What do you think about first: technology or your product?
On the latest episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives podcast, host Kailin Noivo is joined by Rigel St. Pierre, Director of Engineering at Mejuri. Together, they discuss fitting emerging technologies into a business roadmap, whether to outsource engineering, and how to protect consumer data in the age of AI.
Where Does Technology Sit?
There’s a trend within the DTC and eCommerce industry for companies to try to brand themselves as technology companies, even though their value comes from their core product. With Rigel’s engineering background, he’s incredibly interested in all of the emerging technologies of today, but he still keeps the product front and center.
Mejuri is, at its core, a jewelry brand, and so any technology the business incorporates needs to enhance that offering. This could be to help power the retail side or to support the product supply team and the personalization of customer experiences.
Further, Rigel emphasizes that you need to make sure the technology will still be relevant further down your roadmap. If it’s only going to work for now and will be redundant in five years, it’s probably not worth the investment.
Buy VS. Build
The build versus buy debate often refers to product solutions, but it can somewhat apply to engineering. Specifically, eCommerce companies need to decide whether they want to build an engineering team or work with an agency.
Rigel advises brands to begin by bringing in a product person. That way, they can ensure that everything is thought of from a product perspective and all of the existing team are aligned on KPIs. From there, you can decide whether to outsource or build an internal team, knowing it will power your product offering at its core.
That being said, even if you do build your own team, Rigel advises never building your own error software.
Data Privacy and AI
It is very clear today that AI is here to stay. However, many people still, rightly so, have concerns over its use.
For Mejuri, the main concern has surrounded data privacy. With Open AI, any data would be fed back into the model, so they have been very mindful about playing with it, protecting both themselves and their customers. Instead, they have mostly utilized it for internal operational efficiency, assisting with writing documents and taking meeting notes.
Rigel believes that both the brand and the wider world are still early in the AI journey, and its use cases can only expand from here. Ultimately, Mejuri’s focus is on keeping their customers protected at all times.
Collaboration and Authenticity
Rigel advocates for brands to be more open with each other, especially if they are solving the same problems in different spaces.
Not too long ago, many brands would hold their strategies very close to their chest, but everything has recently been opening up. For example, Mejuri have recently been evaluating different eCommerce platforms and building relationships with brands who are further ahead in their journey so they can learn what their experience was like. In turn, they have been able to feedback their experience with certain warehousing softwares, creating a collaborative relationship between the brands.
Really, being open is a win-win for everyone.
Listen to the Full Episode Below:
Tune in to this episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives with Rigel St. Pierre to learn more about fitting technology into your roadmap.
Rigel St. Pierre is a Toronto-based developer and software engineer with an impressive list of clients under his belt. Today, he is the Director of Engineering at Mejuri, a jewelry brand redefining luxury. Prior to this, he was the Engineering Manager at Half Helix.
Posted on June 27, 2023
In today’s connected world, eCommerce has become an inevitable part of life, transforming the way we shop and interact with brands. With 2.64 billion global digital buyers in 2023, the incredible growth potential of the eCommerce landscape cannot be denied.
In such a competitive landscape, the key to success lies in differentiating your business from the multitude of others vying for ever-diminishing consumer attention.
The single most impactful differentiator? Exceptional customer service and support.
As the online marketplace grows, the demand for prompt and personalized customer service is intensifying. Traditional models of customer service are often unable to meet these demands due to their reactive nature. Enter machine learning (ML), a subfield of artificial intelligence that’s rapidly changing the customer service landscape by offering proactive, personalized, and predictive support.
But how exactly does this all work in the eCommerce industry? What are the key advantages of implementing eCommerce machine learning in your customer service and support systems, and how are these benefits seen in real-life applications? Read along to find answers to these questions.
The Role of Machine Learning in eCommerce Customer Service
In an increasingly digital world, the eCommerce landscape is constantly evolving, and with it, customer expectations. Consumers demand a seamless, personalized, and efficient online shopping experience, which can only be delivered with the help of advanced technologies such as machine learning and deep learning. This paradigm shift has brought machine learning to the forefront of the eCommerce industry, primarily focusing on customer service and support.
Machine learning, an innovative subfield of artificial intelligence, involves the development of complex algorithms that allow computers to learn from and make decisions or predictions based on data. Unlike traditional computer programs, these algorithms don’t need to be explicitly programmed. Instead, they evolve and adapt based on the information they process, which means they become more accurate and efficient over time.
In the context of eCommerce, machine learning can be a genuine game-changer. With the ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data, these algorithms can unearth profound insights that would otherwise remain hidden.
The more data these algorithms process, the more accurately they can anticipate and respond to the needs of your existing and potential customers.
Benefits of Machine Learning in eCommerce Customer Service
Embracing machine learning in customer service is not just a trend; it’s a strategic move that offers significant benefits and provides a distinct competitive advantage for eCommerce companies.
Personalization and customer segmentation
By analyzing various data points such as browsing patterns, purchase history, and customer preferences, ML classification algorithms can create detailed customer profiles. These profiles enable online retailers to build personalized recommendation engines, tailor promotional messages, and even predict future purchase behavior.
Moreover, machine learning enables customer segmentation on a granular level. Instead of simply segmenting customers based on broad categories like age or geographical location, ML algorithms can segment customers based on previous customer behaviors and preferences, creating highly-targeted marketing campaigns.
Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service, utilizes machine learning algorithms to analyze customer data and preferences, which are then used to provide personalized fashion recommendations. Their algorithms take numerous factors into account, like customer feedback, purchasing history, and current fashion trends, to create recommendation algorithms and deliver a highly tailored service that resonates with their clientele.
Predictive analytics for proactive support
The power of eCommerce machine learning also extends to predictive analytics, which can be a game-changer for customer support. Predictive analytics use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and trends in user behavior and predict future outcomes.
For instance, if a customer often faces issues while checking out, predictive analytics can proactively identify this and prompt customer service to reach out and assist the customer. This proactive approach not only resolves issues before they escalate but also makes the customer feel valued and taken care of, improving both user experience and customer loyalty.
Harnessing the power of predictive analytics, Delta Air Lines efficiently forecasts customer service needs, considering variables such as flight timetables, historical trends, and exceptional occurrences.
The derived insights enable them to predict the requirement for customer support personnel at any given time. By doing so, Delta ensures optimal staffing, preventing unnecessary manpower during slack periods and guaranteeing adequate customer service representatives during peak times.
Automating routine tasks for improved efficiency
Customer service agents often spend a significant amount of their time handling routine tasks such as answering frequently asked customer questions, updating order statuses, and managing returns. By automating these routine tasks with machine learning for eCommerce, retail businesses can free up their customer service agents to focus on more complex customer inquiries that require human intervention.
Machine learning can automate these tasks around the clock, providing instant support to customers irrespective of time zones or holidays. This constant availability drastically improves the efficiency of customer support and ensures that customers always have access to timely assistance.
Real-time data analysis for quick decision-making
In today’s fast-paced eCommerce environment, being able to make quick decisions based on real-time data is crucial. Machine learning excels at processing vast amounts of data in real-time, providing eCommerce companies with valuable insights that can drive immediate decision-making.
For instance, if an error is detected in the eCommerce platform, machine learning algorithms can identify it quickly, allowing brands to resolve the issue before it impacts a significant number of customers.
Similarly, real-time analysis can reveal sudden changes in customer behavior or market trends, enabling businesses to adapt their strategies swiftly, which can lead to an improved customer experience and give businesses a competitive edge.
This real-time data analysis allows Glossier to quickly identify trending products, sudden shifts in consumer preferences, or any spikes in customer complaints about a particular product. These insights enable Glossier to make quick, data-driven decisions such as adjusting their inventory based on trending products, addressing issues with a specific product, or tailoring their marketing campaigns based on the latest consumer trends.
Leveraging Machine Learning for Customer Interactions
The modern consumer expects businesses to be available round-the-clock, offer immediate responses, and understand their unique needs and preferences. Achieving this level of customer interaction might seem challenging, but it becomes significantly more manageable with the application of machine learning.
Chatbots and virtual assistants
A prominent application of eCommerce machine learning in enhancing customer interactions is the development and implementation of chatbots and virtual assistants. These tools have transformed the way businesses communicate with their customers, enabling 24/7 support, immediate responses, and increasingly personalized service.
Chatbots and virtual assistants, powered by machine learning, can interact with customers in a surprisingly human-like manner, answering queries, providing instant replies, relevant product recommendations, virtual customer assistance, and even facilitating transaction processes and business workflows. What sets them apart is their ability to learn from every interaction, constantly improving their communication skills and understanding of customer needs.
Babylon Health’s symptom checker stands as a stellar example of how AI chatbots can revolutionize healthcare. This innovative tool is the brainchild of a collaborative effort between doctors, engineers, and scientists who harnessed the power of machine learning and natural language processing to facilitate organic conversations.
As users input their symptoms, the chatbot intelligently interprets the information provided, identifies potential risk factors and causes, and suggests potential courses of action.
Enhancing Customer Support with Machine Learning
While customer interactions form a key part of eCommerce customer service, the foundation of a robust support system is its ability to handle issues and resolve customer queries effectively and efficiently. Here’s where machine learning comes into play, elevating the support experience by offering predictive and personalized solutions, reducing resolution time, and automating repetitive manual tasks.
An important aspect of customer support is issue detection and resolution. In traditional customer service models, businesses only address issues when customers report them. With machine learning, however, businesses can take a proactive approach.
eCommerce machine learning algorithms can monitor and track eCommerce data to detect anomalies and system errors, or even for the purpose of eCommerce fraud detection. This allows online stores to identify and resolve issues and fraudulent activities before they significantly impact the experience for customers.
Another crucial area where machine learning can enhance customer support is by speeding up response and resolution times. ML algorithms can automatically categorize incoming customer queries based on their urgency and complexity, ensuring that critical issues are prioritized. They can also suggest solutions based on similar past queries, enabling customer support agents to resolve issues faster.
Dealing with a significant volume of customer inquiries daily, software company Freshworks leverages machine learning to analyze and categorize each incoming ticket based on factors like the nature of the issue, the urgency, and the technical skills required to handle it. Once classified, the tickets are automatically routed to the appropriate support agent or team that is best equipped to resolve the issue.
Lastly, machine learning for eCommerce can also aid in providing personalized customer support. By analyzing past interactions and purchase histories, ML algorithms can understand each customer’s unique needs and preferences. This allows customer support agents to provide personalized solutions, enhancing the customer’s experience with the brand.
Use Machine Learning for eCommerce as Your Superpower
As we’ve explored, machine learning and deep learning are powerful allies for eCommerce platforms, enabling them to provide stellar support and service for customers. Through its capabilities of personalization, predictive analytics, automation, and real-time data analysis, ML is setting the stage for a new era of customer service.
Moreover, by monitoring and tracking eCommerce data, machine learning algorithms can identify issues in real-time, allowing swift intervention. This proactive approach minimizes customer churn and frustrations, enhances overall customer satisfaction, and helps eCommerce businesses retain their valuable customer base.
But as we continue to innovate in this field and uncover new ways of harnessing the power of ML, the incorporation of eCommerce machine learning is set to rise exponentially. The eCommerce of the future isn’t just online, it’s intelligent, intuitive, and customer-centric.
As businesses in the eCommerce industry adapt to this new reality, the question isn’t if they should use ML-based solutions, but how well they can implement them to create a superior and personalized shopping experience.
Posted on June 23, 2023
As an eCommerce developer, you may encounter the “The Object Does Not Support the Operation or Argument” JavaScript error while developing web applications. This error means that an object in your code does not support the operation or argument you are trying to perform, resulting in an error message. This guide explains the underlying causes behind this error and provides step-by-step troubleshooting and resolution steps.
Investing the Code for the JavaScript Error
When faced with this error, the first step is to investigate where in your code the error is occurring. To do this, open up your browser’s developer console and look for the error message along with the line number where it occurred. This will give you a starting point for troubleshooting.
Potential Underlying Reasons for this JavaScript Error
There are several underlying reasons behind “The Object Does Not Support the Operation or Argument” JavaScript error. Some of the most common causes are:
Using methods that are not supported on certain objects or elements
Using incompatible data types in your code
Syntax errors in your code
JavaScript library conflicts
How Does this JavaScript Error Occur?
This error can occur while working on any eCommerce project that uses JavaScript. Common scenarios that can lead to this error include:
Attempting to manipulate the DOM with incorrect or unsupported methods
Working with older versions of JavaScript, or using libraries that are incompatible with your code
Using incompatible data types, such as strings instead of integers, in your code
Troubleshooting and Resolving Steps
Now that we understand the possible causes of this error, let’s go through the troubleshooting and resolution steps to fix it.
Step 1: Check the method compatibility
First, check that the method you are using is compatible with the object or element you are trying to manipulate. This error can occur if you try to call an unsupported method on an object. Refer to the browser’s documentation to see what methods are supported.
In the code example above, the “visibility” property is spelled incorrectly. This will throw the error since the method is unsupported.
Step 2: Double-check data types
Make sure you are using the correct data types in your code. Using incompatible data types can cause this error as well. To avoid this, make sure you are using the appropriate data type for each variable and input.
Code example:
let sum = 2 + '2';
This code example concatenates the number 2 and the string “2”. This will result in the error since they are different data types.
Step 3: Look for syntax errors
Syntax errors can also cause this JavaScript error. To ensure that your code is correct, double-check your syntax for any errors.
Code example:
function displayAlert() {
alert("Hello World!");
}
This code example is missing parenthesis after the function name. This will cause the error since the syntax is incorrect.
Step 4: Check for library conflicts
If none of the above steps work, it’s time to check for JavaScript library conflicts. Library conflicts occur when two different libraries are used to implement a function or method, causing errors.
The above code includes two different JavaScript libraries (jQuery and Prototype) that could conflict with one another.
Best Practices to Avoid this Error
To avoid encountering this error in the future, follow these best practices:
Check documentation and compatibility before using new libraries or frameworks
Regularly review your code for syntax errors
Use data types consistently and correctly throughout your code
Refactor your code periodically to avoid any conflicts
Conclusion
The “The Object Does Not Support the Operation or Argument” JavaScript error can occur during eCommerce development for a variety of reasons. However, by following the troubleshooting and resolution steps outlined in this guide, you can successfully identify and resolve the error. By incorporating the best practices to avoid this error, you can ensure robust and error-free eCommerce web applications.
Leverage Noibu to detect all such errors on your eCommerce website
Noibu is an eCommerce monitoring platform that proactively detects site errors in real time and provides actionable details you can use to efficiently resolve them without having to replicate, thus reducing error resolution time by 70%.
What’s more, the platform calculates the predicted impact of each error on the annual revenue so you can confidently prioritize those with the highest impact and boost your top line. So, even though JS and HTML errors are inevitable, they can be proactively monitored and efficiently resolved using a robust platform like Noibu. To experience it in action for your site, sign up for a free checkout audit and uncover site errors that could be hurting your online store’s conversions.
Posted on June 19, 2023
In the age of the digital revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) stands as one of the most transformative technologies, influencing a myriad of industries in unprecedented ways. From healthcare to transportation, finance to retail, AI is steering a significant shift in how businesses operate.
The eCommerce industry, in particular, is witnessing seismic change thanks to the integration of AI technologies. Analysts predict that by 2030, AI-powered eCommerce solutions will be worth no less than $16.8 billion.
The burgeoning integration of AI within the eCommerce sector can be ascribed to its potential in transforming customer experiences and business operations. By providing personalized shopping experiences, enhancing customer service, streamlining operations, and bolstering sales, AI is evolving the conventional norms of eCommerce.
Yet, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The breadth and depth of AI eCommerce capabilities are far-reaching and profound, and they are explored in this comprehensive guide.
How AI Is Changing the Online Shopping Experience: From Humble Beginnings to Transformative Applications
The journey of AI for eCommerce has been fascinating. From the early adoption in the form of simple recommendation engines to the more sophisticated implementations seen today, AI has consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in online shopping.
