This is no small feat. Multiple channels increase the chances that manufacturers, buyers, retailers, and your brand conflict. 

Nike manages it…but most brands aren’t Nike. 

So, how can fast-growing brands, with less brand recognition and tighter margins, introduce channels without also introducing loads of conflict? 

In this article, we look at:

• What channel conflict is and how it can impact your business
• The most common forms of channel conflict 
• Notable pros and cons of adding new channels 
• 4 strategies for preserving channel relationships
• Firsthand accounts from three ecommerce brands

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What is channel conflict? 

Channel conflict is when two or more partners in a sales channel oppose each other. For example, when a retailer goes directly to a manufacturer to launch a copycat product. 

To get a clearer picture here, let’s back up for a minute. 

A channel is a means of distributing your product. This includes:

• Selling direct-to-consumer through your website
• Selling to consumers in your brick-and-mortar store
• Partnering with physical retailers (Target, Walmart) to sell in chain stores
• Partnering with online retailers (Amazon) to sell in an online marketplace

Channel partners are the different parties working together to make, list, and distribute the product. A channel partner is often a manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, reseller, or consumer. 

Channel conflict is when two or more of these partners are at odds. 

What is the upside to managing channel conflict effectively?

Harry’s managed to disrupt the men’s grooming industry with a multi-channel strategy. 

While they started as an online-only shaving subscription service, they’ve since turned into a massively successful men’s grooming brand. Today, they sell their products through a DTC ecommerce store as well as in various big-box retailers such as Target and Walmart. 

What’s more, Harry’s has largely avoided channel conflict. By maintaining a standard price for their products across all sales channels, they circumvent any price competition between the retailer and manufacturer.

But given all the benefits of DTC, why do brands like Harry’s bother with other channels to begin with? 

They bother because there are many upsides to adding channels: 

• Rapid growth potential. New channels let you tap into additional audiences and volume overnight. Higher volumes can mean manufacturer discounts, which improve your margins. While you can drive high volume with a large DTC presence, partnering with a retailer is a faster, more approachable option for many brands. 
• Authority by proxy. Simply appearing on Nordstrom, Target, or Walmart’s shelf can communicate credibility to shoppers. Consumers think, “Hey, they’re in Walmart, they must be a legitimate business.” 
• Access to ‘offline’ shoppers: You’ve seen the stats around the massive growth in ecommerce. But even after the pandemic, not everyone wants to shop online. Working with retailers gives you access to the “offline” customer base. 
• Customer convenience. Many consumers still want the convenience of popping in a store and getting an item now. Or, they want the option to easily try and return an item. When you work with a retailer, you provide convenience for customers in both of these scenarios. 
• Share of mind and wallet. You’re present on the shelf during weekly store runs, and you’re present in the retailer’s shopping app when the consumer puts together a curbside pickup list. Both of these give you ‘free’ advertising. You’re regularly popping into the customer’s mind each time they shop. 

Marquis Matson, Content Marketer for RugPadUSA, explains, “Big Guys like Amazon simply make it easier to be found. If our site cannot compete with a site like Amazon, then it’s better to list our products there instead of hoping that customers find us organically.”  

RugPadUSA relies on DTC, as well as Amazon, Wayfair, Walmart, eBay, Overstock, and others. While working with those giants has drawbacks (including environmental and social impact), Marquis notes “these corporations are helping small businesses by footing the marketing and admin bill, while our small business can continue focusing on the business itself.” 

However, the math isn’t as simple as product + channel = profit. It’s a bit more complicated than that. 

Why is it (potentially) bad for business? 

While the benefits of additional channels are notable, so are the costs. 

The perils of adding channels include: 

• Lower margins. There’s no higher margin than a direct-to-consumer owned sale, which is why many brands launch DTC in the first place. While adding channels does have benefits, one of the biggest costs is lower margins. 
• Costs of getting in the door. Breaking into a channel — whether it’s Walmart, Nordstrom, Target, or Amazon — is hard and expensive. Sourcing and vetting partners often means hiring a lawyer or specialized service to review contracts, and the costs of this further erode margins.
• Contracts that strongly favor retailers. Speaking of contracts, those aren’t guaranteed to be in your favor. On a Drive and Convert episode, Ryan Garrow (Director of Partnerships at Logical Position) talks about a friend’s experience with a massive drugstore chain. As part of the friend’s contract, the chain could throw away or severely discount the brand’s product — not to mention the brand was responsible for buying back any product the retailer didn’t sell! Yikes. 
• Logistical complexities. Imagine having to get your product in bulk to a thousand retailers, on the same day, with product that has the same sell-by date. This is a major logistical hurdle and, again, the costs add up quickly.
• Poorer customer data. When you add a non-DTC channel, you inevitably lose control over customer data. For example, who is purchasing your product gets a lot fuzzier. 
• Confusing customer maps. You also introduce “customers” who aren’t the end-user of your product, and this creates a complex map of who’s buying and using items from your brand. (In some scenarios, your customer may even be a competitor.) This can make improving — not to mention tracking — lifetime value very tricky. 
• Compromised customer experience. Partnering with a retailer means giving up some control over the customer experience. There’s no way you’ll visit thousands of retailer locations to ensure your product is being displayed correctly. And even if you pop into one store and notice an issue, what do you do? Ask for the store manager and say, “Hey, I own this product, and I need you to make these changes…?” 

Unfortunately, that’s not an exhaustive list. There are additional downsides like oversaturation, price wars, and turf wars (more on these just below), which can all have big impacts on your business.  

What are the different types of channel conflict?

To prevent or manage channel conflict, you’ll want to understand the different types, plus strategies for preventing or addressing them to begin with. 

How does channel conflict come about? 

Before we get into strategies, let’s look at a normal distribution flow and the different types of conflict that can occur in distribution channels. 

In the image below, each layer of the flow is dependent on the next. Meaning, even the slightest disruption to this process can create conflict throughout the entire distribution network.

Conflict can be vertical, horizontal, or across multiple channels.

Vertical conflict, horizontal conflict, and multiple channel conflict

The most common form of channel conflict is vertical channel conflict. This is when two parties at different points in the distribution channel (e.g. a manufacturer and a retailer) have a dispute. 

Causes of vertical conflict can include:

• Direct and Indirect Sales. You’ve heard of retailers going directly to a manufacturer to launch a cheaper or “copycat” product, right? That’s a source of vertical channel conflict. When one party sidesteps another to sell direct-to-consumer, you get competition between manufacturers and retailers. 
• Oversaturation. When manufacturers allow too many retailers in a given territory to sell their brands, you have oversaturation. This ultimately hurts sales and creates fierce price competition for retailers

You can also have horizontal channel conflict. This is when two parties at the same level in a distribution channel (e.g. two retailers) are at odds. 

Causes and results of horizontal channel conflict include:

Loss leader and price wars. Sometimes, one member of the distribution channel significantly lowers the price of a product to drive traffic to their store. (Retailers often use this tactic to bring people into their store.) Then, they upsell more expensive products to customers to make back the margin they lost on the initial discounted product. This creates conflict with other retailers — it pressures them to adjust the pricing of the same product, even if it will have a substantial impact on their profit margin. 

A common result is a price war. Even if you don’t directly participate in this war, it has negative effects on your brand: 

• Devaluation: It trains customers to expect a lower product price, which devalues the involved brands and products.
• Stagnation: Prospects may hold up on a buying decision and wait for the price to drop even lower. This can lead to sales stagnation. 
• Higher return rates. Those who have already purchased your goods may feel cheated when they see lower prices. This can lead to higher return rates and degradation of your brand.

Turf war. Price wars bleed into turf wars, which is when multiple wholesalers or retailers are selling in the same territory. Manufacturers may appoint a few wholesalers to the same region or city, but if territories aren’t properly set, wholesalers will be battling for sales in the same territory. As a result, brands get caught in a war they can’t participate in — their “soldiers” (products) are moved around without you. 

Lastly, there’s multiple channel conflict. This occurs when a manufacturer has at least two channels competing for sales of the same brands/products. For example, a manufacturer may be selling their products direct-to-consumer (D2C), while also selling to a wholesaler/retailer. This creates conflict because the manufacturer and retailer may be selling the products to the same markets, but at different prices.

What is the most commonly cited source of channel conflict? 

Amazon is its own beast. Selling there involves spending time and resources on:

• Understanding the channel
• Creating channel-specific product content
• Regularly optimizing for the channel
• Forming a relationship with Amazon

Let’s take one of the most expensive pieces of that list: ads. 

Ryan Garrow notes his budget on Amazon ads is five times what is on Google. And that’s just the money piece. There’s also the fact Amazon is a different ballgame. Both Amazon and Google have algorithms. But where Google’s ad algorithm is more defined, Garrow notes Amazon’s “is strange. It takes time and a lot of failure to figure it out.” 

In short, Amazon is a unique channel. But ecommerce founders are up for challenges. Some brands have developed equally unique ways to leverage Amazon that make it worth the effort. 

How Tortuga Backpacks uses Amazon to move inventory

In non-pandemic times, Tortuga Backpacks uses Amazon to move the remaining inventory for discontinued or updated products. So, they’ll list version 3 of an item at full price on their DTC website and version 2 (the older version) for a lower price on Amazon. 

This approach has a few benefits. It:

• Reduces confusion on tortugabackpacks.com because new and old versions don’t appear side-by-side 
• Avoids direct competition of the same SKUs
• Maintains a healthy liquidation margin, despite Amazon’s fees 
• Allows Tortuga to cater to an additional audience with a lower price point

Fred Perrotta, co-founder and CEO of Tortuga Backpacks, explained, “We can also offer the [Amazon] link to people who email us asking for discounts or saying they want a Tortuga but can’t afford it.”

How to know when a new channel is worth the risk of channel conflict

There are plenty of pros to adding channels…and there are plenty of cons and potential conflicts, too. How do you decide when adding a channel makes sense for your brand? 

There’s no easy answer here. However, adding a non-DTC channel could make sense if you can check the following three boxes: 

• It’s good for the customer. We often speak with clients whose primary concern is sales. Others are worried about offending their distributors. But those aren’t the best way to frame your channel approach. Our philosophy is that every decision should begin with concern for the customer. When customers are pleased, demand is high and sales are good. Never lose sight of who really provides paychecks for your staff and employees. By developing that mindset in all you do – including your agreements with retailers and others in your distribution system – you’ll all have the same goal in mind. When the customer is happy, every part of every channel works better. 
• You have the time and resources to invest. Whether you’re eyeing Target shelf space or a listing on Amazon, you’ll need time and resources to break in, understand the channel, and manage a contract. Something else to keep in mind: any time and resources you’re pouring into adding a channel is time and resources you’re not pouring into some other aspect of your business (i.e. there’s an opportunity cost). Make sure that’s a trade you’re willing to make. 
• You have a strong DTC brand. The stronger your brand and customer base, the more leverage you’ll have when you negotiate contracts. Think of it this way: When a retailer partners with you, they’re placing a bet that your product will sell. If you can minimize how risky that bet is, you can secure better terms for your brand. And the best way to minimize that risk is to have an established presence with strong sales. 

Let’s say you do check these boxes and decide to pursue an additional channel. How do you avoid those nasty vertical, horizontal, and multi-channel conflicts? 

4 strategies for preventing channel conflict

Below are two high-level recommendations and two specific tactics for preventing channel conflict. 

Let’s look at the high-level approaches first. 

1. High-level: Build leverage for a watertight contract 

As we mentioned earlier, building your DTC brand before adding a channel helps you negotiate better contracts. And when you can negotiate a watertight contract, you can better hedge against the potential cons of adding a channel — poorer customer experience, lower margins, and contracts that favor the retailer. 

Build leverage (aka a strong brand consumers want) and gain more control over the narrative of what, where, and how your products are sold through retailers. 

2. High-level: Start small, then ramp up 

If this is the first time you’re working with a retailer, don’t go “all in” from the start. Instead, start small, negotiate strong terms for that start, and then ramp up if you experience success. Once you do that, there are tactical ways to thrill customers by participating in direct sales – without angering or alienating your distributor base.

3. Tactical: Offer exclusive products 

Offer products on your ecommerce site that are exclusive to you. Examples are shoes customized to the buyer’s feet, a unique hydration bottle design, a specially branded tent, or extended sizes (like Jon’s size 15 shoes) that can only be purchased on your site.

Why it works: Exclusive products create buzz, build demand, and show off your brand. This tactic avoids channel conflict with your retail outlets and other sellers. That’s because you aren’t directly competing against them, and you’re not undercutting them on price.

You’re simply offering a unique product; you’re keeping part of your production in-house, but there’s still plenty else to sell.

Chaco (see below) will make sandals to match your school colors. Retailers can’t carry every conceivable combination, but the manufacturer can. It’s a win-win-win situation.

NikeiD, an online service that lets customers create their own designs, is another good example. Want a custom Nike shoe? You’re going to have to go through Nike for that one. 

Of course, providing product customization isn’t doable for all brands, but most manufacturers can provide a unique option only available on the brand site. You don’t have to go big to generate sales. You only need to be creative.

4. Tactical: Use bonuses (not discounts) such as product giveaways 

Instead of authorizing a price reduction for retailers, offer a gift with purchase or some other add-on. For example, a free pair of socks with shoe purchase. 

Why it works. Consumers love free stuff. With this tactic, you create value for your consumer (“Buy a ski jacket at the regular price, get your choice of gloves free”) without undercutting your retailers. Your fans will love it, and your entire sales channel will benefit from the added exposure and marketplace chatter. 

It’s a win-win-win: The customer, the manufacturer, and the rest of the sales team all benefit. 

It’s common knowledge Apple typically doesn’t offer discounts on their products. Nor do their retailers. What Apple does offer are gift cards with purchase (or an iPod some years) which they time up with specific buying seasons: beginning of the school year, holidays, and at the end of a product run.

Without explicitly offering a discount (which would tend to upset large box retailers), Apple can save their customers $100 and more on Apple products. And there’s nothing to stop retailers from doing the same thing. A variation of this tactic is to add on services or extend the warranty.

Another option for providing extra value without slashing prices is creating bundles and kits for your products. This can grow sales, help your customers get more of your goods, and allow you to (once again) discount products without the appearance of a discount.

For example, check out Gerber’s apocalypse kit idea below.

The Gerber team once came up with the brilliant idea of bundling some of their most popular products into one kit for those who want to get ready for the “zombie apocalypse.” The kit, which retailed for $435, included six knives (that can be purchased separately), plus a zombie apocalypse carrying case to ensure buyers can easily take all their knives into the walking dead wilderness.

Let’s dive into some other ecommerce brands and how they’ve navigated multiple channels. 

First-hand accounts of channel conflict from notable ecommerce brands

Below are three brands succeeding with their channel strategies. But you’ll notice something interesting here — none of them have the same approach. 

One added Amazon as a channel, dropped it, and experienced more success sticking with DTC. Another started on eBay and added DTC later, along with a myriad of other channels. And the third built a notable DTC presence then added Target. 

Why the conflicting stories? As you no doubt know, there’s rarely a one size fits all solution to big questions like these.  So, instead of giving you a “7-step formula for channel conflict,” we’ve opted to provide something far more useful — context and stories that help you choose what’s best for your brand and customers. 

BeardBrand stopped selling on Amazon — and increased business 20%

A few years ago, you could find BeardBrand products on Amazon. In fact, Amazon sales made up about 10% of their business. 

But if you Google “BeardBrand + Amazon” today, you’ll find this notice this page in the search results.  

What changed? 

Founder Eric Bandholz explains it came down to maximizing what BeardBrand does well, and that’s DTC — not selling through Amazon. “One of the lessons we’ve learned is you need to do the things you do well and continue investing in those things until you’ve maxed out your capacity,” he explained, “and then you pivot from there.” 

Bandholz felt his team hadn’t maximized their own platform, beardbrand.com, so they stopped selling on Amazon and redirected resources to DTC. 

It was a smart move for BeardBrand. 

“Everyone says you have to be on Amazon and you’re leaving money on the table,” he noted, “but we actually found the opposite to be true.” Yes, they lost the 10% they were selling through Amazon, but that’s not the end of the story. 

Ultimately, they saw a 20% increase in business. 

Bandholz attributes this to:

• Less margin drain. Nowadays, the brand captures more sales direct (which are higher margin) as opposed to through a third party. 
• Higher AOV. Because Amazon suggested similar or comparable products, a customer’s average order value on Amazon was about half what it was on beardbrand.com. Without those distractions, the DTC site brings in higher AOV. 

So, would every brand see a similar 20% increase? Not necessarily. Here’s how Bandholz thinks about whether or not Amazon is a good distribution channel for an ecommerce store: 

• Amazon is not a great fit if you’ve invested heavily in your brand, message, mission, and core values to sell your product. It’s difficult to effectively display those on Amazon. 
• Amazon is a good fit if you’re more product-focused — if you differentiate by the product alone, not necessarily the brand. It’s also a good fit if many other retailers carry your product because if you’re not putting your product on Amazon, it’s likely one of your retailers will. 

BeardBrand falls into the first category. They have video editors, an art director, influencers, and other creative talent they regularly work with to build the brand. “All those things are useless on Amazon,” Bandholz explains. “So those are resources we would be spending money on that wouldn’t be helping us grow on Amazon.” 

And then there’s the expense of getting set up and driving traffic to the channel. That, as we mentioned earlier, is expensive. This is why Bandholz cautions other brand-heavy ecommerce leaders to consider moving off the platform, too. 

“…more likely than not, the amount of sales you would be cannibalizing is far higher than the amount of sales you would be capturing on Amazon,” he cautions. “If you’re paying for ads, you might as well pay to drive people to your website and own that customer, own that address, own that data.” 

How Three Ships successfully launched at Target…in the middle of a pandemic 

Three Ships started in 2017 with a chemical engineer, a business grad, $4,000, and an apartment kitchen. 

That, by the way, was in Canada. And while the Three Ships team has successfully been growing their brand there, co-founder Connie Lo notes, “raising broad US awareness has always been a challenge, and at the forefront of our marketing efforts.” 

So, they partnered with Target. 

This made sense for several reasons:

• Target fit Three Ships’ customer base. Lo explained, “Target was our ideal partner not only for their broad reach in the US market, but also because our shopping demographic aligned perfectly (millennial women with average HH income +$80,000).”
• The retailer delivered recognition. Partnering with Target meant exposure and instant recognition for millions who shopped there weekly.
• Three Ships infrastructure could handle it. Lo and her co-founder didn’t go straight from the apartment kitchen to the Target Shelf. “After refining our brand, products, and supply chain over the past four years,” Lo says, “we finally felt ready to approach one of the giants. Waiting until our back-end could manage the inventory demands of Target was a huge part of our decision making process, and I’d recommend it for any indie brand looking to partner with a larger retailer.”

But Three Ships didn’t just launch with a retail giant (notable in itself!) — they launched with a retail giant in the middle of a pandemic when fewer Americans were walking through stores. 

To deal with this curveball, Lo says they “pivoted from in-store marketing efforts like temporary price cuts (TPC’s at-shelf) and sampling, to focusing more on Target.com marketing.” Sponsored placements and enhanced product pages helped Three Ships capture the at-home shopper as well as boost sell-through. 

As a result, Three Ships is reaching more of the American audience while also experiencing what Lo calls the halo effect — “we’ve had many mass retailers reach out (in both the US and Canada) after discovering us at Target, which has greatly benefited our distribution rollouts.” 

Her advice to other ecommerce leaders considering a new channel?

• Have an established budget for it. A few months before launching at Target, Three Ships raised a seed round of $1.4 million. Lo says “we knew we wanted to invest in various marketing arms (e.g. influencer marketing, sampling, gratis, in-store promotions, Circle offers, in-store audits), and knew we would need capital to execute successfully.”
• Pitch your SKU price points carefully. “If I could go back, I would have proposed lower-priced SKUs to match the skincare brands we are carried next to,” Lo admits. Three Ships top sellers are ~50% higher in price point than the competition in-store. “Knowing that the general consumer is not able to discern the difference in ingredient cleanliness and quality in just a few seconds at-shelf,” Lo says, “I wish I had pushed back and either suggested our lowest-priced SKU’s or a smaller format.”

WheelerShip strengthens marketplace sales with DTC in a historically skeptical industry 

WheelerShip a leading provider of factory-replica wheels and other automotive products. 

And they have no shortage of ways to get those products to customers. Their channels include Amazon, eBay, a native DTC site, online wholesalers, drop-shipping…“We basically run three websites and two marketplaces in addition to our human sales structure,” Kate Cannova, Chief Business Officer explains.

Their journey isn’t conventional. 

WheelerShip started (and continues as) a family shop in 2010. Their initial sales channel was eBay because it afforded the fastest ramp-up from not-selling to selling. At that time, WheelerShip could become an authorized seller, list good photos, and abide by the marketplace requirements with more ease than creating their own ecommerce store. 

But to successfully combat the stigmas of the automotive industry, WheelerShip realized they needed a way to develop strong brand equity, and that (as Eric Bandholz from BeardBrand notes) wasn’t something the marketplaces were suited for. 

