Think about that for a second, for all of the work you’ve spent optimizing landing pages, pricing strategies, and perfecting your information architecture, just about 7 out of every 10 people are going to stop at the finish line. How depressing.

What’s worse is that number, 67.75%  is an average of 21 different studies on cart abandonment, taken over the last 8 years. In Q1 2013 the average shopping cart, basket and booking abandonment rate among top 200 retailers was 73.6%  (up from 70.7% in Q4 2012). Worse than that, a study by SeeWhy reports that 99% of visitors won’t buy on their first visit.

The truth is, from $1.2 Billion lost in 2009, to $9 Billion in 2011, the amount of money lost due to cart abandonment has been climbing rapidly over the last few  years.

According to Forrester Research, the estimated total of annual abandoned shopping cart revenue will reach $31 Billion dollars.

So let’s talk about why cart abandonment happens, how to recover abandoned carts, and explore some winning strategies that have worked for others.

Why Cart Abandonment Happens

When you’re looking at all of the abandoned orders, it’s easy to imagine that customers leave their shopping carts simply because they changed their mind at the last minute. But digging in, you find that’s simply not the case.

In fact, most research indicates that the #1 reason people abandon their carts is “unexpected costs” like shipping, taxes & fees.

In this study by Worldpay, “Decided against buying” isn’t even the second or third, but rather the fifth reason  that people leave at the checkout

Seeing as the top 4 reasons people abandon their cart have to do with “Price” and “Timing”, we’ll explore those 4 reasons in depth , and discuss different strategies & how to combat it.

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Reason #1 – Presented With Unexpected Costs

Imagine you’ve just spent the last hour at the grocery store picking up items for a summer barbecue. You’ve taken care to pick the perfect meats, sides and beverages for your guests, and though you’re operating on a budget, you’ve managed to come in just slightly under budget.

When you approach the checkout the clerk announces your total, followed by taxes, a “bagging fee”, “card processing fee”, and a “packaging fee”.

Do you continue your purchase, or would you try another grocery store without as many hidden fees?

Online, of course the “unexpected costs” commonly takes form of shipping costs. Turns out, bigger companies have spoiled your customers, and if you don’t have some form of “free shipping” offer, you’re increasing the risk of cart abandonment.

Back in 2011, comScore reported nearly half of all online online purchases had some sort of “free shipping” offer.

That same 2011 report noted that 61% of consumers said they are “somewhat likely” to cancel their order if free shipping is not offered.

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“Free shipping” becomes even more important when you learn that “Free Shipping Week” -started in 2012- increased online spending by 16% during the period of November 1st to December 21st with significant lifts (up to 53%!) on major shopping holidays.

2012 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2011 … Non-Travel (Retail) Spending … Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate PurchasesTotal U.S. – Home & Work LocationsSource: comScore, Inc. … Millions ($)

According to Deloitte, 20% of consumers believe “free shipping” is top reason to shop with a particular retailer. Turns out, “Free shipping” is a huge factor in online customer experience.

If you’re thinking free shipping is restrictive to your business, consider the different ways you could offer it to your customers (h/t Carol Tice):

• All Free or Qualifying Free (L.L Bean, Nordstrom)
• Free Shipping to Members Only (Amazon Prime)
• Free Shipping With Minimum Order (REI, Lego, Best Buy, J.Crew)
• Special Free Shipping Days (Fossil, Levi’s)
• Free Ship-To-Store (Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware)

Still think “Free Shipping” isn’t something your business can do? This article on Web Marketing Today gives some really great advice on how to tackle the free shipping conversation realistically. Perhaps my favorite advice is consider your order thresholds, if your average order is $50, offer free shipping for $60 orders.

Also, one of the many findings in a joint study by Harris Interactive & UPSwas that 39% of customers reported they’ll often purchase enough to get free shipping when available.

In this talk by Tony Hsish, CEO of Zappos, states the bulk of their marketing budget is spent not on inbound marketing, but on customer experience, mainly on surprise free overnight shipping.

Hsish says they’re operating under the theory that people aren’t shopping with Zappos based on price, but rather on a superior customer experience, which ultimately leads to strong word of mouth marketing.

Bonus Case Study: In this case study, Western-ware retailer, Shepler’s increases top line sales by 57%  in underperforming markets by offering free shipping.

Reason #2 – I Was Just Browsing

Repeat after me… cart abandonment is a part of the buying cycle.

In an extensive study from SeeWhy, they analyzed the behavior of over 600,000 people and a quarter of a million online transactions to further understand an online shopper’s motivation for buying and more importantly, when they don’t.

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What they discovered was that 99% of first time visitors will not buy on the first visit (but 75% of customers who abandon the cart do so with the intention to buy.)

In a sharp contrast, 81% of online merchants believe that the majority of abandoners are simply wasting the merchant’s time.

This miscommunication of intention leads to serious missed opportunities, especially when merchant believes cart abandoner’s aren’t worth marketing dollars.

This couldn’t be any further from the truth.

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According to the study, the average time delay between first visit and purchase is 19 hours, but 72%  of visitors will buy within the first 12-24 hours.

Seeing that 75% of visitors actually have intent to buy, it’s critical to get email remarketing & search remarketing triggered almost immediately after the cart gets abandoned.

Here’s the complete breakdown of the “time-to-purchase” data:

• 30% purchase in less than 20 minutes
• 50% purchase in 20 minutes to an hour
• 60% purchase in 1 to 3 hours
• 65% purchase in 3 to 12 hours
• 72% purchase in 12-24 hours
• 80% purchase in 3-7 days
• 95% purchase in 1-2 weeks
• 100% purchase in more than 2 weeks

Assuming a good portion of visitors are abandoning the cart because they’re looking for better shipping or better deals, you want to be as present as possible while they continue their search.

When I asked James Green, the CEO of Magnetic.com, an agency that specializes in ad retargeting he said (emphasis mine),

“You’re going to want to play with things like recency (how quickly you serve up an ad so someone who was on your site) and frequency (how often you serve the same ad to the same person) to find the sweet spot between super annoying (for the recipient) and not noticeable enough.  

