already stocked up on women’s vitamins. Instead of pitching more women’s vitamins, Ritual sent a “next-of-kin” offer on men’s vitamins.

You can also use the confirmation email to pitch a subscription. Fullscript does this with a friendly and unobtrusive reminder:  

Also worth noting: compared to the “subscribe and save” model many brands default to, Fullscript pitches convenience instead of price as the main incentive. 

#2 – Shipping Confirmation

The second email your customer receives post-purchase is shipping confirmation. It notifies the customer their order is on its merry way.  

When to send it: Right when the item ships. 

How to think about it: This email builds on the customer experience you provided in your first email. You’re continuing to alleviate anxiety (“we didn’t steal your money!”), deliver assurance, and build trust. You’re paving the way for the great review you’ll request a few emails down the road.

How to do it: Make sure and include these pieces of information in your shipping confirmation: 

• Shipping update: answer “what’s happening with my package?” 
• Expected delivery date/date range
• Tracking information: even if the tracking number isn’t available for the shipping carrier (it may take 12-24 hours for those to show up), you can simply say, “Hey, fyi, this link may not show results for x amount of time” the way Food52 does below. In addition to reassuring the customer, this one line may reduce how many support requests you get. When Taster’s Club, an alcohol subscription box, added this, they cut customer support volume by 10%.  

• Additional resources 

What kind of additional resources? 

Anything that helps your customer engage with and use the product you’re sending. Remember, if the product sits unopened in the box or stuffed onto a dusty closet shelf, you and the customer are both missing out on a lot of value. So, give your customer everything they need to experience the “Aha! This is amazing!” moment where they fall in love with your product. 

Not only does this help your customer, it also paves the road for a great review or referral down the road. 

For example, check out how Biolite includes an instructional video, three quick tips to get going once the light arrives (bonus points for skimmable text), and a link to FAQ. All of these serve the customer’s interests and goals — now, when they get the product, they can immediately start using it. 

#3 – We’re here for you. Need anything from us?  

Once your product hits the doorstep, it’s time to check in that everything arrived a-okay and assure the customer you’re available if not. 

When to send it: The day the product arrives or 2-3 days after it arrived.  

How to think about it: We’ve all had a package show up that looks as if it were a stand-in ball for some midday warehouse soccer. This email is to double-check that didn’t happen. You want to ask questions like “did you receive your order?” and “was everything okay?” 

When you do this, you’re preemptively handling a bad situation and heading off a negative review. If something did go wrong during shipment, you’re saying “hey, if you’re not 100% satisfied, reply to this and we’ll fix it.” When the customer has this email, they’re more likely to hit reply than vent on social media. 

Plus, when a customer engages with you this way, you have an opportunity to take advantage of the service recovery paradox. This occurs when a customer is happier and more loyal to a brand after the company fixes a problem…compared to if the customer never had a problem at all! So keep in mind when you turn a bad situation into a good one you’re pre-selling a good review and future purchases.  

By the way, this is a great opportunity to take advantage of the service recovery paradox. 

How to do it:

• Ask how things are going: Was it on time? In good shape? Did they have any issues? 
• Offer support: show how easily customers can reach out if there’s a problem. The email below from Outdoor Voices is a great example of this. It comes directly from a customer experience team member (“Chelsey”) and states that if the customer wants personal attention, all they have to do is reply.

• Provide multiple ways to get in touch: A “Hit reply to this email” note can be effective, but we’ve found adding a support phone number can build more trust, especially if your demographic skews 45-50+. If your demographic is younger, you could alternatively lean into live chat, SMS, or social media support options. 
• Additional resources: Consider showing customers how to use the product or addressing FAQs. Get your customer support team involved here and use data or observations to figure out what kind of information is most relevant to customers. This, again, can help reduce support volume. 

For example, Allergy Buyers Club sends a friendly email check-in with simple setup instructions, just in case customers haven’t set up the product yet:  

#4 – How about a review? 

Once you deliver an incredible product and/or provide stellar customer service, now’s the time to ask for a customer review. The trick? Make it as easy as possible for the customer to do this. 

When to send it: A week or so after they’ve received the product. 

How to think about it: According to data gathered by Spiegel Research Center, nearly 95 percent of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. 

Gathering post-purchase reviews will help you improve conversion rates for new customers down the road.

We reached out to DJ Sprague, the Chief Marketing Officer at Trust Brands, for his opinion on why verified product reviews are such a powerful motivator for potential customers. Here is what he had to say…

“Social proof is pivotal at the critical moment when shoppers ask themselves these common questions before making a final purchase decision:

• Who else has purchased this?
• How popular is this product?
• How do I know that I can trust this product or brand?

Without trustworthy evidence or social proof to adequately satisfy these uncertainties, they are less likely to convert in the first place, let alone continue to purchase or recommend it to others in the future.”

What’s more, a pile of positive reviews is a gold star for SEO. Yotpo looked at 30,000 businesses and compared their organic traffic before and after posting reviews. For a number of reasons, posting those reviews made a big impact: 

And if you need even more convincing, consider this: reviews are an excellent way to hear, straight from your customers, what they love, hate, and can’t live without. In other words, it’s a feedback goldmine. 

How to do it: Of course, you can’t send any old email and cross your fingers for a great review. Ideally, you’ve laid the groundwork for this in your product and your last three excellent emails. To further incentivize customers, include the following in this email: 

• A brief reminder what a great product or experience they just had
• A clear explanation of how long the survey/review will take
• Link to the exact page they need to enter the review. Make this as easy as you possibly can. Tools like Shopper Approved ensure all the customer has to do is select a number of stars. For example, see the email from Target below. They make the review easy and encourage action by framing the review as a way to help others (which is true, not manipulative, since most shoppers read them!):

• Insightful prompts. If you’re going beyond stars and asking for an in-depth review, lead with some good questions. 

What counts as a good question? Here are a few options: 

• What was the customer’s life/situation like before purchasing your product or service?
• What did the product or service do for the reviewer?
• What happened as a result?
• What would the reviewer say to someone considering a similar purchase?

A note on validity: 

Prompting customers for reviews via email helps ensure you collect reviews from verified purchasers. There are plenty of product detail pages where any visitor can leave a review. These are untrustworthy because anyone — family, friend, employees, random person — can add their thoughts. In contrast, when you only request reviews as a part of the post-purchase experience sequence, you ensure all of your reviews are from verified customers. 