The inception of AI eCommerce can be traced back to Amazon’s introduction of product recommendation algorithms, a simple yet effective AI-based system that suggested products based on a user’s browsing and purchasing history. Amazon’s AI venture turned out to be a game-changer, and the approach has since been adopted by virtually every other eCommerce platform.
Fast forward to the early 2000s, with advancements in AI and Machine Learning (ML), businesses started leveraging more advanced and diverse applications of AI. For instance, eBay introduced its AI-powered ShopBot in 2016. ShopBot was a virtual shopping assistant, using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to help both existing and potential customers find the items they were looking for.
Another notable example is the launch of Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, which uses AI to interact with users, place orders, track shipments, and provide personalized product recommendations, among other tasks. The integration of voice-assisted shopping marked a significant milestone in the evolution of AI in eCommerce.
In recent years, the use of eCommerce AI has reached new heights:
AI-powered visual search, a feature championed by companies like Pinterest and Google, enables customers to search for products by uploading images. The visual search technology analyzes the image and returns results of identical or similar products.
Another remarkable development is the emergence of AI-powered chatbots, capable of delivering a level of customer service previously achievable only through human agents. Brands like H&M and Sephora use chatbots to provide personalized fashion advice, product recommendations, and instant customer support.
Lastly, the rise of AI in analyzing customer sentiment cannot be understated. Tools that can analyze customer reviews, comments on social media platforms, and other feedback are being used to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and sentiment, allowing online retail businesses to optimize their products and services accordingly.
AI in eCommerce: Diverse Applications Delivering Transformative Results
Artificial intelligence is not just changing the way eCommerce businesses operate but also transforming the very dynamics of online shopping. Let’s delve deeper into how AI is revolutionizing key areas of the online retail industry.
Product recommendations
As we have already mentioned, one of the earliest applications of AI eCommerce is in the form of product recommendation systems. These AI-powered algorithms analyze a user’s past behavior, browsing patterns, and purchase history to suggest products that align with their preferences.
According to a study conducted by McKinsey, 35% of Amazon’s revenue can be attributed to its recommendation engine, underscoring the enormous potential of AI in driving sales. Other eCommerce giants like Alibaba and eBay have also embraced AI-powered recommendation systems to guide users toward product descriptions they may find interesting.
Virtual assistants
AI eCommerce extends beyond screens and pages into our homes and daily lives in the form of virtual assistants. From Amazon’s Alexa to Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri, AI has made shopping an effortless task.
Users can now ask their virtual assistants to place orders, track shipments, and even suggest gift ideas. By 2025, it’s estimated that 75% of U.S. households will own a smart speaker, indicating the growing influence of AI-driven virtual assistants in eCommerce.
Customer feedback analysis
The power of AI in deciphering customer sentiment is proving to be a game-changer for online retailers. AI tools can swiftly analyze thousands of customer reviews and feedback across multiple platforms, identifying patterns and trends that might otherwise go unnoticed.
This comprehensive analysis can provide valuable insights into product performance, customer satisfaction, and areas of improvement. For example, sentiment analysis tools powered by AI can monitor and interpret social media mentions and comments to gauge public sentiment about a brand or product, providing real-time feedback to businesses.
Coca-Cola has been at the forefront of leveraging AI for sentiment analysis. The company uses AI to analyze social media comments and feedback to understand customer sentiment about their products. They also use AI to gain insights about their marketing campaigns and use that information to strategize their future marketing efforts.
Personalization
The era of one-size-fits-all marketing is on the wane. In its place, personalization driven by AI is shaping the future of eCommerce. Tailored product recommendations, personalized emails, targeted ads, and customized content based on a user’s behavior, preferences, and previous purchases are redefining the customer journey and experience.
A study shows that a staggering 44% of consumers are likely to become repeat buyers after a personalized experience, emphasizing the potential of AI-driven personalization in boosting customer retention and loyalty.
Fraud detection and prevention
With the exponential increase in online transactions, eCommerce websites are becoming increasingly vulnerable to fraud. Fortunately, AI is stepping in as a robust solution to tackle this growing challenge.
AI systems can analyze thousands of transactions in real time, spotting unusual behavior, identifying suspicious patterns, and flagging potential fraudulent activities. These systems use machine learning algorithms to learn from each transaction, constantly updating their understanding of what constitutes normal behavior and what might be a potential threat.
AI’s role in fraud detection and prevention showcases how the advanced technology is not just enhancing the user experience and optimizing business operations, but also playing a crucial part in securing the eCommerce landscape. As the sophistication of online fraud continues to grow, AI’s role in combating it will become increasingly critical.
Challenges of AI in eCommerce: Navigating the Roadblocks
While AI presents vast opportunities for the eCommerce sector, the path to full-fledged integration is not devoid of challenges. Understanding these potential roadblocks is crucial for businesses aiming to effectively leverage AI in their operations.
Data privacy
One of the most significant concerns with AI eCommerce is ensuring data privacy. As businesses collect and analyze vast amounts of data for AI systems, they must also ensure that this data is securely stored and used.
Breaches can have severe consequences, including hefty fines and a loss of customer trust. With regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S., businesses must ensure their AI systems comply with these stringent laws.
To tackle this challenge:
Utilize advanced encryption methods, secure access controls, and regular security audits to safeguard customer data and prevent security threats.
Clearly communicate to online customers how their data is being used and stored. This transparency can build trust and ensure compliance with privacy regulations.
Accuracy of AI systems
AI systems are as good as the data they’re trained on. However, even with high-quality data, AI systems aren’t infallible. They can make errors in predictions, provide incorrect recommendations, and may not always interpret customer behavior accurately.
These inaccuracies can lead to customer dissatisfaction and potential loss of business. Continuous refinement and optimization of AI systems, incorporating feedback loops, and rigorous testing are essential to minimize errors.
Regularly monitor and adjust AI algorithms to reduce errors and improve accuracy. Regular feedback loops can help identify and rectify inaccuracies quickly.
Complex integration
Integration of AI systems into existing operations can be complex and time-consuming. Businesses need the right infrastructure, skilled personnel, and a clear roadmap for implementation.
It can also be a costly affair, requiring substantial investments in technology and talent. This can be particularly challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that may not have the necessary resources.
To tackle this challenge:
Instead of implementing AI across all operations at once, consider a phased approach. Begin with one aspect of your business, learn from the implementation, and then expand to other areas.
Consider hiring or consulting with AI experts to assist with integration. This can reduce errors, save time, and ensure the effective deployment of AI systems.
Lack of understanding
Despite the growing influence of AI, there’s still a lack of understanding about the technology among many business leaders. This lack of knowledge can result in unrealistic expectations, improper implementations, and suboptimal utilization of AI capabilities. Hence, educating stakeholders about the potential, limitations, and use cases of AI is crucial.
To tackle this challenge:
Regularly educate your team about AI, its potential, limitations, and impact on your business. This knowledge can help in effective decision-making and the management of AI systems.
It’s crucial to understand that AI isn’t a silver bullet that can solve all problems instantly. Set realistic goals and expectations, and be prepared for a learning curve.
AI Is Here to Stay, so Use It Wisely
In a nutshell, AI for eCommerce is no less than a revolution, decisively reshaping the dynamics of online shopping and business operations. Its profound influence stretches from customer interactions to their expectations and behaviors.
And despite the challenges that arise from data privacy concerns, the accuracy of AI systems, and the complexity and cost of integration, the potential benefits that AI offers are simply too vast to ignore. Companies that successfully incorporate AI technologies into their operations stand a greater chance of staying ahead of the competition, delighting customers with superior experiences, and driving significant growth in an increasingly digital world.
Posted on June 7, 2023
In today’s interconnected world, eCommerce is definitely the high street. The rapid expansion of the internet has brought about a significant shift in consumer behavior, with global eCommerce sales expected to reach $6.9 trillion by 2024.
Nonetheless, in the fiercely competitive environment of eCommerce, businesses must learn to maximize every interaction. The key to turning browsers into buyers and one-time customers into repeat customers lies in the art and science of eCommerce growth funnel optimization.
A growth funnel maps the conversion path of potential customers, from their first interaction with your brand, through the decision-making process, all the way to the point of purchase, and beyond. Understanding how to effectively navigate this journey can mean the difference between the thriving success of your eCommerce business and being left in the dust of your competitors.
How to Build Your eCommerce Growth Funnel
Building an eCommerce growth funnel is akin to constructing a blueprint for your customers’ journey that should ideally culminate in conversion and customer loyalty.
Key metrics and goals for each stage of the funnel
Let’s delve into the essential stages of an eCommerce growth funnel and the key metrics you should be following for each of them.
Awareness stage
In this initial stage, your goal is to attract as many visitors to your site as possible.
The strategies you deploy here are crucial, as they set the tone for all subsequent funnel stages:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Social media marketing
Content marketing
Influencer marketing
For instance, the digital fitness platform, Peloton used influencer marketing to build awareness. They partnered with influencers and celebrities in the fitness industry, leveraging their followings to increase brand exposure. The influencers would showcase the Peloton bikes and classes in their social media posts, making their followers aware of the brand.
Key metrics to monitor in this stage:
Website traffic
Social media reach and engagement
Ad click-through rates
Brand mentions
Consideration stage
Once a visitor lands on your site, the next step is to pique their interest in your products or services. This involves high-quality product images, compelling descriptions, customer testimonials and reviews, and FAQs. Video demos or tutorials can also be a useful tool in this stage.
Take Apple, for instance. Their product pages are well-known for their captivating images and detailed product descriptions. They also provide customer reviews and ratings to build trust and pique visitor interest.
Key metrics to track in this stage:
Pageviews
Time spent on the website
Bounce rate
Email open and click-through rates
Conversion stage
This is when your prospective customers actually make purchase decisions. Offering competitive pricing, flexible payment options, free shipping, and a smooth checkout process can all play a significant role in the conversion funnel.
For example, ASOS offers a ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ option to make it easier for customers to complete their purchase, reducing the financial burden on the customer and making the process easier.
Key metrics to monitor at the purchase stage:
Shopping cart abandonment rate
Conversion rate
Average order value
Cost per acquisition
Loyalty stage
After the sale, your task is to build customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases. This can be achieved through excellent customer service, loyalty programs, personalized offers, and regular engagement through email newsletters or social media.
For instance, Starbucks’ loyalty program is a prime example of a successful customer retention strategy. They offer points for every purchase, which can be redeemed for free drinks and food, encouraging customers to come back.
Key metrics at this stage include:
Customer lifetime value (CLV)
Retention rate
Repeat purchase rate
Net promoter score (NPS)
Common challenges of eCommerce funnel optimization
While all this may look easy and straightforward, creating eCommerce growth funnels doesn’t come without its challenges:
Driving traffic: While techniques like SEO, PPC, and social media marketing can drive traffic, they require time, effort, and expertise to execute effectively.
Visitor engagement: Keeping visitors on your site long enough to pique their interest can be tricky. High-quality content and blog posts, intuitive navigation, and fast load times can help here.
Conversion: Turning interest into sales is a considerable challenge. Streamlining the checkout process, providing excellent product descriptions, offering competitive pricing, and displaying customer reviews can help improve conversions.
Shopping experience: A single glitch, slow load time, or complicated checkout process can result in cart abandonment, so ensuring a seamless user experience is vital.
Customer loyalty: Acquiring new customers is often more expensive than retaining existing ones, yet building customer loyalty can be difficult. Regular engagement, excellent customer service, and loyalty programs can be effective strategies here.
In each of these areas, it’s essential to continually test, measure, and optimize to ensure you’re meeting your customers’ needs and expectations. Take a look at our guide on eCommerce growth experiments to further improve your knowledge on this topic.
How to Measure Your eCommerce Funnel Performance
It’s great to know all the specific tactics, but how can you measure it all and know how to adjust your strategy over time? This is where the Noibu tool gets to shine.
The Summary Dashboard serves as the central hub, offering a succinct snapshot of your website’s health. It provides insights into the total revenue loss, significant issues, funnel steps affected, and the efforts of your team.
The Quick Stats panel is your starting point on the Summary Dashboard. It gives a quick overview of the annual revenue saved, the outstanding revenue loss, and any new issues identified within the selected time frame.
The Funnel Analysis chart complements the Quick Stats, displaying the Annualized Revenue Loss totals for each step in the marketing funnels during the chosen timeframe. It tracks the customer journey through four critical stages:
When a customer lands on your site.
When a customer adds a product to their cart.
When a customer initiates the checkout process.
When a customer finalizes their order.
The chart helps visualize potential revenue losses at each stage due to errors, aiding you in prioritizing your debugging efforts.
Key features of Noibu
Noibu’s platform offers features that showcase all errors affecting revenue and conversion. It pinpoints the funnel step affected and flags the common steps to reproduce the error.
Session Replay: This feature allows an in-depth replay of the customer journey, negating the need for inbound customer tickets or reliance on insufficient details. It includes video replay and console information, simplifying the error reproduction process.
Developer Tab: The Developer Tab provides vital details needed for confident debugging. It offers stack trace, browser details, last steps, HTTP information, and more, allowing for faster and more effective issue reproduction.
Issue Management: This helps in planning and executing bug resolutions right within Noibu. It allows for ticket triage directly on the platform and syncs with Jira for convenience. With custom tags, organizing and managing issues becomes straightforward, and the sharing capability facilitates cooperation with external partners.
How to Improve Your eCommerce Growth Funnel Optimization
Implementing the mentioned tactics is necessary if your goal is immediate growth, but shaping strategic, long-term plans through a proactive approach will continuously improve your eCommerce growth funnel. Here are some advanced, big-picture tactics to consider.
Leverage data for personalized experiences
Utilize the power of eCommerce data to personalize your user experience at every touchpoint. You can personalize emails, product recommendations, content, offers, and more based on user behavior and preferences.
One example would be to use something similar to “Customers who bought this also bought…” and “Frequently bought together” recommendations to drive additional sales.
Optimize for mobile
With the rise of mCommerce, a mobile-responsive design that loads quickly and provides a seamless browsing and shopping experience across different devices can significantly improve conversion rates.
Apart from providing a mobile-friendly site, consider building an intuitive app and offering features like visual search and social media integration to enhance the mobile shopping experience.
AI and machine learning
AI and machine learning can be leveraged to improve product recommendations, personalize customer experiences, automate customer service via chatbots, and predict future trends. They can help create a more seamless, efficient, and personalized experience for your customers, improving your conversion process and customer retention.
Fashion retailer Stitch Fix uses AI and machine learning to personalize clothing recommendations for customers based on their style, size, and price preferences, creating a unique, tailored shopping experience.
Scaling and Expanding the Funnel
Expanding your eCommerce growth funnel isn’t just about enlarging your customer base, but also about deepening the relationships with your existing customers.
The following are some advanced tactics to help you scale and expand your funnel growth:
Diversify marketing channels: Consider exploring channels such as influencer marketing, podcast advertising, or even offline advertising like print or television, depending on your target audience.
Explore international markets: If your products have potential appeal outside your current geographic market, consider expanding internationally. Fashion retailer Zara is a great example. It operates in over 96 countries, adapting its product offerings and marketing strategies to local trends and cultures.
Enhance product range: This can attract new customer segments and encourage existing customers to make additional purchases. Be sure to conduct thorough market research to understand what new products your customers might be interested in.
Implement new technologies: Whether it’s AR technology to allow customers to ‘try on’ products virtually, AI chatbots to enhance customer service, or personalized video marketing, staying on the cutting edge of technology can provide a significant competitive advantage.
Optimize operations: As your funnel expands, you’ll also need to optimize your operations to handle the increased volume. This might involve enhancing your supply chain management, implementing automation in areas like customer service or inventory management, or improving your website’s hosting and load times to handle increased traffic.
Final Thoughts
While the tactics outlined in this article can provide a solid foundation, remember that no two businesses are exactly alike. The best strategies will always be those that align with your ultimate goals, target audience, and brand identity. Therefore, constant testing, iteration, and flexibility are critical to your sales funnel optimization efforts.