When you’ve got each of these strategies running, you should turn on search retargeting, which is a display technique that enables you to show display ads for people who have been searching for relevant keywords – even if you haven’t seen them on your site or on your search campaign.”

All of this matters, because as it turns out, the study shows that the more a person abandons the same cart & the more they return your site, the more likely they are to convert.

To get a copy of the full shopping cart abandonment study – click here

Reasons #3 & 4 – Found A Better Price Elsewhere/Price Was Too Expensive

At first glance, this is pretty straightforward logic as to why someone would abandon.

According to a different study by Forrester it’s confirmed that “price & timing” are the major themes as to why shoppers abandon their carts.

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But in order to really understand how price plays a role in cart abandonment, you have to also understand that not all cart values are created equal.

Going back to the study by SeeWhy, we discover that low carts tend to have a higher abandonment rate.

My instinct says this is likely due to lower-priced carts contain higher amounts of commodity goods, so searchers abandon specifically to find a better price elsewhere.

The price to abandonment breakdown looks like this:

• $0 to $100 cart: 78% abandonment
• $101 to $250 cart: 52% abandonment
• $250 to $300 cart: 70% abandonment
• $300 to $350 cart: 70% abandonment
• $350 to $400 cart: 73% abandonment
• $400+ cart: 85% abandonment

Operating under the assumption that abandoners are intentionally leaving to find better prices, and understanding you’re probably not willing to race to the bottom on price,  here are a few retargeting communication strategies you can use to recover the lower priced carts.

 1. Use Retargeting to Emphasize “Free Shipping” & Other Customer Satisfaction Perks. 

“Free Shipping” “Live Support” or “Free Return Shipping” are all huge selling points and could become the deciding factor for lower cost cart abandoners. Harris Interactive has found that 56% of customers would be willing to switch brands based on better customer service options.

Using a service like Retargeter, you could run a campaign that leverages banner ads, video, and sidebar advertising, that highlight your customer satisfaction policies.

So if a cart abandoner leaves your site to watch a product video on Youtube, or searches a product review on a different blog, you’d be right there giving clearly demonstrating why your site is the best choice.

Remember that Zappos video from earlier? Tony Hsish credits their focus on Customer Satisfaction to be the reason they’ve generated over $1 Billion dollars in sales, even though they’re primarily a shoe company.

This article on Guildquality demonstrates just how deep Zappos focus on customer satisfaction really goes.

2. Offer a Loyalty Program To Cart Abandoners  

This is fairly common for the brick & mortar retail stores and E-commerce is just starting to catch on.

Target comes to mind where you get 5% off your first (and every) purchase + Free Shipping simply for being a RedCard member.

According to Forrester Research, loyalty program members also spend an average of up to 13% more  and increase shopper annual visits up to 20%.

If a low price cart abandoner starts searching for a bargain, but instead finds a quick win and repeat value through your loyalty program, you’re greatly improving your chances for repeat purchases in the future.

Going back to the SeeWhy data, we also learn that 11% of returning visitors who have made a purchase (within the previous 28 days) will make additional purchases, making a very strong case for offering a loyalty program up front.

Bonus Case Study: Cosmetics company Sephora increased their client loyalty index up to 82.88% and increased average logins by 2-3 times simply by implementing a loyalty program – Download Here

3. Use Retargeting & Call Tracking To Emphasize Over The Phone Ordering/Sales Support
Not specific to “low cost” cart abandonment, the creative for this retargeting tactic should be adapted for carts at various price points.

In a study by Harris Interactive, it’s stated that 53% of online shoppers cite a lack of human interaction as a reason for abandoning the shopping cart. The same study reports that 86% of consumers want more ways to interact with a brand.

By combining call tracking, display ad retargeting & click-to-call advertising, you could create a retargeting campaign that uses a call tracking solution to advertise over the phone ordering/sales support on the sites your visitor goes to after they abandon their cart.

Imagine how convenient it would be to call in your Amazon basket the same way  you’d order a pizza.

In the call tracking article, we sited a BIA/Kelsey study that stated “Inbound phone calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert than inbound web leads.”

For higher priced carts, retargeted ads would use a specialized call tracking number which routes to a specialist who answers questions about products and make recommendations & upsells related to the items in abandoned basket.

In this rough mockup below, I demonstrate what this would look like if I added a $1,000+ Camcorder from B&H Photo, then checked out “camcorder reviews” on PCMag.com

The idea here is to decouple phone support from your website, and use it as another option for buying. Considering that 71% of customers are concerned about businesses having their credit card information, making live human contact a primary selling point can go a long way in building trust.

<strong “>Bonus Case Study: Though I wasn’t able to find a case study that directly uses this method, I did find a facinating study that Forrester Consulting conducted by creating a composite company (3 retailers and 3 airlines) which used Click-to-call/click to chat solutions to resolve product, billing, and purchasing issues in real time. On site, this improved sales by 23%.

Considering that call tracking & ppc retargeting have been proven to increase leads & sales in unlikely categories, I’m confident combining these tactics would produce a positive ROI.

The Role of Recovery Emails In Winning Back Abandoned Shopping Carts

So far, we’ve talked a lot about ad retargeting, but what role can good ole recovery email play in getting visitors to complete their transaction?

Back in 2011, SeeWhy reported that only 16% of online merchants sent shopping cart abandonment emails, which is surprising because statistics also show that cart abandoners will spend 55% more.

It’s also noted that the transaction rates and revenue generated through email retargeting is significantly higher than other email marketing programs.

From my research, I’ve found the following to be critical in cart recovery emails:

Timing – Based on the SeeWhy first visit – purchase time earlier, the first recovery email should be sent within 24 hours. (58.7% of Top 500 Internet Retailers are doing this already)

Images – Including images of abandoned items, reviews & recommended products as well as a single call to action drive visitors back to the cart.