“There is a lack of customer and consumer confidence in the industry altogether,” Kate explained, mentioning used car salesman tropes and idioms. To build credibility, WheelerShip pursued DTC in 2015. She says, “there was an impetus to feel more in control of the sales experience, to be paying less in fees, and to have to abide by other people’s rules less.”

Turns out, investing in DTC and brand integrity has strengthened their marketplace presence, as well as positively influenced the B2B side of their business. The B2C improvements, Kate says, are “having a pretty significant halo effect on the B2B side.” They’ve created a clear, beautiful, and straightforward user- experience on the wholesale side, which makes it easier for wholesalers to run their business. “And that means they come to us more frequently because it’s so much easier for them to track their invoices and manage their own shipping because they can easily see everything that they need to see in a very clear way.”

So, what can you learn from WheelerShip’s decade-plus experience with channel management? 

Here’s Kate’s advice and caveats to other ecommerce founders:

• DTC <-> marketplace benefits aren’t a two-way street. While strengthening the WheelerShip brand with a DTC presence has encouraged marketplace sales, Cannova cautions those relationships aren’t a two-way street. Shoppers tend to stick with their preferred channels, and this means an eBay shopper rarely leaves eBay to purchase at wheelership.com. 
• Understand the channel’s audience. “There is such a thing as an eBay shopper or an Amazon shopper,” Kate reflected. To succeed in a channel (as well as keep your sanity), you need to know the quirks of each type of shopper and how to meet them. 
• Know the ROI of each channel. When you know the ROI, you can answer, is this channel worth keeping around? Cannova says ROI isn’t just a dollars, cents, and volume equation, either. “It’s also how many returns are we getting? What kind of condition is the product when it comes back? How much time are my customer care team representatives spending with Amazon communications…what really are we getting out of these experiences?”  
• Don’t take certain things personally. You’re working hard to build a business, keep folks employed, and keep the lights on. And when you’ve invested so much in your brand, it can feel personal when someone returns a product, a marketplace grants a seemingly ridiculous claim, or you experience buyer fraud (Cannova has received everything from ceramic planters to Elvis memorabilia in “returns”). 
• Accept some compromise. Hand-in-hand with the point above, you may not be able to stick to 100% of your company policies when you add marketplace channels. “There are rules Amazon and eBay have. If you want to sell there, you have to deal with those rules,” Cannova reminds store owners. This may mean accepting return merchandise or offering refunds you normally wouldn’t. While any form of compromise may initially feel weighty and stressful — as if you’re polluting the brand or customer experience — Cannova chooses to look at it another way. “What you’re doing is meeting people where they are and allowing them to shop in the way that feels comfortable,” she says. “And if you have to make certain adjustments to your internal policies to make that less anxiety-inducing — not just for your customer, but also for your team and your staff and yourselves — then that’s okay.”  
• Consider trademarks. Per contract agreements, it’s not unusual for Amazon to allow competitors to sell off your listing. (Not only is this confusing for customers, but it can create serious headaches with returns and customer service!) However, trademarks can provide extra protection for your marketplace IP and brand integrity, including photographs and content. 

Channel conflict can be a big opportunity for your brand

Conflicts are a normal part of running any business, including an ecommerce business. And adding channels beyond DTC doesn’t make sense for every brand or brand stage. 

However, store owners looking to expand the ways they distribute can minimize potential conflicts by:

• Assessing whether new channels are a good fit for your brand before adding them
• Understanding the types of channel conflicts and why they occur
• Starting small and using watertight contracts 
• Leveraging additional strategies like exclusive products and bonuses to keep retailers, customers, and your margins happy 
• Listening to how other ecommerce leaders have navigated channels and learning from both their successes and failures 

Channel conflict isn’t inevitable and it doesn’t have to wreck your sales or margins. With some careful planning and preparation, you can avoid it and maximize the benefits other channels offer. 

Questions? Get in touch.

The post How to Best Manage Channel Conflict (and How to Prevent It) appeared first on The Good.

There are two ways you can look at this.

Option A is to think, “Look at all these people who didn’t buy from us! Why? People are annoying.” 

Option B is to think, “Look at all this room we still have for growth! We could increase our revenue a good deal if we get this fixed.”  

If you’re in the Option B camp, this article is for you. Abandonment is an opportunity for ecommerce brands, and there are a number of effective ways to get more of your shoppers to convert into buyers. 

Below, we look at:

• What is shopping cart abandonment?
• What is a good abandoned cart rate?
• Why are your customers leaving their carts? 
• How can you reduce shopping cart abandonment? 

What is shopping cart abandonment? 

Shopping cart abandonment is when a potential or existing customer adds something to their shopping cart and then doesn’t make a purchase. 

Someone browsed through your product offerings, selected what they wanted, and added it to their online shopping cart. But before they made a purchase, something happened. They never completed the order and the product remains in the cart until your site automatically clears the order — or you encourage them to come back. 

Now, cart abandonment is often confused with other types of abandonment, so let’s clear that up real quick:

• Browse abandonment is when a shopper views a product but never adds it to their cart. 
• Cart abandonment is one step further than browse abandonment. It’s when a customer adds an item to their cart but doesn’t go any further. 
• Checkout abandonment is when a shopper adds an item to cart, starts down the checkout path, and then abandons purchase before submitting their order and payment. 

Why is shopping cart abandonment a problem for ecommerce retailers? 

Abandoned carts are “bad” for online retailers because they often indicate a website or customer experience problem.

For example:

• Super slow loading times
• Poor trust signals
• A confusing checkout process

These are all issues ecommerce retailers can fix — and recover a good deal of revenue in the process.  

How much revenue? When Baymard Institute looked at solvable checkout problems (stuff you can fix, like slow load times), they found “the average large-sized ecommerce site can gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate.” Thirty-five percent increase! 

Industry-wide, this translates to about $260 billion US and EU stores can recover.

Some of that revenue applies to your store. Here’s how you can calculate your abandonment rate and the ROI of improving it. 

How do you calculate your abandonment rate? 

Cart abandonment rate is reported as a percentage. It tells you what percent of your total number of shoppers add items to their cart, but don’t complete their checkout.

Here’s how the math works: 

So, let’s assume that your store gets 100 visitors this month. Let’s also assume that 60 of those visitors add at least one item to their shopping cart.

Most of those 60 shoppers won’t actually complete their purchase. They will get distracted by something else, go look for a better price or a discount code, or just “save it for later.”

Let’s say that 20 of those shoppers DO complete their purchase, though. 60 shopping carts were initiated, but 40 of them were never actually purchased, which means that about 66% of your shoppers left without completing their order.

That’s a lot of money left on the table, right? Well, you might be surprised to learn that a 66% cart abandonment rate is actually pretty good compared to industry averages.

What is the average abandoned cart recovery rate?

Based on data from 44 different studies, Baymard Institute reports the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.80%. And these numbers are only increasing. The abandoned cart rate is even higher now than it was pre-pandemic.

Keep in mind though, this is a broad analysis. Some studies found an average rate as low as 57.60% while others reported rates as high as 84.27% (and those were from the same year!). Rates will vary according to industry, niches within industries, and business type as well, so we caution against using any of these numbers as your benchmark. 

What is a good abandoned cart rate? 

But if you don’t use a benchmark, where do you start, and how do you know if your rate is any good? 

We often say “a good conversion rate is one that’s always improving.” The same principle is true for abandoned cart rates. As long as the number is getting smaller, your business is improving.

Meaning, you want to start with your unique abandonment rate and make it better. A good abandoned cart rate is one that’s lower than last month’s. 

To find your rate, you can look at a handful of data sources: 

• Platform analytics: If you’re using Shopify, you can quickly access all the numbers you need to use the formula above. Under Analytics > Reports, look for (a) the total number of sessions where a customer added a product to cart and (b) the total number of sessions where a customer purchased a product. If you’re on BigCommerce, you can skip the math altogether. They have a handy Abandoned Cart Report, which includes your rate (already calculated!) and several other handy metrics (see image below). If you’re using WooCommerce, you might need to install a plugin, such as Cart Reports, to easily view your rate and metrics such as most abandoned products.  

• Google Analytics: Alternatively, if you have the Enhanced Ecommerce feature turned on in Google Analytics, you can access your rate there. It’s in the Shopping Behavior Analysis report, which shows you (per time period) the number of sessions you had at each stage of the purchase funnel. 

From there, it’s helpful to look at what kind of ROI you’d see from improving your abandonment rate. Thankfully, we’ve got an abandoned cart ROI calculator to save you some time.

Let’s say your rate is 70%, which is pretty close to that average rate from Baymard Institute. In the best scenario, that means more than half of your potential customers don’t end up buying from you, which means there is a world of opportunity to continue to grow your business. 

How much opportunity? Let’s do the math.

Let’s say you have 1,000 transactions per month, and your average order value is $100. If you improve your 70% abandonment rate to 65%, you’d see an extra $5,000 in revenue per month. And that’s from improving your abandonment rate by just 5%! 

Now, imagine you improve that rate by a few percentage points each month! 

This is why a good abandoned cart recovery rate for your brand is one that’s always improving. 

Why your shoppers may be abandoning their carts

With that kind of ROI ahead of you, it’s easy to jump to a list of “quick fix” tactics. Don’t.

Before you start treating the problem, you want to diagnose what’s wrong. 

Think of it this way: Your current abandonment rate is like a recurring migraine. If you go to a doctor’s office and complain about your aching head, the doctor may theorize why you’re getting migraines (maybe it’s those 10 cups of daily coffee?), but she’ll still go through a full examination to ensure her hypothesis is correct. Because sometimes, that examination reveals her hypothesis was wrong. 

Likewise, once you diagnose your cart abandonment issue — aka know what’s causing the problem — you can address it. 

So, first, we want to look at some reasons why your customers might be leaving their cart in the internet equivalent of the checkout lane, and then look at optimization steps you can take to mitigate cart abandonment.

Here are some common reasons cart abandoners don’t complete their checkout: 

1. They’re just window shopping 
2. They’re shocked by high or unexpected costs
3. They went digging for a coupon code
4. They’re not sure they can trust you
5. A technical issue frustrated them
6. The checkout process was a total pain 

1. You’re not catering to window shoppers 

There are seven types of customers who come to your site. One of these types is visitors who are “just looking.” We’ll call them “Lookers.” 

Lookers aren’t there to buy, they’re there to window shop. They may add items to their cart, but they do this to create a wishlist, or to save an item they want to look at again later. 

How many folks do this? In all likelihood, more than half of everyone who abandons a cart. Baymard Institute estimates as many as 58.6% of US shoppers abandon cart because they’re simply browsing. This number may only increase, too. As more people shop online as a pastime and stress reliever, “window shopping” rates will rise. 

While this isn’t exactly a problem (a Lookers’ goal is to look, after all), there are several things you can do to entice Lookers to return for items they save. 

For example:

• Displaying any true notices about limited availability or low stock
• Listing any promotions, such as bundles, to encourage purchase
• Capturing their email and re-engaging them with a cart recovery email (more on that later)
• Retargeting the Looker through ads over the next few days 

2. You’re introducing unexpected costs 

When you exclude folks who are “just browsing,” unexpected or hidden costs are the number one reason customers who want to purchase say “forget it” during checkout. 

These unexpected costs are the reason 49% of high-intent shoppers abandon their cart. 

Many times, that extra cost culprit is a high shipping fee. 

To combat this trigger for shopping cart abandonment, you can:

• Offer free shipping: Bake shipping costs into product prices, then offer across-the-board free shipping, geographically-bound shipping (“Free shipping in the US”), or free shipping once customers reach a minimum order value (“Free shipping for all orders over $49”). Relevant: 68% of US shoppers say if there’s not free shipping, they won’t purchase at least half the time. 
• Offer flat-rate shipping: If you can’t offer free shipping, consider flat-rate shipping. For example, “$6 flat-rate shipping in the US.” Some shoppers won’t want to pay it, but by listing this cost upfront, you at least sidestep the bad experience of surprising customers with it later.
• Make shipping costs explicit: List shipping costs early on in the funnel. If you offer free shipping, emphasize this in a free shipping bar at the top of each page. Or, if you can’t offer free shipping, make shipping costs explicit on product detail pages, so potential customers aren’t surprised by it in checkout. 

The rule of thumb here is to be upfront and transparent about all costs before the customer reaches the final steps of the checkout flow. 

3. You’re sending bargain hunters off-site 

When shoppers are about to make a purchase and they see an empty “apply coupon” field, many of them pause. The empty field whispers, “there’s a discount out there, you just have to go and find it.” 

Especially if your shopper is a bargain hunter, their next step is to:

• Plug in common codes like “WELCOME15” or “SPRING20” to see if they work
• Or pull up a new tab and search “[your brand] + coupon” to see if they can find a promo

Sometimes, they find what they want, or give up, and carry on to purchase. But many times they get distracted by rabbit holes on Google (like Amazon listings), competitor pricing, or become frustrated (i.e. they don’t find a coupon) and abandon the cart. 

Depending on how often you offer coupons or discounts, you have a few options to deal with this:

1. Place the field low: If you frequently offer coupons or promos, place the code field at the end of the checkout process or below required fields. 
2. Provide codes on-site: Instead of sending shoppers to Google, keep them on a site with a link to “find an offer”, “see all active offers”, or relevant promotional bar on checkout pages. 
3. Pre-apply codes: If you’re using a promotional code to drive traffic from email to a product page, pre-populate the promo field with this code (don’t send shoppers back to their email where they may get lost). Or, pre-apply the code based on qualifying cart items. 
4. Collapse the field: For brands who send codes less frequently, consider collapsing the field in addition to placing it low. A collapsed field will only expand when customers click it (see the example from Sundays for Dogs below), so it looks less like an enticing blank that needs to be filled in. 

5. Remove the field entirely: The discount code field is a default setting for most ecommerce platforms. But if you never offer discounts or promo codes, there’s no reason to leave this field in your checkout. Remove it. 

4. You’re not building sufficient trust 

Buying stuff online is normal, but customers are still (rightfully) wary of sending money to a new brand they’ve just met. 

Even in a world where we’re almost always looking at some kind of screen, consumer trust isn’t something you automatically have — it’s something you earn. 

Now, building trust is a complex process that starts from the first moment a consumer hears about your brand, and we don’t have space to go into every step here. 

But when it comes to a purchase flow in particular, earning trust involves: 

• Displaying ample product reviews: Compared to a product with zero reviews, shoppers are 270% more likely to purchase a product with 5+ reviews. We believe other shoppers more readily than we believe sellers. Collect ample reviews, testimonials, social media clips, and other social proof for your Product pages and Product Detail pages, so you can build trust that carries through checkout.
• Appropriate trust badges: This includes any payment processing security you provide, as well as return policies or guarantees. Eyebuydirect, for example, lists their return policy, satisfaction guarantee, and helpline all on the checkout page. These three pieces of information work together to say, “you can trust us to make you happy.” 

• Footer signals: Real businesses have things like an address and phone number. List these in your footer to signal to customers you’re legit. 

5. You have some technical issues (aka bugs)

Another common reason for shopping cart abandonment is technical issues. For example:

• Slow load times
• The website crashed
• Payment processing glitches
• Poor mobile responsiveness

At best, these user experience issues make the shopper reluctant to try checking out again. At worst, they diminish the shopper’s faith in your ability to process their order or manage their credit card information (“what if they double-charge my card?”), and they seek a more stable site. 

Make sure and regularly test your site in a variety of browsers (Chrome, Safari, etc.), on different device sizes, and on both fast and slow internet connections. Keep in mind usability issues are often best monitored and prevented by development teams, so you may also want to ensure you have someone monitoring site updates, page load times, and bug reports. 

6. Your checkout customer experience isn’t optimized 

Envision the ideal checkout experience in a brick-and-mortar store. It’s likely simple, fast, easy, and friendly. That’s how an optimized checkout should work in an online store, too. 

But many ecommerce stores haven’t optimized their checkout. As a result, potential customers experience all kinds of unnecessary friction or confusion as they try to make a purchase. 

For example:

• Difficulty updating or adjusting cart items
• Ambiguity around what’s in the cart 
• Distracting banner notices or ill-timed pop-ups 
• Unclear sense of progress (i.e. no progress indicator)
• Unclear next steps 
• Too many form fields 
• Confusing error messages
• Poor financing or payment options 

Below is a real-life example from a brand that didn’t hit the mark with its checkout form. As a user, you have arrived at the final step of the checkout process only to be met by confusion. Among other issues, there are too many fields, it isn’t clear what is required, and it lacks motivational messaging for the user.

Now, a big reason many of these issues persist is brands don’t know they’re happening — they’re tough to spot from where you sit because you’re not walking through the checkout process. 

So, the best way to uncover these issues is through an audit. Some effective options include:

• Pathway analysis: Pop into Google Analytics and use their reports to figure out where customers are leaving. The Goal Flow Report, Users Flow Report, and Enhanced Ecommerce feature can all come in handy here.
• Combing feedback: From there, look through records of wherever customers engage with you to figure out why those dropoffs might be happening. Are there any recurring checkout complaints in your live chat logs, SMS, support emails, or social media tags? Are folks requesting a payment method you don’t offer? Look for and document any trends.
• User testing: Finally, use a service like userinput.io to quickly test any hypotheses you formed from looking at analytics and feedback. Or, if you want to DIY user testing, gather a group of potential customers who fit your persona (e.g. regularly purchase furniture, have over $100k annual income, etc) and have never seen your site before. Then, ask them to walk through the checkout flow. Ask them to talk you through what they find helpful and/or confusing.

Once you know where consumers are getting stuck in checkout, you can begin testing improvements.

7. Your shoppers are human and the universe is chaotic

This last bucket of why shoppers abandon carts is a catch-all. While it feels good to sort human behavior the way we just did, the gritty truth is there are plenty of other reasons someone ditches a cart — and many of those aren’t solvable. 

For example:

• The doorbell rang for a delivery
• The credit card is all the way across the house 
• The dog just threw up on the carpet 
• The oven timer went off (ack! the souffle!) 
• A phone call came through
• The kids got home from school

And dozens of other reasons. Case and point: I abandoned several carts while writing this article and gathering screenshots! The point is, you can’t account for every irrational quirk of human nature and the universe, nor should you try to. 

The goal isn’t the cart equivalent of “inbox zero.” Remember, you’re not trying to eliminate cart abandonment, you’re trying to improve your specific rate.

There are a few other practical ways you can do that.  

Five other ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment

To recap, some of the suggestions we’ve brought up so far are: 

• Clearly stating all shipping costs 
• Adjusting how/where you display coupon fields 
• Building consumer trust with reviews and badges
• Ensuring a dev team is monitoring your site uptime
• Auditing your current checkout flow

These improvements all address the solvable reasons consumers jump ship, while helping you create a less distracting path to purchase. 

Another good way to reduce friction in your checkout process is to give shoppers the option to skip any kind of signup. 

Offer a guest checkout option (no sign-up or log-in required)

While, yes, a sign-up helps you collect valuable customer data, it’s not a good idea to force customers to do this. 

Remember when Baymard Institute looked at customers who wanted to complete a purchase? The number one reason those folks abandoned cart was unexpected costs. The number two reason was “the site wanted me to create an account.” This is why 24% of potential customers who wanted to purchase left. 

To avoid losing a quarter of your “ready to purchase” site visitors, give them a guest checkout option (the way Crate&Barrel does below) that doesn’t require them to sign up or log in. 

A guest checkout helps maximize the chances a shopper completes their purchase. And, if they complete their purchase, you’ll still receive their email, so you can always prompt them to create an account later.

Another helpful tactic is allowing shoppers to save their carts for later. 

Add an option to “save cart” for later

Remember, as many as 58.6% of US online shoppers abandon their cart because they’re just browsing and aren’t ready to purchase yet. 

One good way to encourage these Lookers to come back is to allow them to save their carts for later. Anthropologie provides this option beneath each item you add to your cart.  

Create recovery emails (or improve the ones you have)

We spoke with Val Geisler, email marketing expert and Customer Evangelist at Klaviyo, who shared about the opportunity to stand out with recovery emails. “Unlike marketing campaigns that are sent to many subscribers all at the same time, transactional emails like cart abandonment messages go out on a case-by-case basis.”

The average open rate on cart abandonment emails, aka recovery emails, is around 48% with an average click-through rate of 6.5%. This is substantially better than the average open rate for marketing emails, which have an open rate of 18% and a click-through rate of 2.6%. 

Val emphasized “They’re personalized to the customer’s journey with your brand and their impact is huge – if you can capitalize on them with customized content and a meaningful message.”

We go into detail about how to design abandoned cart emails elsewhere, but an overview is you want these emails (much like your other emails) to be:

• Automated
• Timely
• Personalized 
• Low-commitment 
• Simple

Specifically, Val mentioned that “Cart abandon emails don’t have to be creepy. Consider your copy choices and how you might feel if you got your own email as a customer. Would you be grateful for the reminder? Annoyed at the timing? Weirded out by the ‘we saw you looking’ vibes?”