Keep in mind that technology has a significant role to play in this process, with platforms like Noibu providing comprehensive tools for measuring, analyzing, and optimizing your funnel growth and performance.
And finally, remember to maintain a big-picture perspective, focusing not only on immediate tactics but also on long-term strategic planning. Your eCommerce journey is what shapes you and your business, instilling resilience, agility, and an unerring focus on the customer – qualities that are the hallmark of every successful eCommerce venture.
Posted on June 6, 2023
In the fast-paced world of eCommerce, digital shopping carts fill up rapidly with potential purchases. Yet, a significant proportion of these carts never make it to the checkout line. This phenomenon, known as shopping cart abandonment, represents a significant revenue loss for eCommerce stores.
As the eCommerce industry continues to grow, with global retail eCommerce sales expected to reach $6.31 trillion in 2023, so does the potential for revenue loss due to cart abandonment.
Cart abandonment is akin to customers walking into a brick-and-mortar store, filling their shopping baskets with items, reaching the cashier, and then abruptly leaving, never to return. For the business owner, it’s a bewildering and frustrating scenario. This critical juncture, where potential revenue morphs into a lost opportunity, has become a hotbed for analysis, innovation, and strategic planning.
The following article provides a detailed analysis of online shopping cart abandonment, delving into its causes, impact on revenue, and effective strategies for everyone who wants to know how to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
Common Reasons for Cart Abandonment
Seeing these reasons for cart abandonment as serious eCommerce errors will help you identify the pain points in the purchasing journey that dissuade customers from completing their purchases.
Unexpected costs: Hidden costs that customers encounter at the checkout stage can take various forms, such as costs of shipping, taxes, and handling or service fees. If a customer perceives these extra costs as too high or feels blindsided by them, they are likely to abandon their cart.
Mandatory account creation: Mandatory account creation can disrupt the fluidity of the customer experience. A customer’s desire to make a quick purchase can be hampered by the need to spend time creating an account. In fact, research by the Baymard Institute found that 24% of customers abandoned their cart because the site wanted them to create an account.
Complicated checkout process: A checkout process that’s too complicated or time-consuming is a major deterrent. Long forms to fill, unclear navigation, slow load times, or too many steps can frustrate customers and lead to abandonment. The same research suggests that 17% of online customers have abandoned an order during the checkout process because it was too long or complicated.
Security concerns: In an era where data breaches are becoming increasingly common, customers are understandably concerned about the security of their personal and financial information. If your website doesn’t clearly demonstrate that it is secure, customers may abandon eCommerce shopping carts. Trust signals such as SSL certificates, well-known payment gateways, and visible privacy policies can help alleviate these concerns.
Cart abandonment statistics
The impact of cart abandonment on eCommerce can’t be overstated. It represents a major hurdle to optimal conversion rates and has significant implications for lost revenue.
According to the comprehensive report by the Baymard Institute mentioned above, the average cart abandonment rate documented online is approximately 69.99%. In simpler terms, seven out of ten online shoppers leave without completing their purchase, which underscores the extent of the problem and the potential for cart recovery.
Further highlighting the financial impact, data suggests that eCommerce businesses lose approximately $18 billion per year due to abandoned carts. This colossal figure speaks volumes about the magnitude of the problem and the monumental opportunity it presents for revenue recovery.
Optimizing the Checkout Process
A significant portion of your potential customers reaches the checkout process, signaling a strong intent to purchase. However, checkout can be a make-or-break point in the customer journey. Hence, optimizing this process is critical in decreasing your cart abandonment rate, which is one of the main eCommerce KPIs.
Strategies for optimizing the checkout process
Optimizing the checkout process involves making strategic changes that simplify and streamline the process, enhancing user experience, and thereby encouraging customers to complete their purchase.
Simplify the checkout flow: Minimizing the number of form fields and steps required to complete a purchase makes the process more customer-friendly and less likely to cause frustration or impatience.
Offer guest checkout options: This allows users to make a quick purchase without the need for account creation, which can significantly reduce friction and lower abandonment rates.
Provide multiple payment options: By offering a variety of options including debit/credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and others, you cater to a broader audience and increase the likelihood that customers can pay as they prefer.
Etsy offers multiple payment options including credit/debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and even Etsy Gift Cards. This variety ensures that most customers can pay in their preferred way, reducing the likelihood of cart abandonment due to payment-related issues.
Transparent pricing: Be upfront about any additional costs, such as shipping costs or taxes, early in the process. Transparency in pricing helps build trust and reduces the likelihood of customers feeling blindsided at checkout, which could lead to abandonment. Alternatively, provide free shipping if possible.
Warby Parker, an online glasses retailer, provides a commendable example of transparent pricing, with a flat-rate pricing model and no additional shipping charges. Prices on product pages are the final prices that customers pay.
Testing and analyzing the checkout process
Implementing changes is just the beginning. It’s crucial to continuously test and analyze the effectiveness of the checkout process.
A/B testing allows you to experiment with different elements to identify what resonates best with your audience.
Heat mapping can also provide valuable insight into customer behavior during the checkout process.
Tools like UserTesting allow real users to interact with your website while providing feedback.
Different customer segments might behave differently during the checkout process. Analyze behavior based on customer demographics, source of traffic, and type of product to gain deeper insights.
If customers are abandoning their carts, a simple email survey or popup can provide valuable insight into their reasons for not completing a purchase.
Building Trust and Reducing Friction
One significant challenge of eCommerce is the lack of physical interaction, which means building trust with customers becomes more complex. Additionally, any hurdles encountered during the online shopping experience, often referred to as friction points, can easily deter customers.
Building trust
In an age of data breaches and online fraud, customers need assurance that their personal and financial information is secure. Displaying security badges prominently on your website, particularly during the checkout process, can reassure customers. These could include SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, or badges from well-known internet security companies like Norton, McAfee, or TRUSTe.
Trust can also be built by showcasing social proof like positive customer testimonials, customer reviews, or ratings. According to a consumer review survey by Bizrate Insights, 54.7 percent of customers read at least four product reviews prior to purchasing a product. Highlighting these positive endorsements can reassure potential customers of your product quality and customer service.
Moreover, clear and comprehensive product details, along with high-quality images or videos, can help customers make informed decisions, reducing the chances of post-purchase dissonance and returns, and increasing the likelihood of successful transactions.
Apple provides a stellar example of building trust with its customers. They ensure the entire shopping experience, from browsing products to checkout, is secure. The site uses HTTPS, indicating that all data transferred is encrypted and secure. Additionally, the payment process is streamlined and secure, with Apple Pay as a payment option, reducing the need for customers to enter credit card details.
Apple also extensively showcases customer reviews and ratings for its products. This transparency not only allows potential buyers to make informed decisions but also builds trust in the quality of their products.
Reducing friction
Friction in the eCommerce context refers to anything that hampers the smooth flow of the customer journey, from browsing to purchase. It could be slow website speed, poor navigation, lack of product information, complicated checkout processes, or limited customer support.
Addressing these friction points involves improving website design and functionality, providing detailed product information, simplifying the purchase process, and offering efficient customer support.
A customer-centric return policy can also reduce friction. If digital buyers know they can easily return a product if it doesn’t meet their expectations, they may be more likely to complete the actual purchase.
Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer, is a leading example of reducing friction in the eCommerce journey. The website is user-friendly, with intuitive navigation, clear categories, and a robust search function that makes finding products easy.
Moreover, they offer a simplified checkout process with minimal steps, guest checkout option, and multiple payment methods, all contributing to a frictionless user experience. But where Zappos truly shines is in its customer-centric return policy. They offer a 365-day return policy with free shipping both ways, giving customers peace of mind and reducing the perceived risk of purchase.
Recovering Abandoned Carts
While preventive measures to decrease cart abandonment are crucial, it’s equally important to have strategies in place for recovering online carts that do get abandoned.
Strategies for recovering abandoned carts and reclaiming lost revenue
Recovering abandoned carts essentially involves re-engaging with customers who have shown a clear intent to purchase.
Retargeting ads: Retargeting ads allow you to display personalized ads to users who have visited your website but left without making a purchase. These ads, displayed on various platforms such as social media or other websites the user visits, act as reminders of the items left in the cart, prompting customers to return and complete the purchase.
Abandoned cart emails: These are personalized emails sent to customers who abandoned their carts, reminding them of their unfinished purchase. Cart abandonment emails can be simple reminders or offer incentives like a discount code, coupon code, or free shipping options to entice customers to complete their purchase.
Casper, an online mattress retailer, sends out a well-designed cart recovery email. The email is simple, reminding the customer of what they left behind and showcasing the benefits of their product. They also add a bit of humor to keep the tone light and friendly, asking “Did you forget something?”. This kind of personalized email helps reconnect with customers and encourages them to complete their purchase.
Exit-intent popups: These are messages that appear when a user is about to leave your website, offering incentives or assistance to encourage them to stay and complete their purchase.
Live chat support: Offering real-time assistance through live chat can address any questions or concerns that may be causing the customer to abandon their cart. Having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.
Implementing these strategies can help re-engage customers, address their concerns, and guide them towards completing their purchase, thereby helping you reclaim lost revenue.
Reclaiming Lost Revenue Leads to a Better Bottom Line
Cart abandonment is a persistent and common problem in eCommerce, leading to significant revenue loss. However, with a detailed understanding of its causes and a strategic approach to address them, online businesses can successfully reduce abandonment rates, reclaim lost revenue, and enhance their customer’s shopping experience.
While this article outlines several effective strategies, it’s essential to remember that every eCommerce business is unique. Therefore, make sure to combine data analysis, customer feedback, and constant testing to tailor these strategies to your specific needs and audience.
Remember, the goal is not just to recover lost sales but to create an efficient, customer-friendly shopping process that builds trust and loyalty. The focus should always be on the customer’s journey and eCommerce experience, leading not only to immediate sales recovery but also to long-term business growth through repeat customers.
Posted on June 5, 2023
In today’s highly competitive eCommerce landscape, the ability to drive conversions is crucial for the success and growth of any online business. In that context, conversions, whether they involve purchases, sign-ups, or any other desired action, are the ultimate goal of every eCommerce team.
However, thoroughly understanding the complex journey that customers take from the initial website awareness to the final conversion and why they act how they act in given situations and places can be a daunting task.
Let’s put this into perspective. Despite all the time and hard work that you and your team have spent perfecting your conversion funnel, visitors just flow through your eCommerce site each day but all of the traffic funnels down to just a trickle of sales, signups, and conversions. Sounds familiar? In all likelihood, probably, yes. Is there a way to address this issue? Also, yes.
This is where funnel analytics and website funnel analysis come into play. Funnel analytics help eCommerce teams thoroughly understand how real customers shop online by providing next-level insights into the entire customer journey. This way, eCommerce team leaders and their personnel can identify vital opportunities for optimization and growth by optimizing their conversion funnels to reflect each visitor’s unique customer journey.
In the following sections, we will delve deeper into funnel analytics and explore how the proper utilization of this valuable tool can increase conversions and propel your eCommerce business forward.
Setting Up Funnel Analytics For Your eCommerce Website
To effectively leverage funnel analytics and website funnel analysis, first, CCOs and their dedicated teams need to set up tracking and define their funnel goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Defining Your Funnel Goals And KPIs
Defining these will provide a framework for tracking and measuring your funnel and conversion performance. Here are a few steps to follow along the process:
Identify your primary conversion goals. Identify the main actions you want your website visitors to take. For example, it could be purchasing, signing up for a newsletter, or completing a contact form. These goals will serve as the key milestones in your sales funnel.
Break down your funnel into stages. Map out the various stages that customers typically go through before reaching the conversion point. These stages usually include awareness, consideration, and decision-making. For instance, many online shoppers might be visiting the homepage of your eCommerce store, but only a few really see the “thank you” page after purchase. If you break down your funnel conversion path, it would look like this: homepage→category page→product page→cart→checkout→thank you page. Understanding the funnel path will help you track user progression and identify areas for improvement.
Assign KPIs to each funnel stage. Once you have defined your funnel stages, determine the relevant KPIs for each stage. For instance, you might track metrics like website visits, page views, and social media engagement at the awareness stages. At the consideration stage, you could focus on metrics such as product views, cart additions, and wish list interactions. Finally, at the decision-making stage, key metrics may include conversion rate, average order value, and checkout abandonment rate. Assigning specific KPIs will allow you to measure progress and identify areas that need attention.
Set specific and measurable targets. Establish clear targets for each KPI based on your business objectives. These targets should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, you may aim to increase the conversion rate by 8% within the next quarter or reduce cart abandonment by 3% over the next month.
Defining your funnel goals and KPIs lays the foundation for effectively implementing funnel analytics. Now, because this article is focused on using the proper funnel analysis in order to increase conversions and grow the revenue of your eCommerce business, let’s see how your eCommerce team can use the website conversion funnel analysis to monitor funnel performance, diagnose funnel issues, and identify funnel opportunities.
Using Funnel Analytics To Increase Conversions And Grow Your Business
Now that you have set up funnel analytics and defined your goals, it’s time to leverage the power of this data to increase conversions and drive growth for your eCommerce business. Here are two critical strategies for utilizing sales funnel analytics effectively:
How To Use Funnel Reports And Dashboards To Visualize And Monitor Your Funnel Performance?
Funnel reports and dashboards visually represent your funnel performance, allowing you to monitor and assess the effectiveness of your marketing and conversion optimization efforts. Here’s how you can utilize these tools:
Choose the right analytics platform. Select an analytics platform that offers funnel visualization capabilities, such as Noibu or Google Analytics. For instance, Google Analytics 4, or GA4, is the latest Google product that allows for app and web data to be collected separately or in a single continuous property. The latest analytics platform is designed to replace both UA and GA360 by the end of 2023. All these analytics platforms provide users with pre-built reports and customizable dashboards specifically designed to track and analyze the funnel data and use it to their advantage.
Set up funnel visualizations. Configure your analytics platform to generate funnel reports based on the stages you defined earlier. These reports will illustrate the progression of users through your funnel, indicating where they drop off and identifying potential areas for improvement.
Monitor key funnel metrics. Pay attention to key funnel metrics, such as conversion rates at each stage, drop-off points, and overall funnel performance. Regularly review these metrics to track progress toward your goals and identify any anomalies or trends that require attention.
Create customized dashboards. Customize your analytics platform’s dashboard to display your eCommerce business’s most relevant metrics and KPIs. This way, you can have an at-a-glance view of your funnel performance and make informed decisions based on real-time data.
How To Use Funnel Analysis And Insights To Identify And Diagnose Funnel Issues and Opportunities?
Funnel analysis provides not only visualization but also deep insights into your customer journey. Here’s how you can utilize funnel analysis and insights to uncover issues and opportunities within your sales funnel:
Analyze drop-off points. Review your funnel analytics to identify the stages where users drop off the most. By understanding the reasons behind drop-offs, such as confusing checkout processes or lack of information, you can address these issues and optimize the user experience.
Segment your data. Break down your funnel data by different segments, such as traffic sources, demographics, or device types. This segmentation allows you to identify patterns and preferences among different user groups. By tailoring your marketing and optimization strategies to specific segments, you can improve conversions for each group.
Perform A/B testing. Implement A/B testing on different elements of your funnel, such as landing pages, calls-to-action, or checkout processes. You can make data-driven decisions to optimize your funnel for maximum conversions by comparing different versions and analyzing the impact on conversion rates.
Leverage behavioral analytics. Use advanced behavioral analytics tools to gain insights into user interactions, such as mouse movements, click heatmaps, or session recordings. These tools help you understand how users navigate through your website, identify usability issues, and make data-informed improvements.
By leveraging funnel analysis and insights, you can uncover hidden opportunities, diagnose funnel issues, and implement targeted strategies to drive conversions and grow your eCommerce business.