Phone Number – Featuring your phone number in a focused environment (like email) can diffuse any concerns your customer may have. It’s also critical to have the technology in place to track & route phone calls coming from recovery emails to properly measure conversion rates.

Customer Satisfaction Reminders – Satisfaction guarantees, return policies, shipping policies, and any other perks you offer to make your customers happy should be made known.

In this brilliant triggered email case study, Horse supply company SmartPak Equine hits all the right notes. They send abandoned cart email one day after a cart has been abandoned.

The email includes the names and images of the abandoned items, as well as prices, ratings & a link to return to the cart.

Also included are reminders of the company’s “100% happiness guarantee”, free shipping over $75, free return shipping, and price-match program.

According to the study, the campaign earns an average of $4.80 per email, and a 50% conversion among readers who click through.

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Another case study by Jetblue shows how the company uses a much softer approach in their email retargeting, and how they contemplated just how much personalization data to include in their recovery emails.

Finding the right balance for the airline resulted in 150% higher open rates and 200% higher conversion rates than standard promotional emails (resulting in 1,640% increase in revenue).

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While there is no “one size fits all” approach, it’s worth considering taking the recovery email a step further, and turning it into a full sequence.

In the email retargeting article, we mentioned SmileyCookie.com and how they used a triggered sequence to recover lost carts.

That sequence,  looks like this:

Email #1 – Sent immediately (Open Rate: 54% , CTR: 28%)

Offers a helpful customer service tone, subject line asks “Oops…was there a problem checking out?” Also includes ordering F.A.Qs, Customer Service Phone number, 100% satisfaction guarentee, single call to action.

Email  #2 – Sent 23 hours after first email (Open Rate: 50%, CTR 16%)

If the cart abandoner doesn’t respond, a second email in the sequence gets sent 23 hours after the first email, and offers a 10% off discount. This discount is also offered in the subject line “10% off your Smileycookie.com Order”

There is also a large graphic displaying the offer, with a coupon code that is hyperlinked to the customer’s abandoned cart. It’s important to note there are no customer service links in this email. Instead there are three links encouraging customers to complete their purchase.

Email #3 – Sent 6 days and 23 hours after second email (Open Rate: 23%, CTR 6%)

If a customer still hasn’t completed their purchase, roughly 4 days after the second email was sent, they’ll receive a nearly identical email to the second, only this one offers a 20% off discount. Subject line says “Come Back and Save 20% Off Your Order”

It must be noted: Offering discounts is not recommended as a part of the recovery strategy, as you do not want to condition your customers to expect it.

The important take-away from using the framework is that it corresponds directly with the “time-to-purchase” graph found under the “I was just browsing” section.

As always, frequency and recency is something that should always be tested to find the best fit for you.

Tools For The Job

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering what tools you would need in order to get everything in order.

• SeeWhy’s Core – Full featured solution, integrates with over 30 different services. Enterprise level cost.
• Rejoiner – Real time abandoned shopping cart recovery tools for online retailers.
• SalesCycle – Automatically recontact abandoners via email, sms or call centre.
• Vero – Send emails to your customers based on their actions – like abandoning cart.
• AbandonAid – Cart abandonment tool.
• CartRescuer – new kid in the block.
• + various ecommerce platforms have their own extensions you can use.

For call tracking tools see our call tracking post.

Conclusion – Cart Abandonment Isn’t The End, It’s Just The Beginning

If there’s anything you should take away from this article, it’s that abandoned carts are a huge opportunity to re-engage with would be customers to create a real, meaningful long term relationships with your visitors.

An abandoned cart is a great (if not the best) starting place to really demonstrate your core values because the cart abandoner has already spent their time interacting with your site and putting an order together. By using smart ad/email retargeting & call tracking to communicate what makes your company unique, you can encourage repeat purchases, and if you’re taking a page out of the Zappos playbook, that coveted word of mouth marketing.

The post Shopping Cart Abandonment: Why It Happens & How To Recover Baskets Of Money appeared first on Conversion Uplift.

Luckily, there are a few ways you can optimize your website to help generate more sales (almost) instantly. At Profitworks, we’ve learned a thing or two about conversion optimization and A/B testing, and we’ve uncovered a number of tactics to increase conversion. We found that as with most digital marketing methods, it can often take a little time to see results. However, you can implement these 10 tips on your website today and simply sit back and watch as they go to work for you.

1. Keep Your Home Page Simple, and Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience

This may be surprising to some of you, as many people assume you’re better off offering as many products as possible on your homepage to give your visitors a range of options. Entrepreneur, however, suggests that offering fewer products on your page with more text describing a specific topic will actually increase overall sales. This works because it allows your company to focus in on one or two specific products and answer any possible questions visitors may have.

Once great example of a simple, yet effective home page comes from Electronic Arts. Though they offer thousands of gaming titles, you’ll often only find a few recent titles mentioned on their home page. Also, take note that above their fold, they often only present only a couple of calls to action.

2. Add Videos to Your Key Conversion Pages

Mashable claims that adding videos to some of your top landing pages can result in an increase in conversions averaging at 86 percent! Our brains process visual information about 60,000 times faster than text, which means that any visitors to your site absorb information in videos better than they would by reading text. Learning about your product or service will be much more effective through video than text.

A great example of adding a video to your home page can be found at Ditto Residential. Not only is their home page very appealing, but their large, high-resolution video is sure to draw in any visitor.

3. Create Ways to Capture Email Addresses

Email marketing is still a very viable method of digital marketing and produces one of the top ROI across all marketing methods. However, you can’t do any email marketing without email addresses, right? By creating methods to capture a visitor’s email address, you create an opportunity to invite them back to your website through email marketing campaigns.

Forbes suggests that one of the top ways to capture email is to offer them something of value, such as a digital download, that won’t cost your company. A great example of this can be found on the Profitworks website. They offer a free website review in exchange for some information, such as an email address and your first and last name.

4. Build Trust with Testimonials, Associations, and Case Studies

Many companies already understand the importance of social proof, but if you don’t currently have a way to promote customer trust on your website, then you’re missing out on its rewards. Things such as testimonials, images of your staff, and case studies about your products or services can go a long way to convince a visitor to choose you.