As you collect these reviews, though, keep in you want to use an approved review aggregator. There are plenty of plugins that will collect reviews on your site, but not all of them are approved, and not all of them build search engine trust. Choose one that is for better optimization.

Also keep in mind that you don’t want to stop asking for reviews once you get 50, 100, or even 200. Bright Local found 84% of consumers think reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant anymore, so keep asking for fresh ones. 

#5 – Refer a friend

Something that continually surprises us is how few brands ask for referrals. What a missed opportunity! There are a few ways you can do this in context of the other emails your sending:

• Conditional referral ask: only send a referral request to customers who submitted a product review or vice versa 
• Ask for a referral instead of review
• Ask a segment of purchasers for a referral (e.g. (25% receive a referral request, 75% receive a review request)

Whichever option best fits your goals, referrals ask customers to talk with their friends and family and send them your way. 

When to send it: A week or so after they’ve received your product or a few days after you asked for a review. 

How to think about it: If you’re not considering the different ways you can help a happy customer become a referral source, you’re leaving some revenue on the table. The first step here is surprisingly simple, too. You ask. Many brands immediately jump to “10% off for you and friend” or something similar. But remember, there are better options than offering a straight discount. 

How to do it:

• Prompt a share: offer the customer something worth sharing. The generic “I just bought this product, you should too!” social media post is cheesy and pushy (not to mention off-brand for most companies). It’s also a mistake because most customers don’t want to associate with this message. But when you provide something more useful, such as a how-to video or recipes paired it with a referral code, sharing that kind of helpful content comes more naturally for your customers. 
• Give it a personal touch: Similar to the idea above, swap out the cheesy share script for something more thoughtful and personalized. For example, “Good news! Someone out there loves you because they took the time to forward you this video. Here’s a little bit about what we do…” 
• Offer a creative incentive: While 10% off or $10 for you + $10 for a friend referral offers are common, they’re not your only (or your best) option. Consider alternative perks like free shipping or a free gift. For example, Bombas incentivizes referrals with free socks. And who doesn’t want more socks?

And while we’re calling this a referral email, you could use it to pitch a loyalty program instead. If you need a tool for all this, check out Smile.io. They do a great job of helping you manage loyalty programs and referral incentives. 

#6 – Add the customer to your usual email marketing

Whew, you’ve done some hard — and good — post-purchase email work. There’s just one more send you want to be aware of. When, and only when, your customer has completed all the emails above, you can add them to regular-ish marketing emails. 

When to send it: After the customer has received all other post-purchase emails. 

How to think about it: While it’s true you’re adding the customer to regular marketing emails here, you don’t want to put them on the same cadence as non-customers. Have at least one separate segment for existing customers. Put them on either a slower cadence or only send them high-priority marketing messages (e.g. holidays). 

You’ve earned some of the customer’s trust by this point, but you want to keep in the mind it’s still fragile. Remember the adage, “trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” Keeping building trust through regular emails. 

How to do it:

• Use a tool like Klaviyo to hold all regular marketing emails until customers have completed the post-purchase flow. 
• Use a unique tag, segment, or list to identify existing customers in your email platform. 
• Demonstrate value in slow drip emails

Think about it this way: you talk and share information with a friend very differently than you do with a stranger. You’re not sure what a stranger thinks of you; you’re reasonably sure a friend likes you. A customer is more like a friend than a stranger. You’ve earned their affection, and now you can engage with them in a more personal way. 

So, instead of bombarding them with additional purchase options and promos, hone in on helpful and personalized emails. 

Check out how Ritual does this for existing customers. By showcasing value in slow drip emails, they continue building customer “friendship” (trust and affection) which improves their retention: 

One last thing before we wrap up the email journey here: There are a few things you want to keep in mind for every email you send. These are best practice items that ensure your email is readable, enjoyable, and working as hard as it can for you and customers. 

Bonus: best practice checklist for EVERY post-purchase email 

Keep in mind, most customers (like you) have roughly 397 unread promotions in their inbox. The fact is, they haven’t been sitting around waiting for your communication. More likely, they’re in their inbox because they’re procrastinating, trying to feel productive, or searching for something. 

This means you don’t have long to grab their attention. Follow the checklist below to give your emails a better chance of earning the customer’s attention. 

• Skimmable: Long blocks of text are intimidating. Say only what you need to say, and even break that up into short paragraphs and bullet points. Don’t make the customer squint at their screen to figure out where you’re saying to them. 
• Focused on THEM: Lead with what matters most to the customer (Reassurance? Tracking information?) or something that’s valuable to them. 
• Delightful: Think of the last transactional email you bookmarked or, for that matter, actually remember. I’ll bet it probably delighted you in some way. The best emails do. Find a way to deliver joy, surprise, or connection through your emails. Your customers are more likely to remember them (and your brand) if you do. 
• Inbox friendly: Not everyone uses whatever email app is on your phone. Use a tool like Litmus to preview emails in different devices and email providers to ensure your emails look the way they’re supposed to. And use a tool like mail tester to ensure your emails reach the customer’s inbox. 
• True to brand: Don’t use the stock designs or imagery that comes with your email or marketing software. Customize each email with your colors, font, and logo. Make sure the tone and voice you use with customers is consistent, too. Your website, emails, and campaigns should all sound like “you.”
• Purposeful: If you don’t know why you’re sending an email, trust me, your customers won’t either. Have one clear and defined purpose for every post-purchase email. 

Alright, that wraps up the nitty-gritty of post-purchase emails. To finish out this journey, let’s zoom back out and make sure we’re on the same page in terms of what you want to track throughout all these optimizations. 

Tracking improvements in the post-purchase experience: Four metrics you can impact 

Done well, optimizing your customer’s post-purchase experience with your brand is going to boost four important metrics: 

• Customer Lifetime Value: If you’re optimizing your post-purchase experience — from the thank you page to emails — you’ll see an increase in customer lifetime value (LTV). LTV is the average cumulative total of a customer’s purchases. So, if you’re doing a great job satisfying customers and encouraging them to purchase again, those repeat purchases will drive up LTV. 
• Healthy Traffic Sources: If you’re incentivizing repeat purchases, you’ll most likely see traffic categories such as Direct, Email, or Referral account for bigger shares of your overall traffic. As in, when you view a pie chart of these in Google Analytics, those channels will make up larger slices than before. This is a good thing because you have more control over these channels than Organic (SEO) or Paid Advertising (Facebook/Google). And more balance in your referral channels is an indicator of a healthy, secure business. 
• Verified Product Reviews (& Average Rating): In most cases, people only leave a review if they’re satisfied or deeply unsatisfied. You see few reviews between one and four stars because most customers don’t care about that mushy middle — at least, not enough to take time out of their day to mention it. If you’re providing a great product with great support and asking for reviews post-purchase, you’re going to gather more verified and high-rated reviews. 
• Conversion Rate: Thanks to repeat purchases and those verified high reviews, your overall conversion rate should increase as well. Repeat purchases mean easier and more frequent sales, both of which positively impact your conversion rate.