One strategy she recommends as you design your emails is to “take a tour of your emails from the customer’s perspective before you let them go out into the world.” This will expose any areas for improvement. “Those big click-through rates come from messages that put the customer first.”

This abandoned cart email from Everlane, for example, checks all those boxes and more. 

If you don’t have any recovery emails set up, clear some time on your calendar to get these going. If you do have some running, pull them up and ensure your email elements are optimized. 

Use SMS alongside your emails

If the shopper has given you their phone number and opted in to receiving texts from you, you can also leverage SMS to remind them to complete their purchase. 

Abandoned cart texts often require fewer images, design, and formatting than emails, though you’ll still want your message to be timely, personalized, pointed, and simple. 

Keep in mind, SMS messages ideally work with your emails to provide a cohesive reminder experience. For example, you could send an abandoned cart email the day the customer leaves their cart and follow up the next day with a text, before the cart or an offer expires. 

Here’s how Omnisend visualizes this approach: 

There are two primary ways to send this kind of text:

• Automated: You can use tools such as Postscript or Omnisend to set up automated flows like the one in the image above. Postscript notes brands using a blended email-text automated approach have generated results like earning over $75,000 in revenue in just a few weeks.  
• Human-powered: You could also use a tool like Cartloop to engage with customers in a more personal manner. As a bonus, this approach can help you both diagnose why customers are ditching carts as well as recover their purchases. ShineOn did exactly this using Cartloop and generated over $101k in 30 days. 

Invest in retargeting ads 

One other way to bring potential customers back to your site is retargeting ads. Use tracking pixels or cookies on your site (work with your development team here) to resurface your brand or products the customer explored in:

• Future related Google searches
• Social media feeds
• Sidebars of other sites

This strategy has proven successful. Brandon Bauer, Director of Omni-Channel Strategy at award-winning digital marketing agency Logical Position says “Based on all of the campaigns we run, the highest conversion rates we see come from shopping cart abandoners.” That higher conversion rate means “you want to try and win them back more aggressively” through retargeting. And Brandon assures us that the ROI is worth it. 

Retargeting ad strategies for shopping cart abandonment

Several factors go into retargeting, including determining when a customer returns to purchase (so you don’t keep retargeting them), so an expert agency should be considered for your campaign. As a starting point, Brandon outlines some of his advice below.

• Segment your users: The process starts with proper user list segmentation. Group your site visitors into segments based on their actions so that you can create levers for each list. The more actions a user took on your site, the more valuable they are to your campaign.
• Be careful about frequency: Brandon warns “just because most users expect and know what retargeting ads are at this point doesn’t mean they find them any less annoying or creepy.” His advice is to “ensure you’re monitoring how many impressions users are getting on average or set impression frequency caps, especially if there’s a risk that a user could fall into multiple lists or segments.”
• Take your campaign to the next level with unique ads: Creating different ads for each segment avoids fatigue and creates a more pleasant customer experience. 
• Consider the customer’s timeline: Taking into account the date of a customer’s last site visit “allows you to either hold off on discounts until a certain amount of time has passed since the last site visit, or vary the discount depending on the duration.”

Need some help? We’ve got you covered

The customers who make it to cart have already engaged with you to create an order — they just need a bit of help completing the purchase. 

This makes cart abandonment a tremendous opportunity for brands who want to convert lost sales into profitable customer relationships.

If you’re not sure the best way to do that, we can help. 

Our data-backed processes and intelligent experiments are designed to uncover exactly where your customers are getting stuck and then identify actionable solutions that rescue more sales.

Check out our Comprehensive Ecommerce Conversion Audit to see how we can find out why more of your shoppers aren’t purchasing.  

The post How To Understand, Calculate, And Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment appeared first on The Good.

Meaning, there are proven steps you can follow (we covered those in part one), but the real-world application is rarely perfectly linear…or neat-and-tidy. 

Rather, one question leads to another, feedback here sparks a question over there, and what you discover isn’t often what you set out to find. 

In a word, research can be messy.

But the messy middle of a research process is worth the result. 

Customer research uncovers opportunities and customer needs that can improve your brand’s performance in every business area from product development to positioning to content production.

This article rounds up six real-life stories of ecommerce brands doing customer research and making those kinds of brand improvements based on real insights into customer needs. 

These stories are meant to inspire, but keep in mind that’s not all they’re good for. You’ll also find plenty of actionable tactics (e.g. tagging in Gorgias, following up on social media mentions, post-purchase email asks) you can use to get the most out of your research efforts as well. 

Here’s what’s ahead:

• Form Nutrition and how trust inspires rich feedback
• Allegra Poschmann and how analysis side-stepped an expensive redesign
• OLIPOP on the power of informal conversations 
• EVELO on compounding insights over time
• Three Ships Beauty on using customer feedback to drive product development
• Six steps you can take in 30 minutes or less to gather feedback

Be a brand customers want to confide in 

Back in 2015, Google’s People Ops (their HR) did 200+ interviews with employees and looked at 180+ active teams to answer, “what makes teams effective?” 

The answer, surprisingly, had little to do with skill sets, degrees, or personalities. The most important factor was something called psychological safety, which is when you can answer “yes” to the question, “Can we take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed?” 

As Google explains it, “we’re all reluctant to engage in behaviors that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and positivity.” This is why psychological safety is such an influential factor. It creates a space where you can, as Harvard Business Review put it, practice “sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off.”

Psychological safety and earning ecommerce customers’ trust 

Interestingly enough, some of the brands who do a phenomenal job collecting customer research (the ecommerce equivalents of Google’s high-performing teams) cultivate a similar kind of safety for their customers. These brands create an environment where it’s safe for customers to engage with the brand and be vulnerable about their experience — good, bad, or mixed. 

In ecommerce, the language we use to describe creating this psychological safety is “building trust.” 

Take Form, a vegan protein powder brand. CEO Damian Soong says he frequently hears customer stories that are so personal, most folks would hesitate to share them with their doctors!

That’s some serious trust, and it didn’t happen by accident. 

Damian told us, “For me, any relationship is about building trust and sharing value.” And one of the ways he’s intentional about this is through expert content. Form’s blog and email content is packed with expert-led advice. 

“It provides value to users while at the same time establishing trust and authority,” Damian explained, “People are much more receptive to this kind of relationship than the usual one-way sales traffic.” 

Form then solidifies this trust through activities like giving back to various communities and its certified B-corp status. This high brand equity — how customers perceive the brand’s reputation — further communicates, “we’re trustworthy.” 

So, Form starts with a firm foundation of trust.    

Then, when anyone on the Form team reaches out, they do so with genuine concern. They know customers (much like you and me) know when kindness is fake. “Customers sense very quickly…if there’s a real connection, if there’s a real sense of caring,” Damian told Stuart Balcombe on the DTC Voice of Customer podcast.  When you come across “as open and caring, really putting your customer first,” Damian explains, “it’s amazing what you get back and the information people share with you.”

Genuine interest isn’t something you can fake. 

Trust + genuine interest = rich customer feedback 

This potent combination of trust and genuine interest gives Form a good deal to listen to. 

Especially as they pay attention to:

• Social media
• Email
• Surveys 
• Chat (before they retired it)
• Customer service conversations
• Customer behavior data

As a direct result of the feedback they gather in all these channels, Form can develop meaningful customer personas based on real customers. 

Meaning, their personas don’t just include demographics like age, sex, or location. They include motives. For example, why a customer might buy a specific product or why they’re interested in nutrition to begin with. 

This is important because Form’s main customer base isn’t exactly who Damian expected. He originally developed Form as a gender-neutral brand, but women quickly grew as a segment, and now make up 70% of his customer base. That’s not what Damian would’ve guessed when he started. 

Form can then use these highly actionable personas to inform website design, product strategy, and content. It’s particularly useful in email, Form’s most important communication channel, where real-person personas influence what content goes to which email segment. “We try and make sure emails and offers are tailored to the right people based on what we know about them,” Damian told Stuart, “so that everyone’s getting something that’s much more useful. And I think that’s important to keep up open rates and to lower churn from your email list.”

You may have noticed Damian gathers input from many sources, most of which any ecommerce brand has access to. 

That’s good news in terms of opportunity, but it can also make for tricky analysis. With all that data, how can managers identify what’s meaningful? 

One potential solution is using a carefully crafted research approach.  

To uncover a customer need, go Scooby-doo: dig around for clues  

Allegra Poschmann has worked with DTC brands like Glossier, Harry’s, Honest, and more.  

Allegra is a designer who does strategy, branding, and packaging. And one reason she’s able to do these well is her strong emphasis on research. (I’ve participated in one of her user research sessions, and I can confirm she’s thorough!) 

As a researcher, Allegra’s particularly good at digging into data and layering insights to uncover the core issue. 

While pulling actionable insights out of customer feedback is (on rare occasions) like finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk (it’s obvious and there for the taking) it’s more like panning for gold. 

It takes time and a keen eye. You have to interrogate the data, ask “why?” several times, and layer different data points.

For example, digging into a customer’s motives (note: folks rarely tell you the real reason they did something the first time you ask) often looks like the following example from User Interviews: 

Here’s how searching for a core problem and layering insights looked on one ecommerce project for Allegra. 

Why a sitewide redesign wasn’t this maternity brand’s best option 

A while back, a maternity brand approached Allegra with an issue: their returns rate was much higher than they wanted, and they were looking for a sitewide overhaul. 

A redesign, they reasoned, would fix all their problems. 

Allegra wasn’t so sure, and she wanted a closer look at the problem. “I wanted to pressure test their hypothesis before moving ahead,” she said. 

So, she:

1. Recruited research participants. Allegra looked for 15-25 women who fit the brand’s target customer (either pregnant or recently post-partum). 
2. Qualified participants. To make it into the research pool, women also had to fit the location, household income, and education level that defined the brand’s customers.
3. Observed the new-to-file experience. Once she refined her research pool, Allegra spent time with 10 women who had never heard of the brand or seen the website. She, “asked them to navigate the website and tell me what they observed, how they might select a size for a piece they might purchase and what factors would influence them to purchase from this brand.” 
4. Interviewed current customers. Allegra also spoke with existing customers to figure out what they did and didn’t like about the purchase experience. 
5. Interviewed customer service. The brand had one customer service agent who was manually tracking each return, issuing labels, and answering customer questions. “I asked her what was the most common, prevalent question that came from customers,” Allegra said. 

When she layered all these three data points (new prospects, existing customers, customer service), she realized the brand didn’t need an entire website redesign. 

What they really needed was a better Product Page. 

Layering the data to find an actionable insight

This particular maternity brand didn’t use traditional sizing (XS-XXL). Rather, they used proprietary sizing (0-3) because they didn’t want women to feel ashamed when they sized-up during pregnancy. 

This was well-intentioned but confusing for shoppers. 

The customer service agent told Allegra the most prevalent question from customers was, without a doubt, how sizing works. Allegra’s interviews with qualified customers confirmed this. “I was able to capture insights from prospective new customers about what might help them to convert,” Allegra explained, “and understand the main pain points from a customer service perspective.”

Armed with a clear understanding of the problem, Allegra made these product page improvements:

• Provided robust detail around the brand’s proprietary sizing approach 
• Added graphics that showed how the garments grew with mothers-to-be through pregnancy

As a result:

• Conversions increased
• Rate of returns decreased
• The customer service agent was freed up to tackle important tasks 

“User Research and Testing is an up-front investment” she emphasized, “that really allows a business to investigate the root cause rather than spending hard-earned cash throwing spaghetti at the wall.”

A highly structured approach like this one is an effective way to answer specific research questions. 

In fact, it’s an approach we take with clients at The Good. 

How The Good helped Easton see a 240% increase in ecommerce revenue

Easton is the biggest manufacturer of baseball equipment in the world. Over 90% of college baseball swings are done holding an Easton bat, and they’re the official supplier for the Little League World Series.  

But when Easton approached us at The Good, they were lagging in the direct-to-consumer sales market, specifically at the 15-year-old level. To find out why we set up a simple Google form and showed it to the customer service team. For two days, we asked them to fill out the form after every call with a potential customer. (The form asked a few questions about the purpose of the call and how the service team member solved the complaint.) 

Turns out, the service team spoke with a lot of potential customers who couldn’t figure out the best bat for their child. When we looked at the product category page on Easton’s site, this made sense. It was a wall of bats with little guidance on which one to choose. The product detail pages didn’t help much, either — they primarily listed technical details like size, length, and how big around the bat is. 

This may have made sense for visitors familiar with choosing a technical bat. Say, collegiate baseball players and college coaches. But it left most moms and dads of 15-year olds scratching their heads. They had no idea which bats were approved for their child’s league and what the differences were between technologies and price points.

Among other changes, we wound up designing a bat-finder questionnaire that helped visitors make a few easy selections to find the right bat for their kid. This quicker path to purchase and other changes resulted in a 240% increase in ecommerce revenue.

Both Allegra’s example and our Easton example show how impactful a structured research process can be. But keep in mind, a conversation with a customer doesn’t have to be planned, scheduled, and recorded to be useful. 

All the little customer interactions you and your team have each day (e.g. in customer service emails and on social media) are useful. 

A conversation doesn’t have to be formal to be useful

There are nuggets of feedback lurking in most customer conversations. 

Eli Weiss, Director of CX (Customer Experience) at OLIPOP,  knows this well.  

Eli has learned that while email complaints and feedback are certainly valuable, there’s a load of value waiting to be unpacked on social media, too. 

It’s why he periodically hops on various channels and follows up with customers. “When I have free time on a weekend, I’ll just hop into the OLIPOP DMs and just start DM-ing people,” he told Katelyn Bourgoin on the Customer Show. 

If a customer posted a picture of a drink, he’ll follow-up and ask questions like: 

• How was it? 
• What did you like? 
• What did you dislike?
• How did you find the shipping and delivery? 
• What did you think about the unboxing?

It’s time well-spent. “Every person that leaves, there’s a reason. Every person that joins, there’s a reason,” Eli said to Katelyn, “digging a little deeper and seeing what we can learn from every one of these entries and exits has been so impactful.” 

Using Gorgias to track, spot, and act on trends in feedback 

But keeping up with feedback in disparate channels can be a herculean task. (Brands who’ve started using TikTok to gather feedback find this particularly difficult.) One way Eli’s team manages all the pieces is with their customer service tool, Gorgias, which they use to tag feedback. 

Then, once a week, Eli exports this data and puts key learnings into a presentation for his team, which helps everyone in the room spot trends. 

For example, Eli shared on the podcast they once saw some USPS-related issues. OLIPOP took this information and made a short-term switch to FedEx for most shipments. Ultimately, this proactively prevented poor experiences instead of throwing the team into stressful reactive situations when shipping complaints poured in. 

How OLIPOP is addressing churn and turning disappointment into brand evangelism

Two other notable things OLIPOP has been able to do with customer feedback include addressing churn and finding ways to leverage the service recovery paradox. 

Addressing churn 

One reason folks cancel an OLIPOP subscription is they build up a pile of sodas in their fridge or home. To get ahead of this problem, OLIPOP has started notifying customers of an upcoming shipment a few days in advance, plus giving customers the option to skip an order. 

It’s effective: 70% of active customers have either skipped an order or swapped a flavor. 

The service recovery paradox 

Regularly engaging customers presents another interesting opportunity as well: it gives OLIPOP a chance to turn a bad experience into a good one, and even convert dissatisfied customers into brand evangelists. 

This is known as the service recovery paradox. 

In one poignant example, a subscription customer ordered OLIPOP for her intimate wedding. But the order got stuck in the mail — for over a week and a half. Concerned, she reached out two days before the wedding. OLIPOP did some quick work and found a stock in a smaller warehouse on the East coast. They overnighted it to her, and the sodas arrived in time.

More commonly, new customers may express they didn’t like a flavor. When that happens, it’s not unusual for OLIPOP to offer a full refund. As a result, the refunded customers often tell their friends to give the sodas a shot. Eli explains, “we just gained 12 customers on a customer that disliked us” and “every customer we blow away is another superfan.”

OLIPOP must be doing something right. They’ve been growing exponentially and recently doubled their subscription base in 100 days to 5,000 subscribers. 

One other thing OLIPOP’s approach demonstrates: when collect and catalog feedback over time, something powerful happens.

Turns out, customer research is a bit like regularly putting money into a retirement account — if you routinely get 1% better at researching and understanding customers, the ROI compounds over time. 

Compound your learnings with ongoing research  

Business gains rarely happen overnight. 

If you’ve started publishing content, you know you don’t publish a post before bed, climb the search rankings overnight, and wake up to your brand on page one of Google. Rather, you publish optimized articles over time and, months or years later, you wake up on the front page.

Likewise, you don’t develop a social media following or email list right away. You build it over time by showing up consistently, delivering more value than you request, and engaging your audience. 

Customer research (which informs all of those activities) operates the same way. 

The three ways EVELO regularly collects feedback to identify customer needs

That’s an idea DTC electric bike brand EVELO has taken to heart. Graeme McLaughlin, Director of Marketing, explains they collect ongoing research in several ways: 

• Ongoing post-purchase feedback: Every EVELO customer receives a post-purchase email sequence, and one of those emails prompts them for feedback. As part of the automation flow, they’re asked, “Why did you choose EVELO?”  Graeme says the responses are often three to four paragraphs in length!
• Annual ad hoc surveys: The brand also runs annual surveys. “We try to do like one annual survey that’s a bit of the State of the Union,” Graeme told me. On top of that, they may run additional, targeted surveys around bike accessories (e.g. what kinds are people buying?) or specific questions. 
• Quarterly customer interviews: A third way EVELO gathers research is batches of one-on-one customer interviews. They do this quarterly with two groups of people: (1) customers who’ve purchased a product and (2) potential customers who abandoned cart and did not purchase. 

In the one-on-one interviews, Graeme asks customers who did convert questions such as:

• Pretend you’re talking to a friend and describe our bikes in your own words.
• What was happening in your life when you started looking for an electric bike?
• Did you try any bikes prior to ours?
• What hesitations did you have prior to buying?
• Why, ultimately, did you choose us over the competition?
• How has your bike improved your life? 

Answers to these questions inform a number of things, including EVELO’s value proposition. And, interestingly enough, their trial period. 

EVELO used to do a 10-day home trial but, based on what they were hearing in customer interviews, that wasn’t ideal. Customers weren’t sure they’d be able to get out and about during those first ten days to trial the bike. So, EVELO changed that trial period to 21 days and hasn’t seen an increase in returns during that period. 

Codifying a regular influx of information

As we mentioned earlier, regularly collecting customer feedback presents a bit of an organizational challenge. 

To ensure the information he gathers doesn’t sit on a shelf, Graeme does several things:

• Quarterly transcription review: Graeme records quarterly interviews and has them transcribed. His team then goes through the transcripts and “codifies the information.” For example, they look at whether a particular insight is useful for positioning, a campaign, or a new piece of content.  
• Monthly email review: Once a month, Graeme also reviews responses to their post-purchase emails and highlights useful information for those. He then pulls that information into their Voice of the Customer document, which they use to inform various brand activities. 
• Monthly cross-team meeting: Because the insights Graeme and his team collect are useful to various teams at EVELO, they hold a regular monthly meeting to look at customer research insights and voice of customer data. This way, sales, finance, and product development are all in touch with the customer’s journey and experience. 

Translating insights into brand improvements 

In addition to the 21-day trial, the regular insights EVELO collects inform a number of activities, including testing new email campaigns and marketing messages. 

For example, research has informed:

• Product page improvements: EVELO is testing improved descriptions on their product details page that better qualify prospects and proactively reduce return rates. 
• Product development: From combing through research, EVELO realized shorter people were looking for bikes but not finding a good option. EVELO’s bikes come in one size, and they cater best to taller men and women. So, they redeveloped their Galaxy 500 model so it’s easy to get off and on — especially if you’re shorter. 

While Graeme’s process may look intimidating to a brand that has never done customer research, it starts in a very simple place: a willingness to listen. 

And that’s something any brand can do.  

Start by listening…Three Ships shows it’s easier than you think

Lillie Sun, Growth + DTC at Three Ships Beauty, knew something was off with their Calm Lavender Hydrosol Toner. 

“We began seeing some reviews on our site about the scent being off,” she told me, “and that was a bit concerning for us because we weren’t sure if this was an individual issue or a product issue.”

To find out, Three Ships reached out directly to customers:

• Via Gorgias: They looked at inquiries in Gorgias and pinged customers with follow-up questions.
• Via social media: If someone tagged a picture of the toner on Instagram, they’d DM the customer and ask, “Thanks for sharing! How are you enjoying the product – do you have any feedback for us on improving?”

The team didn’t compose big questionnaires, run huge surveys, or build out a 30-day research timeline. This wasn’t a templated or extensive process. Rather, their small team took screenshots of noteworthy customer responses and posted them in an internal #customer-feedback Slack Channel.

And the simple act of asking and listening yielded plenty for Three Ships to go on.   

