Surveys show that while consumers value the convenience of shopping online over any security concerns, online security is still on their radar. Shoppers are savvy about factors that can protect their security, such as only shopping from HTTPS connections and not using public WiFi to checkout online.

For ecommerce businesses, it’s not just about the risk of financial losses, but reputational loss that can go along with a data breach. While studies show many consumers won’t hold a breach against the retailer in the future, at least 25% said that they would. If a leak occurs within your own business, a 25% loss of customers would be significant!

With that said, what do store owners and their customers need to know about shopping cart security? What can you do if your store is built on WooCommerce? Here’s our quick guide:

What is a secure shopping cart?

As a general rule, a secure shopping cart has more than one or two security measures in place to protect user data. The idea is that if one fails, you should have other means of protecting the integrity of your customer’s details. You may already have a 128-SSL certificate, but that doesn’t entirely protect against hackers. Some other examples of means of protection include:

• Only using secure, reputable payment gateways.
• Running regular updates.
• Using security plugins that limit login attempts.
• Enabling 2FA (two-factor authentication).
• Choosing a very secure host.
• Setting strong usernames and passwords.
• Ensuring that integrations (such as your CRM) are secure.
• Identifying/preventing fraudulent transactions

Secure gateways

Payment gateways are a service provided by a third-party merchant that allows the transfer of money from your customer to you. The processing of the transaction doesn’t happen directly on your website, nor are payment details stored there. This adds an extra layer of protection because hackers would need to get through gateway security.

Ecommerce store owners should stick with well-known, reputable merchants. For example, Stripe, PayPal, Visa, Apple Pay etc. 

Website updates

Your website operating system and any plugins you run will have periodic updates that should be applied ASAP. The software developers update (or should be updating) software to protect against any new threats and to keep the software in top working order.

When you choose plugins, one thing to look out for is that they are being regularly updated. This tells you the developers are active and move quickly to secure against threats.

Security plugins

WordPress/WooCommerce are generally thought to be safe platforms, however they’re not bulletproof. It helps to have reliable security plugins deployed that add an extra layer of protection.

The role of the plugin is to constantly check for threats and eliminate them through updating security measures. Look for a plugin that limits login attempts as well, so that anyone who has too many failed tries is locked out.

2FA

Two-factor authentication means all user accounts must get through two steps before being granted access. For example, after inputting username and password, the user may have to supply a code that has been sent to them via text message or email.

Secure hosting

There are thousands of website hosting companies out there, but not all of them are reliable. WooCommerce store owners should choose a hosting service that specializes in WordPress and has built a strong reputation for reliability and security.

Strong usernames and passwords

Usernames and passwords should be easy for you to remember but not easy for hackers to guess. For example, many store owners use “admin” as a username, but that’s one of the easiest to guess. Mix up usernames and passwords with different characters and numbers added in, and make it unique for each account you have.

Secure integrations

Any integrations with tools such as CRMs should be strong and secure. These should also be regularly updated to maintain their integrity.

Identifying/preventing fraudulent transactions

This is something that happens on the merchant end and tends to be administered through controls you put on your ecommerce store. Each business will be different in terms of what sorts of transactions constitute a risk. For example, you might have geo-location blocks on transactions, or prevent transactions with shipping addresses outside of a certain region. You can use gateways that require CVV on credit card transactions so that hopefully it’s a barrier for stolen card information where the thief doesn’t have the physical card.

Ecommerce security should involve multiple measures to mitigate fraud or data breaches
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Are store owners ever liable for fraud?

In some cases, yes. Ecommerce store owners will be held responsible (if not liable) for fraudulent transactions. For example, if someone makes a purchase using a stolen credit card and you allow the transaction to go through, you can find that you end up with a chargeback from the bank of the person whose card was stolen. Chargebacks also include extra fees that you pay.

Chargebacks are a common problem for ecommerce brands, including some fraudulent chargebacks (where a customer alleges they didn’t receive a product or make a purchase, when they actually did). Some e-tailers choose to get chargeback protection as part of their merchant account for these reasons. 

In terms of data leaks, where a hacker has stolen customer data from an ecommerce site, the question of liability is a “maybe.” Stolen data definitely leaves the company open to civil lawsuits, so it’s always better to err on the side of overprotecting customer data.

Is shopping cart security different for international transactions?

This very much depends on the security preferences you have set up. You may want to do business internationally, but that also means you could end up dealing with chargeback rules and fees for different locations. Of course, there are also issues with shipping costs and taxes to consider. Every ecommerce merchant should do their own due diligence to understand the risks and benefits of conducting business across borders.

Some merchants choose to set their preferences so that no international credit cards will be accepted at all. Others base their rules on shipping addresses. For example, what if someone living in a different country wants to send a gift to their mom, who happens to live in your country? Can they pay with their foreign credit card?