Using Noibu To Track Funnel Statistics And Identify The Issues With Most Revenue Loss To Grow Your eCommerce Business
Noibu is a powerful tool that monitors your eCommerce website and can help you flag errors in real time. One of the many features that Noibu puts on the table for eCommerce teams is that it can also help you track funnel statistics and identify issues that result in revenue loss for your eCommerce business. As a result, by leveraging and harnessing the power of Noibu, you can gain valuable insights into user behavior and address critical issues that hinder conversions.
For each phase, the funnel statistics view summarizes unique sessions and the number of sessions that successfully progressed to the next phase within a specified time frame. For example, you can customize the timeframe for data retrieval, such as the past day, seven days, 14 days, 30 days, or 90 days.
Noibu’s funnel feature also provides insights on sessions lost and transactions lost at each phase. Sessions and transactions lost are distinct only in the on-site and add-to-cart phases. In later stages, transactions lost encompass the natural drop-off attributed to errors encountered in earlier phases.
It is expected to experience some drop-off at each phase of the buying process. By gathering data and computing an average conversion rate, the funnel statistics view determines the number of sessions and transactions lost due to website issues. Furthermore, it estimates the potential revenue loss at each phase if these issues are not addressed.
Issues With Most Revenue Loss
The “issues with most revenue loss” feature is a valuable funnel analysis tool that allows you to prioritize your debugging efforts by pinpointing the issues that have the most significant impact on your revenue. As the funnel statistics view, you can customize the timeframe, such as the past day, seven days, 14 days, 30 days, or 90 days, to gather relevant data.
In the “issues with most revenue loss” view, user-impacting issues verified by your team or Noibu support appear at the top. In contrast, uncategorized problems are ordered by projected revenue loss. Addressing both types of issues is crucial for improving user experience and minimizing revenue loss.
With Noibu’s funnel analysis features, you can filter the table of issues by any column, and you can freely customize which columns appear in the table by opening the menu. The available filters include urgency, assignee, state, label, OS, browser, resolution likeliness, impact, annual revenue loss, leads lost, users impacted, created at, last seen, closed fixed at, error type, error source, page type, and analytics period.
Posted on June 2, 2023
In the dynamic and intensely competitive world of eCommerce, cart abandonment remains a significant challenge. You have probably already employed various strategies to mitigate this issue, but given the persistently high rates of cart abandonment, you may need a more in-depth approach to reduce cart abandonment rates and increase your conversion rate.
Traditional tactics might not cut it in the face of evolving consumer behavior, technological advancements, and a complex competitive landscape. It’s no longer just about having a well-stocked inventory or competitive pricing. Today, the battle is won by those who can strategically leverage data, optimize user experience for a cart owner, and implement smart, adaptive tactics to reduce cart rates.
In this comprehensive guide, we aim to explore eight advanced shopping cart abandonment solutions. First, we’ll delve into the importance of data analysis for understanding customer behavior and cart abandonment, and then we’ll tackle the role of user experience, website design, as well as other tactics you can use to recover abandoned carts.
Analyzing Cart Abandonment Data
The foundation of any effective strategy to reduce cart abandonment lies in a deep understanding of why it happens in the first place. This understanding can only come from a detailed report, which includes rigorous and systematic analysis of cart abandonment data.
Without abandoned cart reports and analytics, you’re navigating the choppy waters of eCommerce based on hunches and assumptions, which is a recipe for wasted resources and disappointing results.
Identifying patterns and trends in cart abandonment
To harness the power of data, you need to become a detective of sorts, seeking patterns and trends in your cart abandonment data. Carefully tracking when and where customers abandon their carts can help you start uncovering the specific factors that contribute to cart abandonment in your store.
By asking these and similar questions, you can start identifying commonalities and trends:
Are there specific products that are more often left in the cart?
Is there a particular stage in the checkout process where customers are most likely to drop off?
Are customers from certain regions more prone to abandoning their carts?
Do abandonment rates fluctuate at different times of the day or week, or during specific seasons?
These insights serve as signposts pointing toward the areas of your store and the aspects of your customer experience that need your attention the most.
Using data to optimize your eCommerce store
Once you’ve gathered valuable insights and data (cart abandonment rate), the next step is to leverage them to optimize your store.
This is where your analysis transforms from a passive exercise into an active, value-adding endeavor:
If certain products consistently have high abandonment rates, it may be time to reevaluate product price points, descriptions, or images.
If customers using mobile phones and devices have a higher tendency to abandon their carts, you might need to improve your mobile shopping experience.
If customers from a particular region are more likely to abandon their carts, perhaps there’s a need to revisit your shipping options, delivery times, or payment methods for that region.
In essence, your cart abandonment data should serve as a roadmap, guiding your optimization efforts. Data-driven optimization allows you to address specific issues that directly contribute to cart abandonment, enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of your strategies.
Recovering Cart Abandonment: 8 Tactics for Success
The data has been analyzed, patterns have been identified, and you’re armed with a deeper understanding of why customers are abandoning their carts. Now comes the crucial next step – implementing effective tactics for abandoned cart recovery.
Here we delve into a collection of advanced methods that extend beyond common practices, focusing on elevating user experience, optimizing website design, and employing strategic marketing interventions.
1) Importance of user experience
In the realm of eCommerce, user experience (UX) can no longer be an afterthought. Every step of the customer’s journey, from landing on your site to the final step of checkout, needs to be meticulously designed to be smooth, intuitive, and pleasant.
A poorly designed or confusing site can cause frustration, leading customers to abandon their carts and seek a better experience elsewhere.
Prioritize UX to keep customers engaged and reduce the chances of cart abandonment by following these two steps:
Prioritize page load speed because a delay of even a few seconds can lead to higher abandonment rates. Use CDNs, optimize images, minimize HTTP requests, enable browser caching, minify HTML, Javascript, and CSS files, optimize CSS delivery, and prioritize above-the-fold content.
Make sure your checkout process is clear and easy to navigate, with as few checkout fields as possible.
2) Optimize website design
The design of your website is the first thing customers notice, and it can significantly influence their shopping experience. A well-optimized site is easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing, and intuitively guides customers toward making a purchase.
To reduce cart abandonment, it’s essential to eliminate any hurdles that might make shopping difficult or frustrating:
Make your site easy to navigate with a logical menu structure and clear product categorization.
Provide detailed product descriptions and high-quality images to help customers make informed decisions.
Ensuring your site is responsive and works seamlessly on all devices, especially mobile (fluid grids, flexible images, mobile-first design, hamburger menu, compress images and videos, touch-friendly design, AMP, mobile SEO).
Understand how different colors can elicit different responses from consumers. The chosen color scheme should reflect the brand’s personality and resonate with the target demographic, and the contrast between colors should be such that content is easily legible and calls-to-action stand out.
Set up an exit-intent popup that appears when guest or logged-in users show the intention of leaving your website at the checkout.
3) Effective calls to action
Your call-to-action (CTA) buttons play a critical role in guiding customers through the purchasing process. These buttons should be clear, compelling, and strategically placed to drive customers toward completing a purchase.
This data-driven approach allows you to base your decisions on actual customer behavior, increasing the chances of converting browsers into buyers:
Use clear, compelling language that encourages customers to take action.
Experiment with different colors, sizes, and placements to see what works best.
Use A/B testing to determine the most effective CTAs.
4) Streamline the checkout process
One of the top reasons for cart abandonment and one of the common eCommerce mistakes is a complicated or lengthy checkout process. Streamlining this process, reducing the number of steps, and offering a guest checkout option can significantly reduce cart abandonment.
These steps can make the checkout process quicker and more convenient, encouraging more customers to complete their purchases:
Reduce the number of steps in your checkout process.
Offer a guest checkout option (with cart details included) for guest users who don’t want to create an account/become registered users.
Display all costs, including shipping fees, taxes, and any additional fees upfront to avoid surprising customers at checkout.
Implement the autofill feature for returning customers.
Offer a variety of payment options.
5) Offer incentives
Offering incentives like free shipping, discounts, coupon codes, or gifts can provide the extra nudge some customers need to complete their purchases. However, it’s crucial to ensure these incentives are not only enticing but also effectively communicated.
Consider offering dynamic incentives based on the value of the customer’s cart, which can also encourage customers to add more items to their cart:
Offer free shipping to remove a significant barrier to purchase. This can lead to an increase in conversion rates and average order value, directly influencing the ROI and bottom-line revenue.
Personalized discount codes add an element of exclusivity and personalization to the shopping experience. By increasing conversions, they contribute positively to KPIs like sales revenue, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value.
Free gifts can increase the perceived value of the purchase, making customers feel they’re getting more for their money. This strategy can increase conversion rates and average order value, as customers may be more inclined to spend more to qualify for a free gift.
Finally, make sure to prominently display your incentives and make sure they’re easy for customers to apply, and also test different types of incentives to see what is most effective.
In a recession, customer retention becomes crucial. These strategies can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, leading to repeat purchases and higher customer lifetime value, which can help sustain businesses through difficult economic times.
6) Create a sense of urgency or scarcity
These can be powerful motivators for customers to complete their purchases promptly:
Use limited-time offers or low-stock warnings to encourage customers to purchase quickly.
Include countdown timers on limited-time offers.
Always be transparent and honest about the scarcity or urgency of your products to maintain customer trust.
7) Display trust signals and security badges
Online shoppers need to feel confident that their personal and financial information is safe. Displaying these trust signals can reassure customers and increase their likelihood of completing a purchase:
Display security badges from reputable organizations on your site.
Include customer reviews and testimonials on product pages and throughout your site.
Ensure your site uses secure HTTPS protocols.
8) Implement a Remarketing Strategy
Despite your best efforts to optimize your site and checkout flow, some customers will still abandon their shopping carts. That’s where a robust remarketing strategy (such as checkout recovery email campaigns) comes in.
Remarketing involves reaching out to customers who have left your site without making a purchase, encouraging them to return and complete their transactions. This can be achieved through various methods such as targeted ads, personalized abandoned cart emails, and social media campaigns.
Retargeting cart recovery emails can be particularly effective. Cart abandonment emails should include a cart recovery link and serve as gentle reminders to customers of the items they left in their cart, possibly offer a small product discount or incentive to complete the purchase, and provide an easy link back to their cart.
Additionally, targeted ads can be used to remind customers of their abandoned carts as they browse other websites or use social media. The ads should be visually appealing, showcase the abandoned products, and include a clear call to action.
Make sure to personalize your remarketing efforts to make them more effective.
It’s Time for Effective Abandoned Cart Recovery
Shopping cart abandonment is a persistent issue for eCommerce stores, but it’s not insurmountable. By understanding why customers abandon their carts and implementing strategies to address these issues, you will be on a good path for abandoned cart recovery and boost your store’s profitability.
From optimizing your website design and user experience to offering enticing incentives, creating a sense of urgency, and implementing a robust remarketing strategy, there are indeed numerous ways to encourage customers to complete their purchases.
However, remember that every eCommerce store is unique, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to cart abandonment. That’s why it’s crucial to analyze your data, understand your customers, and continually test and optimize your strategies. With a data-driven approach and a commitment to providing an excellent shopping experience, you can reduce cart abandonment and set your store up for long-term success.
Posted on May 17, 2023
The eCommerce industry is living its golden years and there’s no doubt about that. As a matter of fact, retail eCommerce sales totaled roughly $5.7 trillion worldwide in 2022. Moreover, this number is projected to grow by 56% over the following years and reach about $8.1 trillion by 2026, speaking volumes about how rapidly the industry actually grows.
And while these numbers are quite promising, they also show that the competition for customers among eCommerce brands will only become more intense. To acquire new and retain current customers, optimize prices, improve efficiency and profitability, stand out in the sea of different eCommerce businesses, and ultimately increase their sales and revenue, companies will need to heavily rely on eCommerce analytics.
Keep reading to learn how you can use data and eCommerce analytics to grow your sales and why doing so is essential for your brand in 2023.
5 Areas Where eCommerce Businesses Can Use Analytics
Analytics for eCommerce involves collecting and analyzing relevant data to help eCommerce businesses gain an edge over their competitors. Then, companies can use this data to improve various aspects of the business, including customer acquisition and retention, logistics, and payments.
Acquisition
Analytics can help businesses understand how customers find them online, which products are most popular, which channels are driving the most conversions, and where their customers come from. This data can then be used to determine which marketing campaigns and channels to focus on.
Retention
Analytics can also provide valuable insights into customer retention, including the percentage of current customers who make repeat purchases, the average time between repeat purchases, and which product categories have the best customer satisfaction rates. This information can be used to encourage repeat purchases and increase revenue from existing customers.
Monitoring customer engagement with your company is another important use of sales data analytics. By tracking when a customer last visited your online shop, bought any products, or contacted your support team, you can prioritize any customers who haven’t been contacted for a while or any who are at risk of leaving.
Profitability
Analyzing product performance from previous transactions helps you spot when a product is on the up or quickly declining. Analytics can help you increase profitability by identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities, segments of customers that drive high revenues, product pricing that has the best potential for conversions, as well as products that have the potential to improve margins.
Efficiency
Data can be used to improve operational efficiency by identifying ways to speed up delivery times, forecasting future demand, managing inventory more efficiently, and planning staffing levels during high and low-traffic phases.
ROI
Finally, understanding the performance of marketing campaigns on various channels, including pay-per-click ads and social media, can help you measure the ROI of each campaign and identify which campaigns have the best potential for scaling up.
This knowledge can then be used across various departments of an eCommerce business:
Business and marketing departments can identify where to focus their resources and marketing budgets by acquiring insights on which marketing campaigns and channels are driving the most conversions, which products are popular, and where customers are coming from.
Product departments can make better decisions by analyzing product performance from previous transactions. This includes valuable insights into customer behavior, shopping trends, and product performance, which all help identify which products are on the rise or decline and allow for better decisions regarding product development, pricing, and inventory management.
Finally, technical departments can use data to identify areas of inefficiency in operational processes, which allows for better planning of staffing levels during high and low-traffic phases. Moreover, data can help streamline various customer service processes, reduce the number of tickets, and improve customer satisfaction by providing faster responses to customer inquiries.
4 Advanced Ways to Use eCommerce Analytics for Sales Growth
Analytics and data can sometimes be overwhelming, especially if you’re analyzing graphs and figures every day. And even when you understand what the numbers mean, it may not be completely clear how you can use them to increase sales figures.
Here are a few proven ways you can use analytics for boosting your eCommerce sales funnel.
Product recommendations
To cultivate customer loyalty, companies need to establish good relationships with customers. One effective tool for achieving this is a product recommendation engine, which utilizes machine learning algorithms to suggest items that a customer might be interested in. Recommendations can be delivered through a variety of channels, including websites, email campaigns, and online ads.
Market basket analysis
Market basket analysis is a technique that identifies the correlation between a pair or group of products that are frequently purchased together. In simpler terms, if a customer buys a product, they are more or less likely to buy another related product. This method also employs machine learning algorithms, similar to product recommendation engines.
Price optimization
Competitive pricing is one of the most important aspects of eCommerce shopping, so it’s crucial to establish optimal prices that balance customer satisfaction with profit.
Let’s take a look at three critical concepts related to price optimization:
Segmentation of customers and products: This entails grouping similar products and customers, with the aid of classification and clustering algorithms. This information can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns, offer product bundles, or provide discounts to specific groups of customers.
Regression modeling: After the segmentation process, regression models can be used to determine optimal product prices by analyzing sales data, conversion rates, seasonality, product attributes, marketing channels, and so on.
Dynamic pricing: Dynamic pricing uses competitor data as input into machine learning algorithms to establish the product’s price at various times. This allows products to remain competitive in the market despite frequent price fluctuations.
Through data analysis, you can optimize your pricing structure by seeing key financials for each product line from gross profit, costs, revenue, and quantities. This allows you to define the best value price for both you and your customers.
Demand forecasting
Another important use of data analytics for eCommerce is to predict customer behavior. By analyzing previous transactions, you can identify trends and patterns that help you anticipate future shopping behaviors, which is key to better time management, prioritization of key accounts, and creating realistic sales forecasts.