Screenshots, Slack Channels, and just enough feedback 

After realizing how consistent the messages were (and to what depth customers were willing to explain the issue), Three Ships concluded that the Toner needed improvement. 

They honed in on two key fixes: 

• Changing the floral water to address scent concerns and
• Adjusting the spray nozzle to address uneven sprays and provide a finer mist

Lillie emphasized these fixes not only aligned with what customers wanted to see, they aligned with Three Ships’ values. “Our key goal is to have skincare that is 100% natural and actually works” she explained, “…the most important piece of customer feedback is knowing what’s mission-critical to your brand values and vision.”

In the case of the toner (and, truly, in the case of much customer feedback), customer goals and Three Ships goals aligned: natural products that work. 

How Three Ships customers drive product development

This kind of listening drives much of Three Ship’s new product development, too. 

Lillie told me they work hard to make customers their Board of Directors. This includes:

• Customer-based product development. “All new product developments are based on customer requests,” Lillie said, mentioning that an all-natural, no-petroleum-jelly lip product is in the works based on request volume. 
• Having a pre-production group of customers. Once Three Ships crafts a new product, it goes to a small group of customers who test products before they’re released.  

And, yes, a pre-production group may take a bit of organization and recruiting for most brands. But Lillie was emphatic that the listening part is something any brand — of any size — can do.

“One thing I would stress is listening to your customers is really easy,” she said, “You don’t need a complicated CRM tool, tons of feedback forms, or crazy Excel analysis…Look at customer inquiries, look at comments on tagged IG pics, make it really easy for them to give feedback and take what they say seriously!”

How to take a small step forward in 30 minutes or less — today   

Customer research can feel like a time-consuming, intimidating, and intensive process. 

And yes, it takes time and can be messy.

But you don’t have to start with a full-fledged research program or team to start gathering insights and translating those into test ideas or impact. 

If you want to start getting 1% better at customer research today, here are six things can do in 30 minutes or less: 

1. Update your abandoned cart email to include, “On the fence about buying? Hit reply and let us know what’s on your mind.” (Note: You’ll need to actually respond to these emails!)
2. Add an ask or email to your post-purchase email sequence prompting customers to tell you why they purchased. 
3. Order a small batch of user tests from UserInput.io. Ask pointed questions and get unbiased feedback from customers in your target demographic.
4. Comb through your help desk or support emails and look for anything overly positive/negative.
5. Comb through your product reviews or social media tags and look for similar overly positive/negative sentiments. 
6. Find one happy or unhappy customer on social media and ask to follow-up with them about their experience. 

Start with one of these and see what you uncover. Next week, do it again or pick a different one. And let us know what you learn!

We can help take your ecommerce website to the next level

To complement your customer research, a Conversion Rate Optimization agency can help you manage and implement a testing program to improve conversions on your e-commerce website. At The Good, we focus on optimizing website experiences for brands of all sizes (SMB to enterprise). Request a free landing page assessment to get a better understanding of how you can start optimizing your site for the best customer experience possible.

The post How Six Ecommerce Brands Uncovered Customer Needs That Improved Their Business appeared first on The Good.

• Glossier names its cult-hit cleanser “Milky Jelly” 
• Harry’s launches a new deodorant and shifts from a shave brand to a personal care   
• Katelyn Bourgoin positions Charboyz meat kits as a social solution for suburban dads
• A maternity brand figures out how to present its proprietary sizing, which improves conversions and decreases returns 

The answer: good customer research. 

Each of those bullets came about because the brand or founder listened closely to stories their customers and prospective customers told. 

These brands know something too few ecommerce companies have taken to heart: customer research has far-reaching implications for businesses. With the right resources and process, it’s possible to collect meaningful insights that help you improve many areas of your business, from marketing to customer support to product development. 

And although it may seem intimidating first, the time and financial investment customer research requires is manageable for most teams — especially in light of its ROI. 

This article is a step-by-step guide to formulating a research plan, interviewing customers, and turning the qualitative data you collect into meaningful improvements for your brand. 

The rest of this articles outlines how to:

• Think about the benefits of customer research
• Put together a research plan
• Run effective customer interviews
• Gather indirect customer research
• Put your research data to good use

What is customer research?

Customer research is a structured way to find out why customers do and don’t buy. It’s an effective way to step out of your head and into the buyer’s journey, so you can provide better products and experiences. 

Why is it especially important for ecommerce? 

For ecommerce leaders, the biggest benefits of customer research include: 

• Getting outside the jar 
• Knowing what to improve (instead of guessing)
• Providing better customer-centric experiences

Customer research gets you outside the jar

Imagine sitting inside a jar (an empty one) and trying to read the label. Even if you could make out a letter or two, or perhaps a fine print medical warning, it’d be impossible to piece together what the whole label looks like from the outside.

That’s a bit like trying to imagine a new customer’s experience from inside your brand. You know your site inside and out, and that’s a strength in many contexts. But it’s also a weakness because your proximity to the brand makes it impossible to know what it’s like for new customers to hit your homepage or try to purchase something.

You’re stuck inside the jar, and one of the best ways to get out is customer research. 

But that’s not the only benefit. 

Customer research helps you identify data-backed improvements

There’s a marketing approach Katelyn Bourgoin calls “liquor and guessing.” It’s the old formula of gathering smart, creative people in the same room, giving them a cool product to work with, and letting them guess their way (occasionally with liquor) to more sales. 

While that occasionally works, it’s a bit like throwing a dart with your eyes closed — you could hit the board, but it’s not likely. Customer research provides a more guaranteed path. 

Some of the most common benefits folks cite is clarity around their messaging strategy — who to speak to, how to speak with them, and when to do so. 

But depending on what you set out to discover, customer research can do way more than that. 

Harry’s for example, crowdsourced some of their newest products from current shoppers. Jaime Crespo, GM at Harry’s, told Retail Brew the brand had 1,600 customers call in or send emails requesting deodorant. And 120,000 customers said in a survey they wanted to see deodorant or antiperspirant. Harry’s leaned into this.  

Crespo says, “We have a very strong, close connection with the customers. So we start talking with the customers and asking them, okay, why do you want a new product in deodorant? What’s wrong with the products that you’re currently using? And that’s how we develop our proposition.”  

This ties into the third major benefit for ecommerce brands.

Customer research shows you how to build better customer experiences

One of the biggest strengths of ecommerce, and especially DTC, is the unique opportunity brands have to influence or control every aspect of the customer experience. 

And better experiences pay off:

• PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found 65% of them said they were more strongly influenced by a positive experience than a great ad campaign
• Coschedule found marketers who do audience research at least once per year are 303% more likely to hit marketing goal
• McKinsey says brands that improve the customer journey see revenue increases as much as 10-15% — while lowering service costs by 15-20%

When you start dialing in the customer experience, metrics like conversion rate, lifetime value, average order value, return on ad spending, and others improve as well. 

Customer research shows you, with astonishing clarity, how visitors are experiencing your brand. Meaning, it also shows you where to improve, where to double down, and where missed opportunities are, too. 

Here’s how to get started. 

How to build a foundation with a one-page research plan 

If you’re doing DIY research for your brand (DIY as in not hiring outside) help, start with a plan. This doesn’t have to be complex, either. 

To put together a one-page customer research plan, you’ll want to define:

• Your goals for researching
• Who will “own” the research
• Who you’ll talk with 
• What success looks like 

Below are each of those pieces in more detail.

What are your goals for customer research? 

While it’s admirable to simply want to know your customers better, your research will be far more effective (read: impactful for a specific area of business) if you start with some goals.

I say “goals” because Hannah Shamji, Customer Researcher, emphasizes every customer research project should have two goals:

1. A research goal
2. A business goal

Your research goal is typically in the form of a question. Be careful of going too broad here though. Shamji says a question like “why are customers buying?’ is too vague to be useful. It’s not something you can actually measure and answer. Instead, try something like, “why are customers in the past 6 months buy or not buying?” This is more specific, measurable, and directive. 

Once you have your research goal, your business goal outlines how you’ll use the research — what decision it’ll drive internally or what it will inform. Hannah explains this as, “stepping away and peeling back the future state of where this data is going to live and be used.” For example, if you want to know why customers have and haven’t bought in the last six months, perhaps you’re looking to improve new customer conversion rates.  

Who is going to be doing the research?

Ideally, you want to appoint one person to lead the research efforts. This person “owns” the research project. 

They can be an internal team member or an external expert, like Shamji or an agency. The point is, you identify one person who’s responsible for running the research and organizing the findings. This, among other things, ensures the research actually happens. 

How will you find customers or prospects to talk to?

Once you have your goals and your project owner, you now need someone to research. 

Figuring out who that “someone” is involves two steps: 

1. Identifying which type(s) of customer you need to talk with
2. Outlining how you’ll engage them 

1. Identifying who to talk with 

You’re no doubt aware you have different types of customers. These different types include distinct personas with distinct needs. Your different customer types also include action-based segments — customers who just purchased, signed up for the email list, or canceled a subscription. 

Each type of customer provides a different type of insight. For example:

• Prospective visitors can help you understand why folks come to your site, what they’re looking for, and where they get tripped up.
• Customers who just purchased can give insight into what triggers and contexts motivate other new customers to buy. 
• Repeat customers can help you see what’s both delightful and frustrating about the experience you’re providing.
• Higher average order value customers can provide insight into what drives brand fanatics.  

And that’s just to name a few. 

Ultimately, who you focus on depends on your research question. Let’s say you’re a DTC drink subscription company, and you want to understand why subscribers canceled their recurring soda subscription last month. Your goal is to reduce churn. To do this research, you’ll want to speak with subscribers who canceled last month and dig into why they moved on. 

The general rule is, speak with the customer segment or prospective customer segment that’s best equipped to answer your research questions. 

2. Outlining how you’ll engage them

Once you know who you’d like to talk with, you can identify how you’ll reach out to them.

If you’re speaking with existing customers, this may be as simple as an email. 

If you’re speaking with prospective customers, you’ll also want to consider where to find folks and how to qualify them as well.

Note: I’ll get into the logistics of both of those below. For now, simply write how you plan to reach out to folks. 

What types of research make the most sense?

The next planning decision you’ll want to make is, “What type or types of research will give us the best data for our question?” There are quite a few types of research, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. 

Here’s one helpful framework:

• Direct vs. indirect: Direct research involves actively reaching out to customers. Think interviews, online surveys, questionnaires, user testing, and similar primary research methods. Indirect research is more passive. These are methods like social listening (gleaning data from social media) or buying market research. 
• Qualitative vs. quantitative: Qualitative research methods focus on substance and answering “why is this the case?” Quantitative research methods focus on numbers and answering “how often is this happening?” Most research methods excel in one area or the other. But some methods, such as surveys, can help you answer both. 

You can plot most research methods (interviews, surveys, polls) along those two axes: 

Keep in mind combining multiple types of research is often an effective way to gain clarity around your research question.

For example, if you want to know why website visitors aren’t converting on the homepage you rolled out last month, interviewing prospective visitors will help. But so will looking at heatmaps and path analytics in Google docs. 

Non-interview research options 

The rest of this article will focus on interviewing customers because this is one of the most impactful research methods, as Katelyn Bourgoin illustrated: 

That being said, you may sometimes want to start with research options that aren’t interviews. For example, when you’re:

• Not sure what questions you need to ask or who could answer them 
• Needing to gather a large volume of data points quickly around a specific question 

In those scenarios, non-interview options include: 

• Customer surveys: Via email or form add-ons 
• Live chat transcripts: 29% of consumers use or plan to use chatbots to shop online. If you’re using chatbots, there’s a wealth of qualitative data sitting in those conversations. 
• Customer support: The people answering emails, calls, and chats from potential customers or customers every day are a rich source of insight. Don’t neglect what they know. 
• Forums/communities: Listen in wherever your potential customers hang out — Quora, Slack groups, Facebook communities, LinkedIn groups, local meetups, etc. This is a helpful way to find common pain points and desires. 
• Social Media: Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Clubhouse, Facebook…if your potential customers are chatting there, there’s something you can learn from lurking. 
• Product reviews: Mining competitor reviews, similar products on amazon, or browsing aggregate review sites can indicate where customers are most fed up and what they may be looking for instead. 
• Audience research tools. Several tools, such as SparkToro, UserInput, and Hotjar, are specially built for figuring out who your audience is and what they’re interested in. 

Again, we don’t go deeper on each of those types of research here because that could be a book in itself. But keep in mind these can be a good starting point in certain scenarios, and they’re often useful to layer on top of interviews for additional context. 

For example, Natalie Thomas, Director of Strategy at The Good, explains we always start with the journey: the path the visitor takes, where they’re coming from, and what their mindset is. 

If we were working with a glasses company, we might ask, “what keywords are people searching for? Are they landing on your site because they’re looking for cute glasses? Are they looking for blue light glasses, or are they looking for acetate glasses, or are they not looking for glasses at all?” This kind of journey analysis diagnoses any problems, which helps us form specific research questions and business goals. With this method, we can ensure we’re asking the right question and focusing research on points of highest return.  

FREE EBOOK

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How to Conduct Customer Research to Improve Customer Experience

How do you define “enough” and wrap up the project?

The last piece of your plan is defining “enough.” Or, what success looks like. This is identifying, “we know we’re done with this phase of research when…” 

There are a few ways to benchmark this:

• After x amount of weeks
• After talking with y customers
• After identifying z trends 

While customer research ideally becomes an ongoing effort at your brand, it’s useful to know when each piece of research wraps up. So, make sure and set a finish line. 

How to conduct effective 1:1 customer interviews

Once you have a plan, you can start executing your research. This part is a lot of logistics — and a lot of fun. It involves:

• Reaching out to potential interviewees
• Formulating interview questions 
• Running interviews 

Those steps sound simple enough, but many folks get tripped up here. Do you pay people to participate? What do you say in the emails? And, for the love, what do you say in the interview??

Here are some answers based on our experience and the experts we talked with. 

First, reach out to your target audience and get them to engage

The plan you built above identified which customer segment you’ll interview. Here’s where you start engaging that segment. Some questions you might run into here include:

• How many people do I contact?
• Do I pay or incentivize them to participate?  
• How do I qualify them?
• What do I say when I email people?
• How do I not lose my mind scheduling it all? 

They’re all good questions! Let’s take them one-by-one. 

How many people do I reach out to? 

It’s unlikely every customer will accept, so email 1.5 to 2x the number of customers you’d like to wind up talking to. 

If you’re doing customer interviews, aim to speak with at least 5-10 people. Jess Nichols, User Research Leader and Experience Strategist, recommends, “For exploratory research, like interviews, I aim for eight to 10 participants per segment. This number ensures you can identify patterns, similarities, or differences in your participants’ responses and allow you to dive deeper into nuances you may discover during research.”

So, if you’d like to speak with 10 customers, email 15 to 20 with an interview request. 

Do I use incentives? 

This depends on your budget, the segment you’re trying to reach, and whether you have time to try a no-incentive approach first (if you hear crickets, you can always add in an incentive later).

If you’re interviewing existing customers, particularly brand enthusiasts or loyalists, you may not need to sweeten the ask. But if you’re trying to connect with prospective customers, an incentive will generally speed up your timeline and up your response rate.  

If you opt for incentives, Hannah recommends you use between $20 and $50 per person. This “encourages sign ups and avoids no shows without biasing customers to only give positive insight.”

How do I qualify research participants? 

If you’re pulling from your existing customer base, you may be able to use analytics you already have to qualify participants. For example, the date they purchased or canceled (if they’re subscribers), average order value, types of products they’ve bought, and so on. 

If you’re rounding up prospective customers who have never seen the site before, you’ll want to qualify them in some sort of a screening survey. For example, we once worked with a paint company. This paint was five times the price of normal paint because it was low VOC, environmentally friendly, made in the US, and had many other benefits. 

Natalie explains that, when she qualified prospective paint customers for research, one of the things her team asked about was pricing sensitivity. She notes, “if you get the wrong person in the door, they’re going to say, ‘I would never even consider this,’ and the rest of your research is null with that individual.”

Most researchers opt to qualify participants in a screening survey (e.g. using Google forms or Typeform). The important thing is you do qualify your participants by some means. Remember, the folks you speak with should be the ones who are best equipped to answer your research goals. If you cast a wide net with no qualifiers, your findings will be far more muddied and conflicting — if they’re useful at all. 

What do I say when I email people? 

Think of the emails you like to receive and read. They’re probably clear, concise, and have a bit of personality to them. That’s the kind of email you want to send here, too. A good interview request email will:

• Have a clear subject line. If you’re offering an incentive, feel free to lead with that. For example, “Laura, $25 Amazon gift card for your thoughts…” If you’re not incentivizing, aim for a subject line that’s both interesting and accurate. Perhaps, “How you can help us improve [x]” since folks like opportunities to help. 
• Explain why you’re emailing. Clearly explain what you are doing (research) and what you’re not doing (pitching a sale or some other hidden agenda). 
• Explain why you’re researching. Briefly say why you’re doing research and how their participation will help.
• Set expectations for an interview. Define how long the interview will take, what the person needs to do to prepare (usually nothing), and whether it’s face-to-face, video, or voice-only. You may want to mention that any data you collect won’t be sold or shared outside the company as well. 
• Equip the reader to take action. A good way to do this is to include a link for the respondent to book an interview slot, e.g. via Calendly. 

For a good starting point, check out Hannah’s email template: 

How do I schedule it all? 

Whoever is leading this research probably has other to-dos on their plate. To ensure interviewing customers won’t completely wreck their (or your) schedule, it’s best to:

• Batch interviews on certain days
• Schedule batches back-to-back
• Use a tool like Calendly to prevent calendar conflicts

This approach doesn’t just help you schedule, it helps you interview well. Hannah explains, “When you stack interviews like this, it triggers the compound effect and helps you immerse in the world of the customer. By the third interview you’ll be asking sharper questions, spotting more nuances and drawing richer customer insight.”

One other tip: batch interviews but leave about 15 minutes between each one. This will give you time to transition (read: take a snack break). It’ll also ensure it’s no big deal if you need to run five minutes over to let an interviewee finish a specific thought. 

Interview customers to collect the data (using the Jobs To Be Done Framework) 

When it comes to running each interview, it’s helpful to think of it in two parts: 

1. Pre-interview prep
2. During interview guidelines 

Pre-interview prep: formulating questions  

The biggest task here is coming up with a list of potential questions you can ask. 

One popular method is formulating questions around the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework. There are several books on this topic, and I’ll spare you all the nuances of it here. But the basic premise is customers “hire” your products or services to fulfill needs in their life. For example, I recently “hired” a Ruggable rug to reduce my mental load — I don’t want to worry about rug fuzzies or stains for the next half-decade. Other folks “hire” certain meal kits to take meal planning off their plate or to feel more confident (e.g. by losing 15 lbs). 

Understanding what job customers hire your product to do, what else they considered to fill that job, and what drove them to try and hire it out in the first place can yield rich qualitative insights. 

To find those insights, many interviewers ask questions about: 

• Triggers: Triggers are what make potential customers go, “Hey I have a need here.” For example, a trigger for needing a new mattress may be getting married or adopting a dog who sleeps in the bed. 
• Deciding: Making a decision usually involves many desires, anxieties, and hesitations. For example, price, social perception, durability, and so on. 
• Looking: Before purchasing, customers consider alternatives to your product. These may be the competitors you have in mind — or they may not. If I need new cookware, I may consider Caraway, whatever is on the kitchen aisle of TJMaxx, or asking my grandma if she has extra cast iron. 
• Purchased: Those who chose your brand have a reason for doing so. Oftentimes, that reason isn’t particularly rational or logical either. 
• Using: Identifying friction points, moments of delight, and what customers expect next can all help you craft better experiences. 

Keep in mind, you won’t get through all of your template questions in each interview. In fact, you shouldn’t necessarily aim to. Remember to tailor your conversations around the specific research and business goals you have in mind. 

During the interview: listening for emotions, taking notes, and what not to do 

When you first hop on the phone or video, you want to do a few things right off the bat:

• Set expectations around length; reiterate what time you’ll wrap things up
• Reassure the interviewee there are no right or wrong answers (it’s about collecting their story and experience)
• Let the interviewee know if they don’t want to answer a question, they can decline
• ASK TO RECORD

Seriously, don’t forget that last one. There are few things more disheartening than wrapping up an interview and realizing you didn’t hit the record button (facepalm). Zoom is a great option for storing and recording interviews if you don’t already have one. 

Once you’ve done a quick intro, your goal is to listen way more than you talk. Here are a few things, in particular, you’re listening or watching for: 

• Emotional language:  Katelyn Bourgoin, CEO of Customer Camp, explains, “The interesting thing about how people buy is that 95% of the purchases that we make are actually driven by unconscious emotional triggers.” One of your goals in the interview is to identify these triggers. Listen for words like “angry” or “frustrated.” 
• Shifts in tone or volume: Pay attention to how someone says something, not just what they say. Shifts in tone can indicate excitement or disappointment. And emphases on certain words underscore their importance. 
• Shifts in body language: Changes in facial expression or body posture can all indicate strong underlying emotions. Keep an eye out for these, too. 
• Stories: Our buying decisions are highly contextual. They’re embedded in our emotions, daily lives, and goals. Stories help illuminate these factors. 
• End goals: How did they hope buying a product or service would make them or their lives more awesome? 
• Underlying motives: As Katelyn pointed out, we’re not always aware of why we buy. Listen for underlying motives in the stories the customer tells. Don’t take every statement at face value. 