Marketingdonut also suggests that you get as much accreditation as possible to help boost your online reputation, especially if face-to-face contact with your customers is limited or even non-existent. You can check out this list of testimonials from Westmount Signs to understand how they should be implemented.

5. Create Content That Targets Key Market Segments

Creating quality content is a surefire way to increase both traffic and conversions to your website, but you should also spend some time targeting different market segments. Writing content specific to certain market segments helps you to draw in different customers, and it gives you the opportunity to express your expertise in their industry. It’s a win-win! For an example, check out IBM’s site, where they offer full landing pages to a number of different industries.

6. Incorporate Upselling

How often does a sales person at a store try to upsell you a product? If they’re doing what their superior asked them to do, then your answer would be 100 percent of the time. If people can upsell inside of a business, is there as reason you can’t upsell online as well? Shopify suggests that upselling is actually 20 times more effective than cross-selling online, even though we see the latter more often.

Dollar Shave Club does an excellent job of upselling on their blades page, as they draw you in with the promise of each blade being only a dollar, only to reveal more expensive, premium options.

7. Clearly Explain Your Value Proposition on Your Landing Pages

A value proposition is simply a sentence or two that promotes the value of your products or services. Conversionxl suggests that any good value proposition should have these three qualities:

• It should explain how your product solves a customer’s problems.
• It should describe what specific benefits your product will deliver.
• It should explain why they should purchase from you instead of a competitor.

Check out this example from Trello that gets straight to the point.

8. Install Live Chat

Live chat tools are a fantastic way to generate ecommerce sales, but they can also be used to address any questions visitors to your site may have. They’re also more likely to be used than a contact form because they generate an immediate response. Almost every type of business website can benefit from this tool, even those who don’t do sales through their site. For a double bonus, you can also use this live chat tool to gather email addresses.

A great example of live chat done well comes from SnapEngage. Not only do they have chat available directly on the site, but you’ll also receive a chat notification whenever you enter a page with a 404 error.

9. Address Objections

One great way to improve the quality of your website is to address any objections or questions that may not be directly answered through the content already available. As suggested by the Harvard Business Review, it’s more important to focus on keeping up with your customers, not your competitors.

Take the time to go through your site and make a list of any hesitations you believe visitors may have based on the information already available. Critically evaluate your site in this step—don’t just assume that the visitor will be able to find the answers. You want to ensure everything is easily accessible. Once you’ve done this, provide a solution to the problems you uncovered. Not only will this increase conversions across your site, but it will also make it more user-friendly.

One of the best ways to do this is to answer some frequently asked questions, like ConvertKit has done on this page.

10. Perform A/B testing

With all of the above suggested tips for increasing sales across your website, the one thing that is most important is to A/B test all of these changes. Every business is unique, which means that their customers are unique, and certain things will work for some businesses that won’t work for others. By A/B testing, you can be sure to find out what works best for your website. Here are a few tests you can perform across your site right now:

• Changing up the text in your call to action buttons is a classic but easy test to run. Don’t be surprised if this simple change results in a two to three percent increase in conversions.
• Test different headlines at the top of your traffic-heavy landing pages. I’ve had pages leap from a one percent conversion rate to a 4.5 percent conversion rate just by testing out different headlines.
• If you have any stock images across your site, try replacing them with more candid photos of your business or employees.
• For your contact page, test using fewer fields in your contact form. This generally produces a positive result.

Here are two different home pages that I’ve tested against one another to determine which provides better results:

Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. 

The post 10 Things You Can Do Today to Increase Website Sales appeared first on Conversion Uplift.

Think of a product page as the perfect storm where information, images, customer service, and minor details all come together to convert a customer. No matter how a user reaches your page, they expect to be informed and educated about your product as well as provided with details like options, cost, and availability. However, if even one of these aspects is lacking, missing or incorrect, expect your customer to jump ship in search of a site that can meet their expectations.

So, what can you do to make your product pages stand out, meet your users’ expectations, and increase conversions?  In this post we’ll look at 5 proven tips that will do all of that and more.

1.Take Your Images Seriously

Customers rarely buy anything sight unseen so the quality and presentation of your pictures is hugely important.  Not only are the images likely the first thing a visitor sees on a page, but they must serve as a substitute to actually holding and feeling a product.  Because of this, they need to be detailed, interactive, and professional.

• Bigger Is Better – Multiples studies have shown that bigger images yield higher conversions, even when they push the copy below the fold.  Do not, however, increase size at the expense of quality, either use a better image or stick with the original.

• Offer Interaction Opportunities – Users should be able to zoom in on the details of the product and even rotate it with 360 degree imaging.  If you offer multiple colors and really want to go above and beyond, ensure that your image changes based on the color selected. This vendor not only allows you to view a larger image of the shoe, but also offers different angles and the ability to rotate it 360 degress.

• Be Consistent – Even if your images were taken over multiple years, customers should barely be able to tell.  This means doing your best to use the same background, lighting, etc, so that people viewing dozens of images per session don’t see a difference.

2.Entice Them with Your Descriptions

As the often-quoted saying goes, content is king.  This is true no matter what your product is or to whom you’re selling.  Words are a highly proven yet sadly underutilized resource when it comes to forming bonds with customers.  I know I am not alone when I say I am impressed with sites go above and beyond the classic bulleted list for their descriptions, it allows me to think a little deeper about the product and imagine myself using it.

• Tell a Story – Anyone that says they hate a good storyteller is lying.  Use your description to introduce your product, tell the customer where it’s from, how it’s made, and how they can enjoy it. If the following description of tea doesn’t make you want a cup, then I don’t know what will.

• Be Creatively Detailed – Obviously you should include all the relevant details about your product, but don’t be afraid to get creative with it.  If you can make a customer remember this description, you have done your job. William Sonoma (below) does a great job of explaining the features of their pizza peel and how you can use it.