Now, with improvements like these, it may be tempting to pull back on traditional conversion rate optimization efforts and focus on post-purchase experience instead. But not so fast. You need both of these for healthy conversions, revenue, and margin. 

How pre-purchase and post-purchase optimizations work hand-in-hand

Work your way up to these post-purchase experience steps and start seeing digital experience optimization as something that spans the entire customer experience, from the moment they meet you to their 2nd, 5th, and 50th purchase. 

If you haven’t done any optimization yet, the best place to start is pre-purchase. You want to go to “optimization college”, so to speak, and complete your basic courses on helping the customer get to the point of purchase. Focus first on providing a great customer experience that maximizes the number of visitors who convert into first-time customers. 

Then, once you’ve graduated, you can move on to graduate school — post-purchase optimization. With the opportunities to increase average order value, encourage repeat purchases, and improve customer retention, this part of the customer journey is well worth your attention. 

Eventually, you’ll want to have a comprehensive optimization program, which analyzes the end-to-end purchasing process and identifies ways you can continue maximizing the value of every customer experience.

If you’re already there, consider researching our Digital Experience Optimization Program, which is a custom program that systematically improves your user experience over time.

The post How To Design A Post-Purchase Experience That Creates Raving Fans appeared first on The Good.

One thing remains.

If those visitors don’t make it through your checkout process to finalize the purchase, none of the rest really matters. The success of your ecommerce website rises and falls on how many sales you make, not on how many people you can attract to your site.

According to research from Baymard, average cart abandonment hovers around 70%. At the end of 2020, 1 out of every 5 shoppers abandoned cart due to a “too long / complicated checkout process.”

Can you see the opportunity here? How much money did your company invest last year on getting more traffic – both paid and organic? How much did you pay for website “improvements”? And how much went to specifically optimizing your online checkout process?

Not much, right?

In this article, we’ll show you how to turn more of your existing visitors into customers. We’re going to cover 25 checkout process optimization tactics you can put to work today. If you’ll do that, your cart abandonment rate will drop and sales will rise.

How often do you get them this close to buying, then lose the sale? That hurts.

What does the typical checkout process look like?

The checkout process encompasses the specific steps a consumer must take when completing an ecommerce purchase. The checkout process is the grand finale for an ecommerce website. It is where the prospect finalizes choices about the product, selects any add-ons, confirms shipping options, then provides payment.

No part of ecommerce stands alone. The visitor’s journey from awareness to interest, then on to desire and purchase, consists of a series of decisions visitors make based on the path you’ve provided. A failure anywhere on that journey means the loss of the sale. Dropping the ball during the checkout process is like a football team getting to the opposing team’s goal line, then failing to score. All of the effort it took to move that far goes unrewarded.

Checkout process design varies according to the strategy in play for each ecommerce business. We’re going to show you the top 25 practices we’ve found to be most effective.

The process typically follows this flow:

If you can boost your checkout completion rate by even five or ten percent, you can make a significant difference in your return on investment.

25 ways to score at checkout process design optimization

Much of checkout process optimization work is focused on eliminating distractions so shoppers can focus on finding and buying the item or items they’re searching for. It’s critical to make sure all necessary information is available and that the consumer understands the stages of the checkout process. Make it simple and make it easy. The checkout process begins at product selection and continues on to the confirmation email. To illustrate the concept, we’ll use an actual Office Depot order (file folders).

Office Depot provides links the shopper needs to review or get more info on the product, but notice which button stands out the most: Add to Cart.

Here are 25 key insights regarding the process as a whole:

1. Set expectations. Show visitors what to expect during checkout. Never make them guess. Confusion is your enemy; clarity is your best friend. Use simple graphics.

2. Show progress. Use a progress bar, accordion design feature, or other tool to show shoppers the steps they need to take to complete checkout and where they are in that process at every step along the way.

FREE EBOOK

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The Guide To Optimizing Your Checkout And Post-Purchase Experience

3. Don’t require shoppers to register before check out. Registration is a big source of friction on websites. Offer a guest checkout procedure so your users enjoy a smoother experience. And ideally only ask for this once they’ve completed the order.

4. Capture the buyer’s email early in the process. That will allow you to follow up with an email campaign aimed at saving the sale and building a tighter relationship with the prospect.

5. Keep the back button fully functional. Many people use the back button on their browser to ‘undo’ any actions they’ve taken on a site. If the back button does anything other than that, it could create additional friction.

In the cart summary, I see there may be shipping charges. I also get options. The big blue button, though, leads me further down the path.

6. Keep customers on the same domain. Directing them away from one site to another causes disorientation and increases distrust.

7. Display trust signals throughout the checkout process. We usually recommend against putting credit card logos on the footer of every page of your site. Instead, we recommend including them and other trust signals on relevant pages of your checkout process.

8. Consistently remind visitors of your value. Highlight benefits like free shipping, easy returns, and your concern for their security while shopping.

9. Keep it simple. Reduce or remove the header and footer on checkout pages to help remove distractions.

10. Reduce alternative navigation at checkout. Be careful with this one though. This is most effective once you have already created a great checkout flow. If you do it before, consumers will feel trapped or lost and will simply leave altogether if they can’t easily return to the store.

Ouch. The item isn’t at my store and shipping will almost double the price. Good thing they let me know. I missed the in-store pickup possibilities on the product selection page.

11. Provide real-time support (live chat). A little hand-holding can reassure prospects and help remove any lingering doubts.

12. Prevent shipping cost surprises. The easiest way to do this is to offer free shipping. If that’s not an option, consider a zip code/shipping calculator on the ‘Review’ page or flat rate shipping clearly stated on the product detail page.

13. Be transparent about inventory. Inform shoppers plainly about stock levels and delivery times.

14. Provide clear action items. Make “Add to Cart” the most obvious next action on every product detail page.

15. Display cart contents plainly and make it easy for shoppers to make changes to their selections.

Much better. This item is on hand. I’ll even save 5% by ordering online. Note the payment options, coupon code possibility, and Live Chat options

16. Incentivize the purchase. Show complimentary items and coupon codes on the shopping cart review pages, but not anywhere else.