Security measures in terms of using reputable gateways and requiring CVV shouldn’t change. You may also choose to require additional contact details. Some merchants will flag international transactions and check up on them before allowing them to process.

Are some payment platforms more fraud-prone?

The answer to this question is not as straightforward as “this gateway experiences more fraud.” As long as you’re using reliable platforms, from the ecommerce merchant perspective, it’s often about chargebacks and which platforms are more likely to side with customers over every chargeback request (remembering that some are malicious or fraudulent).

For example, payments via digital wallets such as Apple Pay have been prone to “friendly fraud”, such as when kids make purchases using stored information. PayPal has been known to have high chargeback rates due to friendly fraud too, and have a reputation for often siding with their user, while charging the ecommerce store.

Debit cards pull straight from user bank accounts and there is no chargeback protocol impacting merchants. Basically, it’s at the customer’s own risk if they use a debit card to pay online. This is the most valuable information for fraudsters to have because they can dip straight into a customer’s bank account.

While you as the ecommerce owner may not be on the hook for fraudulent activity on a debit card, it still puts you in an ethical quandary. The account owner may request a refund from you, and it will be up to you to decide whether to honor that or not.

Conclusion

Security is always a concern and a risk for ecommerce stores. For WooCommerce store owners, managing that risk starts with following some good protocols for security, including having a reliable host and putting security plugins in place.

There’s really no way of completely avoiding risks such as fraudulent purchases or chargebacks, but you can follow some best practices so that you minimize them. As an ecommerce merchant, you need to do all that you can to protect customer data, and protect your business from the potential consequences of fraud.

One thing that can help? An optimized checkout experience that integrates with top payment gateways. Take a look at how CheckoutWC can help.

The post What’s Behind Ecommerce Shopping Cart Security? appeared first on CheckoutWC.

It’s important to have your foundation in place so that you don’t experience growing pains and expensive technical glitches as you grow.

WooCommerce helps thousands of e-commerce businesses across multiple industries scale revenue.
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Let’s look at the technical considerations to plan for to scale your business and how WooCommerce can help you succeed.

What Does Scalability Mean?

In the context of online platforms, scalability relates to three areas:

Performance: can the system handle increased traffic and order volume without bottlenecks or breaking? For example, in the early days of e-commerce, websites would slow or crash during peak shopping season because the network could not scale to accommodate the traffic spikes. Over time, hosting and network technology improved as cloud computing dramatically increased scalability.

Recoverability: If the site does experience problems, how fast can the company get back to business as usual? Uptime is the critical variable here.

Maintenance: How easy is it to maintain the site? Websites that require lots of manual coding for updates, plug-ins, or changes are technically not scalable. As the site grows, manual intervention becomes more expensive and takes longer to complete.

Scaling for E-commerce Stores

In terms of e-commerce, there are two primary technical considerations: the hosting provider for the site and the storefront software the owner uses to build the shop.

We’ll go over considerations for your website later in the post, but even the best website can’t scale if it’s sitting on the wrong hosting platform. Lets look at hosting considerations first.

Optimizing Hosting for Scaling an E-commerce Business

One advantage to WooCommerce is that you are free to choose your hosting provider. You are not locked into one specific WooCommerce hosting plan.

Your hosting provider is the foundation for your website performance. Some providers have pricing increases that kick in if traffic to your site spikes. Check with your current hosting provider and ask about any traffic or resource limitations.

If you think it may be time to change hosting providers, the time to do so is before you start to scale to avoid growing pains in the middle of your expansion. If your strategy is to scale your business, you need a provider with a network optimized to handle growth. Look for providers that host large e-commerce stores with good reviews from customers.

Create a checklist to compare how the different companies stack up based on the following features:

• How do they handle traffic spikes? Are there costs involved?
• Do they have dedicated servers?
• What are their metrics for uptime and recoverability?
• Can you pay as you grow via a staggered hosting plan? Compare hosting costs at the top end of your growth plans; you don’t want to have to switch hosting later if costs for large businesses are prohibitive.
• You need to be able to focus on e-commerce, not server performance. Ask them about their back-end maintenance, server configuration, and how they keep up with the latest PHP and MYSQL versions.
• Do they offer a Content Delivery Network and caching tools to optimize site performance and speed?

Scaling with WooCommerce

Once your hosting fundamentals are locked in, it’s time to look at some crucial areas where WooCommerce helps you scale your business.

Flat rate, transparent pricing

No one wants to work hard to build their business just to see their operating costs go up and eat into their profit margins. Many other e-commerce platforms increase their fees as a percentage of sales or per transaction. With WooCommerce, your transaction costs actually go down as your shop scales!

Customer Experience

Customers want to browse, select and purchase items without issues. The industry term for this is “frictionless experiences.” Friction in the customer journey contributes to increased churn and cart abandonment.

Gartner predicts that by 2025, stores offering a unified commerce experience by frictionlessly moving customers through journeys will see at least a 20% uplift in total revenue. WooCommerce helps you design a frictionless experience even as you scale sales and serve more customers.