Ultimately, when you identify these clues, you’re pinpointing insights you’ll use later on when you apply your research. “The secret to identifying insights lies in understanding the human brain works on two levels and that most of our behavior is influenced by subconscious motivations in the brain. We’re simply not consciously aware of why we do what we do,” Daryl Travis, CEO at BrandTrust told me. To draw out unconscious behaviors, he recommends asking for stories. “…ask them to share in story form their experiences aligned with what you’re trying to understand. Inevitably, they will share the experiences that are emotionally intense and therefore most relevant.”  

Also, a quick note on taking notes: 

Ideally, you’re taking minimal notes during the interview (because you’re recording), and this will help you tune in to the other person. Bob Moesta, President and CEO of Re-Wired Group (and pioneer of Jobs-To-Be-Done), only writes down the words he wants to follow up on and unpack, for example. 

The final result looks like a treasure map. 

Like Bob, you’ll want to dig deeper into certain words and cues throughout the interview. Here are some follow-up questions that are particularly helpful for drawing out richer insights: 

• Why is that? 
• Can you tell me more about that? 
• What led you to that decision?
• Could you walk me through your thought process there?
• What else was going on that made that the right choice?
• Sounds like that [need/want] was important to you. Why is that? 
• That seems to bug you. I bet there’s a story there. 
• You seem pretty excited about that. Why was it a big deal?  

Lastly, when you’re running the interview, you want to check yourself for these common mistakes:

• Forgetting to record (seriously, it’s the worst) 
• Talking more than you listen 
• Asking leading questions
• Asking either/or yes/no questions
• Formulating statements as questions
• Accepting an answer at face value (use those follow-ups!)
• Quickly filling the silences (let these prompt the interviewee to speak)

The leading questions thing is important, and it’s one of the more difficult to keep in mind during your first interviews. For example, I once asked, “what made this product enjoyable?” That question is leading because I assumed the person found the product enjoyable. Turns out, she didn’t! Two better questions would’ve been, “Tell me how you used this product” or “what was your experience like using this?” 

Likewise, either/or questions are leading because they assume only two possible outcomes. So are double-barreled questions because they trap the interviewee. Natalie explains, “Sometimes a double-barreled question is, ‘How much do you love our product and our emails?’ And, well, they might hate your product and really love your emails. So now they can’t even answer that appropriately.” Avoid these, too.

These mistakes may take some practice to spot, and you’ll get better with practice. For your first interviews, do your best to stick to open-ended questions that keep your assumptions out of the picture and give the interviewee plenty of room to tell their story. 

How to map research data to real brand opportunities 

All too often, great research winds up on dusty digital shelves. It’s not because brands plan on wasting the effort they’ve gone through. It’s often because of sheer overwhelm.

“The most overwhelming aspect of research can be the sheer amount of reading that’s required to understand the material,” writes Lucy Denton, Senior Product Designer at customer research app Dovetail. “The average one-hour interview transcript might contain 10,000 words and you’re looking at half a dozen of these, and that’s before the workshop output, diaries / journals, visual documentation, or observation notes.” 

The good news is, there are a few steps you can take to help your future self use the data you collect. These steps include:

• Consolidating your research into one central location
• Organizing your research with tags 
• Socializing your research with various teams 

Then, once you do those things, you’ll be in a good position to analyze your findings and: 

• Identify big picture trends
• Highlight rich customer personas
• Map observations to improvements
• Prioritize improvements

Let’s look at the help-your-future-self logistics first. 

Consolidate, organize, and socialize 

The first steps of putting data to use include creating a home for it, organizing insights, and sharing them with others. 

Consolidate: create a home for the research

Pull stuff in one visible, accessible place. This could include:

• A shared Google Drive
• A dedicated customer research Slack Channel
• An Airtable or Notion Base
• A research tool such as Dovetail

Whatever you choose, it needs to be something that (a) keeps your research in mostly one place and (b) is accessible to the appropriate team members. 

Erik Goyette, Senior UX Researcher, Shopify: “To catalog our research, we’ve built a research library. Anyone across the company can go there to find our reports, slide decks, and recordings of our presentations.” (They use Dovetail.)

Keep in mind, you’ll want to take your recorded interviews and generate transcripts of those. This will make reviewing and organizing the research much, much easier. Useful transcript tools include Rev and Descript. Both the original recording and the transcript should live in whatever home you create for research. 

Organize: make the research easier to consume

Once your research has a home, you’ll want to use some system to keep any observations you pull out of transcripts segmented as well. One easy way to do this is to use tags. 

These tags should highlight key insights and relate to the business goal in your original research plan. Hannah explains, “You already know what the data is going to inform…based on that you’re going to start to get ideas of types of insights you need.” Insights could be top objections, new features, search motivations, pain points, customer journey points, and so on. 

How else do you know if you’re looking at an insight? Here are some indicators you’ve found one:

• It’s grounded in data. You can point to the sentiment in the research/transcript and not just your memory.
• It occurs often. Multiple interviewees mention it.
• It’s embedded in high emotion. The point has some strong emotion or sentiment attached to it.
• Useful to the business. The point maps to an opportunity — usually, to improve some aspect of the customer’s experience or journey with the brand. 

Use some sort of system to highlight, grab, or tag parts of your transcripts that fit these bullets. 

And for the perfectionists out there, keep in mind there’s no one right or wrong way to tag your research. A minimal approach may work well for a lean team just starting research whereas something more extensive may be ideal for a larger team with thousands of inputs. 

Some pointers for developing your approach:

• Start minimal: You can always add more process later. For now, pick something that’s intuitive and has a low learning curve for other team members. 
• Functional: Any tagging system you choose should help you use the data. Relate tag names to business goals or end uses. 
• Visual: Colors help team members quickly sort and bucket insights. Don’t go overboard (12 colors is a bit too much, yeah?) but do use visual cues. 

Socialize: share what you find with others

While it’s good for you to be knee-deep in the research, it’s even better for your teammates to jump in there with you, too. Silo-ed data is crippled data, so make sure various team leads can access it. (Note: if the research contains any sensitive customer data, be thoughtful about how you secure and distribute this.) 

Three reasons it’s important to distribute, or socialize, what you find: 

• Each team will see something different. A customer service team member will spot a different opportunity or use case than a marketer. That’s a good thing.
• You’ll prevent redundancies. Socializing data also prevents various teams from running similar surveys (and frustrating customers in the process). 
• You’ll enable customer-centric decisions. Executives and team leads can’t make customer-centered decisions if they don’t have access to the customer’s experience. 

Remember, customer experience spans every team and aspect of your brand. So, give every team access to what the customer is experiencing so they can contribute ideas for improving the holistic journey. 

Identifying real insights 

Once you’ve organized, tagged, and distributed your research, you’re in a good position to step back and analyze. Researchers sometimes call this finding the “arc of the data” — the overall trends that move like a current through what you’ve collected. 

You likely have some gut ideas based on the research you’ve done. But you mustn’t immediately run with these. For one, that’s a good way to introduce bias. “Attempts to merely rely on human memories and impressions from interviews are likely to introduce bias. And even if we did keep notes, when we consume raw data directly, we’re in danger of unconsciously giving weight to certain points,” writes Lucy Denton. “From there we’ll likely form misleading opinions that lead to impulsive decision-making, and eventually, take the whole team down a path that focuses on the entirely wrong outcome.”

Relying on gut alone in research (much like in testing) leads teams on wild goose chases. Instead, take a step back and look for overarching trends like customer segments and potential brand improvements. 

Look for customer segments or personas

One of the great things about qualitative research is it helps you build rich and useful customer personas. 

Quantitative data like Google Analytics reports can tell you whether customers are primarily on mobile, what region of the country they come from, and other data or demographic points. But if your customer personas stop there, they’re not going to be particularly useful. 

“The first way to create a buyer persona that doesn’t suck, is to actually talk to your customers,” Adrienne Barners, founder of Best Buyer Persona told me. “Data Analytics and survey data is a wonderful way to validate what your customers are saying, but starting with audience research and qualitative data makes for a richer and more accurate persona.” 

What does a richer persona look like? It takes motivations and behavior into account. “Segmenting people according to job title, age, or gender, doesn’t tell you why they bought your product. Think of segments as ‘jobs’ or the reason they purchased your product and how they use your product,” Adrienne explained. “Segmenting in this way means you’re able to broaden your segmentation while keeping it focused on buying behavior.”

Two related perks of building rich ideal customer segments: 

• They’ll improve your journey map. The best journey maps highlight what personas think, feel, and experience at every point. This is exactly what you can pull from rich customer segments and interview data. 
• They’ll help you make sense of conflicting data. It’s not uncommon for one person to say they bought for x reason while another person explains they bought for y reason. Rich segments help resolve that tension. 

Remember to keep an open mind as well! When Katelyn Bourgoin and her husband started researching potential customers for Charboyz, they assumed their main persona was a farmers market shopper. Turns out, it’s what they wound up calling Suburban Jock Dads. This persona, Katelyn explained on the DTC Voice of the Customer podcast, “probably used to be somebody who would go out every weekend prior to having kids, and now was looking to rebuild that social community through his now suburban life.” 

And so, when the Bourgoins launched their first box, they didn’t position it as a food box. “We positioned it as a virtual barbecue,” Katelyn said because that fit their ideal persona much better. 

This leads into the next thing you’ll want to do with your insights and personas: map those observations to areas of your business. 

Map observations to areas of the business

The conversations you have will rarely tell you exactly what to do with your business. As in, a customer isn’t going to say, “You know, if you had advertised your fitness gear to me as suiting up for ‘me time,’ I totally would’ve bought it.”

Nope. It’s part of your job to identify insights and then map those insights to potential improvements in your brand. 

This involves:

• Hypothesizing potential improvements
• Prioritizing and testing those improvements

Hypothesizing improvements

Because you’re talking with customers about their experience and journey, insights you collect can apply to any area of your business.

Some common applications include:

• Ads: When you know what context and motivation brings potential customers to you, you can do a better job engaging them — especially if you know the words and phrases (“voice of customer”) they relate to. 
• Email sequences: If Ruggable had interviewed me after I purchased one of their rugs, they’d know prompting me to upgrade to a 9×12 cushioned rug pad (+$130) before the product shipped would’ve been a more effective post-purchase email CTA than asking me to purchase another rug…before I’d even received the first one.  
• Content: The pain points your potential customers wrestle with, the hesitations they faced when purchasing, the questions they had about using it…these are all content opportunities. Adrienne Barnes writes, “The first thing I look for when turning audience research into a content strategy is customer questions. Customers often need help learning how to use the product or the benefits of a feature.”
• Social media: Likewise, the same sentiments that inform your articles can inform your social posts. What contexts can you show your products in? What rave reviews will resonate most with your target personas and what you know about them? 
• Product images: Knowing how customers use the product in their everyday lives can inspire you to produce more relevant and contextual imagery for your site and product galleries. 
• Customer support: It may be you discover new common pain points and how to head them off, which reduces your customer support load. Or maybe you identify a channel where customers feel particularly helped and decide to lean into it. 
• Product design or development: If customers regularly express a need you don’t address or a frustration with your product/service, there may be a good reason to prioritize the improvement. 
• Wayfinding/Improving poor UX: Understanding what brings customers to your site and what needs they’re looking to fill once they’re there can inform how you structure navigation, what filters you provide to sort products, product category names, and so on.

For example, Bob Moesta and Katelyn Bourgoin did a live customer interview with Amanda Natividad who recently purchased a Peloton. Moesta and Bourgoin wanted to understand why and how Amanda decided to buy the premier stationary bike. Some insights and hypothesized improvements they uncovered were:

• It was too hot to walk outside. This is one reason Amanda became interested in a bike. Could this insight inform advertising strategy in geographic areas where it’s often too hot or too cold to exercise outdoors?
• Amanda didn’t read reviews; she trusted word-of-mouth from friends. Could incentivizing referrals and word-of-mouth drive higher conversion rates for Peloton? 
• Mental health was a huge purchase motivator. Perhaps one of Peloton’s biggest competitors isn’t other exercise bikes or gyms, it’s counseling and therapy.
• She didn’t consider herself a “workout fanatic.” Yet most of Peloton’s ads feature chiseled, thin models. Could more diverse product imagery help prospective buyers identify with the product more readily?

And these are all hypotheses from one interview! Imagine what you could find in a whole set.

Prioritize and test potential improvements 

Once you have a handful of hypotheses, you can start crafting experiments and testing improvements. 

This is an important step. “[Interview] Data is never going to tell you exactly where to go because it shouldn’t be the only spoke in the decision wheel,” Hannah Shamji cautions. “It’s going to help you improve and inform and drive…but it shouldn’t be the only deciding factor.” 

Put another way, research gives you evidence for what to test and which directions to test in — but you still need to test.  

But how, out of all your hypotheses, do you decide where to start? Two tips on picking which tests to prioritize: 

Start with what customers prioritize

According to research by PwC, 80% of American consumers point to speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service as the most important elements of customer experience.

If your research indicates any major holes in those areas, consider starting there. 

Work on your Peak-End Moments

Another option to improve the critical moments of your customers’ experiences. 

It’s tempting to think each part of a customer’s experience is equally weighted — as if the ad that brought them to your site is 1 point and the header they see once they get there is another one point. 

But psychology indicates this isn’t how we recall interactions. Rather, we pay extra attention to the intense highs/lows and final moments of any experience. This is called the “peak-end” rule.

“Recognize the brain doesn’t remember everything. It only stores the experiences it deems—via emotional intensity—that are worthwhile to store for future reference,” Daryl Travis advised me. “Once you identify those experiences—Behavioral Economics refers to as Peak-End moments—then you know what are the real opportunities for brands.” 

Figure out the common peaks and ends from your interview data. Then, prioritize improving those pieces. 

Go ahead, kick off your research project

Start with a plan, find your participants, and create a home for the data you collect. From there, analyze your body of research and map your findings to areas for improvement. 

Then, tell us the most interesting thing you learned! 

Remember, the time and effort are worth it — customer research is one of the most effective ways to understand what your customers experience, identify ways to improve that experience, and boost all kinds of related metrics from conversion rates to lifetime value, and more.

If you still aren’t sure where to start with your research, we can help identify areas on your website that aren’t converting. Or try building a research plan based on the identified pain points in a custom 5-Factors Scorecard.

The post Customer Research: The Most Underappreciated Strategy In Your Toolkit appeared first on The Good.

Then they set it and forget it. 

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

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

How do you seize that opportunity? 

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

Here’s what you can expect to learn:

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

What is a confirmation email?

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

Why are confirmation emails important to marketing?

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

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

Here are four big opportunities you have when they do. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Track valuable data for better engagement

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

For example: 

Quantitative:

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

Qualitative:

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

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

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

4. Boost conversions with well-timed CTAs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 types of ecommerce confirmation emails 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What to include in your confirmation email design

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

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

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

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

Here are each of those bullets in more detail. 

Optimized subject lines: Get their attention ASAP

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

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

A few more data-backed tips here:

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

Relevant information: Include what’s necessary

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

What information is necessary and relevant? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right expectations: Start on a good foot 

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

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

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

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

Clear next steps: Tease an upcoming email 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brand-specific elements: Keep all elements on-brand

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

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

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

Skimmable structure: Make it easy to digest

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

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

Mobile-first design: Make it phone and tablet friendly 

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

Friendly celebration: Confirm milestones with rewards

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

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

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

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

Just remember to choose carefully here. 

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

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

What else could you prompt readers to do?

Here are several ideas:

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

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

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

Effective confirmation email examples

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

Warby Parker’s purchase confirmation email

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

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

Welly’s confirmation email sequence

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

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

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

Dollar Shave Club membership confirmation email

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

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

Chipotle registration confirmation email

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

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

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

Confirmation email FAQ

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should I A/B test my emails? 

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

How do I send a confirmation email?

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

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

What about an email confirmation page? 

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

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

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

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

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

Confirmation Emails: Your Brand’s Advantage

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

They’re a key part of your potential customer’s decision-making process; 87% of consumers rate product content extremely or very important when deciding to buy. 

Meaning, if you’re not optimizing your product descriptions, you’re certainly leaving money on the table.

And while optimizing your product descriptions means, yes, you’ll be working with words, you don’t have to be a pro copywriter (or marketer) to win that money back. Effective product descriptions are more about defining who you’re talking to and why they should care than crafting the perfect pithy pitch. Chances are, that’s work you’ve already started! 

Even more good news — you don’t have to do anything near as complicated as double-down on pay-per-click, rebuild your Shopify website, or block out a week’s worth of your team’s time. With a little bit of effort and a few handy steps, you can craft (or quickly optimize your existing) product descriptions into a full-time, friendly salesperson — the kind that makes your ideal prospect and returning customers go, “wow, yeah, I think I need this.”

In this article, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step approach you can use to create or overhaul your current product descriptions…and improve revenue and conversion rates, too. 

Here’s what’s ahead:

• The real job of a product description
• An effective product description template
• Steps to writing a product description that converts
• Product description FAQ

P.S. Already put a ton of time into developing your current product descriptions? Don’t worry.  You don’t have to start over from scratch. A solid editing pass (see Step 6) may be just the thing you need to amp up the value of what you have. 

What does an ecommerce product description really do? 

First off, let’s poke a hole in the idea that the job of an ecommerce product description is to describe the product. Given the name, it makes sense most folks think this. But your product descriptions aren’t just there to describe what’s on your Shopify or ecommerce site, they’re also there to:

• Qualify: They help website visitors quickly assess “is this for someone like me?” 
• Persuade: They provide compelling, customer-centered reasons to consider the product.
• Surface: They use SEO keywords and search terms in a natural way, so the page shows up in search engine or Amazon results. 

Here’s one to think about it: product descriptions are a bit like 24/7 in-store retail associates for your online store. And just like live retail associates, they can help or hurt conversions for potential buyers. On the one hand, I’ve had encounters with store associates at Verizon that have — no exaggeration — brought me to my wit’s end, made me want to toss my beloved iPhone in the trash, and move somewhere without cell service. Yikes. But on the other hand, I’ve also had interactions at Athleta, coffee shops, and other retailers that make me feel like I’ve “come home” and the products were made just for me. I made happy purchases and returned often for more. 

Your product descriptions, as your virtual retail associates, can have a similar impact. If they do their job well, they’ll draw visitors to your goods and increase conversions. If they do their job poorly, they’ll frustrate visitors, push them away, and hurt sales. 

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What are some good product description examples?

There are two extremes a product description land on. One generates sales, the other doesn’t. Since it’s helpful to know where you want to go, as well as where you don’t want to end up, let’s look at both. 

Losses: Bland and nondescript examples

Let’s start with where you don’t want to end up — the island of product description blah and meh. 

Descriptions that live in this category make one or more of the following mistakes. They:

• Don’t exist (really, we see this more than you’d think!)
• Screenshot or verbatim copy the manufacturer’s description 
• Copy/paste from a print catalog 
• Give too much attention to technical details in the product copy
• Rely too heavily on product images or product photos to tell the whole story
• Use self-centered language (they’re brand-focused instead of customer-focused)
• Hurt readability (e.g. small and/or light-colored text)

Those are all a sure path to being ignored by prospects and search engines alike.

For example, here’s a brand I’m a target buyer for but recently ignored. As a momma-to-be, I am actively purchasing maternity clothes. But Hatch has a long way to if they want to convince me to splurge on a pair of their jeans. While their product description is packed full of product features, I only spied one clear benefit (I can, uh, tuck my t-shirt in?). 

I’m left to wonder why this pair of flexible denim commands an eye-popping $260 price tag for the 4 months I’d wear them. 

Another “meh” example comes from a tech-accessory company, Nomad. Their docking station looks super sleek, and it apparently does something for my devices. But even after working in and around tech for over 6 years, I’ve no idea what their self-serving and jargon-packed description means. 

So, those are places you don’t want to end up. Let’s look at some better examples. 

Wins: Informative and persuasive examples

The other place your product descriptions can land is on the island of product description I need this ASAP. This is where product descriptions do their job (to qualify, persuade, and surface), very well. 

For example, I own an occasionally anxious dog, and this description from Finn instantly intrigued me. The copy quickly qualified what the product is and who it’s for (dog owners with stressed out pups), plus it persuaded me that it was useful with plenty of me-centered benefits (it relaxes my pup AND keeps them healthy — a win-win!). 

However, keep in mind “greatness” comes in all shapes, sizes, and, er, tones. Take the much wackier and informal themed descriptions over at Barkbox (the one below is for a snow day).  

These two pet brands look and sound very different, but they both do a good job — and for all the same reasons. It’s important to remember what “excellent” looks like will vary according to the target audience, brand, and product (more on that below). 