• Consider Cross-Selling and Interlinking – If your images have other products in them, consider linking to them as a means to cross-sell.  Also, consider linking to other valuable information like guides on how to use your product or anything that could enhance the experience. In the image below, the primary product was actually a shirt, but the vendor smartly included the rest of the outfit on the same page.

3.Offer Product Reviews

Unless your product or service sucks, reviews are gold for any business.  They use both visual and textual cues to create a safety in numbers mentality, allowing customers to see that other people have bought this item and (hopefully) enjoyed it.  UK retailer Argos found that products with reviews had conversion rates 10% higher than those without. Checkout how Bestbuy (below) shows you the number of reviews next to the product image in addition to listing them fully in the corresponding tab.

• Don’t Be Afraid to Ask – If you haven’t been asking customers to review their purchases, don’t worry, just send them a follow up email asking for their $.02.  Also think about adding a “Write a Review” CTA for all products.

• Test Locations – A/B testing is an integral part of conversion optimisation and it’s about time we mentioned it in this post.  You will want to test the location of the reviews on your product pages to see if it results in any difference in sales.

• Leverage the Best Reviews – Someone write an awesome review for your product?  Consider using it in a marketing campaign, tweet, or on your homepage.

4.Provide Reassurances

We have said this before, but do not assume your customers are comfortable buying things online or even internet savvy.  Play it safe and assume they need reassurances before making a purchase and be prepared to take the steps necessary to prove that your site is legitimate and worthy of their business.

• Obvious Customer Service – Start by putting your phone number and/or email in plain site, you want customers to call you if they have a question instead of abandoning their session.  One site took it even further and offered a live chat option, a decision that increased their conversions by up to 50%.

• Social Proof – In addition to reviews, make sure to offer links to your social profiles on every page (usually in your footer).  Shoppers expect you to have these and it shows that you are real and accessible.

• Trust Seals and Badges – This is another thing definitely worth testing.  Just because you might be satisfied with just a SSL certificate doesn’t mean your customers will be as reassured.  Consider adding a security badge or trust seal to your site and see if conversions increase.

5.Pay Attention to Details

Let’s include one more saying for this post: the devil is in the details.  It’s quite easy to devote most of your time to improving images and creating amazing descriptions, but do not neglect the little things that can make or break a product page.

• Shipping and Availability – Do not make your customers add an item to their cart to see if it’s in stock and how expensive it is to ship.  Both of these (as well as any relevant policies) should be clearly stated on the product page.  And with 66% of abandoned shopping carts linked to shipping costs, shipping calculators have become a necessity.  Also, if you have a brick and mortar store, you should be listing whether or not it’s available there as well.

• Page Title and URL – Both of these are commonly overlooked but will make a big difference in the outward appearance of your site.  I understand that designing the menus and navigation for a large site can be daunting, but using arbitrary numbers instead of descriptive text will hurt you.  All of your page titles should clearly state what item is offered and match both the item name in the URL and on the page.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling cleaning supplies or imported luxury goods, these suggestions apply regardless of product. With close to 2 billion sites now currently online, it is almost guranteed your customers have other options if your site isn’t cutting it. And while implementing all of these will not be easy (especially if you have a large site), taking the time to do so will yield results.

Do you have any other suggestions for optimizing a product page? Let us know in the comments below!

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Conversion rate optimisation is all the rage these days. Experienced online marketers now agree that “CRO is as important as SEO,” meaning that if you’re not testing, you’re leaving money on the table.

And yet, with more people entering into the field, it’s more common to see the same testing mistakes over and over. While some these are not unique to CRO, many basic lessons can be learned before you dive head first into an ocean of AB testing.

Here are my top four mistakes to avoid with CRO testing:

1. Imaginary Lift

When performing a test, Optimizely and VWO show you graphs which make it easy to view the results and the statistical significance achieved. Here’s an example:

In this case, variation 2 shows a 50% improvement at a whopping 100% confidence interval. Nice result! This means that you can go back to your client and tell them you have improved conversion rate by 50% … right?

No!

Just because a test shows a 50% improvement in conversion rate does not mean that conversions have actually improved by 50%. The only thing that you know for certain at this point is that the second variation is converting at a higher rate than the original, but you do not know exactly by how much until you have additional data.

Let me repeat this again – just because you measured a 50% lift doesn’t mean conversions will improve by 50%. Usually, the conversion improvement is much less; in practice, getting only 50-60% of the measured lift is common. This is simply due to the fact that website performance tends to regress to the mean. The longer that you run the test, the less difference you will measure.

When you are performing your AB tests, it’s critical that you allow at least 4 weeks for tests to run in order to gain enough insight. You should also preferably have 100 or more conversions in each group. Now sometimes you will need to implement winning variations due to client demands, or you may have enough of a difference that you feel confident you’ve exceeded the initial goal (as in this case), but generally speaking, the more data and time you give the tests, the better your results are going to be.

2. Hacking, not Strategizing

Many of the same people who are involved in the tech “startup” scene are also people who would identify themselves as “growth hackers.” I love hacking as much as anything else – even this site and concept was created through lots of trial and error – but CRO is not the same!

To get the best results with conversion rate optimisation, you need to have a strategy and cannot simply test through trial and error. The process usually looks like this:

• Gather Insight: Review the Google Analytics account to identify areas of drop off. Review competitors to identify areas where you can make yourself more competitive.
• Test Hypotheses: Queue up about 2-4 tests that you generate based on the insight. Measure each for 1-4 weeks.
• Rinse, wash, repeat: Look at the data, and come up with a few more ideas.

Many amateur testers will simply come up with ideas at random – “What if we changed the products on the homepage?” – rather than have a long-term testing strategy. When you do this, you end up with a lot of random tests at random times, and minimize the total amount of conversion lift.

3. Statistical Significance and AA Testing

Just because a test reaches statistical significance doesn’t mean that it’s valid.

One of the things that may surprise new CRO professionals is the importance of “AA” testing. An “AA” test simply compares the conversion rate of two website versions, and ensures that your test software is setup correctly. If your testing software shows a different conversion rate, or a statistically significant result between the two site versions, something is clearly wrong with your test setup. While it may not sound common, you would be very surprised at how frequently the javascript used by VWO and Optimizely can interfere with websites.