Demand forecasting involves using analytical techniques to forecast product demand and predict sales. When you know the sales trends in advance, you gain an advantage over your competitors by improving:
Inventory management: Effective demand forecasting allows for informed inventory planning, which saves you from both selling out of popular products and unnecessary storage costs.
Cash flow management: Additionally, it helps you plan your budget properly and utilize cash optimally, thus reducing financial risk.
Pricing strategy: Finally, a better pricing strategy can be achieved by charging more for high-demand products and properly planning marketing budgets, advertising investments, and discount plans.
7 Best Practices to Make the Most Out of Your eCommerce Data
It is estimated that as many as 218.8 million people will make an online purchase in the US alone in 2023. And if we’re to believe these predictions, this number will grow to 230 million in 2026.
This means that the eCommerce market is only becoming bigger, so you stand a good chance of capturing a share of it. However, as you already know, second-guessing is an absolute no-no in the world of business.
If you want to fully rely on eCommerce data analytics, here are seven best practices to follow:
Start small. In the beginning, focus on the metrics that matter most to your business goals. Don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data available.
Build a robust system for collecting and organizing data. An integrated data stack that consolidates data from multiple sources into a single source of truth will improve data accuracy and enhance decision-making.
Consider data quality. Ensure that your eCommerce analytics data is always accurate and reliable by using advanced analytics tools, regularly auditing data sources, and using data cleansing techniques.
Use data ethically. Protect data privacy and security by being GDPR and CCPA-compliant, as well as only using collected data for its intended purpose.
And use it optimally. Use analytics to measure performance, validate assumptions, find opportunities for improvement, test new strategies, and inform all business decisions. Moreover, it’s a good idea to share insights with stakeholders throughout the organization.
Stay away from data silos. Centralize data from various sources to prevent misalignment between teams and obfuscated insights. Dashboards provide fast information on sales performance, enabling you to make better, informed decisions and take action more quickly.
Automate. Automating tasks based on your sales data enables you to streamline your sales process, save time and improve efficiency. By automating routine tasks, such as creating reports and adding customer details to your calendar, you can focus on high-value activities that drive sales.
Current Trends in eCommerce Analytics
As eCommerce businesses evolve, new trends emerge in analytics that can help them stay ahead of the competition. Here are some of the latest trends in analytics for eCommerce that marketers are observing:
Focus on customer retention
Many eCommerce businesses are now focusing on customer retention by using analytics to predict customer behavior and offer personalized benefits. By identifying customer segments based on their purchasing habits, eCommerce companies can prioritize which customers to target with retention strategies.
Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics is being increasingly used to predict market trends and customer behavior. By using machine learning algorithms and historical data, eCommerce businesses can anticipate which products will be popular, which customers are most likely to buy and when, and the most effective marketing strategies.
Multichannel retail
eCommerce brands are now utilizing multiple channels, including social media, websites, apps, email, WhatsApp, and even physical stores, to reach their potential customers. A sound strategy for managing, collecting, and utilizing data across all these channels is crucial.
AI and ML technologies
Using artificial Intelligence and machine learning for customer segmentation and personalization, businesses can deliver a more customized customer experience. They can also use sentiment analysis to understand customer feedback and build dynamic pricing for products to remain competitive.
Real-time analytics
Real-time analytics enables eCommerce businesses to quickly adjust their strategies in response to changing customer behavior and market conditions. This trend is critical for businesses that want to stay competitive and agile.
Want to uncover errors impacting your eCommerce revenue potential? Let us show you with a free checkout audit.
From customer retention to real-time analytics and AI/ML technologies, the trends in eCommerce analytics are constantly evolving. To stay competitive and successful, you must keep up with these trends and invest in a robust analytics strategy that meets your unique business objectives.
By embracing the power of eCommerce data analytics, you can gain actionable insights that enable you to make data-driven decisions that can drive growth, improve customer engagement and ultimately increase sales. As a result, you will truly thrive in today’s dynamic eCommerce landscape.
Posted on May 16, 2023
eCommerce stores constantly evolve and improve their business operations to meet changing market needs, customer preferences, and industry trends. At times, such evolution may require a business to migrate or re-platform its eCommerce site, which can be overwhelming and complex.
As much as 27% of eCommerce businesses are thinking about migration, but to ensure a seamless transition, you need to carefully consider and take numerous steps. In this article, we’ll delve into the process of eCommerce migration, why businesses opt for an eCommerce re-platforming project, and how to prepare for a successful eCommerce site migration.
What Is eCommerce Migration?
eCommerce migration is the process of moving your eCommerce site from your current platform to another, to a newer version of the same platform, or to a new host. It can also involve making other types of changes to your entire website (e.g. data, design, and content).
What are the different types of eCommerce migration?
It’s essential to identify the type of eCommerce migration required based on the needs of the eCommerce business and to plan the eCommerce migration project accordingly.
Platform migration
This type of migration involves moving from your current platform to another (re-platforming process), such as moving from Magento to Shopify Plus or from WooCommerce to BigCommerce.
Version upgrade migration
This type of migration involves upgrading to a newer version of the same eCommerce platform. For example, this would include upgrading from Magento 1 to Magento 2 or from WooCommerce 5.0 to WooCommerce 6.0.
Hosting migration
Hosting migration involves moving from one hosting provider to another, like moving from a shared hosting plan to a VPS or dedicated server.
Data migration
If you want to move data from one eCommerce platform/URL to another, you need eCommerce data migration. This could include product data, customer data, order history, and other relevant data.
Design and content migration
Finally, this type of migration involves migrating the design and content of the website. This could include migrating custom themes, plugins, and content like blog posts and product descriptions.
Why Do eCommerce Businesses Re-platform?
There are several reasons why online businesses consider eCommerce platform migrations:
Outdated technology: As technology evolves, eCommerce platforms may become outdated, making it difficult to keep up with the latest trends and customer expectations.
Poor user experience: An eCommerce site with a poor user experience can significantly impact conversions (e.g. high bounce rates), customer loyalty and retention (e.g. loss of customers), and ultimately revenue. Migrating to a new platform can help address these issues and provide a better user experience.
Scalability issues: As a business grows, its eCommerce platform needs to be able to scale with it. Migrating to a platform that can handle increased traffic and sales is essential to support business growth.
Tapping into new markets: eCommerce migration can help businesses expand to new markets. The best eCommerce platforms offer advanced inventory management, payment gateways, and shipping options, as well as multilingual and multicurrency capabilities.
Better data analytics: A robust eCommerce platform with advanced analytics features provides critical insights into vital metrics like average order value, conversion rate, and revenue per customer, helping you enhance lead conversions, reduce abandonment rates, establish optimal product pricing, and accurately allocate budgets.
Integration with third-party applications: Integrating third-party apps, such as payment gateways, shipping providers, and marketing tools, can be challenging on certain platforms. eCommerce platform migrations can make integration more seamless and efficient.
Cost: Some eCommerce platforms may become expensive over time as businesses grow, making it difficult to manage operational costs effectively. Re-platforming to a more cost-effective platform can help an online business manage its budget more efficiently.
Take a look at our case study to see how one of our clients successfully migrated their eCommerce website using Noibu.
5 eCommerce Platforms to Consider
There are several eCommerce platforms available in the market, each with its unique features, functionalities, and pricing. Some of the most popular eCommerce solutions to consider include:
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level version of the popular Shopify eCommerce platform. It is designed to meet the needs of high-growth, high-volume businesses and offers a range of advanced custom features and capabilities not available on the standard Shopify plan.
Magento
Magento is an open-source platform that powers Adobe Commerce. It provides flexibility and customization options for businesses with complex eCommerce needs. It’s a great platform for large businesses or those with high-volume sales.
SAP Hybris
SAP Hybris is a popular enterprise-level eCommerce platform designed for large-scale businesses. It offers a wide range of features, including product content management, order management, and omnichannel commerce capabilities.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based eCommerce platform that enables businesses to create and manage personalized, omnichannel shopping experiences for their customers. It offers a range of features, including product catalogs, promotions, order management, and artificial intelligence capabilities.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress that provides eCommerce capabilities. It’s ideal for small businesses or those with basic eCommerce needs, and it’s the most widely used platform with almost 39% market share.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a cloud-based platform that provides a wide range of features, including design templates, payment gateways, and marketing tools. It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries.
Custom solutions
Finally, if you’re an eCommerce brand that is looking for a fully customized eCommerce platform to tailor it to your business, a custom solution may be the best choice. In fact, many of our clients choose this option, and you can read more about the pros and cons of a custom eCommerce platform vs off-the-shelf.
How to choose the right eCommerce platform
Choosing the right eCommerce platform is critical to the success of your eCommerce store migration, so here are some key factors to consider:
Consider your business requirements, such as the type of products you sell, the volume of sales, as well as the level of customization required.
Think about the cost of the platform, including any ongoing fees, such as transaction fees or hosting costs.
Ensure the platform can handle your business’s growth over time.
Consider the platform’s user experience and how it aligns with your brand and customer needs.
Make sure the platform can integrate with any third-party applications you currently use or may need in the future.
Consider the level of support the platform offers, including documentation, customer service, and community resources.
Want to uncover errors impacting your eCommerce revenue potential? Let us show you with a free checkout audit.
If you want to ensure a seamless transition, creating a comprehensive eCommerce migration strategy is critical. This migration plan will make the process and your life easier.
First things first
The initial step involves defining the scope of your migration and determining the changes that you intend to make to your site. This could include retaining the existing site structure or making modifications to navigation, product categories, and other elements.
Consider the following factors:
Domain: Verify that you have access to your domain so that you can update the domain name server (DNS) record to the new server if you switch website hosts.
SSL certificate: Check whether your SSL certificate is compatible with the new server and if it can be transferred.
URLs: Determine whether your URLs will change following the site migration. If they do, you’ll need to set up 301 redirects to avoid losing search engine rankings and ensure that users can access your new pages via links.
Assess your current eCommerce site
Next, assess your current eCommerce site thoroughly to identify any potential challenges and develop a plan to address them.
Here are some key areas to assess:
Site design and user experience: Review your site’s design, layout, and user experience. Consider how easy it is to navigate, whether the site is responsive, and whether the design is consistent with your brand.
Site functionality: Evaluate the functionality of your site, including features such as the shopping cart, checkout process, and payment gateway. Identify any issues or limitations that may impact your ability to sell products online.
Data and content: Take stock of all the data and content you have on your current site, such as product information, customer info, and order history. Identify any issues with data quality or completeness that may need to be addressed before migration.
Integrations: Review any third-party applications or services that integrate with your current eCommerce platform. Identify any potential issues with compatibility or data transfer that may need to be addressed during the migration process.
Set goals for the migration
Once you’ve assessed your current eCommerce site, it’s time to set clear goals for the migration. These goals should align with your business’s broader strategic objectives and include specific outcomes you want to achieve, such as improved user experience, increased sales, or better integration with third-party applications.
Here are some key steps to consider when setting goals for the migration:
Identify the outcomes you want to achieve: Consider the broader business objectives and identify the specific outcomes you want to achieve through the migration process. These may include improving site performance, increasing sales, or enhancing the user experience.
Set specific, measurable goals: Ensure that each goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). This will help you track progress and measure the success of the migration process.
Prioritize your goals: Once you’ve identified the outcomes you want to achieve, prioritize them based on their importance to your business objectives.
Identify risks and mitigation strategies
As with any major project, eCommerce migration comes with risks. These risks can include data loss, website downtime, and compatibility issues with third-party applications. Identifying these risks and developing mitigation strategies can help minimize the impact of these risks.
Identify potential risks: Consider all the potential risks associated with eCommerce migration, including technical issues, data loss, and compatibility issues with third-party applications.
SEO and downtime are also two important aspects which can suffer great risk during the migration process. SEO can be significantly affected due to a drop in traffic and rankings, and if the new platform isn’t set up correctly, it can lead to a temporary loss of sales and traffic to the website.
Assess the impact of each risk: Determine the potential impact of each risk on your business and prioritize them based on their severity.
Develop mitigation strategies: Develop strategies to mitigate each risk, such as regular data backups, thorough testing, and contingency plans for website downtime.
Identify key performance indicators (KPIs)
To measure the success of the migration process, you should identify KPIs to track. Identifying KPIs and tracking them throughout the migration process will also help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your new eCommerce platform.
The KPIs should align with the goals you’ve set for the migration, and they should be measurable and specific. Here are some of them:
Website traffic: Track the number of visitors to your website before and after the migration to assess the impact on traffic.
Conversion rate: Measure the conversion rate before and after the migration to determine whether the new platform has improved sales and created an increase in conversion rates.
Average order value: Track the average order value (before and after) to determine whether the new platform has increased revenue.
Site performance: Monitor site performance metrics such as page load speed and server response time to ensure that the new platform is performing as expected.
Develop a timeline and budget
In order for the migration process to stay on track and within budget, you should develop a custom migration plan that aligns with your business objectives and minimizes risks:
Develop a project timeline: Create a timeline for the migration process that includes key milestones and deadlines.
Allocate resources: Determine the resources required, including personnel, technology, and budget.
Create a budget: Develop a budget that includes all the operating costs associated with the migration, such as licensing fees, data migration services, and third-party integrations.
eCommerce Migration Checklist
Hopefully, all the tips and tactics we mentioned above will be useful in your migration process.
For the sake of having even more clarity and staying organized, make sure to follow this eCommerce migration checklist:
Determine why you want to migrate your eCommerce site and what your goals are for the new platform.
Obtain agreement from all stakeholders.
Research and compare eCommerce platforms to determine which one is the best fit for your business.
Choose an eCommerce platform that aligns with your business goals, budget, and technical requirements.
Conduct a thorough assessment of your current eCommerce site to identify any areas for improvement.
Develop a detailed migration plan that outlines each step of the migration process, including a timeline and budget.
Ensure that your data is properly formatted and ready for migration to the new platform.
Make sure to create a backup of your current eCommerce site’s data before initiating the migration process to ensure you have a copy of your data in case something goes wrong.
Notify your customers and stakeholders about the upcoming migration process and any potential disruptions to services during the transition period.
Design your new website.
Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit, avoiding content updates and 404 errors.
Ensure that all SEO settings, such as URLs and meta tags, are properly migrated to the new platform to avoid any negative impact on your SEO rankings (i.e. a drop in rankings).
Test the migration process to ensure that your data is properly migrated and that your new eCommerce site is functioning as expected.
Train your team on the new eCommerce platform and any new features or functionality.
Set up any necessary third-party integrations, such as payment gateways and shipping providers.
Launch your new eCommerce site and monitor its performance to ensure that everything is working as expected.
Conduct thorough post-migration testing to ensure that your new eCommerce site is functioning as expected and that all third-party integrations are working properly.
Continuously monitor and optimize your new eCommerce site to improve performance and user experience, as well as achieve your business objectives.
Customize your new eCommerce site to align with your brand and create a seamless customer experience.
Update your payment gateway settings to ensure that payments are properly processed on the new platform.
Make sure to migrate all product information, including images, descriptions, and pricing, to the new platform.
Migrate customer information, including order history and account details, to the new platform.
Update your shipping settings on the new platform to ensure that your customers are properly charged for shipping.
Monitor traffic and sales on your new eCommerce site to make sure that everything is functioning properly and that your sales are not being impacted negatively.
Create a customer support plan to ensure that your team is prepared to handle any issues or questions that arise during the transition period.
It’s Migration Time
eCommerce migration can be a complex process, especially if it involves re-platforming. Assessing your current eCommerce site, setting clear goals for the migration, choosing the right eCommerce platform, customizing your new site, as well as testing and QA are all critical components of the eCommerce migration process.
Fortunately, by following a strategic approach and carefully planning each step, you can ensure a seamless and successful migration that meets your business’s and customers’ needs as well as aligns with your broader strategic objectives.