To craft a winning product description that works for you, use the template below as a rough outline. Then, follow the steps beneath the template to color in a description that’s specific to your unique customers, brand, and product. 

A simple ecommerce product description template and how to use it

The template below is your starting point for your product descriptions. Keep in mind, it’s an intentionally flexible starting point. Think of it less as a blueprint and more of a guideline you’ll customize using the steps that follow. 

1. Descriptive headline: Use a product title that will hook your audience. Bonus points if you connect with them emotionally.
2. Benefits-focused paragraph: Use a descriptive paragraph to explain why, exactly, the consumer benefits from the product.
3. Key benefits list: Follow the description with a bulleted list of key product details and features.
4. Additional motivation: Minimize any remaining purchase hurdles (“will it fit?”; “do others like it?”) with credibility, social proof, product reviews, or urgency, and/or a call to action.

Here’s a pretty minimal example of how this can look, via Outdoor Voices. 

How to Write and Optimize Product Descriptions That Convert (with examples)

Alright, you have your rough outline, now what? You’re going to use information about your customers, brand, and product to fill it in. Here are the steps you’ll take to do that: 

1. Know who you’re speaking to and what their pain points are
2. Define and refine the voice you speak in
3. Focus on solutions more than features
4. Keep if effective and efficient 
5. Write as if they’re right in front of you
6. Run through a final edit checklist 

By the end, you’ll have a product description that’s engineered to convert potential buyers — though, of course, we’d advocate for testing it!

Let’s look at each step in detail, with plenty of examples from the ecommerce wild. 

FREE EBOOK

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Everything You Need To Know About Building A Product Page That Converts

Step 1: Figure out who you’re speaking to (aka your ideal prospect)

You’ve likely heard the adage “everyone is not your ideal customer.” That’s important to keep in mind for your product description. If you try to sell everyone, you’ll end up selling to no one. 

To avoid this mistake, speak directly to your ideal customer, and don’t worry about the rest. To do this, your first job is to know who your ideal customer/prospect is, what difficulties that prospect faces, and how your product will help the prospect overcome those difficulties.

If you haven’t defined your ideal prospect before, begin by asking these questions:

1. Who could most benefit from this product? 
2. What problems will this product solve — or what pain points does it address — for those prospects?
3. What desires will owning this product fill?
4. What objections will the primary prospects have during their purchase decision?
5. Why should they buy from me instead of a competitor?
6. What words or phrases do they use to talk about the product?

These questions will help you create your rough buyer personas. Your personas should be front and center when writing the copy for the product descriptions. As in, tape them on your computer screen next to your word file when you write your descriptions! 

For example, here’s how you might answer those questions above for a natural deodorant product:

1. Who’s the potential customer? Men and women who are fed up with chemical-packed deodorants
2. What problems does it solve? Keeping them stink-free for more than 5 minutes
3. What desires does it fulfill? Feeling healthier and more responsible (toward their bodies and the planet); feeling less dirty and smelly
4. Objections? Other natural deodorants just don’t seem to work or lie about the ingredients
5. Why you? Compared to those other guys, this deodorant actually works
6. What words do they use? “Natural” “fresh” “scent” “confident” 

Understanding all this lets you craft a compelling description like Schmidt’s deodorant does: 

One last prospect tip: remember to choose a target persona for each product description on your ecommerce site. Your different products are going to cater to different buyers. So, identify who can benefit from the particular product you’re working on, then speak to that unique person in your description (that’s the next step).

Step 2: Define and refine the voice you use to speak with your prospects

Once you’ve nailed down WHO you’re speaking to, your next step is figuring out HOW to speak to them. Are you talking to them like you’re both in a boardroom? Or like you just met up for beers with the dogs? 

Just like there are a variety of ways a retail associate can talk with you in a store (for better or worse), there are many different ways a product description can talk with your visitor. What you want to figure out is which “voice and tone” is most persuasive for your ideal prospect. 

Mailchimp defines voice and tone this way: “You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes. You might use one tone when you’re out to dinner with your closest friends, and a different tone when you’re in a meeting with your boss. Your tone also changes depending on the emotional state of the person you’re addressing. You wouldn’t want to use the same tone of voice with someone who’s scared or upset as you would with someone who’s laughing.”

Your voice and tone could be edgy and humorous, like Cards Against Humanity. 

Or more reserved and refined, like Felix Gray. 

Or warm and friendly, like the BFF you call when you need a pick-me-up. That’s Jeni’s ice cream. 

And this is only a sampling. There are nearly as many voice and tone options as there are brands. What’s “right” for your product descriptions will depend on two key factors:

• Your ideal prospect: What’s their emotional state when searching for/needing this product? What kind of language do they use to describe or search for it? 
• Your brand: What impression are you trying to make and how do you want to come across? 

Balance how your prospect speaks with how your brand speaks

Even though each product may have its own targeted prospects, you don’t want to radically shift your voice and tone between products. It’s important to stay in tune with your brand voice and brand image in every product description. Getting out of tune might not be a big deal in a one-off email 20% of your subscribers read once, but your product descriptions are different — they’re being viewed constantly.

Here are some questions that can help you intersect ideal prospect and brand, to nail down the voice and tone of your description:

• What are customers thinking and feeling when they find this product? 
• What kind of tone and language do they use in reviews, searches, or conversations with peers about this kind of product?
• What tone would a high-performing salesperson adopt with your best prospects for this product?
• What is your company persona? (Is your brand relaxed and humorous, or is it premium and serious? Or something else?) 
• What separates you from the competition?
• What company values should be obvious in anything you write?

Questions like these help you — and anyone else writing product descriptions — stay true to the mindset and voice of the company. Remember, keeping your language aligned with your brand helps build and maintain trust.

Two other voice and tone tips: 

1. Nostalgia is powerful. Explore how you can include positive memories in your descriptions.
2. Likewise, humor can ease the stress of buying – as long as it fits your brand. Give your prospects a good laugh to help create a positive, lasting impression.

Step 3: Focus on solutions more than specifications

Kathy Sierra, an American programmer and game developer, once said, “The secret to building great products is not creating awesome features, it’s to make your users awesome.” And in her 2015 book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, she argues, “Most companies compete on the quality of the product, not the quality of the user’s results with the product. Competing on user awesome means fewer direct competitors, even within the same product/service category.” 

She was talking about software, but the key lesson here is just as applicable to ecommerce: 

Your target audience is less interested in your product than what they can achieve with your product. They’re interested in how buying your thing makes them more awesome. 

This is something you can help them see in your product descriptions. And an easy way to do that is to frame product features and relevant information as must-buy benefits.

For example:

• Encourage prospects by applauding their aspirations
• Help prospects visualize what they can achieve with your product
• Help prospects imagine the product is already in their possession
• Use sensory language to explain how the customer will feel using the product by; tap into the five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell)
• Help them imagine how their current needs are being met by using the product
• Highlight the problem before you sell the solution
• If you want to sell big mousetraps, turn the mice into rats (magnify the problem)

Take Welly. For their bandaid kits, they do an excellent job highlighting the problem (tricky hand wounds) and how their product solves related needs (extra-long bandages that don’t slip off) to persuade the visitor.

Also note that instead of leading with a feature like “a tin of 24 flexible bandages”, they focus on why this bandage tin is the solution you’ve needed for that frustration you feel when a bandage falls off your finger (again): “Gone are the days of searching for the perfect bandage for that impossible-to-cover hand wound.” 

Does this mean you throw feature lists in the trash?

Does focusing on benefits mean the new rule of thumb is “no specs lists”? 

Not quite. Specs are important decision criteria for many products. Take buying a water filter. When my husband and I traveled to New Zealand, we decided to purchase a water filter because we planned to camp beside many lakes and streams. If we had a filter, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding side-of-the-road stops to refill water bottles. When I shopped for a filter, some of the things I cared about included: exact weight, volume of water the filter could handle, and what size molecule could pass through the filter. I needed those specs to choose the right option. 

Including specs is less of a “yes/no” question and more of a “where are they most effective?” question. The answer is this: as supporting material. 

Great product descriptions lead with tangible consumer benefits that illuminate and solve consumer problems first before diving into features. For example, REI does a good job leading with the benefits (though they label them features) of the top-of-line MSR water filter. The nerdy technical details come after:

This is effective. REI first sells me on this product’s ability to eliminate virtually all my water concerns (It filters stuff other filters can’t! I can drop it off a small cliff and it won’t break!) before listing the technical reasons those things are true. 

Step 4: Structure your descriptions so they’re scannable, effective, and efficient

Once you’ve figured out what benefits to lead with, you want to balance saying too much with too little. 

On the one hand, you can deliver a firehose of information that is useful piecemeal but overwhelming as a whole. This “wall of text” approach can paralyze a visitor. On the other hand, you can include too few details or information to be useful. (Remember, this is one of the common mistakes many descriptions make.) 

Beam, for example, has a great-looking product with a load of good reviews. But there’s so little compelling information in the product description that I’m left confused (It’s…hot chocolate? But with CBD?) and hanging. 

Aim for plenty a paragraph of useful benefits that’s scannable as well. Overall, you want to structure your product descriptions so visitors can scan them quickly. Bullet points, short paragraphs, and relevant headings are all ways to help with readability and make your description easier to digest.

You can also follow a template. For example, try this format for your next description:

• Introduce the product
• Set up the problem
• Describe the solution in a persuasive way
• End with a call to action (move the prospect closer to becoming a customer)

Caraway leverages this approach well with their cookware set:

Another great way to say more with less? Videos

Another way to simplify your product description without losing value? Use product page videos. A study conducted by LiveClicker surveyed ecommerce business owners and found 88% saw conversions increase when they implemented product page videos.

Think of it this way: A product image says a thousand words and a video says tens of thousands.

Take Atoms. They have a great product detail page that highlights the benefits of their shoes, while also offering plenty of imagery and a product video to give customers a full picture of the product. 

Icons and graphics can also help buyers skim

Icons and graphics are another way to make your product descriptions more skimmable, without cutting back on key info. 

Goodr, a humorous and sporty sunglasses brand, does a particularly good job with this. Click on any pair of sunglasses and you’ll see icons that immediately help you figure out: Is this the right pair for what I do? Will it fit my head? What else are they good for? 

Hydrant, a DTC brand distributing powdered electrolytes, found a similar way to efficiently describe their products. Instead of waxing on about how sweet or tart a specific mix is, they simply show you on a no-brainer scale:  

Step 5: Write as if your buyer is right there with you

Some of the best copywriters have a trick for writing persuasive copy, and it’s one you can use, too: 

Write directly to ONE person. 

For you, this means writing like you were selling and describing the product to the ideal prospect you identified back in step 1. Picture they’re standing right there in front of you. Focus on being persuasive and energetic. Use the second person “you” to address your target customer directly, the way Great Jones does in the example below. 

If you’re finding the “be persuasive” piece tricky, here are a few extra tips for writing product descriptions that persuade and convert:

• Keep sentences short and to the point
• Make an emotional connection with your audience
• Highlight what the prospect will feel after using your product
• Empathize with the challenges your prospects face
• Agree with their pain and emphasize how your product relieves it
• Sell a lifestyle that will keep them coming back

For example, the Youth to the People descriptions below is a bit wordy (it could improve there) but where it shines is highlighting how the visitor will feel about using it (brightened, refreshed) and the lifestyle that will keep them coming back (skin that looks amazing).

A great gut-check: read your product description out loud

A good way to test how your description is coming along is to read it aloud. Ask yourself if it sounds like a real conversation you’d have with your target audience. 

If you find yourself getting tripped up on certain words or phrases when you do this, like a briar is catching your sleeve, pay attention to that. It’s a sign a piece of copy doesn’t sound or feel natural. Keep tweaking and reading it out loud until you don’t stumble.

Also ask:

• Does it flow without dragging out into long sentences, big words, or anything awkward? 
• Does it sound persuasive and energetic? 
• Have you included all the features in the form of benefits?

If you answer no to any of those, revise what you have. Then move on to the step below. 

Step 6: Use these optimization checklists to improve your product descriptions (selling points, grammar, SEO, and more)

Phew, you’ve pulled together a first (or revised) draft of your product descriptions. You’ve made a lot of progress! Your last step is to run through a few checklists that help you check and make you’ve got all the big-picture pieces in place and haven’t gotten sloppy with the nitty-gritty, like grammar and SEO. 

Let’s start with some big picture checks. Have you:

• Used a descriptive and compelling headline? 
• Made your product come alive to the prospect?
• Highlighted surprising or unconventional benefits of your product?
• Led with benefits and pain-busting solutions, not features?
• Used language that’s familiar to your ideal prospect but consistent with your brand’s voice? (No jargon, confusing acronyms, or clichés.) 
• Made your descriptions skimmable with headers, bullets, icons, videos, or another method? 
• Included social proof – are there relevant influencers, technologies, or brands you can reference to help increase credibility?
• Used relevant SEO keywords and Amazon search terms naturally in the heading, subheads, and/or description paragraph? (Remember not to overdo it; write for real people first and SEO second.)

If you’ve done all those things, move on to some of the nitty-gritty refinements:

• Are you using positive words that evoke trust and security?
• Do your sentences start with action verbs? Or just passive statements?
• Did you use future and present tenses to help your customers feel like owners?
• Did you proactively include relevant directions to anticipate and prevent returns?
• Avoided “lazy” writing words such as: actually, literally, honestly, just, nice, sorry, that, very, kind of, maybe?*
• Have you checked for correct grammar using a free tool like Grammarly?
• Avoided hyperbolic words such as market-leading, breakthrough, innovative, stunning, ultimate, revolutionary

*Caveat: Keep in mind many of these are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. For example, your brand is particularly informal, it’s fine (and even wise) to use the “lazy” words sparingly. After all, these are words we use in everyday conversation, and sprinkling them into your descriptions (IF you’re a casual brand) can help your writing feel more conversational. Even so, it’s a good idea to treat these as a dash of sea salt on a chocolate chip cookie — a few flakes are perfect, too many and it’s inedible. Billie, a fun beauty brand, sprinkles them in like salt, and the result is delightful. 

Finally, check for duplicate copy. Use a tool like copyscape.com to make sure you’re not repeating yourself or using copy from another website. Never copy a manufacturer’s product description. Google rewards value-added copy, not cloned copy.

Product Description FAQ

Still have a few lingering product description questions? These FAQ might clear a few things up: 

Can I copy a product description from a competitor?

After all, imitation is a form of flattery…right? Well, no matter which way you spin it, the short answer is, no, you can’t lift product descriptions from your competitors. 

Even if it were ethical, there’s no guarantee it’d actually help you — or be an effective shortcut. For starters, you’ve no idea how their product description is converting. Meaning, you don’t know if you’re cheating off the valedictorian or the bottom 10% of the class. Plus, even if it is a perfect description for a perfect product, it’s perfect for their brand and customer. Your brand and customer are different — even if you sell similar products — and it’s worth your time to understand how and then cater to those unique differences. (This, by the way, is true for all your product and marketing copy.)

How long should product descriptions be? 

Long enough to be helpful, short enough to be digestible. 

There’s no hard and fast rule here because the “right” length will vary between product types and how big of a decision the purchase is for the shopper. For example, if I’m buying a $30 accessory trucker hat, I’ll need a lot fewer details and specs than if I’m buying a $500 tent I’ll sleep in every night on the Appalachian Trail. 

However, most products will fall between these two, so a general guideline for the “right length” is more than a sentence and less than a paragraph for description copy. Plus a handful of easy-to-read bullets that outline key benefits and relevant features.

Overall, remember your main parameter isn’t length — your main parameter is how well the product description serves the customer. If you follow the template and steps we gave up top, you’ll be on track with length.

Are there any power words I can use in my descriptions? 

A quick Google search for “copywriting power words” will return list after list of so-called power adjectives. These lists aren’t baseless. Most of them contain words that make us feel. And since buying is an emotional process, words that make us feel can be powerful and persuasive.

However, adding these words to your description doesn’t guarantee your page will convert better. For example, here’s a quick description I pulled together using common power words:

Feel like you just woke up from a panic-filled nightmare, about to plummet off the edge of a meltdown? This life-changing CBD serum is perfect for conquering that ruthless feeling. Our epic mix blends eye-opening aromas with stunning flavors to thwart your seemingly-unbeatable emotions. Now at its lowest price of the season. 

That contains no less than a dozen “power words” (according to popular Google search results), but you’re not exactly clamoring for a link to it, are you? 

This is because while power words may be correlated with action, sprinkling them in like blueberries in pancakes doesn’t auto-magically cause the visitor to do anything. Plus, some of them are so dang overused (looking at you, innovative) we’re all tired of them. 

The best way to add them in is this: write your description using the template and steps above. Make sure it’s crafted for your specific audience, brand, and product above all else. Then, look for opportunities to swap a few weak adjectives or descriptors for something stronger. 

One last thought on power words: The most powerful word in your vocabulary isn’t some flowery adjective, it’s a pronoun — you. The biggest power move you can pull in your description is speaking directly to your unique visitor and using the word “you,” the way Moonpod does below.  

What’s next? Improve your product descriptions today (or get some help from us).

If you have time now, go ahead and evaluate your current product descriptions using the tips and examples we listed above. It takes time, but the potential improvement in sales performance is well worth the investment.

If you don’t have time now and are dashing off to your next meeting, latté, or to-do, you should consider a Digital Experience Optimization Program. As part of that custom program, we’ll take a close look at your three most important ecommerce pages – the homepage, category page, and product page – and prepare a prioritized list of opportunities for improvement.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it should be that optimizing your product descriptions doesn’t have to be difficult. From our experience optimizing hundreds of ecommerce sites, we know that even small, incremental improvements to product page copy can accumulate into significant revenue gains.

The post How to Write Powerful Product Descriptions that Sell appeared first on The Good.

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It’s no wonder most visitors leave without making a purchase. Even if they make it past this barrage, landing pages often scream, “Look at how great WE are!” instead of, “How can we help YOU?”

The smartest ecommerce brands do something different. 

They don’t prioritize cheap conversion tricks; they prioritize the customer’s experience — and profit because of it. 

How? 

For starters, enjoyable experiences are a phenomenal way to acquire and retain customers:

• PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found 65% of them said they were more strongly influenced by a positive experience than a great ad campaign. 
• A separate study conducted by Oracle discovered 89% of consumers switched to a competing product or service because of a poor experience with their current provider.

(Also, turns out 86% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience.)

And then there’s the impact great customer experience has on repeat purchases and lifetime value: 

• A report by Dimension Data found 92% of companies improving their customer experience saw an increase in customer loyalty
• 84% of those companies also saw an uplift in revenue
• 79% improved cost savings as well 

As Katelyn Bourgoin, CEO of Customer Camp put it…

So, what exactly is CX and how do you start reaping its benefits? 

This guide breaks it all down. From what goes into CX, to how to audit your current customer experience/customer journey, to how to make it a cornerstone of your brand. 

Here’s what is in this guide:  

• What is customer experience?
• What’s the difference between good, bad, and best-in-class CX?
• How do you audit the CX you’re providing? 
• How do you improve your CX from there? 

Note: In this guide, we’ll walk through a few examples of good and bad customer experiences. When we do this, it’s not to criticize unsuspecting ecommerce websites; it’s to provide constructive commentary. We respect any ecommerce brand who’s out there doing all the hard work running a business requires! 

What is customer experience (CX) and what goes into it?

Let’s start at the top: what is this powerful revenue booster we’re calling “customer experience”?

When most brands think of CX, they think of customer support and product packaging. While those play a big role in how the customer experiences a brand, CX is much bigger than that. 

Imagine a phenomenal shopping experience:

You pull up to a store and the facade looks clean and professional. Then you walk in and an associate pleasantly greets you. They offer to help in a non-sleazy way, the products are all clearly organized and labeled so you can easily find what you’re looking for, there’s no line at the checkout. On the way out, someone holds the door for you and says “Have a great day!” And you’re back in your car and off to the next task before you know it. 

All of these touchpoints make up the customer experience in retail, and they all translate to ecommerce in one way or another. The “facade” is your homepage. The organized and labeled sections of the store is your navigation. The friendly sales associate is your website copy, product pages, help docs, and live chat. And so on.

Which means, customer experiences isn’t any one moment, channel, or team within a brand (though some progressive and well-funded companies do have a dedicated CX team). CX is the overall quality of interaction your customers have with your company. This includes:

• How easily the customer can accomplish their goals 
• Whether your brand adds delight or friction to their journey toward that goal
• Every single brand impression along the way — word-of-mouth referrals, ads, chat, landing pages, your loyalty program, and more  

It’s the sum of every interaction between a customer and your brand, from the first time they hear about you to the most recent touchpoint they’ve experienced. 

We’ll look more closely at what pieces contribute to this sum below. But before we do that, let’s clear up a few misconceptions around what CX isn’t.   