17. Give ample product detail. Provide photos, specifications, and links for the items in the cart.

18. Maximize efficiencies. Include the “Use billing address” option for shipping field to reduce extra input.

19. Use data validation and autocomplete to speed up the checkout process and reduce input errors.

20. Provide payment options. What types of options do your best prospects want? Include each of those.

Ready to buy. I can log in, create an account, or check out as a guest.

21. Ask for card info last. Shoppers will be more inclined to complete this section after everything else is finalized.

22. Don’t be pushy. Offer account creation for guest checkouts on the Thank You page, not before. You already have the customer’s name, shipping address, and email address. All they really need to do is provide a password and opt in as a site member.

23. Follow up with a confirmation email to finalize the transaction.

24. Downplay coupons. If you bring too much attention to your coupon field, visitors will end up leaving your site to find coupons and fail to return.

25. Make next steps clear. Use color differentiation to make Next Step buttons stand out. Make the entire process absolutely simple to grasp and easy to perform (we can’t stress that principle enough).

Bonus Strategy: Keep the shopping cart open. Give shoppers a way to keep shopping during the checkout process without having to start the journey over again. If they want to add another item… let them!

How to effectively deal with cart abandonment

Even if you’ve implemented all 25 tips listed above into your checkout process, you’re likely still going to deal with a significant percentage of cart abandonment. Learning how to proactively deal with cart abandonment is almost as important as optimizing your checkout process and can help increase your conversions even further.

One of the most effective methods for re-capturing the attention of your prospects is through remarketing emails that specifically target customers who abandoned their cart. A report from SalesCycle showed that cart abandonment emails have a significantly higher open rate than regular marketing emails and newsletters (48 percent compared to 22.8 percent). In addition, the click-through rate (CTR) was higher for cart abandonment emails compared to regular marketing emails (6.5 percent to 3.4 percent).

It’s clear that customers respond positively to reminders of products they were previously interested in. If you aren’t already utilizing cart abandonment emails it’s time to start. Give the prospect a reason to come back to your site by reinforcing the most attractive aspects of the product and making it easy for them to return to the checkout process.

A company that has a great cart abandonment strategy is Warby Parker, who will send you an email reminder of what you left in the cart within 48 hours after abandoning.

This approach is effective because not only does it remind the prospect about the specific product they were interested in, but it highlights important details like “shipping and returns are both free”. They clearly position a call-to-action that takes you directly back to the checkout process, and they even provide a customer service number in case the prospect had any specific questions or hesitations about the product.

This is just one example of an effective method for dealing with cart abandonment. Cart abandonment is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the interaction with your customer.

Online Checkout Process Design Is a Crucial Consideration

Your checkout process isn’t the only part of your path to sales that needs consistent optimization consideration, but it’s certainly one of the most crucial parts of the process that is often overlooked.

Optimization is an ongoing process. Develop ideas, make a change, test to see how it affects sales. Keep going. Eventually, you’ll discover that optimization can not only be fun and enlightening – it can pay off big in return on investment.

If you’re looking for better results from your website but don’t know where to start, get your free 5-Factors Scorecard.

The post 25 Ecommerce Checkout Process Best Practices that Convert appeared first on The Good.

Your consumers are coming incredibly close to completing their transactions, only to rush away at the last minute. Fortunately, with the right tactics, you can drastically cut your cart abandonment rates.

Think of the revenue spike you could get by learning how to reduce cart abandonment today. Now multiply that by 17. That’s how many shopping cart abandonment optimization tips you’ll find here.

On average, about seven of every ten online shoppers bail out without making the purchase (see the chart below). What if you could reduce your cart abandonment rate and also increase your conversion rate?

Think of it this way: the amount you can reduce your cart abandonment is directly proportional to the amount you can increase your conversion rate. Use this tool to quickly calculate what that would mean to your business: CRO Impact Calculator.

In this article, we’re going to give you 17 proven ways to get more of your shoppers completely through the path to purchase. These tips are practical, actionable, and field-tested.

We’ve seen companies increase sales by 600 percent and more by optimizing the checkout procedure. If you’ll focus on one or two of these action items each day for the next few weeks, you could end up with the best sales numbers in a single month since Black Friday.

Click on each tactic to uncover the steps you can take to reduce your cart abandonment rate today.

17 actions you can take to reduce cart abandonment (table of contents)

1. Highlight your shipping terms (even if you don’t ship free) to remove anxiety and make more sales
2. Make sure every page on your site loads in a hurry to keep your bounce rate low and avoid irritating potential customers
3. Make your return policy prominent and matter-of-fact to reduce fear and build trust
4. Give them a reason to buy here and now to short-circuit the price shoppers and get a commitment
5. Drive home the benefits of shopping with you and they will lose their desire to look elsewhere
6. Provide chat or phone help 24/7 to answer all questions and get the order placed now
7. Show contact information plainly on every page to build trust and establish the ready availability of customer service
8. Use testimonials and reviews abundantly as social proof of why doing business with you is an excellent idea
9. Make directions and CTAs exceedingly clear to avoid confusing and losing prospective buyers
10. Provide plenty of payment options and stop turning customers away
11. Leverage one-click shopping for repeat customers to make it even easier for them to keep buying from you
12. Make sure your error messages are helpful and friendly to prevent shoppers from perceiving your customer service as rude and uncaring
13. Audit the entire checkout procedure to maximize conversions
14. Make it easy for shoppers to make changes to the cart in order to prevent frustration and keep them engaged
15. Display seals of trust and use secure transaction methods so shoppers will feel safe when they provide their payment information
16. Don’t give them reasons to get distracted and abandon their carts to increase the likelihood of getting the order
17. Make all surprises good surprises – they’ll love you for it and reward you by adding even more to the shopping cart

Here’s the short course on how you can get more sales: reduce fear, build trust, and make it super-easy for people to buy from you.

Note that each of our 17 tactics is aimed at one (or all) of the goals shown in the graphic above. Here’s the breakdown of steps you can take to make sure they’re working for you.

1. Highlight your shipping terms (even if you don’t ship free) to remove anxiety and make more sales.

Why it matters: “Expensive shipping” is the number one reason digital shoppers give for cart abandonment (see the chart above). This tactic is aimed at turning objections about shipping charges into reasons to buy from you.