Customer Service

As your sales increase, your number of customers will increase as well, and you’ll need a plan for customer service. Some of the top help-desk and customer service companies have plugins for WooCommerce. Live chat offers live chat, an automated chatbot, and options for building a knowledge base. ZenDesk Support for WooCommerce helps you manage all customer support issues in one place.

Built for Large Volume

WooCommerce has no built-in limits on products or variations, and you can also import an unlimited number of products. As long as your hosting platform supports the volume, WooCommerce software can power thousands of transactions per minute. What’s more, WooCommerce can also deal with traffic spikes, flexing to accommodate the load.

Testing Your Store for Scalability

As you optimize your site for growth, you’ll want to consider testing it before you launch major promotions or other growth plans and be able to track site performance going forward.

Consider load testing your site for increased traffic, customers, and transactions. Keep in mind that page load time becomes more critical for busier sites. Kissmetrics estimates a 1-second delay on an e-commerce site selling $100,000 per day could cost the company $2.5 million per year in lost sales.

Google Chrome’s performance analysis tool tracks how long the store takes to load. It also details which elements are taking the most time. The WooCommerce Google Analytics extension tracks add-to-cart calls. Average add-to-cart calls per minute are a good indication of server performance.

Additional website speed testing tools include Pingdom and Google PageSpeed Tools, which allow you to test the speed of each page and provide you with suggestions on how to improve load time.

Examples of Large WooCommerce Stores

WooCommerce powers thousands of e-commerce stores in multiple industries. Here are a few that illustrate the diversity of companies that rely on WooCommerce:

Paul Mitchell Schools Training:  Paul Mitchell Schools offer career-focused education in cosmetology.

BIPA Beauty:  One of the largest health and beauty retail chains in Europe.

Ryanair Corporate: Ryanair Corporate is the portal for Ryanair Holdings plc, Europe’s largest airline group.

Scan2CAD: Scan2CAD is the world’s leading conversion software built for engineering and design, allowing you to convert your designs for CAD.

Output: Output develops innovative software instruments for musicians, composers, producers, and sound designers across all genres.

Airstream: Airstream Supply Company is the new premium retail brand from 80-year-old brand Airstream, the world’s most iconic travel trailer.

ClickBank: A top 100 online retailer with 200 million customers, selling digital products worldwide.

Tiny Wood Stove: how one blog post about wood-burning stoves for tiny spaces turned into a flourishing million-dollar online business.

You can also check out over 680 stores and filter them for your industry on the WooCommerce showcase page.

Are You Ready to Scale Your WooCommerce Store?

When you decide to scale your store, you’ll see that you have a wide range of WooCommerce choices. To avoid overwhelm, start reviewing your current setup, what’s working and what doesn’t serve the growth plan. Then create tests for increased website demand before you get there. That way, you can scale your business with manageable growing pains instead of downtime and stress.

This post gives you a starting place for your scaling strategy. You can also check out this free resource from CheckoutWC

The post Planning to Scale Up Your Business? How WooCommerce Can Help appeared first on CheckoutWC.

With all the automation and data available in eCommerce transactions, it’s easy to forget there is a psychological transaction happening as well. We have data showing what people do and don’t like about online shopping. Artificial Intelligence is enabling greater personalization for shoppers than ever before. Read on for tips about how understanding the consumer’s mindset and behaviors can be a robust strategic foundation to reduce cart abandonment and increase re-engagement and sales.

The Customer Point of View

eCommerce sellers might think clicking away from a cart in large numbers is a peculiar habit unique to online shoppers. It isn’t. Since people began trading shells for furs, consumers have balanced psychological considerations based on status, comparison, object utility, and price.

Imagine you are working in a brick-and-mortar department store fitting room during a busy holiday season. Shoppers show up with loads of clothes in their cart; they try a few on and leave the rest on the floor in the fitting room.

You could say shoppers in that situation “abandon” a large percentage of their original selection to settle on a much smaller purchase if they buy at all.

This illustrates the “lookie-loo” psychological aspect of the eCommerce buyer’s journey. The Baymard Institute found that “just-looking” was one of the top reasons for cart abandonment for 58% of US shoppers.

What makes it even more interesting is that for some sectors, people don’t have any intention of buying at all.

Statista shows the abandonment rate is highest – 80-89% – for fantasy shopping carts that browsers fill with the auto, vacation, and luxury wardrobe of their dreams.

For expensive items, like plane tickets, hotels, or high ticket retail, comparison shoppers may create several carts across websites to hold the best price until they make a decision.

Carts filled with practical items such as groceries, consumer electronics, and pharmaceuticals have lower abandonment rates of 61 – 70%.

Create a Strategy

Stepping back to consider the customer journey shows us several possible conversions before the sale. Creating a cart abandonment strategy funnel will include a series of conversions tied to interest, establishing trust, and tracking customer behavior on the website for retargeting.