Customer experience (CX) vs. user experience (UX) 

Some folks use customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) interchangeably. They’re related but different: 

• CX is concerned with across all channels and platforms
• UX is specifically concerned with the usability of your website, application, or product

If I’m trying to track down a merino sweater, and I can’t for-the-life-of-me find a relevant product category or filter in your navigation, that’s a UX problem. This may only slightly annoy me, or it may push me to head to another site. Either way, it contributes to a poor customer experience. 

A good way to think about this is UX is an important part of CX, but it’s only a piece of the bigger picture. 

Customer experience vs. customer service 

Likewise, customer service is a part of CX but not the whole:

• Customer service is a specific team that’s often on the frontlines of the customer relationship.  
• Customer experience (in a healthy and profitable company) is something every team focuses on — from the founder to the CTO to the newly-hired cashier — not just the customer service team. 

We’ll mention UX and customer service in this guide because those are important parts of CX. But when we use the term, “customer experience,” keep in mind we’re talking about the end-to-end experience involving every aspect, team, touchpoint, and channel of the brand. 

What are the components of CX?

What determines whether the quality of an experience is referral-worthy…or cringe-worthy?

To answer that question, we need to look more closely at what goes into CX — its components.  

To get a good picture of these, imagine the first encounter between two characters who will fall in love in a movie. This is called a “meet-cute.” For example, when Jack talks Rose off the edge of the ship in Titanic.

The experience of that initial interaction is determined by:

• who those people are
• why they bump into each other 
• what the interaction looks like
• and how they both interpret it 

Likewise, for an ecommerce brand, customer experience is influenced by all these same factors — who, why, what, and how customers brush shoulders with your brand — with one important difference. 

CX isn’t just the first time a customer meets or runs into you, it’s every time they interact with you. 

Let’s look closer at those who, why, what, and how components from an ecommerce perspective.

The WHO

The two main characters here are the customer and your brand. Most brands know themselves (at least fairly well); where they fall short is knowing the customer. This includes:

• Gathering basic demographics (domestic or international?) and persona information
• Narrowing down who you serve…and who you don’t serve
• Identifying the types of customers coming to your site
• Building on demographics: what customers look like, how they act, how they speak

Take shaving and body care brand, Billie. ProfitWell reported how, from the start, Billie has focused on who they’re serving. This included honing in on women, and knowing they’re fed up with paying 10-15% more for razors while having 10x the surface area of men to shave.

This focus paid off. ProfitWell notes, “Women love them, so much so that Billie blew through their first year’s sales goal in just four months…All because they focused on the customer and in return—customers threw them thousands and thousands of glowing reviews.”

Where most brands get WHO wrong: Not understanding their customer well enough. Oftentimes, this is because the brand is collecting a detailed picture of their customer’s needs, pains, and desires. According to an In Moment survey, only 26% of brands are having direct conversations with customers about their experiences! It’s difficult to know your customer if you aren’t conversing with them or actively gathering feedback from them. 

The WHY

Most of your website visitors come to you with a specific goal in mind. This is usually one of two things:

1. Solving a problem they have 
2. Improving their life in some way 

For example, I don’t shop for clothes to expand my wardrobe. If I’m looking for clothing, I’m trying to find something that will do one of the following:

• Make me feel confident (that sure looked good on them)
• Protect me against inclement weather (I’m tired of getting soaked)
• Improve my performance (on those root-filled trail runs)
• Or prepare me for a specific situation (overnight camping trip, or a wedding)

The majority of your customers already know what they are looking for and why they need it when they land on your site. Your primary objective is to help them learn about their options and facilitate a smooth transaction when they are ready to buy.

Where most brands get WHY wrong: Neglecting the customer journey for each type of customer. Many brands design their experience cold traffic. They fail to understand the nuance of context — men shop differently than women, self-purchasers shop differently than gift givers, cold traffic shops differently than referrals.

You need to understand why each type of customer is there and what desires, struggles, and motivations they have as they work toward their goals. This is what helps you determine what content to display where, how to structure your site and make numerous other decisions.  

Stuart Balcombe, the founder of Discovery Sprints and host of DTC Voice of Customer podcast, told me this is where most brands go wrong with CX overall.

“Typically, brands start with themselves, with their product, with their business goals, and then they align everything around that. What the customer actually cares about is ‘How does this product help me make progress?’ and ‘Why do I need this product today, not six months ago and not six months from now?”

– Stuart Balcombe, Founder of Discovery Sprints

Brands who understand how their product fits into the customer’s life as a whole — instead of trying to squeeze the customer into their brand or founder goals — are the ones who get ahead. 

The WHAT

The what piece is every interaction a customer (who) has with your brand during their journey (why). This includes every touchpoint on every channel:

• Pre-purchase: Word of mouth referrals, advertisements, social media, promos 
• Purchase: pricing, shipping, product pages, upsells, credit card processing, testimonials 
• Post-purchase: packaging, delivery, returns, customer service, marketing communications, forums, loyalty program, cancellations

Where most brands get WHAT wrong: Most brands focus an enormous amount of time and attention on everything leading up to the point of sale…and then they think their job is done. But dialing in other areas, like the post-purchase experience, can significantly accelerate their revenue growth.

The HOW

The final how piece is the way every one of the above interactions plays out. Do customers rage shut their computer because the page won’t load? Do they seamlessly find the perfect combination of items? How do they feel when they’re interacting with you? 

Crafting a great how includes: 

• On-site optimization informed by the who and why pieces above; once you’re clear on what paths customers are trying to take, you can help visitors move along those paths by presenting different offers based on past (or present) actions
• Welcoming, familiar language that speaks the customer’s vocabulary, not corporate jargon or confusing brand terms 
• A balanced design that is attractive and engaging but doesn’t compromise trust, usability, or functionality.
• Technical considerations like image quality and page load speed 

Where most brands get HOW wrong: From 11+ years of reviewing ecommerce sites, one of the most common how mistakes we see is making experiences brand-centric instead of customer-centric. 

This often looks like a navigation that’s all about the brand (“About Us”, “Press”) as opposed to one that helps the customer research and purchase. Or site language that hones in on product features…with no indication how those features add value to the customer. 

For contrast, check out how Bare Performance Nutrition crafts their navigation around helping customers quickly find the right type of vitamin. It’s entirely oriented around the visitor’s fitness goals!   

You get the idea: CX is multi-faceted and brands who want to do it well need to monitor a wide range of factors across every channel they maintain. 

So, what does this look like in the wild? 

What does bad vs. good CX look like?

While it’s human nature to want to sort overall experiences into goldilocks-style buckets — too hot, too cold, just right — the truth is most brands offer a mixed bag of experiences. Some parts of their CX are good, while other parts of the experience are bad. 

Here’s how to figure out which one you’re looking at. 

What is the difference between a bad and good experience? 

Bad experiences introduce unhealthy friction

A bad experience is when a customer has a poor taste in their mouth (literally or figuratively) after interacting with your brand. This can include:

• Mismatched expectations 
• Long wait times (e.g. “Please hold. You are number 87 in line.”) or long load times
• Buggy interfaces (“Why doesn’t this button work?”)
• Difficulty finding or exploring products 
• Confusion or uncertainty (“Did my order go through okay?”)
• Poor product quality 

Keep in mind, a poor experience isn’t always a major snafu that leaves a customer fuming. It’s anything that introduces unhealthy friction in the customer journey, big or small. 

For example, yoga brand Gaiam allows you to filter by printed mats (a good first step)…but leaves you hanging with few ways to filter the remaining 50+ products. Keep in mind, an ecommerce site has two primary jobs: 

1. Help visitors learn about the options available to solve their problem or add value to their life 
2. Facilitate a smooth, painless transaction to help them purchase the product that’s right for them

Poor filtering adds friction to both jobs, so this counts as a frustrating experience.  

Good experiences serve the customer

A good experience, on the other hand, is when a customer feels positive about interacting with a brand. 

This includes both big and small moments as well:

• A frustration turned into a resolution 
• The right content at the right time
• A website that feels “easy” or “natural” to move around 
• Support when and how you need it
• Content, pricing, and terms that match their expectations

For example, swimwear shopping is a frustrating experience for most women (including every one I know). Meaning, Andie Swimwear has an uphill battle from the start. Yet they tackle this frustration head-on with their Perfect Fit quiz. It’s based on data from thousands of women and the repeat questions Andie’s support team received. 

From start to finish, the quiz is a great experience. But my favorite piece is the end. When you complete the quiz, you receive a personalized recommendation Andie automatically places in your cart — in the correct size. 

And I didn’t even have to give up my email for that! Talk about making swimsuit shopping easy and less frustrating. 

Note: Want to do something similar? We talked with Ben Parr, founder of Octane AI, about personalization and crafting shoppable quizzes just like this one:

When good isn’t good enough: reaching best-in-class CX

Of course, sometimes good isn’t good enough – especially in a crowded marketplace.  

XM examined feedback from 10,000 US consumers and found customers who have an “okay” experience are 72% likely to buy again vs. customers who have a “good” experience, which are 84% likely to purchase again. That’s a 12% jump between “okay” and “good.”

And if you bump up a “good” experience to a “very good” experience?

The percentage jumps another 10%, to 94% likely to purchase more! 

XM reported similar jumps in the customer’s likelihood to refer, forgive a poor experience, and trust the brand. There’s a lot to gain from going from an “okay” or “good” experience to best-in-class. 

So, what does best-in-class look like? 

In general, best-in-class brands seek out insights directly from their customers and use those learnings to inform design decisions related to page structure, headlines, product descriptions, and other site elements. And they separate themselves from the pack because of it.

Kristen LaFrance, Head of Resilient Retail at Shopify, recently broke down an example of an exceptional customer experience on Twitter.

Kristen started her journey by heading to the Blume site to buy a specific skincare product (Meltdown, a $28 standalone product) for her friend. 

On her way there, she found the perfect skincare gift bundle for $58, which she added to her cart instead. 

Then Blume pitched gift-wrapping and a personalized sticker for $4 and $1. Since this was a gift, she added that as well. 

By the time she checked out, Kristen had spent $30 more than planned, loved doing so, and was just as excited as her friend for the package to arrive. As she pointed out, “That’s two excited customers for the (elevated) price of one. Wowza!” 

A bonus for Blume? This rave review was posted to Kristen’s 8,000+ followers! 

Are poor experiences really costing brands money?

“Whew,” some of you might be thinking, “best-in-class sounds great but sure looks like a lot of work — is it really worth it?” 

The short answer is: yes. 

As we mentioned up top, great experience leads to better acquisition, increased revenue, and more loyal customers. Poor experiences do just the opposite–they hinder acquisition, drain margin, and inspire churn.  

Meaning, if you’re not addressing poor experiences, you’re likely seeing: 

• Underperforming acquisition. Compared to five years ago, ProfitWell found the costs of acquiring new customers is 60% higher. Consumers have a larger pool of choices at a wider range of price points than ever before. With trends like this, you can’t afford to chase away first-time customers (and leak revenue) with poor first experiences. 

• Poor reviews. According to Spiegel Research Center, nearly 95% of consumers read reviews before they make a purchase. And in today’s world, when someone has a bad experience with a product or service, they can let their whole world know. Worse, one study found that a consumer is 21% more likely to leave a review after a bad experience than a good one. 
• High churn. Even if you have a herd of loyal fans, poor experiences work against you. According to PwC, one in three consumers will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. In the U.S. 59% of consumers will walk away after several bad experiences. Meaning poor experiences don’t just cost you new customers — they cost you existing ones as well. 
• Few referrals. Word of mouth is powerful, and if your CX isn’t dialed in, your customers might find your brand just “okay enough” instead of “brag worthy.” Meaning fewer word of mouth referrals from customers. 

Lastly, there’s the opportunity cost. This is difficult to quantify, but it’s everything you’ve lost by not reaping the benefits of a great experience. Let’s say you attract 100 customers per month. If you have a poor customer experience, research shows that 20 of them will still buy from you again. But, if you have a very good customer experience, 75 of them will buy from you again. What could those 50+ additional purchases you earn every month mean for your business?

So, you have a lot to lose from poor experiences and a lot to gain from good ones. How do you audit your brand to find out where you can make improvements? 

How to Audit Your Current Customer Experience

As we mentioned earlier, most brands provide a mixed bag of experiences; a few touchpoints are great, many are okay, and some are bad. This can make auditing your current experience a bit tricky — it’s  more involved than saying either “wow, we’re doing great!” or “ugh, we’re really falling short.” And, there’s always room to improve; you’re never fully finished or optimized.  

Tricky, but by no means impossible. To make auditing your brand’s customer experience manageable (the first time and every time after that), you’ll want to do two key things:

1. Map out the current, holistic experience using a customer journey map
2. Keep a sharp eye out for common, easy-to-miss hot spots 
3. Get third-party help seeing what you’ll otherwise miss 

Let’s look at each one.  

1. Map out your current customer journey 

Remember, CX includes every interaction your customer has across every touchpoint and channel. 

To build a clear picture of the overall experience, you’ll want to start by mapping the customer journey. 

From an ecommerce perspective, the “customer journey” maps how customers interact with your brand — from the customer’s perspective. (Compared to sales and marketing funnels, which are usually from the brand’s perspective.) 

It integrates data from all your tools and research into a unified view. Broadly speaking, it gives you the ability to “walk in your customer’s shoes” and identify glaring pain points you may have missed otherwise. (Reminder: interview your customers! If you talk with 10-20 customers about how they found you and what purchasing from you was like, you’ll be able to map out several journeys.)

Here’s an example of what a journey map can look like, but keep it mind yours doesn’t have to be this polished: 

If you’re not familiar with these, they may strike you as another trendy marketing tool. And yes, journey maps are in fashion — but for good reason!

How a journey map significantly improves CX 

Pointillist surveyed over 1,050 CX, analytics, and marketing professionals and discovered 95% of organizations have adopted a journey-based approach to CX, and 8 in 10 respondents say a journey-based strategy is critical to the overall success of the business.  

In fact, the journey is so important, over 50% of companies also have a dedicated role or team in place to manage it. 

Why all the hype? 

Well, from a CX perspective, a good journey map helps you do several important things:

• Clarify the entire customer journey from the very beginning — the real beginning, not just when they hit your site — to the point where they become a loyal advocate or jump ship
• Segment different stages of that journey (e.g. consideration and purchase)
• Outline customers goals and preferences for the entire journey, as well as each segment
• Identify what customers and thinking and feeling at every stage
• Pinpoint pain points, bottlenecks, common frustrations, and friction
• Personalize experiences across channels 
• Hone in on brand opportunities to improve customer experience

The bottom line is, the more you know about your customers, the quicker and easier you can improve their experience with every part of your brand.

Never created a journey map before? Here are some good resources for getting started:

• How to create a customer journey map by Hotjar 
• Customer Journey Maps — Walking a Mile in Your Customer’s Shoes by the Interaction Design Foundation
• How to Make an Effective Customer Journey Map by CoSchedule

2. Keep a sharp eye out for common customer experience mistakes

In 11+ years of business, we’ve seen plenty of customer experience mistakes (and, encouragingly, plenty of brands eager to correct them!). Use the most common mistakes below to audit the experiences you provide. 

Common strategic mistakes 

• Auditing off competitors. It’s tempting to audit your competitor’s CX and simply copy them. Don’t! Instead, focus on what experiences you want your customers to have based on your brand and your business goals. You win the competition by being the best, not by copying everyone else.
• Focusing on your message instead of what the customer wants to hear. It’s important that your site reflects the identity and message of your brand, but it should primarily serve the goals of the consumer. Too many brands default to ‘feature dumping’ and talking about how great their products and their company are, when what a site visitor really cares about is how those products can improve or enrich their own life.”
• Using intuition rather than data. If you invest some time and resources into listening to what customers want (through interviews, data, testing and other means), they’ll tell you what improvements you need to make. Unfortunately, too many brands rely on guesswork instead. 

Common tactical mistakes 

• Crowding your website pages with jargon and marketing. Use pages to highlight products your best customers are buying, images that inspire, and content that is actually consumed by visitors. I’ll say it one more time for the people in the back…survey and interview your customers. Transcribe those interviews and use their language in your headlines, ad copy, and product descriptions. This is so easy, so effective, and so often overlooked. 
• Filling the page with unnecessary information.  Too many brands think they need long, detailed homepages and product pages. Those can be great — when done properly — but don’t shoehorn your blog posts or aspirational quotes into the page unless they address customer concerns or answer customer questions. 
• Installing “features” that act as roadblocks. Email pop-ups, rotating carousels, and brand-focused navigation may all seem like perks for your brand, but they’re roadblocks for your customers. Avoid these. 

3. Get third-party insights for extra clarity

Auditing your site with a journey and a mistake checklist is going to get you a long way. But, as we often point out, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar. Meaning, there’s only so much perspective you can gain from inside the business. 

That’s why it’s often helpful to work with a third party. They can help you see pieces you missed or help your team get further, faster. If you’re an early-stage ecommerce brand, this could mean simply relying on useful third-party tools. 

Useful third-party tools

• Google analytics
• Heatmaps 
• Survey tools

Note: We detail options for these tools, how to set some of them up, and the best ways to use them in How To Improve Your Conversion Rate When You Have More Time Than Money. 

If you’re further along than early-stage, you’d likely benefit from tools and human support. This could mean a mastermind or an agency or consultancy. 

Masterminds

If you ask around, you may find there’s a Slack or private group of ecommerce leaders you can join. If not, you could always create your own mastermind group: pull together a diverse group of ecommerce founders or leaders you respect and take turns auditing each other’s experience. Or, have them review an audit you do yourself. 

Third-party consultants and agencies

If you’d benefit from an even more hands-on approach, an agency like The Good could be a helpful option. For example, our Conversion Growth Assessment is a great companion to your CX audit. It’s not an end-to-end solution, but it’s a great starting point to learn why your site isn’t converting and how to fix it. 

How to put together an improvement plan post-audit

You’ve identified areas of improvement. Now, you need to make sure those “where to improve” notes don’t die in a Google Doc somewhere. You need some kind of improvement plan. 

Putting one together usually includes:

• Prioritizing your resources (start with high impact, low investment)
• Measuring the impact
• Creating a “CX Culture” (institutionalizing a customer-first approach)

Here’s each of those in detail. 

Where do you prioritize your efforts?

While every piece of CX matters — because every piece can be a memorable good or bad experience — you’ll need to prioritize your initial improvements. After all, it’s unreasonable for even big brands to tackle everything at one time. 

Here are three ways to start prioritizing: 

1. Peak-end components

It’s tempting to think each part of a customer’s experience is equally weighted — as if that Facebook ad is one point, the homepage is another point, and so on.

But psychology indicates this isn’t how we recall interactions. Rather, we pay extra attention to the intense highs/lows and final moments of any experience. This is called the “peak-end” rule.

If you have a detailed customer journey map, that will help you pinpoint those for your brand (your customers will tell you what’s most memorable). Here’s some additional guidance. 

Peaks include moments customers realize your product is helpful, valuable, or delightful. They also include particularly negative interactions, such as moments of confusion or frustration. For example:

• Positive peak: discovering the perfect fit  
• Negative peak: website crashing when you’re ready to purchase

Ends, on the other hand, include the final step of a task or journey segment. For example:

• Hitting the purchase button  
• Reaching a certain rewards level 

If you have the opportunity to improve a positive peak, eliminate a negative peak, or strengthen an end experience, dig into those. 

2. Components consumers prioritize 

Another good way to prioritize improvements is to prioritize what your customers prioritize. 

According to research by PwC, 80% of American consumers point to speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service as the most important elements of customer experience.

If you’re falling particularly flat in any of those categories, consider doubling down there for starters. 

However, one caveat: keep in mind this data is from a wide range of consumers. In all likelihood, your customers have similar priorities, but if you can find out what your specific customers say is important (via surveys or interviews), that’s even better! 

3. Poor-performing components  

Metrics (Google Analytics, heatmaps, etc) may give you another option for prioritizing. 

Bad stats are great options for good tests. For example, pages with high bounce rates, low conversion rates, or unusual data are prime candidates for user testing. Choose a handful of poorly performing pages, send testers to those pages, and assign goals you expect your customers to perform on those pages.

Some generic goals for user tests that you can make more specific to your brand and products include:

• Find a product and add it to the cart
• Use search to locate a particular product
• Use the product filters to locate a particular product
• Add multiple products to the cart and attempt to check out
• Find support information for a particular product
• Attempt to make a product return
• Find answers to common questions about a specific product

Keep in mind it’s possible you have a poor experience that checks all three of these boxes: it’s a peak-end component, it’s a priority to customers, and it’s poor-performing. If that’s the case, by all means, start there!

How do you measure success?

As you start making the improvements, you’ll want to know, “Is this working?” 

There are a few ways to measure that, and they’re listed below. Generally speaking, if you’re providing a great experience, you’ll see a handful of metrics go up and another handful of metrics go down. 

Note: Because we cover these metrics in detail elsewhere, we’re going to stick with an overview here. 

Quantitative metrics

Quantitative metrics are ones you can represent numerically. They’re what most folks think of as “hard” metrics and they primarily address “what is happening?”. 