The other issue that many people miss is that statistical significance, by definition, assumes that the website data is normally distributed, which is not always true. In fact, a normal distribution is somewhat naive to assume for most websites. Smaller sites have no other option but to use a standard distribution, but for sites with enough data, it’s worth trying to suss out their true distribution curves to test against rather than make a blanket assumption.

4. Expecting Small Changes to Bring Big Impact

Changing a button color will NOT improve your conversion rate by 50%!

The web is littered with case studies of clients claiming to double conversion rate with minor changes. This nearly never happens. In practice, only large, drastic changes to your website will lead to huge conversion improvements, or a combination of smaller tests.

Many people assume that changing the headline on a website, or changing the CTA, will be enough to get a 20% improvement in conversion. Usually though, these types of changes will yield a 5-10% improvement at best. To get a 20% or more lift, you’ve got to do some major redesign work, or change something else about the page.

Some of the largest improvements that we’ve gotten clients have been through:

1. Shipping Offers: Giving Free Shipping to customers is a HUGE change that will lead to massive conversion improvements, usually 20% or more. You also need to check that profitability improves accordingly, but we’ve shown ways you can make it work.
2. Drastic Choice Reduction: Reducing the amount of CTAs by 30-50% will improve conversion as much as 25% on e-commerce sites.
3. Positioning and Competitive Advantage: Strong USPs and strong pricing/offers compared to competitors are often needed.

Some case studies have been through making a series of small changes – such as minor checkout changes, minor homepage changes – but almost all of the big wins we’ve gotten from clients have been from major changes, not just small tests.

Summary

Don’t expect CRO – or anything else in life! – to come immediately and easily. It takes hard work! Create a strategy, do your due diligence in test hypotheses, make large changes, and be sure that you are measuring correctly. With all these in place, you can be on track to achieve large gains in conversion that so many site owners have enjoyed.

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How to Recoup Lost Shoppers and Increase Conversions

Note: This post was originally authored by Quincy Smith.

According to Baymard, 68% of shoppers abandon their online shopping cart before completing their purchase. This results in e-commerce companies losing an incredible $4 billion dollars of revenue from a single stage of their funnel: the checkout process.

Let that sink in for a second – companies are losing out on billions of dollars every year not because of their products or marketing, but because their online shopping cart is either too confusing, complicated, or unappealing to their customers.  While the argument can be made that some abandonment is unavoidable, there are steps you can take to decrease your abandonment rate and turn shoppers into buyers.

Keep It Simple

1.  Don’t Require Registration

This is number one for a reason – forced registration is like kryptonite to a checkout process.  Your best bet is to mimic Apple and provide a guest checkout option where your customers can proceed without creating an account:

If your customers absolutely must register, then forgo the traditional “Create an Account” or “Register” buttons for one that says “Continue.”  

Retailer ASOS did this and saw an 50% decrease in abandonment for that step of the process.

2.  Don’t Ask for Too Much Information

This study from VWO saw an 11% increase in conversions by removing 3 fields from their registration form, proving that less is more during checkout and you should only ask for information that is absolutely needed.  According to Jesse Ness of Ecwid

Any extra field or information that is requested beyond what is necessary to complete the order reduces the conversion rate.

This means fields like middle name, business phone number, and business name can usually be omitted or at the very least marked as a non-requirement.

3.  Localize for International Shoppers

If your company offers international shipping, you might be bleeding potential customers if you don’t allow shoppers to switch between currencies or languages.  Both 
Shopify and Magentoallow for these options and even offer location-based defaults depending on the configuration.

A good place to start with this is Google Analytics – check out all the countries from which you receive traffic and compare that against your actual sales from those countries.  If your conversion rate is disproportionate to your domestic traffic and sales, then it’s time to consider a change.

Etsy does both of these really well, they offer the ability to change between both currencies and languages as well as filter by products that ship to your region.

4.  Remove Navigation to Pages Outside of the Checkout Funnel

Once a user is ready to checkout, you want to do everything you can to provide that final nudge towards converting.  This includes simplifying the page by removing all distractions, the biggest of which is the ability to navigate away from the process.  Removing all links to pages outside of the checkout process will help keep customers focused on completing the checkout steps without temptation.

Make the Customer Feel Secure

5.  Don’t redirect to a different URL

If you have ever been redirected during checkout from a known website to an obscure e-commerce payment site then you know the impact it can have.  If not, imagine you are about to purchase some prime treats from vegandogfood.com and they redirect you to randomecommercesite.com to handle your checkout and payment – what would you think?

You’d likely think something along the lines of:

• Why am I here?
• Is this site secure?
• Do I want to take the risk of giving them my credit card information?

A lot of people will backout of the sale at this point because they don’t trust the redirect (even I have cancelled past orders because of this and I understand why they redirected).  Even though online shopping is far from a new concept, shoppers are still weary of giving out their payment information and confusion like this can spook them.

Ideally your checkout page should share your URL and utilize words like ‘checkout’, ‘buy’, or ‘purchase’.  Amazon does a great job of this by using ‘buy’ as well as showing you what step you are on (in this case it’s shipping).

6.  Display Trust Seals

As we mentioned above, many customers are nervous about handing over their shipping and billing information online, even when the site is extremely secure.  One way to minimize this nervousness is by prominently displaying security badges and seals. A case study by  Lemonstand showed a 14% increase in conversions simply by adding these seals and badges to a site.

7.  Awesome Customer Service

No matter how savvy the shopper or optimized the site, people will always make mistakes and have questions.  The key to saving these customers is often a clear and obvious customer service presence that can come to their rescue.  Your best options are an online chat function (like Wiggle) or an obvious phone number (like Crate and Barrel), but we’d love to see you test them both!