A dashboard for managing different carts in different stages is essential for tracking results.
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Check out Abandoned Cart Recovery from Woocommerce as an option. It includes functionalities to make it easy to implement and track many of the tips below.

Key Components of Cart Abandonment Strategy

Online commerce requires a tricky balance: customers don’t want a complicated checkout but don’t always want to sign in, and first-time buyers are still building trust. Below are several best practices to help your customer navigate their buyer’s journey with you.

Cart Abandonment Prevention Tips

Optimize the Mobile Experience

Let’s say your website visitor is one of the 69% of consumers who used their mobile device to pay for a purchase in 2021. They may want to switch to their phone or tablet to complete the purchase. Consumers now expect a seamless experience across devices.

Mobile purchases are becoming more and more common. In 2020 approximately 30% of US Smartphone users paid for a purchase with their phone. By 2023, Emarketer reports this number will increase to 33.6% of all smartphone users in the United States.

Build Trust

Reassure buyers that your site is secure with McAfee, Norton trustee, or BBB accredited verification.

Eliminate Friction at Checkout

21% of survey respondents abandoned carts because of issues with the checkout process. Be sure your interface is simple and transparent.

Offer guest checkout, but be sure to ask for their email address early in the process.

Depending on your product, you already know a high percentage are just looking. Make it easy for them to convert to a buyer when ready with a Save for Later option.

Also, remember to make it easy for them to pay you. Accepting multiple forms of payment is a necessity for larger sites. Some smaller sellers are broadening beyond just one payment vendor as well.

Finally, be mindful of shipping costs. People don’t like to pay for shipping. In 2018, high shipping costs were the number one reason for cart abandonment. Simplify shipping or offer free shipping.

Manage Coupon Strategy

People really like coupons, and they really don’t like it when they don’t work. In fact, Statista reports that a coupon that doesn’t work is the second most common reason for cart abandonment. Manage your coupon strategy to decrease the chances your buyer will try to use an outdated coupon.

Don’t Ask Me Twice

Statistics show that people don’t like re-entering their information. Use that insight to encourage them to create an account so they won’t have to type in their information multiple times.

You can also encourage them to sign in using a social account such as Facebook. This also helps make retargeting easier, as you’ll see in an upcoming section.

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

Consider using AI-enhanced tools to help predict when a person is likely to leave the cart. This can allow you to use popups to catch them before they leave to remind them of what’s in the cart or ask them to sign in (give you their email address) to save their cart.

AI tools can also point out if there is a leak in the sales funnel leading to higher cart abandonment rates. Then sellers can take steps to keep the customers in the funnel and increase checkout conversions.

Finally, AI tools enable personalized offers on the cart page for incentive to finish or upsell in the funnel.Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Inviting Them to Return: Email Marketing

With average abandonment rates as high as they are, getting an email address from visitors should be a primary conversion goal because it provides a way to contact them later.

One common way to collect email addresses is with a popup. The popup can be shown based on time on-site or even visitor actions, for example, if they are about to click away.

Email is also another area where AI in eCommerce can be helpful. Merchants can connect insights about shopper behavior with email marketing to produce even better results. Sellers can now follow up on abandoned searches, not just carts.

AI tools help sellers identify customer buying intent and send relevant and personalized emails. Klaviyo is one option that integrates with WooCommmerce.

The WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery Dashboard features a place to set up email nurture series for abandoned cart management. Timing is vital for email series. So are headline topics.

Be sure you split test email campaigns to see which emails work best. Keep the tone relaxed and friendly, not pushy. Here are some basic guidelines:

Email #1: 1-5 hours after abandonment

1. Include a subject line that grabs attention. Use their name if possible.
2. Introduction text as to why you’re emailing. “Hey Joan, We noticed you left some items in your shopping cart.”
3. The specific items left in the cart.
4. An incentive to go back and complete the purchase (a discount, low inventory, etc.)
5. Call to action or checkout button.
6. Social proof as to why the customer should complete the purchase.
7. A link to get help in your email as well.

Email #2: 24 hours later

You don’t want to overwhelm the customer with emails. 24 hours is a good break before sending the second email. Test this and see what works best for your audience. The second email follows the same basic formula as the first and includes an expiration date.

Email #3: 48 hours after abandonment

The third email should let the customer know this is the last reminder they’ll get – you don’t want them to get annoyed and unsubscribe! Reiterate their offer or cart is about to expire. You might also include additional social proof as to why they need the items.

Retargeting on Social and Google

Retargeting simply means that once a visitor abandons the cart, you can set up a campaign using cookies that will show them ads reminding them of what they left in the cart.

Retargeting can be a bit technical, but the strategy converts up to 26% of lost customers, so it is worth testing. There are also WooCommerce plugins that make retargeting easier.