Leverage Noibu to Eliminate Revenue-Impacting Bugs on eCommerce Websites
However, it’s important to note that no matter which eCommerce platform you choose, you can never completely avoid website errors. Bugs and technical glitches show up even at the most unexpected instances, potentially causing your business millions of dollars in lost revenue through the course of the year.
Noibu is an eCommerce error monitoring platform that not only detects and flags website errors in real time, but also calculates the impact that they are predicted to have on annual revenue. The platform provides all the technical details developers need to quickly resolve high-priority errors without having to replicate them or spend hours investigating. Sign up for a demo of the Noibu platform to witness how you can eliminate revenue-impacting bugs on your site (no matter which platform its built on) and boost your annual top line as you successfully plan migration.
Posted on May 12, 2023
Unlocking eCommerce Success: A Comprehensive Guide To The Data You Should Track
The old saying that applies to almost everything we do in life goes something like this—if you don’t know where you are, you can’t know where you’re going. And you can’t know where you are, nor where you’re going, if you fail to regularly monitor and assess the things that are truly important for you and your growth.
When it comes to managing and scaling your eCommerce company to unlock its full potential, we at Noibu find that this saying rings particularly true. The mere success of your eCommerce operations relies on the data you gather and the eCommerce metrics you measure. In fact, the most successful eCommerce enterprises like Amazon, eBay US, Alibaba, and others that are constantly winning at eCommerce, are doing so because they’re absolutely obsessed with their eCommerce metrics.
For example, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon utilizes big data to improve one of their essential eCommerce metrics—average order value. Amazon sets its product prices in accordance with current activity on its website, product availability, order history, item preferences, foreseen profit margin, and other factors. Then, they utilize the so-called “dynamic pricing” method, which involves changing the prices on given items as big data is updated and analyzed. Thanks to this, Amazon typically earns more significant profits on their best-selling items and offers discounts to the less popular ones. According to a report, this strategy benefited the eCommerce giant by enhancing its annual income by 143% from 2016 to 2019.
Knowing the ins and outs of your key eCommerce metrics and analytics is crucial because it’s the only way to gauge your levels of success and identify critical areas for improvement. In the words of the late Peter Drucker—one of the most widely-known and respected influential thinkers on management—if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. In that context, knowing the data you should gather and the key metrics for eCommerce you should measure can definitely help you make better-informed decisions to achieve your business objectives.
In this comprehensive article, we’ll dive into the essential data eCommerce product managers and eCommerce teams should track in order to grow strong and profitable brands.
The eCommerce Metrics You Should Track To Take Your eCommerce Business To The Next Level
In a nutshell, eCommerce metrics can be defined as any measurable, consistent method to assess achieving a given eCommerce website’s goal. However, while there are many eCommerce metrics to monitor, it is unnecessary to monitor the indicators that do not significantly impact the financial performance of your eCommerce business.
For that reason, it’s far more practical to focus on a limited number of eCommerce metrics that have the most significant influence on your eCommerce business and use them as key performance indicators (KPIs).
KPIs stand for key performance indicators, and they should be the primary focus when tracking any kind of progress, even though all metrics are essential for monitoring. The most significant difference between eCommerce metrics and KPIs is that metrics measure and quantify processes, while KPIs assess the effectiveness of those processes in achieving the desired outcomes.
Below, we have compiled a list of the most important metrics that SMB, MM, and enterprise eCommerce teams should consider tracking to improve and optimize their company’s processes. As you review the following metrics, it is vital to keep your business objectives in mind to identify those relevant to your business.
Conversion Rate
Monitoring the sales conversion rate is a critical metric for eCommerce businesses. This rate represents the percentage of website visitors who make a purchase, and it’s important to maximize it as much as possible.
For instance, if 200,000 people visited your online shop this week and only 1,000 made a purchase, your conversion rate would be 0.5%. However, conversion rates vary greatly depending on the industry and product category.
In March 2023, the average conversion rate across eCommerce businesses was 1.75%, a slight increase from March 2022, at 1.66%. Wellness and health products had the highest conversion rate at 4.2%, followed by crafts at 4.07% and household and kitchen appliances at 3%.
For that reason, it would be best to research your industry and target market to determine a good benchmark for your online store’s performance. Nevertheless, some things that you can do in order to grow your eCommerce conversion rate include:
Enhance your product pages load rates;
Use only high-resolution professional photographs and videos of the products you sell;
Optimize your listings by using well-researched keywords;
Set a different conversion rate for every selling platform that you use;
Set conversion rates for every product category because some may have better conversion rates than others;
Set a conversion rate for each promotion, such as when dealing with influencers or affiliates.
All in all, it’s essential to maintain or improve your conversion rate over time. If you notice a significant decrease in traffic, it could point to an issue with your website that needs to be addressed.
At Noibu, we excel at just that! Noibu is a software solution designed to help eCommerce businesses quickly identify and resolve website issues that interfere with the customer experience and find their correlation with conversion rates.
Integrating with all popular eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and others, Noibu is equipped to track website errors across different selling platforms in real-time, thus allowing eCommerce enterprises to identify and address issues before they significantly impact their sales and revenue.
This way, by catching all new website errors and maintaining functional and healthy eCommerce websites, Noibu actively helps eCommerce teams stay focused on the future of their business rather than consistently worrying about the state of their website and achieving long-term success.
Average Order Value
It goes without saying that one of the top objectives for any eCommerce shop is to maximize customer spending as much as possible. So, here comes the second eCommerce metric that eCommerce teams should track—the average cost of each purchase in their shop, which represents the average order value.
To estimate your eCommerce store’s AOV, divide the total revenue by the number of orders. Measuring the AOV can provide deeper insights into the customers’ purchasing power and help identify growth opportunities. It will also help establish clear sales goals and identify what changes eCommerce teams should make so that their customers will willingly spend more with every new transaction.
To increase the average order value, eCommerce teams could utilize the following strategies for enhancing their AOV:
Offering supplementary goods and items that enhance or extend the functionality of the item the customers originally intended to buy;
Offer items or services as a bundle or a package so clients get a discount on every item compared to when they purchase them individually;
Offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount to encourage their customers to spend the most possible.
In addition to these strategies, eCommerce must regularly measure their AOV over time and change their business model, pricing, and product quality as needed to improve their marketing effectiveness and drive more revenue. By taking a data-driven approach to their AOV, eCommerce companies can make smart decisions to help their business thrive.
Customer Lifetime Value
The customer lifetime value (CLV) is a significant metric used to calculate the estimated total amount a customer is foreseen to spend on an eCommerce website during their entire relationship with the brand.
For eCommerce businesses, CLV is a crucial factor since it forecasts the future value that each customer will bring to the company. By understanding the CLV, eCommerce teams can make informed decisions about customer acquisition, engagement, and retention strategies.
For instance, if a customer’s CLV is high, investing more in marketing and customer service may be worthwhile to keep them engaged and retained. However, a customer with a low CLV may not justify the same level of investment.
By closely monitoring and optimizing their customers’ CLV, eCommerce teams can enhance their customer relationships and achieve sustainable growth in the long term. In essence, CLV acts as a crystal ball that enables companies to predict the potential value of a customer to their business.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Next in line, among the essential eCommerce metrics that eCommerce teams should track is the so-called customer acquisition cost. By identifying this key metric, eCommerce companies can figure out how much it typically costs to lure in a new customer to their business.
This metric can be calculated using the formula: CAC = total eCommerce marketing and sales costs divided by the number of new clients acquired. For instance, suppose you spend $30,000 on a social media advertising campaign, which results in 4,500 website purchases. In that case, the cost per acquisition for that campaign is $30,000 divided by 4,500, or $6.6.
eCommerce teams should keep a tab on this valuable metric and ensure it remains reasonable within their CLV expectations. For example, if your CLV is at $500 and your AOV is $450, your customer acquisition cost practically outweighs your profits.
In order to lower your customer acquisition costs, there are a few tactics your ought to try:
Boosting your conversion rate means that your CAC is going in the opposite direction;
Cutting down on expenses tied to marketing for client acquisition;
Engaging in organic and long-term marketing techniques like social media and SEO;
Spending more money on referral marketing so that your satisfied clients recommend your eCommerce shop to others for free.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
When a prospective buyer begins a purchase but doesn’t go through with it, the process leads to abandoned shopping carts. And since you’re a seasoned eCommerce professional, you know that some customers select to withhold from purchasing even if your products are in great demand and your conversion rate is exceptionally high.
Nonetheless, while this scenario is unfavorable for any eCommerce business, it’s also to be expected. Therefore, monitoring the rate and why potential clients abandon their shopping carts before making the final purchase is an essential eCommerce metric to track and a vital sign of checkout (in)efficiency.
As of March 2023, the calculated data from 48 studies suggest that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.99%. Put differently, this indicates that seven out of ten customers will click out of the eCommerce website without making a final purchase.
In that regard, if you feel like your company can do better when it comes to the shopping cart abandonment rate, here are a few strategies you could try to improve your numbers:
You can work with your development team to make it more straightforward for shoppers to finalize their purchases by streamlining the entire shopping cart/checkout experience;
Start using retargeting to persuade wavering clients to come and purchase again from your business. For instance, you can do this by sending out follow-up emails or using tailored advertisements;
You can provide guest checkout so that clients can buy without creating an account.
When it comes to improving your shopping and checkout abandonment rates, Noibu is the perfect eCommerce monitoring solution that identifies technical issues in these crucial parts of the customer journey.
In 2022, the total eCommerce revenue lost due to cart abandonment was projected to be north of $443 billion. 13% of those $443 billion is expected to be caused by website bugs, errors, and shopping cart malfunctions.
Noibu helps eCommerce teams monitor add-to-cart functionalities, diagnose all potential checkout errors, and get notified when an error or a bug arises in this part of the online funnel to prevent lost sales.
To put it in a numbers perspective, Noibu practically services a $53 billion problem globally, which speaks volumes about why SMB, MM, and enterprise eCommerce companies are eager to implement an error detection solution like Noibu.
Email Opt-In Rate
Although social media has become an essential aspect of digital marketing, email marketing remains a crucial tool for eCommerce companies. Email marketing is still handy for encouraging repeat purchases and remarketing products to potential customers.
Like with website traffic, the aim is to experience a rise in the number of email subscribers, even when they don’t make a purchase immediately. While website visitors may be intrigued by your products or services, those who subscribe to your newsletter have a vested interest in your company and its future, which means that they’re more likely to convert into loyal and paying customers soon.
To encourage people to subscribe to your emails, offer them something valuable in return for their email addresses and other personal contact information. For instance, consider offering your new subscribers an exclusive discount on their first or next purchase through a code or voucher.
Additionally, providing a customer-friendly positive email communication experience (such as understanding your brand and being steady in messaging) along with a simple registration process and effective calls to action can increase subscription rates.
It’s crucial to keep the rate of unsubscribes to a minimum. Though unsubscribers are inevitable, you should aim to keep the number to less than 0.5%. If many people are unsubscribing themselves from your email list, it’s time to reevaluate your strategy.
Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS)
Establishing the right price can be tricky, even for experienced online sellers with solid educational backgrounds. However, it’s critical to determine a pricing strategy that generates profits while being competitive enough to foster repeat business from your existing customers.
When evaluating the appropriate price point, it’s crucial to account for several variables that may be concealed, such as product demand, competition, perceived value, and customer expectations. However, the most critical factor to have in mind when determining the price of your goods or services is your cost of goods sold (COGS).
COGS measures the direct costs associated with producing your goods, also known as the “cost of sales.” By calculating your COGS accurately, you can estimate the minimum amount you’ll need to charge to cover your expenses and make a profit. It’s critical to ensure that your price is high enough to cover your costs while being competitive enough to remain attractive to potential customers.
For a clothing manufacturer and retailer, the cost of goods typically includes the expenses for fabric, buttons, thread, labels, equipment, machinery, and personnel directly involved in production and manufacturing.
Accurate COGS data can help you determine your products’ correct pricing and profitability. In essence, you must know how much your company spends on the products you carry to determine the appropriate pricing and how much revenue you generate.
Moreover, knowing the COGS can guide you in promoting the best products based on their profit margins. For instance, a long-sleeved blouse with an 18% profit margin could be an excellent candidate for a small-scale yet scalable email marketing campaign. In comparison, a high-end designer pair of shoes with a 65% margin might benefit more from expensive marketing methods like social media advertising or PPC marketing.
Want to uncover errors impacting your eCommerce revenue potential? Let us show you with a free checkout audit.
In the end, monitoring the key metrics for eCommerce is critical for the success and growth of your online business, and there’s no way around it. These metrics provide insight into customer behavior, marketing efficiency, operational efficiency, and financial performance.
By regularly tracking and analyzing these metrics, eCommerce businesses can make informed decisions to improve their operations, increase customer satisfaction, and drive growth. From measuring your conversion rates and bounce rates to knowing your customer lifetime value and customer acquisition cost, each metric provides a unique perspective on the performance of your eCommerce business.
A comprehensive understanding of these metrics will help you identify areas for improvement, optimize your operations, and achieve your business goals by providing you with a big picture of where your eCommerce operation is and where it should be headed.
Posted on May 3, 2023
In today’s digital era, eCommerce has become an essential part of the growth strategy for many businesses. However, with the rise of eCommerce, security threats to eCommerce websites have also increased significantly. As a matter of fact, the eCommerce industry is the most vulnerable of all, accounting for 32.4% of all cyber attacks.
Cybercriminals target eCommerce websites with the intention of stealing sensitive customer data, personal information, and financial details. This is why it is crucial for every eCommerce business to have proper security measures in place to prevent these security threats.
In this article, you can learn about the most common e-commerce security threats and the best tactics to make your eCommerce website unbreachable.
Why Is eCommerce Security Important?
eCommerce businesses handle sensitive customer data, including personal information, credit card numbers, and financial details. Any security breach in an eCommerce website can result in the loss of this sensitive data, leading to financial losses both for the customers and the business.
Security for eCommerce websites is important to maintain the trust and loyalty of customers. In case an online business suffers a security breach, customers may lose trust in the business, leading to a loss of reputation and credibility.
eCommerce organizations are legally required to protect their customer’s sensitive data. Non-compliance with data protection laws can lead to severe legal consequences and penalties.
11 Types of Security Threats in eCommerce
eCommerce websites face various security threats, so it’s essential for businesses to understand these cyber threats in order to implement appropriate security measures. What follows is a list of some of the most common security threats in eCommerce.
Phishing and social engineering attacks
Phishing is a cyber attack where cybercriminals trick victims into giving away sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers. According to Verizon’s DBIR report, more than 20% of data breaches in 2020 were a result of phishing attacks.
Cybercriminals often use social engineering tactics, such as creating fake emails, websites, or social media profiles, to lure victims into providing this information. Phishing attacks can be very extremely convincing, so it’s important to educate eCommerce website users on how to identify phishing attempts.
Malware
Malware refers to malicious software that cybercriminals use to gain unauthorized access to an eCommerce website. It can include viruses, worms, Trojans, and ransomware.
A malware attack can infect eCommerce websites through various means, including email attachments, malicious downloads, and infected advertisements. This type of attack can cause significant damage to eCommerce websites, resulting in the loss of customer data, business reputation, and financial losses.
DDoS attacks
In distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, cybercriminals flood an eCommerce website’s server with malicious traffic, causing the website to crash or become unavailable. These malicious attacks can cause significant financial losses for eCommerce businesses as they prevent customers from accessing the website and making purchases.
SQL injection
SQL injection attack is a cyber attack where cybercriminals inject malicious code into an eCommerce website’s SQL database, allowing them to access sensitive data such as customer information, financial data, and personal data. They can cause significant damage to an eCommerce website, resulting in the loss of customer data and business reputation.
Zero-day exploit
A zero-day exploit is a security vulnerability that is unknown to software vendors or developers. Cybercriminals can use zero-day exploits to gain unauthorized access to an eCommerce website and steal sensitive data, such as customer information, credit card details, and other confidential data.