If you’re providing a good experience, you’ll see these quantitative metrics go up: 

• Return on ad spend
• Average order value
• Customer lifetime value 
• Conversion rate

Whereas these will go down: 

• Customer churn 
• Customer acquisition costs

For example, remember that quiz from Andie we looked at earlier? That one good experience has been an incredible conversion tool for them. On Future Commerce, Andie (the CEO and founder) explains how it’s impacted return on ad spending in particular. Her teams discovered a woman is more likely to purchase if she lands on the Fit Quiz vs. any random product page. 

So, they applied this insight to ad strategy. Andie explains, “We spend a lot of money on Facebook and the majority of our Facebook ads dropped a woman right into the Fit Quiz because we just know she’s more likely to purchase.” 

Qualitative metrics 

Qualitative metrics focus less on numbers and more on the consumer. They help explain behaviors behind quantitative metrics; they address “why is that happening?” 

If you’re providing a good experience, you’ll see these qualitative metrics go up: 

• Quality of reviews 
• Quality of other user-generated content
• Referrals
• More positive customer sentiment
• Engaged, positive community discussion

Whereas these go down: 

• Complaints 
• “Basic” support questions (even if your overall support load doesn’t decrease, you’ll usually spend less time answering 101-type questions because you address those on the site) 

Take direct-to-consumer makeup darling, Glossier. From advertising to website copy to product packaging, Glossier provides a customer experience that resonates with their fans (informed by the feedback they gather from a wide variety of channels). This is intentional. 

Founder Emily Weiss told re/code, “The way we look at it is that we’re building this people-powered ecosystem…we have a direct relationship with every single person who buys something from us, unlike all of the incumbent companies that have built through retail channels.” 

This approach has been incredibly effective, too. Weiss attributes 90% of revenue growth to fans and their word-of-mouth marketing! 

One last thing: as you’re tracking and measuring customer experience, keep two caveats in mind:  

• The goal isn’t a “perfect” experience (if such a thing even exists!). It’ s an experience that’s continually improving, reflected by key metrics that are continually improving. As we like to say, “The goal is to get 1% better every day.”
• Experience includes, but goes well beyond, numbers and graphs. Make sure you monitor hard and soft indicators the experience is improving. 

How do you make customer experience a regular part of your operations/culture?

Doing an audit and making improvements once is great. Putting the customer at the center of your business every week, month, and quarter is even better. That’s how you reap not just the immediate rewards of providing great experiences, but the compound ones too.

Take AmEx. Financial Times reported how they made a big shift from viewing the customer experience as a cost to viewing it as an opportunity. They invested in understanding their customers, improving processes, and making other leaps. The result? 400% increase in customer retention. As AmEx kept customer relationships their main strategy, they were able to move into other aspects of the customer’s life as well, like travel and entertainment. 

So, how do you make a similar transition to ensure every time you set up a landing page, campaign, or new product, your teams are thinking about the customer?

No two journeys are the same, but they usually involve several shared elements:

• Top-level buy-in: For individual teams to have the resources, tools, and processes they need to prioritize the customer, the founder and senior leaders need to be on board with putting the customer first. 
• Incentivize good experiences: From who you hire, to team KPIs and bonuses, individuals need to be incentivized to put the customer first. Kate Showalter, Senior Director of Customer Service for Crate and Barrel, told Future Commerce how her team isn’t incentivized by sales. This was a huge help for the service team. It meant engaging with customers “didn’t feel so much like selling to them, it just felt like helping.”
• Empower good experiences: Incentives are a great start, but they only go so far if teams aren’t equipped to meet those incentives. This, too, is something Crate and Barrel tackles. Showalter explained, “We also have to make sure our associates feel confident and comfortable…So we’ve heightened all of our product training.” Point employees toward great experiences — then empower them to provide those. Train them on what “right” looks like, show examples of good and bad experiences, give them authority to do “anything up to [x] to make the situation right”, and encourage them to share good experiences and lessons learned. 
• Give everyone access to the customer: This could look like Glossier’s mandatory 2-hour retail shifts for new hires (literally putting employees in front of customers) or ensuring every employee does at least one round at the support desk. It could also look like making sure all teams are tiehr equipped to do customer interviews, or have access to customer interview data. Stuart Balcombe told me, “The more people you can have with direct contact with customer voice, the better.” That way, they can keep a pulse on the audience and make decisions in the customer’s best interests. 

Overall, the goal of doing these things is to become an increasingly customer-centric organization — the kind that has the customer at the heart of everything they do, not just in marketing subject lines. 

Improving your CX is more than worth the effort 

Crafting a customer journey map, auditing your overall CX, and making improvements will demand a decent amount of time and effort— from you, as well as from your teams. 

However, keep in mind that time and effort is more than worth it: 

• 65% of consumers find a positive experience more influential than marketing
• 89% of consumer began doing business with a competitor after a poor experience
• 86% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience
• Only 20% of consumers will buy again after a poor experience, whereas 94% of consumers will buy again after a very good experience 
• 84% of companies improving their experience saw an uplift in revenue

CX may feel like a “soft” approach to improving revenue, but the data shows it impacts critical hard metrics like return on ad spending, conversion rate, average order value, and customer lifetime value. 

So, set aside some time to map out your customer journey, audit your customer’s experience, and identify where you can start making improvements. 

The ROI is more than worth it. 

The post What is Customer Experience (CX)? (HINT: The Key to Your Next Record Sales Month) appeared first on The Good.

In high school and college, it was relatively easy to figure out where you stood. 

You were either in the cool crowd, the sports clubs, or…one to those other ones (me). You were either at the top of your class, master of the Bs, or praying for a passing grade. 

Then we all graduated or left. And post-classroom, measuring up got murky. 

Now, in the business world, it’s harder to know where you stand. Sure, there are all kinds of vanity metrics you could look at like hours worked, employees hired, followers. But those don’t really tell you how well a business is doing. 

Likewise, for ecommerce store owners, it’s tough to tell whether you’re bombing, coasting, or excelling at conversion rate optimization (CRO)  —  the gatekeeper to ecommerce success. We know because everyone from startups to enterprises asks us, “how well should my site be converting?” and “what’s a good conversion rate?” 

The answer (“one that’s always improving”) isn’t as straightforward as brands hope. Turns out, there’s no one benchmark rate you can measure against. It isn’t that simple, and that’s the bad news. 

The good news? 

For brands looking to see how they measure up, we can tell you what activities make for healthy, mature CRO (the kind that’s always improving) at each company stage. 

And that’s exactly what we outline below. 

From startup to booming enterprise, this insight breaks down what you should be doing at each ecommerce business stage to get a passing grade (or A++, you high-achiever!).  

Here’s what you’ll find ahead:

• Three levers you can pull for ecommerce growth
• CRO for early, middle, and late-stage companies
• The best starting point for any size ecommerce business

The three levers you can pull for ecommerce growth

At a high-level, there are only a small number of ways to grow your ecommerce company. You can: 

1. Acquire more new customers
2. Increase your average order value (encourage new and existing customers to buy more)
3. Improve your average customer lifetime value (get customers who have purchased to come back and purchase again) 

There are several ways to do each of these. Popular options include investing in content, ads and remarketing, and partnerships. None of those are bad options, but your best investment — the one that generates the best returns — is conversion rate optimization (CRO). 

Conversion rate optimization is the key to pulling all three levers

According to marketers, CRO is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing, second only to machine learning. And for good reason — incorporating CRO into your growth strategy has plenty of benefits including: 

• Higher return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Better performance from organic and referral traffic
• Improved customer retention
• Increased exposure, and of course
• Increased revenue 

Even so, many brands remain skeptical. For starters, CRO looks expensive and time-consuming. 

And yes, it can be a good deal of work upfront. However, because it pays dividends over the long-term (think: as long as you’re in business), it has the highest ceiling for impact.

Think of it this way: investing to improve your CRO is a bit like building a retirement account. Every small investment you make in improving how easy it is for visitors to purchase on your site is going to grow into high-value, sustainable returns. 

Can any size ecommerce company do CRO? 

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is the methodology changes for each stage. As your company grows, the sophistication of your CRO program increases and your results get more predictable and more substantial. 

There are three stages we break ecommerce companies into. In terms of annual recurring revenue (ARR), those stages are:

• Early-stage: Just launched to making your first $1 million 
• Mid-stage: $1 million to $25 million
• Late-stage: $25 million and above

If those initially seem like too-massive brush strokes, bear with me — they’re large for a reason:

• From a CRO perspective, the activities for pre $1 million are similar. You don’t yet have enough traffic to run A/B tests, so you’re focused more on gathering rich data and developing qualitative methods. (Well, you could A/B test, but you wouldn’t have statistical significance, so the results wouldn’t be very helpful). 
• Then the $1 million to $25 million is so broad because, with the right CRO activities, it’s surprisingly quick to jump from one end of that range to the other. 

So, how do you know if you’re up to par or even top of your class in each of these stages? 

Let’s break it down. 

What CRO looks like for early-stage companies 

Many small brands feel like they can’t do optimization because it’s too expensive. They’re also often intimidated by the data. There’s a grain of truth to these beliefs. A full-fledged CRO program is too expensive (and wouldn’t make sense!) for this stage. 

However, there are plenty of activities a young company can do to work their way up to where more robust CRO does make sense. 

What this stage looks like

You have:

• Less than $1 million in annual revenue
• Most of the company responsibilities are on your plate as founder
• A loose definition of who your customer is and what they want
• An uphill battle to make sure people know you exist
• An early adopter crowd who will tolerate website complications
• Visitors converting around an easy to use website or product, not your brand 
• A tendency to make decisions around your gut 

Your #1 CRO focus as an early-stage ecommerce business

In the early stages, you’re trying to find those elusive “100 true fans.” You want to focus on driving traffic from the right customers who will stick with you no matter what. 

How to get a passing CRO grade

In this stage you want to:

• Collect quantitative data from Google Analytics (GA): Your Shopify or BigCommerce dashboard may be helpful, but it’s not robust enough to help you identify key improvements. For a better picture of the consumer experience, you’ll need to set up specific GA reports as your “single source of truth” and dive into those regularly. 
• Gather qualitative data from heatmaps, surveys, and customer interviews: You can’t read the label from inside the jar, and you can’t know what it’s like for customers to experience your site from your side of the laptop. Qualitative methods, like heatmaps and interviews, are key for seeing their perspective, even if you only have 100 customers a week. 

• Interpret opportunities for improving your site: Based on the two data sources above, you want to find ways to continuously improve your website and make it easier for the right customers to buy. Where are people getting stuck? Where are they leaving? Why? Identify the holes in your bucket and fix revenue leaks. 

How to get a stellar CRO grade:

• Email every consumer who buys from you: There’s no volume in this stage where you can’t email every single purchaser individually and say, “Hey, thank you so much for buying from me. I’m the founder and I’m sending you a personal email. I want to know why you purchased and what your experience was like, so we can continue to improve our site. Can we chat for 10 minutes at some point, or could you spend ten minutes right now to write down your thoughts?” 
• Use a tool like Bonjoro: Differentiate your brand and experience with personalized emails like the one above and personalized videos like the ones you can create with Bonjoro. 

• Follow the tips and testing strategies in our post on How to Improve Your Conversion Rate When You Have More Time Than Money. It’s a tactical crash course on how to improve your CRO for this stage. 

Reaching $1 million in annual revenue may seem like a big stretch (or not!) from where you sit today, but if you start with the steps above, you will cross that hurdle. 

How The Good can help improve your CRO at this stage:

If you have under 40,000 in monthly traffic, aren’t seeing conversion rates you’re happy with, and want to find out why quickly, our sister company Commerce Critiques will show you. It breaks down why your site isn’t converting and exactly how to fix it. It’s a great way to work with our experts at a small brand price point. 

What CRO looks like for mid-stage companies 

Once you cross the $1 million annual revenue hurdle, you likely have (or will soon have) 40,000 visitor sessions per month. This opens up the realm of statistical significance, where you can run tests and have confidence your results aren’t false positives or negatives. And that means you can invest in data-driven decisions. 

What this stage looks like

You have:

• $1 million to $25 million in annual revenue
• Started growing your team with either employees or contractors; you may have a marketing lead or ecommerce manager — it’s no longer you doing everything 
• Reinvested revenue into growth strategies 
• Begun growing rapidly as you find various ways to gain momentum
• Started relying on data more than your gut for optimization decisions 
• A refined customer profile, plus a clarified vision for who your site serves and what it needs to do

Your #1 CRO focus as a mid-stage ecommerce business

If you’re a mid-stage company, your #1 CRO focus is making decisions based on data. You have enough traffic to A/B test changes and receive accurate results. So, your focus is on continual testing and generating value based on test results you see. 

When you do this, closing the gap between $1 million and $25 million annual recurring revenue can happen quickly.   

How to get a passing CRO grade

If you followed the early-stage steps, you’ve been collecting rich data and building a clear picture of what your site is like for visitors. Now, in this stage, you want to use all that information to optimize the three ways ecommerce businesses grow:

• Convert more first-time visitors: Identify which channels are driving the most revenue (email? PPC? social media?) and double down on those channels. 
• Encourage new and existing customers to buy more (increase average order value, AOV): Dig into fundamentals proven to increase average order value. For example, cross-sells, up-sells, bundles, limited-time offers, and well-placed social proof. 
• Get customers who have purchased to come back (improve customer lifetime value, LTV): Generally speaking, you want your LTV to be at least three times higher than your costs of acquiring new customers. So, if you’re spending $100 on marketing to acquire a new customer, that customer should have an LTV of at least $300 for healthy profit margins. To work towards that 3:1 ratio, identify the 20% of customers who generate 80% of your revenue and hone in on keeping those around. Test VIP treatment, membership programs, and loyalty programs that deliver an above-and-beyond experience for your biggest fans.

How to get a stellar CRO grade:

• Focus on constant, iterative improvements: Rather than looking for a “big bang” improvement, look for ways to improve the customer experience by 1% every week. This sounds boring, but it pays much bigger dividends than the big bang approach. As James Clear pointed out, “If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”

• Involve other internal teams: When’s the last time you interviewed the customer service staff to understand common issues, complaints, and hassles? If you’re not already doing this, set up a recurring meeting with them. Their insights can help you hone in on quick improvements. 
• Optimize post-purchase: Most brands think CRO ends when the customer makes a purchase, but what happens after checkout is an enormous opportunity to encourage repeat purchases. Fun fact: existing customers are 60-70% likely to make a repeat purchase vs. new customers who are 5-20% likely to make their first purchase. Optimize each step of the customers’ post-purchase journey to encourage higher conversions and earn more revenue. 

How The Good can help improve your CRO at this stage: 

For mid-stage companies who are paying to drive website traffic and have time to consume training, we recommend our Conversion Growth Program.  

The program includes personalized action plans for your specific needs (kind of like a personal trainer for your business). Plus, weekly coaching with our in-house CRO experts. That’s in addition to 24 hr community support, workshops and training, and exclusive discounts to the best ecommerce tools.

What CRO looks like for late-stage companies 

You’ve proven value in the middle-stage and moved up to late-stage. By now, you’re probably starting to see the long-term value of CRO. In fact, you likely either have an entire in-house team centered on this or feel an acute need for one. 

What this stage looks like

You have: 

• Over $25 million in annual revenue 
• An in-house team that focuses on CRO (or a strong need for one)
• An interest in augmenting, training, or accelerating that team
• Different teams for different parts of the product experience (e.g. demand team for strategic advertising and/or retention team for win-backs and repeat sales)
• Started heavily relying on data to identify, test, and measure important changes

Your #1 CRO focus as a late-stage ecommerce company

You’ve built a good picture of the customer experience and you’ve been making data-backed decisions for a while. Now, you can start running more nuanced and complex tests. For example, executing multiple tests simultaneously (something we do for the $2-$25 million level) and running higher volume/more frequent tests. 

How to get a passing CRO grade

• Lean into the scientific method: Chances are you dabbled in this mid-stage. Here’s where you go all-in on hypothesizing, testing, analyzing, and iterating (see the graphic below). Where this level of process would’ve been tough beforehand, your business now has the data, team, and revenue you need to pull it off.  

• Secure management buy-in: To do the steps above well, you’ll need access to budget and resources. If the management team isn’t already bought in on the benefits and ROI of CRO, now’s a good time to make a compelling case for more budget here.  
• Press into personalization: While personalization gets thrown around a lot in ecommerce, it’s rarely needed until you have differentiated journeys for your customers. At this stage, you do, and you can lean into improving them. For example, return users coming from email might see a different banner than first-time visitors. 
• Run late funnel tests: At this point, you have enough traffic to run tests in checkout — one of the pages where you have the least amount of visitors — so test all the way through the customer experience.  

How to get a stellar CRO grade:

• Work with an outside team: Consider a firm like The Good that can augment your team with fresh perspectives and ideas. These can accelerate what your team is already doing.
• Optimize for every type of customer: While you’ve probably honed in on your top 20% by now, you may be neglecting your other six types of customers. Identify which ones you’re leaving out in the cold, and then improve the experience for each segment. This ties into the personalization step above.

How The Good can help improve your CRO at this stage: 

At this stage, there are two ways we can help: 

• Conversion Growth Audit: A 360-degree quantitative and qualitative analysis of site-wide conversions that goes beyond surface-level metrics. We build a detailed report outlining your strengths, weaknesses, and top opportunities for increasing conversions.  
• Conversion Growth Program: A done-for-you testing and conversion optimization service that includes: a complete funnel analysis, optimization roadmap, ongoing conversion research, monthly reporting, and a dedicated conversion strategy team. 

Caveat: conversion rate isn’t always the best starting point (here’s where to begin instead)  

I know, that seems like a strange wrench to throw your way now, after pages of CRO talk, but in our experience, it’s an important caveat. If you make conversion rate your end-all-be-all metric, you’re wading into dangerous waters. It’s one of the best things you can invest in, but it’s not the only metric that matters. 

For example: Put doubling your conversion rate and doubling your average order value side-by-side. Either way, you’re going to get a mathematically similar outcome. If you get 100 people to spend $2 or 100 new people to spend $1, you’ll make the same amount of revenue. 

So, if conversion rate isn’t a fail-proof starting point, where do you start? Average order value? Somewhere else? 

It depends.

First things first: start with your particular weaknesses 

Here’s our take on where to begin: start with your problem spots. 

For example: 

• Is your average order value too low? 
• Is your cart abandonment rate particularly high? 
• Are too few people adding products to cart? 

You want to analyze where your particular weakness or high-impact area is (look for clues in the data and customer experience). Then, assess your metrics holistically. For example, maybe you already have a strong, steady conversion rate and you need to get your average order value up. Your starting point depends on your weakness. 

Next: address high-impact areas with vitamins, not silver bullets 

Once you’ve identified your particular weakness and associated metrics, you can work out a strategy for addressing it. 

But be careful.

Many articles and “experts” offer improvement plans in the form of silver bullets or the ecommerce equivalent of diet bills. These look like a quick fix — and do in fact have a quick impact. But they’re sweet-tasting poison for your brand. 

Take popular advice around discounting. Running a 20% off promo will improve conversion rates in the short-term. But discounting leads to long-term, systemic problems that leave you in a worse position than where you started. For example, frequent discounts will drain your margins, train poor customer habits, and lower perception of quality. 

Keep in mind conversion rate is dictated by customer experience, not the other way around. So, start with weaknesses in your customer experience (using the tips above for each stage of ecommerce businesses) and then focus on whichever metrics are most important to move the needle for your business. 

We help you improve your CRO and turn more visitors into buyers, no matter your stage 

Our mission is to remove all the bad online experiences until only the good remains, and we work with a wide variety of ecommerce company sizes to do that. 

If you’re not moving the needle the way you want, we have plenty of options that will get you up to speed.

Already moved beyond the early stage? Check out the Digital Experience Optimization Program.

The post How To Measure (And Improve) Your CRO Program In Each Stage Of Business appeared first on The Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what’s ahead:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What all goes into conversion rate optimization?  

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

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

Conversion rate optimization isn’t: 

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

True conversion rate optimization is: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound like splitting hairs? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s start with gathering better data.

3 ways you can gather better website data this week

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

Why?

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

There are three ways to gather that data:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enhanced Ecommerce 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goal Flow report

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

Looking at this report will help you answer:

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

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

From there, you might explore ideas like: 

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

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

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

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

Users Flow report

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

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

In reality, visitors might:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Channel Groupings

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

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

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

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

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

This will help you answer questions such as:

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

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

• Google’s guide to Channel Groupings

Custom alerts 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tools that offer heatmaps 

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

Other options for heatmaps include: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why bother?

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

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

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

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

Powerful stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This where the scientific method comes in. 

How to turn a laundry list of issues into more conversions 

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

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

In most cases, a scientific approach will look like: 

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

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

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

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

Define a high-impact issue 

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

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

Examine the data to get a clearer picture of the issue

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

Create a testable hypothesis

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

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

Form a testing plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choose a good time to test

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

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

Analyze results

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

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

Figure out where to go next 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See how the Conversion Growth Assessment works.

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

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.