To set this up, you need to place a Facebook pixel, Google remarketing tag, or the equivalent snippet of code from whatever platform you choose, on your website. The pixel tracks the visitor’s actions, called events, on your site. Events include putting items in the cart, checkouts, clicking for more information, and more.

If your website is just getting started, experts suggest that you plan your goals for traffic because the platforms learn from the actions of retargeted people. A minimum of traffic is needed to provide data and improve results from retargeting ads.

Long Term Benefits

Shopping Cart Abandonment affects all eCommerce sectors. We’ve seen that some people don’t want to create an account to check out, so building trust is essential. Many people daydream shop about big experiences and discretionary purchases that are important to them – travel, luxury, automobiles, etc.

However, the solution to abandoned carts isn’t one-size-fits-all. Check out statistics for your industry, and then think about what they tell you about your ideal customer. Create incentives and emails with empathy, personalize where you can, and you will not only increase your recovered cart sales rates, you will increase your “customer for life” base. To learn more about how to improve conversion rates, check out our free guide How to Supercharge Your WooCommerce Conversion Rate.

The post Best Practices for eCommerce Shopping Cart Abandonment Recovery in 2022 appeared first on CheckoutWC.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has left an enduring mark. More and more businesses had to turn to online sales to keep their doors open at a time when they had to be physically shut. Consumer spending shifted to online channels, even for items that typically weren’t big ecommerce sellers.

And through all of this, retailers learned. They learned more about consumer preferences and more about what it takes to operate successfully in an online retail environment. The big question is, how will all of this impact ecommerce this year?

What trends can we expect from online retail in 2021?

#1. Record online competition in retail

While not all businesses were well-prepared to make a shift into the digital world, most have learned some good lessons by now. Research from McKinsey found that ecommerce jumped forward 10 years in just 90 days. Growth was phenomenal out of necessity, so how much of that will stick?

One thing they found was that it wasn’t just the younger generations of shoppers heading online. Older shoppers also made the move to online shopping with some surveys finding 80% to 90% of all consumers shopped online during the pandemic. In all, there is data to suggest that more than 150 million people globally shopped online for the very first time during the pandemic.

With such a massive shift happening, most retailers don’t want to be in the “just waiting this out” sort of position. Timelines are uncertain everywhere and as more time ticks by, that’s more opportunities to optimize for online sales.

A recent Forbes article states: “Three-quarters of global retail professionals surveyed by Euromonitor expect the crisis-inspired e-commerce boom to lead to a permanent channel shift. The key debate is what percentage of this overnight e-commerce growth is sustainable in the coming years.”

So at least for now, record levels of online competition are here to stay as retailers and consumers figure out what’s next.

#2. Consumer preferences drive optimization

One thing that has been highlighted by the pandemic (although almost always true of consumers), is that those who optimize for speed and efficiency win. Arguably, this is happening offline too, or in situations where the modality of the consumer is mixed (such as order online, pick up at the curbside).

Several industry experts in the online retail space have stated that consumer demand for speed and efficiency is at an all-time high. If you can ship faster or set up a better curbside service than the competition, you’re onto a winning strategy.

One thing that retailers need to be aware of is that it’s not just competition in their own country they need to watch – it’s cross-border commerce too. This is another area that has grown during the pandemic.

Online retailers should consider the overall customer experience in detail. It’s fair to say that many digital-first brands are still outdoing those that moved from a more traditional format to online retail during the pandemic. Some of the larger companies (who you might think would have the best resources), actually have among the worst customer experiences of their websites. There’s still room for the small online retailer to compete!

Optimization has always been important for ecommerce, but you could argue that increased competition makes it more critical this year. (See some of our tips for CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization – here).

#3. New product categories are doing well online

How many of us brought home essentials such as groceries or health and hygiene products online for the first time during the pandemic? According to Statista data, health, hygiene, home essentials and food and beverage moved to become the new top online product categories.

A Statista survey showed that drivers of consumer behavior included: direct delivery to their home, cheaper prices, more convenient shopping and the fact that online shopping is available 24/7.

Many CEOs globally expect to see this as a shift that will stick, as long as it goes hand in hand with good customer experience, speed and convenience. A Global Web Index survey found that almost 49% of consumers said they would shop online more often even after the pandemic is over.

If you’re a retailer hoping to continue reaping the benefits of increased online shopping, ensuring your checkout experience is optimized is one of the top things you can do to stay competitive.

New product categories in household and consumer goods are dominating online this year

New product categories in household and consumer goods are dominating online this year
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#4. AI to help with learning

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is not new, but has grown over the last few years in terms of application in an ecommerce environment. AI capabilities can learn from shopper behavior and help to personalize their experience.

Another area in which AI is set to make a bigger impact is within analytics. Google recently introduced its new GA4 (Google Analytics 4) platform, with AI features for helping businesses and website owners fill in any gaps in their data.