E-skimming
E-skimming is a type of cyber attack where hackers install malicious code into an eCommerce website’s payment page. The malicious code can steal customers’ payment card details, including card numbers, CVV codes, and expiry dates, as customers enter their payment information.
Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack
In a man-in-the-middle attack, the perpetrator gets ahold of communication between two parties (such as a customer and an eCommerce website) to steal sensitive information, such as credit card details. MITM attacks can occur when an attacker gains access to an unsecured Wi-Fi network or through phishing emails.
Cross-site scripting (XSS)
This is a type of attack where hackers inject malicious code into a vulnerable eCommerce website, which can be executed by users who visit the site. This attack allows the attacker to steal sensitive customer data, such as login credentials, payment card details, and other confidential information.
Insider threats
An insider threat is a security threat that arises from within the eCommerce business itself, such as employees or contractors. Insiders can use their privileged access to steal sensitive data or cause damage to the eCommerce website or the business.
User error
User error can also lead to security breaches in an eCommerce website. Common user errors include weak passwords, sharing login credentials, and falling for phishing emails.
Brute force attacks
A brute force attack is a type of cyber attack where an attacker attempts to gain access to an eCommerce website by guessing login credentials through trial and error. Brute force attacks can be successful if the website has weak passwords or doesn’t have a system in place to prevent multiple login attempts.
19 eCommerce Security Best Practices and Solutions
To ensure eCommerce security, businesses need to adopt various best practices which help to prevent security breaches, protect sensitive data, and maintain customer trust.
Use SSL certificates
This is one of the most effective ways to secure an eCommerce website. SSL certificates encrypt the data that is transmitted between the eCommerce website and the customer’s browser, ensuring that sensitive data is protected from cybercriminals.
Obtain and install an SSL/TLS certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA).
Configure the certificate to use strong encryption, such as 256-bit encryption.
Implement multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication is a security measure that requires users to provide two or more forms of identification before accessing an eCommerce website. This can prevent unauthorized access to an eCommerce website, stopping cybercriminals from stealing sensitive data.
Enable multi-factor authentication for all user accounts.
Use a combination of authentication factors, such as a password and a one-time code sent via SMS or email.
Regularly review and update authentication factors as necessary.
Regularly update software
eCommerce websites use various specialized software, including content management systems, shopping carts, and payment gateways. Regularly updating this software is crucial to prevent security vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can exploit.
Regularly update all eCommerce software, including plugins and themes.
Enable automatic updates where possible.
Test updates in a staging environment before deploying to the live eCommerce website.
Conduct regular security audits
Regularly conducting security audits is essential to identify security vulnerabilities in an eCommerce website. Security audits can point out potential threats, allowing businesses to take preventive measures to protect their eCommerce website from cybercriminals.
Use automated tools and manual testing to identify vulnerabilities.
Address vulnerabilities promptly and thoroughly.
Use strong passwords
This is an essential eCommerce security best practice. As you probably already know, each user should have a unique, strong, and complex password, and they should include a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
Passwords should be changed regularly and users should be encouraged to use a password manager to store their passwords securely.
Require strong passwords for all user accounts.
Use a password policy that includes minimum length, complexity, and expiration requirements.
Do not share passwords across different websites or use easily guessable admin names.
Implement least-privilege access
Least-privilege access is a security principle that ensures users only have access to the data and resources they need to perform their job functions. Implementing least-privilege access can prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data, reducing security risks. That’s one of the security principles we follow in Noibu to secure our clients’ data.
Use a least-privilege access model for user accounts to limit access to sensitive areas of the eCommerce website to authorized personnel only.
Regularly review and update user permissions as necessary.
Want to uncover errors impacting your eCommerce revenue potential? Let us show you with a free checkout audit.
Did you know that as much as 95% of cybersecurity breaches are a result of human error? This generally happens due to poor password management, inconsistent cyber hygiene practices, and a lack of continuous cybersecurity awareness training.
This is precisely why educating employees on eCommerce security best practices is essential if your goal is to prevent security breaches.
Employees should be trained on how to identify phishing attempts, create strong passwords, as well as use two-factor authentication. They should also be informed about the importance of keeping software up-to-date and how to identify potential security threats.
Develop and communicate a security policy for your eCommerce business that outlines security best practices and expectations for employees.
Conduct security training sessions for all employees to educate them about eCommerce security risks and threats, and how to prevent them.
Encourage employees to use strong passwords for all accounts, including personal accounts.
But educate your customers too
Educating your employees is just half of the equation. You should inform your customers about how to identify phishing attempts and they should also know about the importance of identifying potential online threats.
Create an eCommerce security guide or tutorial for customers.
Send periodic newsletters or alerts to customers to keep them informed about the latest security threats.
Encourage customers to use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and keep software up-to-date.
Provide clear and concise instructions for reporting security incidents or suspected security incidents.
Teach them to never disclose personal information unless they have confirmed the recipient’s identity.
Moreover, they should avoid clicking on links in suspicious emails, as these links may lead them to a fake login page designed to steal their data. Also, warn them against downloading any unexpected attachments.
They need to watch out for spelling and grammatical errors in the email’s subject line or body. Encourage them to pay close attention to the sender’s domain name, as phishing emails often use domains that are similar to legitimate ones but with minor changes, such as a misspelling or a letter missing.
Finally, they should be cautious of emails that urge them to transfer money or approve a charge immediately and provide a reason why it must be done right away. These are common tactics used by scammers to exploit urgency and make people act without thinking.
Regularly back up data
Regularly backing up data is essential in case of a security breach or data loss. Online businesses should ensure that they have a backup plan in place as well as that backups are stored securely and off-site.
Regularly back up all eCommerce data, including customer information and transaction data.
Use a backup system that is separate from the live eCommerce website.
Test backups regularly to ensure they are complete and accurate.
Use HTTPS
HTTPS encrypts the data transmitted between a website and a user’s browser, making it difficult for hackers to intercept or steal data. Using HTTPS also helps to prevent man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks and protects customers’ sensitive data.
Obtain and install an SSL/TLS certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA).
Enable HTTPS on all pages of the eCommerce website, including checkout and payment pages.
Use HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to ensure that all communication is encrypted.
Install eCommerce security plugins
These plugins provide additional security features, such as two-factor authentication, login attempts monitoring, and malware scanning. By using e-commerce security plugins, businesses can enhance their website security and protect customer data.
Moreover, if you want to keep your website healthy, think about using some of these eCommerce platforms and tools. They can help you with various aspects of eCommerce, including research, marketing, automation, and more.
Research and install a reputable eCommerce security plugin that meets your business needs.
Configure the plugin to monitor login attempts, scan for malware, and enable two-factor authentication.
Regularly update the plugin to ensure it is up-to-date with the latest security features.
Use firewalls
Firewalls are essential for protecting an eCommerce website from unauthorized access. A firewall acts as a barrier between the eCommerce website and the internet, blocking unauthorized access attempts.
Research and install a reputable firewall that meets your business needs.
Configure the firewall to block unauthorized access attempts and protect sensitive data.
Regularly update the firewall to ensure it is up-to-date with the latest security standards.
Multilayer security
This approach involves using more than one layer of security to protect the website from various types of security threats.
Use a combination of firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems.
Regularly scan for malware and viruses using antivirus software.
Don’t forget payment gateway security
Payment gateway security is crucial to ensure the security of online transactions. This way, you can protect customers’ payment card details and prevent fraudulent transactions.
Use a secure payment gateway that complies with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
Use tokenization to replace sensitive data with a non-sensitive placeholder.
Implement fraud detection and prevention measures, such as address verification and velocity checks.
Secure servers and admin panels
To prevent unauthorized access to the eCommerce website, you should use strong passwords, restrict access to servers and admin panels, and regularly update software to prevent security breaches.
Ensure that your server is properly secured by using strong passwords and disabling any unnecessary services.
Only allow trusted IP addresses to connect.
Regularly update your server software to ensure that known security vulnerabilities are patched.
Limit access to your admin panel by only allowing authorized personnel to log in.
Use strong passwords and two-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access.
Implement a lockout policy that locks out users after a certain number of failed login attempts.
Install anti-virus and anti-malware software
If you want to protect your eCommerce website from malware and viruses, anti-malware and anti-virus software are the way to go. They scan the website for malware and viruses and remove them to prevent security breaches.
Choose a reputable antivirus and anti-malware software that meets your business needs.
Configure the software to regularly scan for malware and viruses.
Regularly update the software to ensure it can block the latest and most advanced viruses and malware.
Use closed-source code
Finally, closed-source code is code that is not publicly available, making it difficult for hackers to identify vulnerabilities. Instead of using open-source code, focus on closed-source code to enhance website security and prevent security breaches.
Use closed source code for critical areas of the eCommerce website, such as the checkout and payment pages.
Regularly audit the code for vulnerabilities and apply security patches as necessary.
Consider using a code signing certificate to ensure the integrity of the code.
Keep only essential customer data
When it comes to data storage, the key principle is to avoid holding onto more data than necessary for conducting your business efficiently. However, determining what qualifies as necessary involves a multitude of factors.
Especially with the emergence of various data privacy regulations, it’s crucial to establish a comprehensive business philosophy that considers customer experience, operational convenience, and security.
You should ensure that your customers’ vital data is kept separate from other information by segmenting your network. With that in mind, consider employing firewalls and conducting regular audits to verify the proper functioning of your security measures.
Enhance your website security during the holiday season
The holiday season often sees a surge in attempted cybercrime and fraudulent activity, with the increased traffic and pressure creating opportunities for attackers. To safeguard your website’s security during this time, consider the following measures:
Conduct a pre-holiday security check
Most eCommerce cyber-attacks occur during the holiday season when retailers are busy and often unprepared. Conduct a comprehensive security check before the season begins, including point-of-sale system malware checks and improved web server security.
Also, review and manage access to your store’s admin-level accounts and permissions for all your tools and software.
Heighten your fraud protection
Increased shopping volume can lead to more fraudulent activities. Chargeback scams are a prevalent form of cyber risk for eCommerce brands, making it essential to acquire effective fraud protection tools.
Train your customer service team
Train your team to handle common threats and establish a clear process for verifying customer identity when they request changes to their orders or accounts. This can help you avoid unauthorized access or fraudulent account activities.
Final Thoughts
eCommerce security threats are evolving and becoming more sophisticated, which means that businesses must implement a variety of security measures to protect their eCommerce sites from cybercriminals and fraudulent activities.
The tactics listed in this article are some of the best eCommerce security practices that businesses can adopt to enhance their security posture and prevent security issues. By implementing these security measures, you can ensure that your customers’ sensitive data is protected and that their business reputation and credibility remain intact.
In Noibu, we think is one of the most important aspects of every eCommerce business. If you want to find out more about our product, take a look at the eight challenges Noibu solves.
Posted on March 13, 2023
As an eCommerce business owner, it’s essential to keep your website up-to-date to stay competitive in today’s online marketplace. Your website is the face of your business, and it’s often the first point of contact with potential customers. So, how do you know if your website needs to be redesigned?
One of the most common signs that your website needs a redesign is if it’s outdated. If your website hasn’t been updated in several years, it’s likely that it’s no longer meeting your customers’ needs. An outdated website can be slow, difficult to navigate, and may not be optimized for mobile devices.
Another sign that your website needs a redesign is if it’s not generating enough traffic or sales. If your website isn’t attracting the right audience or isn’t converting visitors into customers, it’s time to reassess your website’s design and functionality.
Your website’s design should also reflect your brand and business goals. If your website doesn’t accurately represent your brand or isn’t aligned with your business goals, it’s time for a redesign.
Another factor to consider is your website’s functionality. If your website’s functionality is outdated or isn’t user-friendly, it can lead to frustration for your customers and impact your sales.
It’s also important to keep up with the latest website design trends and technologies. If your website isn’t utilizing the latest design and technology trends, it can appear outdated and unprofessional.
Finally, if you’re planning on expanding your business or launching new products, it may be time for a redesign. A redesign can help you create a website that’s optimized for your business goals and can support your business’s growth.
You’ve now gone through and weighed out whether a redesign makes sense for your business and concluded that it does. That’s great!
However, this process can be complicated and, if not executed correctly, can lead to disastrous consequences. In this blog, we’ll discuss the biggest mistakes to avoid during an eCommerce website redesign.
Ignoring User Experience (UX)
One of the most significant mistakes businesses make during an eCommerce website redesign is ignoring the user experience (UX). Your website’s design should prioritize ease of navigation and functionality, ensuring that visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for and complete their purchase. Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for fast load times.
Ignoring the UX is one of the biggest mistakes that businesses make during an eCommerce website redesign. A website’s design should prioritize ease of navigation and functionality, ensuring that visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for and complete their purchase. Neglecting UX can lead to frustrated customers, increased bounce rates, and ultimately, lost sales.
To avoid this mistake, businesses can conduct user research, including usability testing and feedback collection, to ensure that the website is user-friendly and meets the needs of their target audience. A well-designed website that provides a positive user experience can significantly improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, and build brand loyalty.
Neglecting SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is crucial for any online store’s success. It helps your website rank higher in search engine results, increasing your visibility and driving more traffic to your site. One of the most common mistakes during a website redesign is neglecting SEO. Many business owners get caught up in the aesthetics and functionality of the new design, forgetting about the critical SEO components.
When redesigning your eCommerce website, it’s essential to work with an SEO professional who can ensure that your site is optimized correctly. This means analyzing your existing content, identifying the right keywords, and structuring your new site to maximize your SEO potential.
There are a variety of very helpful SEO eCommerce tools to help your team get the ball rolling and stay on track with what’s important to your business.
Changing URLs Without Proper Planning
One of the most significant risks during a website redesign is changing URLs without proper planning. Your website’s URLs are a critical component of your SEO strategy, and if you change them without a proper redirection plan, you can lose significant traffic and rankings.
It’s essential to conduct a comprehensive audit of your website’s current URLs. Make a list of all the URLs on your website, including product pages, category pages, and any other pages that may have inbound links or traffic. This will help you identify which URLs need to be redirected to the new site’s URLs.
Next, create a redirection plan. This plan should include a list of old URLs and their corresponding new URLs. It’s important to use a 301 redirect for each old URL, which tells search engines that the page has permanently moved to the new URL. This will ensure that your old URLs pass on their SEO authority to the new URLs, maintaining your rankings and traffic.
Once you have your redirection plan in place, it’s essential to test it before launching your new website. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your website and ensure that all of the old URLs redirect to the new URLs correctly.
Finally, it’s crucial to update any inbound links to your website that may be pointing to old URLs. You can use a tool like Ahrefs to identify any inbound links to your website and contact the webmaster to update the link to your new URL.
All of this will work in your favour to help maintain your SEO rankings and traffic, preventing any loss during the transition.
Ignoring the Importance of Website Speed
Website speed is an essential factor in today’s eCommerce landscape. Online shoppers have become accustomed to fast-loading websites and expect nothing less from their shopping experiences. If your website takes too long to load, shoppers are likely to leave and shop elsewhere, resulting in lost sales and revenue. Google reports that a one second delay in website speed on mobile can impact conversions by 20%.
When redesigning your eCommerce website, it’s essential to focus on website speed. This means optimizing your site’s images, minimizing scripts and code, and utilizing a content delivery network (CDN) to speed up page loading times.
Curious to see how fast your website currently is? You can test your website’s speed here!
Failing to Test the New Website Design
Testing is crucial during any website redesign process. A new design may look great on paper, but the real test comes when users interact with it. If your new design is not tested correctly, you risk losing valuable customers who may find the new design confusing or difficult to navigate.
When redesigning your eCommerce website, make sure to test your new design thoroughly. This means conducting user testing, A/B testing, and ensuring that all functionality works correctly. Testing will help you identify any issues and make the necessary adjustments before launching your new site.
Tracking Errors & Catching Regressions
Catching regressions when shipping new eCommerce products or website designs is crucial to ensure that any new updates do not negatively impact the website’s functionality or user experience. Regressions are often unexpected issues that occur when new changes are made, causing errors or unexpected behaviour.