Wiggle:

Be Transparent

8. Show All Fees and Taxes

While being transferred to some obscure site during checkout can be frustrating, a site that doesn’t show the total cost of an item (or worse, tries to hide it), is infuriating.  Your checkout should be 100% transparent and there should be no surprise charges or fees when a customer is ready to submit their payment.  This means you should display:

• Item price
• Tax (if applicable)
• Shipping (if applicable)
• Miscellaneous fees

The most notorious of these surprise fees is the ‘processing fee,’ a term that is about as ambiguous as you can get.  If you charge a processing fee we highly recommend calling it something else to reflect its true purpose – doing so will increase your credibility.

9. Display Checkout Steps

Think of your checkout like a map – customers want to know where they are and how much further they have to go to complete their order.  Al Brookbanks, founder of CubeCart, recommends making sure

“The user journey to checkout is very clear after an item has been added to the basket.” 

We hesitate to call the inclusion of a progress bar a requirement since we are firm believers in testing everything, but it’s pretty close.

Again, Amazon is a great example:

Don’t Give Up Without a Fight

10. Send Follow Up and Reminder Emails

Don’t worry if a customer decides to abandon their cart on your site, all hope is not lost.  Assuming the customer was logged in during their session, you should still be able to close some of those sales if your e-Commerce platfrom tracks abandonment.  For example, CS-Cart allows admins to filter by how long a cart has been abandoned and send those users emails that mention the forgotten items.

Additonally, remarketing services like RejoinerandSaleCycle,help companies send follow up messages to customers who left without completing their purchase and include reminders, images of the abandoned items, and discounts.  According to SaleCycle, nearly half of recovery emails are opened and 1/3 result in a sale, meaning it’s definitely worth your time to develop and implement a remarketing plan.

11. Use an Exit Popup

If the user is not signed in during their session or doesn’t have an account, another option you have to save the sale is to convince them not to leave your site at all (or entice them to come back).  Consider using an exit popup to offer a discount or coupon if a customer tries to leave your page at any point during the checkout process.  Not only will this keep them interested, but it also might provide you with their email if they opt in, which is a decent consolation prize if they never convert.

Test Everything

Your company should be living by the motto “always be testing.”  Never assume you can just apply everything listed above and reap the benefits – every site and every customer is different, it is important to test what works best for you.  In addition, don’t go crazy and test everything at once, start by developing a plan and test over a period of time to ensure your results are statistically significant.  Once you prove or disprove one hypothesis, then you can move onto the next.

The post 11 WAYS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR ONLINE SHOPPING CART AND CHECKOUT appeared first on Conversion Uplift.

With over 5 billion mobile devices out there in the world, it has never been more important to have a dedicated site for your mobile visitors.  Mobile commerce purchases already account for 15% of online sales and are expected to make up 25% by the end of 2017.  However, when you consider the conversion rate for mobile is 1.14% compared to 3.15% for desktop, it’s clear optimisation efforts still have a long way to go.  The much-hyped “Mobilegeddon” was just the beginning – sure, your site might be responsive, but is it converting as well as it could be?  To maximize your sales, opt-ins, etc, you need to focus on a myriad of factors, including speed, user experience, and social presence all while battling variables like screen size and browser choice. 

In this post we are going to examine 9 things that will help your site appeal to, engage, and convert your mobile visitors. We’ll take a look at how mobile optimisation isn’t that different from desktop and explain a few tips to capture the attention of any visitor, no matter how distracted.

1.  Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

You can put away your paper bags and anxiety medicine, you’re not going to need either.  Luckily, optimizing a mobile site is very similar to optimizing a desktop one, so unless you are new to the whole CRO game, transitioning should be a snap.  Processes like A/B testing and personalization are still important and principles like keeping your message above the fold still apply regardless of device.  However, there are two major differences between users on mobile and those on desktop:

• Their Attention Is Divided – Think about how many times you use your phone during the day and the different environments of each interaction.  Maybe you were on the train, walking to lunch, or waiting in line to checkout – unlike desktops you can use your phone anywhere, but are subject to the endless distractions that come with that freedom.
• Their Experience Is Semi-Dependent on Their Device – Variables like screen size, power, and signal strength all dictate what a device can do, and your site must be able to adapt to them all.

If you can understand these two differences and keep them in mind while optimizing your site, you will have much more success with engagement and conversions.

2.  Recognize Your Limitations

Mobile devices are restricted by design, a smartphone or tablet is almost always a secondary device and consumers are willing to sacrifice size and performance for portability.  However, many designers and marketers continue to treat all landing pages the same and ruin the experience for mobile users.  Don’t fall into this group.  It doesn’t matter if a visitor is using a phablet or a Blackberry, they are relying on far less space and performance than a regular computer and are counting on you to make up for it.

• Eliminate Pinching and Zooming – Please, whatever you do, don’t make a user pinch and zoom to view your page in its entirety.  Your site should be responsive, meaning it should work regardless of screen size, so if your visitors are constantly using their fingers to shrink the page and scroll sideways, you’re going to have a bad time.
• Make Your Forms Even Shorter – We have said before that form length plays a huge part in conversions, but it’s even more so on mobile.  Mobile screens are small, so even slightly reducing the amount a user has to scroll in order to fill out a form will make a difference.
• Forget the Videos – Videos are great on desktop but when it comes to mobile, they are frustrating at best and crippling at worst.  Even if your user’s device is able to play your video format and has a connection fast enough to do it, you are wasting a large chunk of real estate even giving them the option.  On the other hand, if your user is unable to play videos (iPhone and Flash…cough, cough) or has a slow connection, you just wasted valuable space for nothing.  Play it safe and skip the videos and consider offering a link to your YouTube channel instead.

3.  Reevaluate Your Metrics

Take a second and think about how many devices you own that can connect to the internet.  Now, think about if you used more than one of them to research or complete a recent online purchase.  According to this Forrester report, 75% of online-capable adults in the US have at least 2 devices connected to the internet and 67% switched between them while performing tasks like research and purchasing items.