In a world where the acceptance of cookies and forms of tracking is expected to rapidly deteriorate, GA4 is Google’s answer to help marketers access data from which they can reasonably learn about their users.

#5. Sales by live streaming

The live stream sale is nothing new. The Shopping Channel and QVC have been doing this for years. Over the last year, ecommerce sales via online streaming have been taking off, especially in China. The US is also expected to see growth in this area.

Amazon and Facebook are moving in on the live shopping trend, testing out new platforms to facilitate it. The live stream gives customers the chance to see products in action and chat with the hosts, creating a more interactive shopping experience. Via social platforms like Facebook, it’s easy for viewers to click on the products and purchase as they see them.

#6. Shipping matters more than ever

We all know that consumers have developed high expectations when it comes to ecommerce shipping. Over the course of the pandemic, those expectations have been heightened. Somewhat unsurprisingly, consumers want fast and free shipping. In the US, almost 40% expect that two-day shipping should be free.

This has come with a number of challenges, especially as shipping infrastructure has been strained over the pandemic. A combination of high demand and staff out with COVID were reasons reported by USPS for slow delivery times.

To add an extra level to consumer expectation, many now have the expectation that sustainability will factor into shipping and packaging choices. Consumers are also showing a willingness globally to pay a premium for sustainable packaging. People are looking for companies that are active in reducing, reusing, recycling and avoiding sending plastics to landfills.

It’s worth noting that your shipping and packaging options may be a way to stay out competitively. Consumer preference has been leaning toward more sustainable practices for a few years now and is unlikely to look back.

#7. Independent businesses popular with consumers

The great news for all you smaller, independently owned businesses out there is that consumers are expressing a preference to shop independently. A Shopify survey found that half of all consumers deliberately seek out independently owned businesses, with their reasons for doing so listed as supporting entrepreneurship, buying unique products, and experiencing good customer service.

The only hitch is that those same consumers still like to shop from marketplaces (like Amazon) for convenience. Still, 57% stated they were willing to shop at new stores for the first time.

One way independent businesses can compete is to highlight their own unique benefits. For example, are you more sustainable? Do you make contributions to a charitable organization? Is shopping with you contributing to some sort of social goal or initiative?

Final thoughts

These were just seven trends out of many in online retail this year. As expected, the biggest impact has come from the ongoing effects of the pandemic and the associated needs and expectations of consumers.

Online retailers can harness a piece of the large digital pie by staying ahead of the trends and optimizing for the best possible user experience. Aim to iron out any sources of friction and this will help your sales.

CheckoutWC provides an optimized checkout experience for WooCommerce. Check it out here today.

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Anything you can do to optimize for sales helps. You need to be able to draw in customers and encourage them to buy, or at least remain in contact with you. A huge part of optimization is considering the buyer’s journey.

In the world of online sales, the buyer’s journey typically comes in the form of a sales funnel. Customers who have just become aware you exist are said to be “top of funnel,” while those who have ultimately gone ahead and made a purchase are at the bottom. These funnel stages are important to define because customers or potential customers have different needs at different stages.

In defining your sales funnel, you can do a better job of optimizing for customer needs at different stages and encourage them to stick with you. Here’s how:

What is an ecommerce sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a representation of the typical stages of the buyer’s journey. When a customer first hears of a business, they don’t generally buy immediately – they go through a few stages of awareness and decision-making. You don’t hang onto every person through each stage, which is why it is referred to as a funnel. It’s wider at the top, with more people coming in, and narrow at the bottom, with a whittled-down number who went through and made a purchase – also known as “converting” or making it through the funnel.

Source – MailMunch

You’ll see different versions of a sales funnel depending on the opinion of the creator. It’s also worth noting that different industries can have shorter or longer stages of the funnel. For example, if you sell big ticket items, customers might spend longer making a decision than they do for lower-value items. Below are the typical stages for ecommerce:

1. Awareness. This is when the potential customer has a need or problem in mind and goes searching for a solution. When they spot your ecommerce store, they’re now aware that you exist, but don’t yet know much about you. This is the “top of the funnel” which usually attracts a larger number of prospects.
2. Consideration (or interest). This is when people are aware of you and are now showing interest in your business. They might be browsing through your products as they consider whether to make a purchase.
3. Decision. As it sounds, this is a stage where the customer is making a decision about finally purchasing. In an ecommerce store, they might be adding items to the cart.
4. Action. This is the stage where the customer actually goes through with the purchase. In ecommerce, you’re always hoping the customer will come back and buy more, so it’s always worth considering how you might encourage them to do so at this stage.

Why is the sales funnel relevant for ecommerce?