Ways to take action today:

• State clear shipping costs on the first page of your cart. Hiding this until the last step of checkout will certainly frustrate buyers and lose the sale.
• Set up appointments to negotiate with carriers. We’ve seen companies drop their shipping costs by 20 percent or more just by comparing rates and asking for a better deal.
• Consider offering a flat rate to customers. That takes the guesswork out of how much shipping will cost and gives them a reason to buy even more on each order. You may not be able to recoup all shipping expenses, but you’ll get some of it back and you’ll build customer loyalty in the process. The increased average order value will cover any costs of shipping.
• If you can’t justify a flat rate, consider using tiered shipping rates to make the charges equitable to all buyers. Rates go up as the total order goes up, but they still seem reasonable in comparison.
• Offer free shipping when orders reach a certain total amount. You may want to do that only for frequent shoppers or for those who join your membership club. To really gain attention and good will, find a way to provide free shipping for all.

Your primary consideration is to develop a shipping plan that shows shoppers you have their best interests at heart – then to make that plan evident right up front. If you save shipping information for the final checkout, you’re sure to irritate shoppers and be plagued by an excessively high shopping cart abandonment rate.

2. Make sure every page on your site loads in a hurry to keep your bounce rate low and avoid irritating potential customers.

Why it matters: Site speed is a topic that’s often overlooked, but can deliver a serious blow to userexperience on your ecommerce website. Any page that takes more than a few seconds to load in the shopper’s browser will encourage that person to look elsewhere. At four seconds, you’ll lose up to a quarter of your visitors. At eight seconds, more than one in three will have moved on. Your conversion rate will slip accordingly.

Ways to take action today:

• Make sure the person heading up your design efforts clearly understands that sales trump beauty.
• Set up an ongoing page load speed testing process and keep a record of the results.
• Pages that load slower than three seconds should be optimized for fast response.
• Always be working to drive load speeds down to a minimum.
• Check both desktop and mobile results.
• Get your creative and IT teams working together on load speed.

If you want your visitors to stay with you long enough to see what you offer, then get them to the content they’re looking for as quickly as possible. Slow load times turn them away fast.

3. Make your return policy prominent and matter-of-fact to reduce fear and build trust.

Why it matters: An unsatisfactory or hidden return policy can stop you from getting the order. Online shoppers often count on a photo and description to evaluate a product. They want to feel assured they’ll be satisfied with the item when it arrives. Your return policy can help remove any fear they have about placing the order.

Don’t just create a consumer-friendly return policy, though. Bring it up and brag about it. Make it easy to find and read.

Ways to take action today:

According to the 2016 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study, here are the primary elements your prospects want to see in your return policy:

• They want free shipping on returns. That may seem cost prohibitive, but consider that most orders won’t be returned – assuming you’re presenting them accurately and delivering on your promises. Not only that, but the chances of getting a repeat order from someone who returned an item and is pleased with the way you handled it is over 90 percent.
• They want a hassle-free returns policy. They don’t want to have to call support, listen to hold music, or jump through any other hoops to initiate a return. This point needs some reflection. How can you make returns simple – but not encourage them at the same time?
• They want to be able to print out return labels easily. Some ecommerce stores even include them with the shipment, though that may be bordering on asking for returns.
• They want refunds to show up without delay. Yes, what the bank or credit card company does is out of your control, but you can expedite your part of the transaction and let your customers know when you’ve completed it, and what the typical refund times are with credit cards.

Take a close look at your return policy. Is it tilted in the your customers’ favor? Is it easy to understand and simple to use? Is it clearly visible and easy to find on your ecommerce website? The more your prospects trust you, the more likely they are to place an order.

Your return policy is as important as the price or the product. - Harley Finkelstein, Shopify COO - @harleyf
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4. Give them a reason to buy here and now to short-circuit the price shoppers and get a commitment.

Why it matters: If you don’t give them a reason to buy from you, they’re quite likely to keep comparing prices and features until someone does give them a satisfactory reason to buy.

Of the seven primary types of shoppers, only one is ready to buy now – but for that type, you still need to ask for the order and make sure your site is optimized for order placement.

Ways to take action today:

• Looking for the best price: offer bundles, show value, provide a discount, highlight benefits, make it possible for visitors to comparison shop without leaving your website.
• Looking for the most up-to-date model: Provide plenty of information about what’s newest and how to get it. Make it easy to find the current model.
• Looking to belong: Give them plenty to look at, but highlight benefits and build desire. Give them an opportunity to join an exclusive club. Invite them to be part of the family.
• Looking for quality: Give them access to complete specifications and comparisons. Provide explainer videos. Make sure the illustrations, photos, and descriptions are high-quality.
• Looking to buy it now: Use time-sensitive offers. Make buying from you the easiest thing they’ve done all day.

You’re in business to sell stuff. Never be ashamed of asking for the order. Don’t hide the fact that you’re in business. Be proud of it.

5. Drive home the benefits of shopping with you and they will lose their desire to look elsewhere and reduce cart abandonment.

Why it matters: One of the most important things everyone in your company needs to know and exemplify is why prospects should buy from you instead of a competitor. What is it about your company that makes you different?

Ways to take action today:

• Revisit your primary USP (unique selling proposition). Is it central to your branding? Is it recognizable by your audience and demonstrated by the way you do business?
• Make sure everyone in your company – especially those charged with sales and marketing – know your USP and keep it in focus in all interactions with your prospects and customers.
• List the benefits your best prospects can expect from shopping with you. How do you make them feel special? How do you understand and help them solve one or more of their biggest problems?

Companies that can’t demonstrate a USP don’t tend to stay in business long. Losing sight of why you’re the right choice for your targeted audience gets you off track and creates confusion.

Strong products and services are highly differentiated from all other products and services. It's that simple. It's that difficult. - Austin McGhie, author of “Brand is a Four Letter Word
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6. Provide chat or phone help 24/7 to answer all questions and get the order placed now

Why it matters: There may be just one easy-to-answer question standing between the customer and the purchase. When you make it easy for shoppers to get their questions answered via chat, you remove a barrier that can hold sales back.

Ways to take action today:

• Audit the methods you’re using now to answer questions shoppers have on your ecommerce site. Are they sufficient?
• Provide a chatbox and staff it well. An eMarketer study revealed that more than half of customers say they’re more likely to buy from and return to a site that provides live chat.
• Track inquiries to chat and phone support. Prepare easy-to-access FAQs to cut down on the amount of live support needed.

Use live support to listen to your customers. You’re sure to get new product suggestions, insight on options they would like to have (but you’re not now providing), and a steady stream of priceless feedback from those you serve when you pay attention to their remarks.