Imagine you own a brick and mortar store with an online presence.  Now let’s consider two scenarios, the first of which involves a user researching a product on their phone, seeing you have it in stock, and then driving to your store to physically pick it up.  The second scenario involves another user researching the same product on their tablet, but completing the purchase later that day on their desktop.

These scenarios are respectively referred to as offline and multiscreen conversions, and unless you way ahead of the game, it is unlikely your analytics will count either of those mobile visits as a conversion.

Furthermore, while the ultimate goal for your site is to convert users, a mobile site could have a very different way of achieving that than your desktop site.  For example, if you are trying to get local users to call your store, then you are going to be far less concerned with how many pages they view during their session and more interested in how the “Call Us” CTA is performing.  Same goal, but different metrics.

4.  Micro-Moments Are the Future

A micro-moment is a relatively new term, but it comes right from the top.  Defined by Google,

“Micro-moments are moments of high intent and engagement, many of which happen in spare moments, such as waiting in line, commuting, or generally when not preoccupied with something else.”

Companies should view these moments as opportunities and design processes to take advantage of them whenever possible.  Apple is already doing this by displaying the app icon when you are close to a business or shop that has an app not already installed on your iDevice.  Taking it even further, Facebook recently announced their Place Tips and Beacon technologies which allow businesses to push information to nearby smartphones.  The goal of both of these technologies is to target consumers when they are primed to make a purchase or decision.

While location-based marketing is nothing new, this level of detail is.  Imagine being able to push a deal offering buy-one-get-one baguettes when a customer is in your the bakery, or incentivising everyone who walks into the store to like you on Facebook for a 10% discount (a practice already common in Asia).  Expect companies to leverage this to the hilt, not just for offline purchases, but also for online engagement.

5.  Mobile Users Utilize Search Functionality A Lot

All search technologies are not created equal and as mobile e-commerce becomes more popular, your search box is quickly becoming a factor in whether or not your user converts.  Even if your site is designed flawlessly and users rave about their experience, it’s still nowhere close to as functional as your desktop site.

Luckily, solid search functionality can help you if you know how to let it:

• Provide Filters – Filters like “bestselling,” “featured,” and “new items” help visitors narrow down their results.  This is especially helpful when you have hundreds or thousands of products.
• Populate Terms Automatically – Your users will love you if you can save them time while searching and successfully guess what they are looking for.  You search box should start offering suggestions after the first few letters of their search so they can click and move on.
• Realize Mobile Users Search Differently – Abbreviations are key in mobile text and searching is not an exception.  Terms will get misspelled or shortened and your search box should be configured to display its best guess as to what they are looking for.  Displaying nothing is not an option, no matter what the device.

6.  Adjust Your Call-to-Actions

CTAs create a bit of give and take on mobile.  You have far less space in which to convey your message, but you are provided with additional options for engagement.

• Keep It Short and Sweet – Less space means less text so you need to be both captivating and to the point.  Pro Flowers increased its conversions by over 20% by reducing the amount of text on their site.
• Leverage the Technology – You may have forgotten, but these internet devices are also phones, and both Android and iOS systems offer “click to call” functionality if you list your phone number as text.  It doesn’t matter if you have a local store or drop ship from China, always give your users the option to call you and make it as easy as possible.
• Integrate with Maps – Remember when we said to eliminate pinching and scrolling?  That goes double for maps on a mobile site!  We recommend integrating your location with the common map apps and offering a “Find Us” or “Get Direactions” CTA so users can find your store with ease.

7.  Test Different Variables

In the beginning of this post we mentioned mobile users are affected by a myriad of variables, far more than desktop users.  Standardization is rare across companies with it comes to mobile devices, so it’s important to test your site against as many variations as possible.

Utilize emulators like Mobile Test Me or Mobile Phone Emulator and start testing your site against the following variables:

• Screen size
• Manufacturer
• Operating system
• Browsers
• Network speed (WiFi/4G/3G/Edge)

8.  Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

Emails are opportunities, and If a user trusts you enough to hand over their email address, the worst thing you can do is disappoint them with whatever you send.  With nearly ½ of emails being opened on mobile devices, it should be a no-brainer to make sure your messages look their best on both phones and tablets.  But, in case you need a few pointers, we’ve got you covered:

• Reduce Image Size – Refer back to #7 above, there is no guarantee the recipient of your email will have wifi and waiting for images to load is a guaranteed to annoy some of your recipients.
• Increase Text Size – Don’t make users squint to read what you sent them, shorten the message a bit and increase the size (including links and CTAs) to make sure they are able to see and understand everything clearly.
• Invest in a Template – Emails are an extension of your site and your company, paying for a responsive template will ensure the first two items on this list happen every time and always look their best.

9.  Embrace Social Media Integration

40% of all cell phone owners access at least one social media site via their mobile device.  Marketing on the likes of Twitter and Facebook is nothing new, but with Shopify and Facebook joining together to offer “buy” buttons in individual feeds, the argument can be made to make social media the priority of your mobile strategy.  However, even if you don’t use Shopify, there are some steps you can take to increase the performance of your profiles:

• Images Are King – Regardless of whether your goal is go viral or not, images reign supreme in the land of social media.  Even if you sell a service instead of a product, jump on the bandwagon and publish quotes or talking points overlaid on awesome backgrounds.
• Landing Pages Are Still Important – When running mobile marketing campaigns on social media, make sure you have a landing page setup to receive the traffic.  As with desktop, just sending them to your homepage and hoping for the best is wasting your time and theirs.
• Offer Deals – 70% of Facebook users access the site daily so use this to your advantage and offer deals and discounts there first before sending an email.
• Know Your Audience – Like it or not, different buyer personas prefer different social media sites.  For example, 43% of online women use Pinterest compared to just 13% of men.  Find out where your customers spend most of their time and focus your efforts there.

Conclusion

With 50% of Google searches now coming from mobile devices, companies stand to gain a ton from a properly optimized mobile site.  Luckily, the road to increasing your conversions is not some complicated journey complete with a new processes and a steep learning curve – if you build on the principles of desktop optimisation while keeping your mobile users in mind, you will be off to a great start.

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