The ecommerce sales funnel allows you to paint a clear picture of what the buyer’s journey looks like for your business, which brings with it a number of benefits. For example you can:

• Identify the right combination of marketing opportunities and do things to adjust your strategy and optimize for where your customers are coming from.
• Determine a content strategy. For example, you can figure out what it is people are looking for at each stage and create content to meet their needs.
• Improve your revenue and overall results. It’s about optimization – finding ways to smooth the buyer journey and reduce friction. This in-turn should lead to improved results.
• Improve your user experience. An optimized sales funnel should improve how the customer perceives your website.
• Improve your SEO. A well-constructed sales funnel encourages actions like click-throughs which are signals to Google.

The ecommerce sales funnel can help you optimize marketing and sales opportunities
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What can you do to optimize each funnel stage?

The sales funnel should always be about helping to guide the customer from top to bottom. This means optimizing to reduce friction or confusion at any stage. Here are some thoughts around what they might look like for each stage in ecommerce:

Awareness

First impressions are huge! At the awareness stage, you should make sure the customer has clear explanations of what your business sells. One of the quickest ways to get someone to bounce away from your website is if they don’t understand what you do within seconds of landing on it.

At this stage, also consider whatever problem it is that the customer needs solved. It might be something as basic as “I can’t find widgets in Chrome,” where you happen to be a Chrome widget stockist. So you might consider the bigger problem (“I need to fix my whatsit”), the product you offer that fixes the problem (widgets fix whatsits), and any specific requirements the customer might have (“I need chrome widgets to match my whatsit”).

Use of video is becoming more popular as a tool to educate consumers. This can be a great option at this stage for ecommerce stores.

Consideration

At the consideration stage, prospective customers will be browsing your site. One of the first and most obvious optimizations is to make browsing as easy as possible. For example, you might:

• Make sure your navigation and menus are as clear and simple as possible.
• Ensure that your search function is useful and turns up relevant results.
• Have clearly written product descriptions, including all specifications that a customer might look for.
• Have high-quality images and/or video.

Social proof is another important factor at this stage. This includes things like testimonials and reviews. Customers want to know that others are using and finding value in your products. You might even include some case studies so they can see customers and the product in action.

Decision

At the decision stage the customer is adding items to their cart and comparing different products. It’s important that you’ve optimized the shopping cart to make this easy for them. For example, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to work out how to continue shopping (a “continue shopping” button is ideal!). Some ecommerce stores make it awkward for customers when they add products to the cart and can’t find their way back out of it.

Anything that helps the customer to make a decision is important here, so get those testimonials at this stage too! You might also have other features on display to promote trust, such as any warranty or return policies. These can make a difference for customers who aren’t able to pick up an item to physically look at it – will they be able to return it if it isn’t right?

Action

Optimizing the action stage is all about making it as easy as possible to go ahead with a purchase. This means doing what you can to optimize the actual checkout experience.

For example, you should:

• Get rid of any unnecessary steps in your process.
• Have payment options that customers want to use.
• Ensure that the checkout itself is clear and easy to use.
• Be upfront about charges like shipping (unexpected costs at checkout are still a top reason for cart abandonment).
• Offer account creation as an option, but don’t force people into it.

It’s also worth considering what you can do during this phase to get customers to come back. You might use special offers if they create an account or offer them one-click sign up to receive messages about deals from you, for example.

Final thoughts

The ecommerce sales funnel is a useful tool for optimizing your website. It helps you to define and understand the buyer’s journey so that you can work to meet their needs at each stage.

One of the first things you will need to do in order to make use of the sales funnel is to evaluate and define who your target customers are, what the problems are that they’re looking to solve and what their goals are at each stage. This will help you to deliver what they need.

Lastly, it’s worth remembering that this all might happen very quickly, depending on your business. Some purchase decisions don’t require a whole lot of agonizing at each stage and customers just need a few quick boxes checked to move through. Knowing your customer well will help so that you can streamline as much as possible.

The post What is the Ecommerce Sales Funnel? (And How You Can Make it Work) appeared first on CheckoutWC.

When potential customers land on your ecommerce site, you want to make sure that it is set up to maximize your chances of a sale. CRO helps you achieve that.

In the online world, success always comes down to how well you’re able to meet the needs of your users. We prefer this user-centric approach to CRO because in the end, it’s about catering to them first! 

Here’s a closer look at CRO and why it matters:

What is CRO?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is defined by Moz as the following:

“…the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise. The CRO process involves understanding how users move through your site, what actions they take, and what’s stopping them from completing your goals.”

So it’s not always about sales, but it’s about getting website visitors to take any desired action you have defined. A “conversion” is simply completing a site goal, which could include things like getting people to sign up to your email list so that you’re able to keep in touch with them.

CRO is a field that’s always evolving. As technology improves and our options for creating new website features expand, there is more testing and experimentation to see what will improve conversions.

If you were to do a search trying to find “best practices” for CRO, you might find conflicting information. An important thing to remember is that it’s about what works for your particular target customers on your website. Sometimes it’s not as simple as deploying “best practices,” but more about testing what really works for you.

How do you calculate conversion rate?

The equation is fairly simple:

Total transactions / Total site visits x 100.