7. Show contact information plainly on every page to build trust and establish the ready availability of customer service.

Why it matters: When you highlight the ways your customers can contact you, it’s like reaching out and holding hands with them. Nothing removes fear better than companionship. You can’t physically walk them through your online store, but you can virtually guide them and be there with them each step of the way.

Ways to take action today:

• Place contact information plainly on every page of your website (with the possible exception of special landing pages).
• Give visitors plenty of options for contacting you – whether to offer a question, make a suggestion, register a complaint… or any other reason. Customer contact helps you understand your audience and focus your offers directly on their needs.
• Make sure every avenue you present for encouraging contact is well-monitored and that responses are given in an acceptable time. In the fast-moving world of ecommerce, “right away” is the best time slot.

Even when contact information isn’t needed, it’s comforting to see. Shoppers want to know you’re real, you’re available, and you care.

8. Use testimonials and reviews abundantly as social proof of why doing business with you is an excellent idea.

Why it matters: You don’t need a psychologist to tell you how important social proof is to ecommerce. Like the rest of us, you frequently check reviews before placing an order for an unfamiliar product. We tend to believe others (even if we’ve never met them) quicker than we believe the seller. It’s human nature.

Ways to take action today:

• Make a habit of collecting and filing testimonials from your customers. Get your staff involved in the process.
• Place reviews and testimonials abundantly throughout your site, especially on product pages and sales pages.
• Allow buyers to rate and review your products. Resist the temptation to stack reviews in your favor or to disallow credible negative reviews.

Implement a variety of social proof methods. Use reviews, ratings, testimonials, and social media clips. Don’t overlook the value of video reviews and testimonials. There’s a direct correlation between the number of reviews for a product and the conversion rate.

The dominant social force that drives our thinking and our actions is the unconscious search and need for social proof. (Dr. Dragos Bratasanu)
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9. Make directions and CTAs exceedingly clear to avoid confusing and losing prospective buyers.

Why it matters: Your path to purchase should be clear and simple. The better your user experience (UX), the more sales you can expect to make. Clarity and simplicity are hallmarks of conversion rate optimization.

Ways to take action today:

• Perform a site audit to find stuck points along the customer journey on your ecommerce website. Check The Good’s end-to-end conversion audit as an example.
• Listen to your customers. Do they frequently need help navigating a specific portion of your website? Take that as an indication you should simplify that part of the sales path.
• Test your calls to action to make sure they’re understood and effective. A/B testing is relatively easy to perform and can deliver valuable insight.

Visitors who get lost or confused on your ecommerce site are quite likely to leave and go elsewhere. Clear the path for them. Make sure they understand what you want them to do next.

10. Provide plenty of payment options and stop turning customers away.

Why it matters: Have you ever wanted to purchase something, but discovered you don’t have the proper means of payment with you? That’s a frustration you never want your prospects to endure.

Ways to take action today:

• Audit your payment methods. Get customer feedback. Do your prospects want to pay in a form you’re not offering?
• Check analytics to see how many of your visits originate from overseas. Are they getting held up at checkout because you accept only U.S. dollars for payment?
• Should you offer payment by bitcoin? That’s a strategic decision you may wish to consider. Check this guide on how to accept Bitcoin (BTC) and speculation about the future of bitcoin payments.
• Consider financing options for larger price-point items. There are several third-party services that you can integrate with, similar to how you would offer PayPal, that may make buying your higher priced product easier.

You’ve put a tremendous amount of effort into attracting the right prospects and convincing them to buy from you. Dropping the ball at the goal line is an especially painful event. Check to be sure you’re providing plenty of ways for people to buy from you.

11. Leverage one-click shopping for repeat customers to make it even easier for them to keep coming back and to avoid cart abandonment.

Why it matters: Shopping online is no longer a novelty or something you do because a certain item isn’t available locally. For many people, ordering via ecommerce is now the preferred choice. No driving, no fighting crowds, no standing in line. When you make shopping with you as easy as loading a basket and clicking a Buy Now button, shopper loyalty will grow.

Ways to take action today:

• Buy something from your store as a new customer. Do it several times. Is the second order easier than the first? Do you feel valued?
• Make the one-click shopping option evident and easy to access. Offer customers the choice of saving information to gain one-click ability.
• Protect customer information securely and let them know you’re doing so.

That last point keeps many people from opting into one-click. They don’t want to store payment information online. That doesn’t mean you can’t maintain every other piece of ordering information for them to simplify the process.

NOTE: Amazon’s one-click purchase patent expired in 2017, but many ecommerce stores still haven’t employed the process that added billions of dollars to Amazon sales.

Amazon’s one-click purchase patent expired last year. Why aren’t more ecommerce sites taking advantage of the option?
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12. Make sure your error messages are helpful and friendly to prevent shoppers from perceiving your customer service as rude and uncaring.

Why it matters: Nobody likes to be talked down to – not even by a machine. Your error messages should maintain the same voice and respect for customers you expect from your sales and customer service staff. There’s never a reason to be rude.

Ways to take action today:

• Audit your error messages. Edit any that don’t demonstrate the voice you want customers to hear from your staff.
• Test error messages for UX clarity and impact.
• Inspect your customer journey for friction points. If any error messages are part of that junction, look at them closely, adjust, and test.

Error messages often get overlooked in the conversion rate optimization process. Checking to be sure yours are customer-friendly is an easy way to make your check-out process more pleasing to shoppers.

13. Audit the entire checkout procedure to maximize conversions.

Why it matters: Spot checks of stuck points along the path to purchase are typically required when an obvious problem is discovered. Regular full-system inspections of the entire checkout process can reveal those revenue-draining areas before they show up on the radar.

Ways to take action today:

• Get a copy of our book, “Stop Marketing, Start Selling.” It will guide you through the checkpoints you want to consider.
• Read the article 25 Ways to Optimize Your Checkout Process for Big Results
• Perform UX testing on your checkout procedure. Streamline the process.

How many times have you tried to buy something online, only to be frustrated at checkout? Make a wrong selection and some checkout procedures require you to start over again. Don’t be that store. Do everything you can to keep shoppers moving smoothly along the process.

14. Make it easy for shoppers to make changes to the cart in order to prevent frustration, cart abandonment, and keep them engaged.

Why it matters: This part of checkout can be especially frustrating. You get to the end of the procedure and realize you forgot something. Now what? The optimized procedure will make changes to the cart easy to do.