You might have primary goals (such as sales or filling out a form) and secondary goals (such as social shares or viewing of specific pages). You can calculate conversion rates for each goal that you have.

Why does CRO matter for ecommerce?

CRO matters for ecommerce because optimizing can make a significant difference to your results. This is probably best shown with an illustration…

Let’s say you leave traffic generation as is (so no new campaigns) and drive a steady 1000 people to your site each week. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say that order value averages to $250 per order. You have a conversion rate (for sales) of 3%, so of those 1000 people, 30 make a purchase for weekly sales of $7,500.

Now, imagine you put in place some new CRO measures. You work to make the checkout flow more simple, for example. That might help you to push your conversion rate from 3% to 5%. Now, you have an average of 50 people making a purchase, and average weekly sales of $12,500.

With one seemingly small adjustment, you’ve added $20,000 a month in new revenue. Not bad, right? Sometimes just a small percentage increase in conversions can work out to significant impacts on your bottom line. 

CRO can help ecommerce stores significantly increase their bottom lines
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There are some other benefits of conversion rate optimization to consider. Let’s say you wanted to increase sales. You set up some ad campaigns to drive more traffic to your website, but besides that, you didn’t do anything else to the site. You could expect that you’ll probably maintain something close to that original 3% conversion rate. However, if you optimized your website before initiating a campaign, you have the potential to make so much more. 

Or, put another way, without spending any more money on driving traffic, CRO helps you to bring your acquisition cost per customer down. Your marketing budget could remain the same, but you’d convert more customers. This in turn means that your profit can go up and you may be able to re-invest more into growing your business. It’s a recipe for a win!

Are there CRO best practices for ecommerce?

Are there CRO best practices for ecommerce? Yes and no. Yes, there are some things that have consistently proven to be important for CRO at a big picture level, such as optimizing the checkout, but the smaller details of what works best can often look different for different ecommerce businesses.

If anyone is trying to sell you on ideas like “all buttons should be red,” be cautious – these are the kinds of details that vary according to who is doing the testing. It’s important to test and check for yourself. 

With those things in mind, here are some CRO best practices from our perspective:

#1. Have a solid analytics setup

It’s surprising how many ecommerce businesses either don’t have an analytics package properly set up, or don’t regularly look at their reports to understand what their numbers are doing.

You need something like Google Analytics or an alternative so that you know what your starting point is with your numbers. It will help you to set your primary and secondary goals with the right information to know if anything you do is making an impact.

#2. Have reliable testing methods

The testing side of CRO is not an easy thing to achieve. Many businesses hire professionals in the field for this reason. You could also choose to use a software package that will help you to run basic tests. Optimizely and HotJar are two examples of these.

#3. Optimize your checkout flow

The “out-of-the-box” WooCommerce checkout has multiple issues that can make it cumbersome for customers. Basically, the aim of an optimized checkout is to reduce friction points for the customer so that they’re more likely to continue with the transaction.

You could test your checkout flow point by point, or you could use a pre-built checkout flow that has been tried and tested extensively. If your store is on WooCommerce, CheckoutWC is a great choice for an optimized checkout flow that can be quickly installed and set up.

#4. Use high quality images and/or video on product pages

This tip is pretty universal. An ecommerce customer has to be able to envision products, how they look, feel and work without being able to physically pick them up. Detailed, high quality images and videos help them to do that.

Besides that, using low quality images can give a poor impression of your ecommerce store. If you had no or poor quality images, that could just as easily be a reason for a customer to click away.

#5. Offer free shipping (if possible)

Free shipping can be a bit tough on smaller ecommerce businesses, but it does work to convince customers to go through with a purchase. In a world where Amazon offers free two-day shipping on almost everything, people tend to expect it.

If you think laterally, you may be able to find a way to either outright offer free shipping, or to do so for purchases over a certain amount. For example, you could increase your product prices to cover the cost of shipping if you can see you’d still be competitively priced. Alternatively, you might say something like “free shipping on all orders of $50 or more.” Some ecommerce stores are able to increase their average order value this way, too.

#6. Use cart abandonment recovery

Cart abandonment recovery strategies are a way you can get back some of the inevitable cart abandonments. You won’t win them all, but you can get at least some back.

Abandoned cart software is the simplest way for any ecommerce store owner to set up a recovery program. For example, Klaviyo or Jilt work well for WooCommerce users.

Final thoughts

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) can be worth a lot of money to ecommerce store owners. The aim is to optimize the customer’s experience of your online store so that they’re more inclined to go ahead with a conversion (whatever that looks like for you).

Sure, sometimes you might have to pay for software or a service that will help with CRO, but generally speaking, if you’ve optimized well you’ll more than make your money back. The investment can be a turning point for the growth of your business.

CRO matters if you want to get the best possible results – that’s the bottom line.

The post What is CRO? (And Why it Matters) appeared first on CheckoutWC.