Ways to take action today:

• Audit the current situation on your ecommerce site. How easy is it for shoppers to make changes to the cart?
• Observe every part of the selection and checkout sequence. What if someone is about to make payment and decides to alter the cart – is it still easy to do?
• Make sure the procedure for making changes to the cart is evident to the shopper. Don’t forget to include the option to easily increase or decrease the quantity of each item in the cart.

Catering to shoppers and making the entire process a breeze may be sounding a bit repetitive by now, but it’s the essence of optimizing your path to purchase. Remove barriers. Make buying from you simple – even an enjoyable process.

Shopping cart abandonment is a multi-trillion dollar headache for online merchants, but it's also a huge opportunity - Business Insider - @businessinsider.
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15. Display seals of trust and use secure transaction methods so shoppers will feel safe when they provide their payment information.

Why it matters: Shoppers are considerably more comfortable with shopping online than they were when buying online first became available, but they’re still wary. News of data breaches keeps the threat fresh. Trust seals like Norton Secured (see the screenshot below) give consumers confidence that you’re being careful with their data.

Ways to take action today:

• Audit your site for trust seals and secure transaction indicators. List the types of locations of those security notices.
• Make sure you display at least one trust seal on every shopping page. Clicking on the seal should bring up a description of what the seal means and does.
• Consider the depth of customer data protection on your ecommerce site. Shore up any weak spots. One data security breach can tarnish your brand severely.

Don’t just show seals and assure shoppers their data is safe with you – do the hard work of making sure what you say is true. Trust seals shouldn’t just look good, they should mean something. They should provide the security they claim to deliver.

16. Don’t give shoppers reasons to get distracted and avoid cart abandonment.

Why it matters: You want your visitors to stay focused on one thing only: completing the purchase. Don’t use mailing list pop-ups, social share request buttons, or anything else that will distract them from that mission. If you must use them, ensure they are used sparingly.

Ways to take action today:

• Work through your selection and checkout procedure to look for distractors. List those you find.
• Work through that list and ask, “Is this necessary.” If it’s not, get rid of it.
• Make sure your marketing team understands and practices the concept of “one page, one job.” Don’t fill up space on a checkout page just because space is available. Only include elements that move the shopper towards the purchase.

This mistake – distracting the shopper – is one of the most frequently ignored principles of conversion rate optimization. Keep a close watch on page design. Empty space can be a good thing. It draws focus to necessary information. You don’t need to pursue mailing list opt-ins and social media shares on every page, but you do need to encourage the purchase.

17. Make all surprises good surprises – they’ll love you for it and reward you by adding even more to the shopping cart.

Why it matters: Everyone loves to find out the price just got reduced. Nobody likes to discover the price has increased. Doing things like waiting until payment to reveal taxes and shipping or not telling the buyer the product they want is out of stock until they’ve ordered the item are surefire ways of creating animosity. Never surprise your customers with bad news.

Ways to take action today:

• Audit the procedure you’re using to display taxes, shipping, and any other add-on charges. Are they upfront, or do you save them for a surprise at payment time?
• Devise no-shock ways of letting shoppers know about add-ons in advance. Better yet, remove add-ons altogether. Give them the all-in price right from the start and make sure they know there will be no surprises.
• Audit your out of stock procedure. If you’re waiting until order time or even after the order to let shoppers know there will be a delay in shipment, design as way to change that system. Use low stock and out of stock situations to your advantage by encouraging the purchase of other items or providing a discount for those willing to wait for shipment.

Look for areas on your ecommerce site where the shopper can be ambushed by unwelcome news. Then get rid of those ambush spots. Take care of your visitors. Give them a joyous shopping experience. They’ll return over and over again to the places that treat them right.

Cart abandonment solutions you can count on

The Golden Rule is alive and well in ecommerce: treat others the way you want to be treated. Be honest with your visitors. Offer them real value.

The shopping cart optimization process is exacting, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Do make sure, though, that you don’t rely on internal feedback only. Observe real prospects as they navigate your checkout procedure. Make sure that a percentage of the testing subjects aren’t at all familiar with your site. Kick the rocks out of the path and smooth the way. The easier it is for visitors to buy from you, the more they’ll purchase and the sooner they’ll be back.

Pave the way for them to buy from you…and they will.

Need help? Contact The Good.

The post 17 Practical Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment (Step-By-Step) appeared first on The Good.

At The Good, when we ask prospective clients that question, most respond with “Using the customer’s name in email messages.”

Some even tell us they’ve been paying someone for personalization services, but all they’re really getting is a glorified email merge.

We both know there’s more to ecommerce website personalization, so let’s keep going.

Here are a few examples to get us started:

• Location identification personalization
• Previous customer identification and personalization
• Previous browsing record identification and personalization

Could information like that be valuable to an ecommerce website manager? How could the data be leveraged to help consumers convert better — by determining the type of content the visitor would most likely react favorably to?

If you’ve been hearing more and more buzz about ecommerce personalization, but you’re not sure about exactly how it works or where you should start, then this article is for you.

Let’s take a strategic look at ecommerce personalization, with the aim of separating that which is actually helpful from the hype that can waste your time.

In this article, we’ll help you get familiar with ecommerce personalization, go over the most common misconceptions about it, and list some of the most effective ways personalization tools and strategy are used in ecommerce today.

This brief study will help provide the clarity you need to make decisions about personalization strategy on your ecommerce site.

So, What is Ecommerce Personalization?

It may sound a bit mysterious, but ecommerce website personalization is nothing more (or less) than tailoring the online customer experience to each visitor specifically. In many ways, it’s the ultimate destination of testing and optimization efforts.

It can show up everywhere on your ecommerce site, including product pages, the product suggestions, or even the social proof recommendations shown to that specific person.

For instance, visitors identified as current customers could be greeted with a “Welcome back” sign, while those who’ve yet to buy from you could be served an incentive announcement like “Get 25% Off Today’s Purchase (for new customers only)” banner.

Personalization allows you to use the information you’ve already collected about your visitors to make their user experience (UX) more helpful, more focused, and more likely to convert.

Common Misconceptions about Ecommerce Personalization

When personalization technology first became widely noticeable online, there was great concern about whether or not it was too intrusive.

Email marketers began pulling from their database to insert “Hello [your first name]” as the greeting on personalized email. (For many companies, that’s still the limit of personalization.)

Travel companies picked up on the concept, and personalized ads (remarketing) began to appear. If you searched for the schedule and pricing for a trip to Paris, for example, you might then notice “Visit Paris” ads popping up everywhere else you traveled online.

That led to the first misconception:

Misconception #1: Personalization is downright ‘spooky.’ At first, it seemed that way – especially when Forbes printed a story about Target determining that a teenager was pregnant… before she’d told her parents. Maternity clothing mailers were addressed to the girl, said Forbes, and that created a bit of drama before the truth came out: she was due in August.

That was in 2012. Personalization, as a marketing practice, has now become so widespread that online shoppers expect it. They sometimes even rely on those retargeting ads to remind them they need to make a purchase soon.

Let’s look at a few more of the most popular objections about personalization we hear at The Good. They frequently come up when we suggest using website personalization tools as part of a conversion optimization strategy.

Misconception #2: Personalization only works if you have a ton of content on your website. It’s true that you’ll need content suited to your personalization plan, but that doesn’t mean you have to work overtime creating more content. Let’s say you sell shoes, and your ecommerce personalization tools are setup to identify your visitors by their previous browsing and shopping behavior.

Personalization can be as simple as showing specials on work boots to the customer who’s been looking for a new pair of steel toes and specials on sandals to the customer who’s been browsing beachwear. You already have those product pages. Personalization allows you to deploy them strategically.

Misconception #3: Personalization is a fad. Given the depth and rate of change we’ve become accustomed to in the world of digital marketing, it’s tempting to think everything will soon be replaced by something else – that every new marketing tactic is just a flavor of the week, therefore not worth wasting the time and capital required to get on board.

That idea does, indeed, make sense. But it’s not always true. Not when applied to the foundational principles of marketing. Those don’t change.

Styles change. Color preferences change. Smartphones change. But the principle that the more you know about your audience and the better you serve them, the more you’ll sell. That was true long before the internet came along, and it’s still true today.

Personalization increases your ability to know what your customers want and gives you a way to serve it up quickly. It’s not a fad. It’s a powerhouse capability every ecommerce manager should investigate closely.

Misconception #4: Personalization is a hard-sell tactic that pushes people away. Think about it. You walk into your favorite coffee shop, and the barista says, “Hey, Joe, good to see you,” as he slides your favorite vanilla latte’ over the counter. You’re not put off. Rather, you’re pleased with the recognition. You’re comfortable and glad to be there.

The same thing applies at the barbershop or hair salon, the grocery store, and every other business in town. You like being known. You like being given special, personalized service. And the better you feel about the business, the more money you’ll spend there.

Smart ecommerce managers see personalization as a way to provide their customers with an easier to navigate, more welcoming user experience. When you work hard to show visitors you are paying attention to their needs, they’ll reward you with sales.

You’re not “pushing the sale,” though, you’re letting people know you want them in your ecommerce store, and you’re doing what you can to make their visit special.

Misconception #5: Personalization is the same as customization. These terms are similar, but there’s one huge difference. Personalization consists of the tools and process you use to anticipate your visitors’ needs and provide them a unique user experience. Customization refers to the steps your visitors can take to tweak their own user experience.

Showing product suggestions based on the interests the visitor has demonstrated by clicking on certain links is an example of personalization. Giving the visitor the ability to sort a search return by either lowest price or highest reviews is an example of customization (which includes filtering).

Both are recommended ways to improve user experience, but they aren’t the same thing.
The objections just listed are the most popular, but there are plenty more. Most arise from confusion about what personalization is and how it works.

There’s one thing we’ve never heard, though: a sound reason for not implementing a personalization strategy.

Ecommerce Website Personalization Examples

Here are some of the ways we’ve seen personalization effectively used on ecommerce websites. The tactics you choose will necessarily be directly related to the products or services you sell and your own conversion optimization capabilities.

• Geographic personalization: You may want to serve up different offers to your visitors, depending on their location. When it’s summertime in New York, it’s rainy season in Sydney. Depending on the products or services you offer, that may mean you’ll want to show those visitors pages tailored to their particular environment.
• Referrer source: Your analytics data may indicate that visitors originating from Facebook are typically interested in an offer that visitors from LinkedIn aren’t so excited about. Referrer source personalization allows you to tweak the user experience, thereby helping optimize your conversion rate. This is even more powerful when combined with targeted AdWords campaigns.
• Prior visit history: The more information you have about a visitor’s prior actions, the better able you are to predict interests and serve pages aimed at serving those interests. Is someone back for the third day in a row to view your snowshoe collection? That’s valuable insight. Your personalization software may be able to make an insightful suggestion about a new model or deliver a special offer that will help the visitor make a decision to purchase this time.
• Past purchase data: Once the customer is established, there are numerous ways you can predict current needs and influence desire. In the Target example we cited, the customer’s purchase history enabled the company’s personalization software to make statistical connections that rightly predicted the pregnancy. To take the concept further, new parents who are buying diapers and baby food today are going to be in the market for toddler clothing and security gates in the foreseeable (and predictable) future.
• Wisdom of the crowd data: This is a step up in creative thinking, and it can be incredibly effective. You can use aggregate data from consumers with similar interests to make predictions about the items they’ll be wanting to buy next. Are your computer equipment early adopters buying and leaving excellent reviews for a new backup device? You can show that product to others with similar interests and help fan the excitement. No, that’s not too “salesy.” It’s smart marketing, and it provides a real service to your customers.
• Also-bought data: This is akin to the checkout clerk’s cross-selling suggestions. Someone buying paint may need an extra paint brush or two. A hiker getting a new pair of boots will likely want to apply leather conditioner and a good water repellent boot grease before going on the maiden voyage. Also-bought data prompts online reminders to help shoppers make sure they order everything needed for a pleasant buying experience.

This is by no means been an exhaustive list. Its purpose is to help you realize the manifold possibilities offered by ecommerce website personalization.

Personalization Starts with Conversion Optimization

If you’ve been dragging your feet about getting on board and going beyond your email salutations to a more robust personalization program—it’s not too late.

As you consider deploying more personalization on your ecommerce website, keep in mind that it all begins with testing and conversion optimization. As we tell a number of our clients, conversion optimization is the foundation that begins to tailor your website while personalization is the natural destination.

For deeper insight, ask The Good about a complimentary review of your ecommerce site and advice on how testing and optimization can help jumpstart your personalization goals, turning more of your existing site traffic into paying customers.

Resources:

• Creating a Personalized Customer Experience
• Score Your Site – Find Out How to Boost Conversions
• Privacy Concern, Trust, and Desire for Content Personalization

The post Ecommerce Personalization: Are You Really Doing It Right? appeared first on The Good.