To catch regressions, eCommerce teams should perform thorough testing of their website and new updates before launching them. This includes testing for functionality, compatibility, and performance across different browsers, devices, and platforms. Automated testing tools can also be used to catch any unexpected regressions or issues before launch.
It is also essential to have a plan in place to quickly address any regressions that are caught after launch. This includes having a system for users to report issues and having a dedicated team to address and resolve them quickly.
By catching and addressing regressions early, eCommerce teams can prevent any negative impact on their website’s user experience and ultimately maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The most optimal way to do this is through error monitoring technology, which coincidentally is what Noibu is built to do, specifically for eCommerce businesses. Barstool Sports uses Noibu to catch regressions as they constantly push out new features and products. This helps save eCommerce teams and developers hours of time and detects any new errors instantly to ensure they are being proactive in working towards not negatively impacting any customer on their site.
Conclusion
A website redesign can be a significant undertaking for any eCommerce business, but it’s essential to get it right. By avoiding the mistakes outlined above, you can ensure that your new site is optimized for SEO, speed, and usability, providing a positive user experience and increasing your revenue potential.
Posted on March 6, 2023
Are you interested in comparing the amount of new revenue impacting issues depending on what eCommerce platform is being utilized? Have you ever wondered during which period of the year eCommerce brands face the highest level of site issues? The results may surprise you.
We’ve analyzed data from more than 1000 websites worldwide that use Noibu, to provide you with insights into the state of eCommerce site errors.
Check out our infographic below for a brief overview!
Posted on March 6, 2023
In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive eCommerce market, businesses need to stay ahead of the curve and constantly find ways to improve their online presence and customer experience. One of the most effective ways to do this is by utilizing third-party apps and tools.
Third-party apps are software applications that are developed by companies other than the main eCommerce platform. These apps are designed to integrate with eCommerce platforms and provide additional functionality and features. For eCommerce businesses, these apps can be a game changer, helping them to stay ahead of the competition and providing their customers with a better online shopping experience.
In this blog, we’ll explore the following key benefits of using third-party apps for eCommerce sites and why they are so important:
Additional functionality
Improving customer experience
Automating processes
Increasing sales
Utilizing valuable data and insights
We will also provide examples of top softwares to help achieve each benefit highlighted above, as well as some key statistics to support the importance of these applications.
Add Functionality
One of the main reasons eCommerce companies use third-party apps is to add functionality to their site. Many eCommerce platforms have robust features and functionalities, but they may not always meet the needs of every business. Third-party apps can provide additional features and functionalities that can help businesses take their online presence to the next level.
For example, the software “Omnisend” provides eCommerce businesses with an SMS and Email marketing platform that can help businesses increase their sales. This app allows businesses to send targeted messages to customers, provide personalized product recommendations, and improve customer engagement.
Improving the customer experience is crucial for the success of any eCommerce business and third-party apps can help achieve this in several ways, from conversion focused assets to tailoring the conversation to your target audience.
With average cart abandonment rates at around 70% in the industry, it’s no question that making the best possible customer experience should be of utmost importance. Below are a couple of tools that can help:
“OptinMonster” provides eCommerce businesses with a powerful lead generation and conversion optimization platform. This app can help businesses personalize their website, improve their opt-in forms, and increase conversions.
Another example is “Tidio Chat,” which provides businesses with a live chat platform that can help improve customer support and engagement. This app allows businesses to respond to customer inquiries in real-time, providing customers with quick and easy support.
According to Engati, stores using conversational commerce in the right way, are increasing annual revenue by 7 to 25% – definitely something to consider with those kinds of returns!
Automate processes
Automating repetitive tasks can help eCommerce businesses save time and resources. There are many third parties that can automate a lot of the manual processes involved in running an eCommerce site, freeing up many hours for teams to focus on other priorities.
The software app “Beeketing” provides businesses with a comprehensive marketing automation platform. This app offers features such as email marketing, product upsells, and cart abandonment recovery, allowing businesses to personalize their marketing efforts and reach their customers with relevant and targeted messages.
Another potential time saving software is “Shipstation,” which provides businesses with a shipping and fulfillment automation platform. This platform can help businesses automate their shipping and handling processes, saving them both time and resources.
With the power of automation available in today’s technology, it’s no wonder why 91% of marketing leaders say that automation is essential to their business’ success, and has been seen to help improve efficiency and marketing ROI by 45%.
Increase sales
Throughout this blog, it’s evident that third-party apps, be it for automation, customer experience, optimizations, shipping, or messaging, all share the common goal of boosting sales for eCommerce businesses.
Here are some other powerful third party tools to help increase your brand’s revenue through subscriptions, loyalty, upselling and reviews:
ReCharge: A subscription management app that helps businesses set up and manage subscription-based products and services, leading to more predictable revenue streams and higher customer retention.
LoyaltyLion: A loyalty and rewards program app that helps businesses create customized loyalty programs that incentivize customers to make repeat purchases and increase customer lifetime value.
Bold Upsell: A shopify cross-selling and upselling app that helps businesses increase revenue by suggesting related or complementary products to customers at the point of purchase.
Yotpo: A customer review management app that helps businesses collect and display user-generated content such as product reviews and ratings to build social proof and increase sales.
One of the most effective ways of increasing revenue is by capitalizing on upselling opportunities. More specifically, through past purchases of your customers. Studies show that 75% of consumers are more likely to purchase products when brands provide relevant recommendations based on their purchase history!
Provide valuable data and insights
Third-party applications can also offer valuable data and insights to eCommerce businesses, enabling teams to make data-driven decisions. This information can be used to improve site performance, optimize marketing campaigns, and increase conversions.
One of the most popular applications to help with this is “Google Analytics,” a robust platform for monitoring and analyzing website traffic and user behaviour. It enables businesses to gain a better understanding of their customers, monitor site performance, and make informed choices.
Another example is “Verfacto” – a marketing analytics software that is designed to show you the data around what converts your visitors into customers, as well as their behavioural patterns.
Setting up and utilizing proper analytics is critical to understanding how consumers interact with your eCommerce brand, along with a variety of other different benefits.
The Downsides of Third Party Apps
As we discussed throughout this blog, third-party applications can be very beneficial for eCommerce brands looking to increase their online presence and streamline their operations. These apps can help businesses with everything from marketing and inventory management to shipping and customer support.
However, with great power comes great responsibility, and it’s important to remember that third-party apps can also pose a risk to your website and customer journey. From slowing down your site speed and creating security vulnerabilities to causing glitches and errors, these apps can negatively impact your eCommerce store if not carefully managed. Fortunately, there is a solution that can give you peace of mind, always.
Noibu is an advanced platform that helps eCommerce businesses detect all site errors and provides actionable solutions in order to prioritize and solve them. By using Noibu, you can rest assured that you will never be in the dark when it comes to third-party app-related issues.
Conclusion
To wrap things up here, third-party apps are a valuable resource for eCommerce businesses looking to improve their online presence and customer experience. They can add functionality, improve customer experience, automate processes, increase sales, and provide valuable data and insights. However, they can also pose risks, so it’s important to make sure you are always aware of potential errors that are live on your website, and not only relying on the few customer complaints that may come through your support team.
It is important for businesses to carefully evaluate the available options and choose the tools that best meet their needs and help them achieve their goals!
Want to check out how many errors on your site are currently impacting your customers? Click below to learn about our free checkout audit and how it all works:
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) is the amount of time it takes to resolve a bug. It’s also commonly referred to as Average Time to Resolution (ATR).
The formula for calculating MTTR, or average time to resolution, is:
Total Time Spend on Resolution / Number of Errors Worked On = MTTR
*Looking for an initial benchmark for your team? We suggest taking a look back at your last two to three sprint cycles to gather the approximate hours spent and the number of errors resolved.
The time-to-resolution metric is used by companies to understand how efficient their development teams are at pushing out fixes.
Why is MTTR Important?
For eCommerce, MTTR has a big impact on customer satisfaction and retention. When customers encounter issues with their experiences on your company’s website, they expect these problems to be resolved quickly so they can get back to shopping with your brand. If the incident response isn’t quick enough, this could lead to lost sales and negative reviews from unhappy customers.
Retailers want the average time to resolution to be as low as possible so that detected errors aren’t impacting others for too long.
When it comes to developers, though, MTTR is important for another reason altogether.
Why Your Developers Should Work to Reduce Mean Time to Resolution
Beyond the impact to customer satisfaction, mean time to resolution also has a significant impact on developers.
While the developer’s main job is to develop new code, error mitigation requests are an inevitable part of working in the department. Unfortunately, the method that they need to use to begin resolving issues requires a lot of time and repetition, which takes them away from developing that new code. Research shows that, with the current state of error resolution, developers are spending at least 25% of their time solely on debugging efforts (some studies estimate that this figure could actually be closer to 50%).
So it’s no surprise that this has proven to be incredibly frustrating for developers. Having developers spend all this time on code fixes also interrupts their planned projects, which impacts their ability to hit their department’s targets.
Both of these should be pretty strong motivators for decreasing MTTR. But how can a lower mean time to resolution be achieved?
Three Steps (and One Software) to Reduce Mean Time to Resolution
1. Identify Errors More Effectively
How is your team currently hearing about website errors? If it’s just from your customers, or directly from your stakeholders, it’s time for an update!
Being able to automatically identify site errors, as soon as they happen, means your developers can immediately know if they have to set time aside for resolutions. It also means that, rather than having to wait for an error to be called out by a customer, developers can proactively begin their resolution process, which decreases the amount of time the error is live on site.
The best way to start doing this is to bring on an error monitoring tool. Monitoring tools automate error detection for companies and help to ensure that the development team isn’t missing any critical site bugs. It will allow your team to stop spending so much time manually QA’ing their website, and allow them to rest assured that any new issues will be brought to their attention.
2. Prioritize Error Fixes
This might be a bit controversial, but not all errors are worth your developers’ time!
Ultimately, the reason retailers want to remove bugs from their website is because they impact the company’s ability to generate sales and collect revenue. However, if a bug doesn’t significantly impact the company’s bottom line, what is the point of putting a developer’s time into fixing it?
When we’re examining average time to resolution, we not only want to reduce the time it takes to solve an error, but also to reduce the total amount of time spent on errors as a whole.
By taking a look into an error’s direct impact on conversion and revenue metrics, teams can more accurately prioritize which bugs have meaningful and detrimental impacts on the business. With access to this data, managers can make a better determination as to what they want their developers to work on.
The only problem with this is that it also takes time to investigate an error’s impact on revenue and conversion. So while developers are saving time by only working on the most impactful errors, they are also losing time to impact investigation. This is obviously not helpful in reducing time to resolution.
Hope is not lost here, though!
There are tools on the market that can automatically calculate an error’s impact on a business, making prioritization possible in a matter of seconds, rather than hours. When paired with an error detection tool, your team can quickly identify all errors and understand which ones are the most pressing, meaning time to recovery is reduced and any critical negative customer experiences are addressed in the least amount of time possible.
3. Gather The Data Needed to Resolve
This step is where developers lose the most time, but it is also where teams can most significantly improve their MTTR.
Data gathering is an absolute must in order to know how to resolve an error, but this is not a simple task. The first step developers need to take to start their resolution process is to gather contextual information surrounding the error’s occurrence.
What URL is the error occurring on? What on-site actions prompt this error to occur? Is it only impacting customers browsing on Chrome, or Safari? Does the impact change when a customer switches devices?
These pieces of information help the developers reproduce the error, but unless the developers have direct access to this data right off the bat, they need to spend time testing out different scenarios (often referred to as reproduction workflows).
Once developers have gathered this data and are successfully able to recreate the error they are tasked with resolving, they must dive into the back end to try and identify the actual technical cause of the error. This requires fine-toothing through API calls, console logs, code firings, etc.
All of this takes time – hence why we’re seeing developers spend anywhere from 25-50% of their time on bug resolutions. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Much like with error detection and error prioritization, there are also tools on the market that automatically capture all the contextual and technical information developers need to more accurately reproduce errors, and allow them to do so in only a fraction of the time.
When developers already have access to the circumstances around an error, including the stack trace and actual line of code that caused the error, they are better enabled to test resolutions and push fixes live.
In fact, in speaking with developers that made the switch from the normalized processes used for error resolution over to resolving errors with the help of tools that provide automated detection, business impact calculations, and contextual and technical data around the error’s cause, they have been able to reduce the amount of time they spend on resolutions by 70%.
Software to Help Identify, Prioritize, and Resolve Errors Quickly
One of the tools available to eCommerce developers to help reduce MTTR is Noibu. Noibu’s software captures all conversion-impacting errors, automatically prioritizes them based on impact to the business, and provides a huge swath of technical and contextual data for developers to use.
With Noibu in place, countless eCommerce brands have seen overwhelmingly positive results for their business and their development team. You can check out some of their stories here.
Conclusion
As so many forward-looking organizations employ software to improve processes, it’s a little ridiculous that the majority of developers are still stuck manually reproducing errors over and over again.
Reducing your MTTR with the use of software helps improve customer satisfaction, and lets your development team do less of what they don’t want to do (work through tedious error reproduction flows) and more of what they do want to do – 55% of developers in a study by Rollbar said that if they didn’t have to spend so much time fixing bugs, they would have the time to build new features and functionality.
We hope that this article has opened your eyes to an infinitely faster way to resolve errors and reduce MTTR!
Posted on March 3, 2023
Don’t let your support team be your only line of defence when it comes to maintaining a positive eCommerce user experience!
While your eCommerce and marketing teams may be in charge of website performance, it’s your support team that ultimately has to hear about and handle any customer-facing issues that arise.
As challenging as customer complaint tickets can be, they can also be helpful in creating and maintaining a healthy website that offers positive experiences to its customers.
Being alerted to a bad experience, or a broken flow on your website, gives your team the opportunity to resolve an issue they might not have known was there and to improve their overall website performance. Unfortunately, support teams aren’t always getting these alerts: only 1 in 10 customers take the time to create support tickets when they experience an error.
So while tickets can be frustrating, they do pose an interesting opportunity for companies.
In this blog, we’ll explore the positives and the negatives around customer support tickets as it relates to eCommerce website issues, and dive into how teams can better equip themselves to handle site errors and the tickets that come with them.
Why It’s Good to Hear About Errors
As we mentioned, customers that experience a site bug while going through their online shopping experience will only create a support ticket 10% of the time. More often than not, the customer will just abandon the website.
Now 10% isn’t really a lot, but it’s certainly better than not knowing about any customer-impacting issues, right?
Every opportunity to make an improvement to user experience, or to unblock a conversion, should be prioritized. Hearing about issues through tickets provides an avenue to do this.
The Common Downsides to Customer Tickets
No, we’re not meaning to contradict what we just said above. What we mean is that customer tickets usually don’t come with a lot of helpful information. The tickets that are coming in, while they alert the team to something being wrong, usually don’t provide a lot of context to actually act on a resolution quickly.
A lot of the time, a customer ticket will come in with a line saying, “Please help, I can’t add these shoes I want to my cart,” or, “Your website isn’t loading.” Depending on the ticket collection form, the support team may be able to see the general time frame in which the error occurred, the URL it occurred on, and the resulting action the customer wasn’t able to take.
Getting to the bottom of a reported error from a ticket that doesn’t contain the right information takes a lot of investigation work, trial and error, and patience. It takes time for the support team to understand what’s actually going on, and then even more time for the development team to gather enough data to begin working on a resolution.
The Impact Beyond Customer Tickets
If your company’s support team is hearing only about 10% of the website errors impacting your customer, what about the other 90%?
Site errors, when left undetected and unresolved, can turn into a massive revenue drain.
A navigation menu not working could lead to a potential customer bouncing from the site before making a purchase.
An infinite loading loop at the View Product step could stop an interested customer from adding an item to their cart.
A faulty redirect from the View Shopping Cart button could block customers from beginning their checkout process.
A PayPal integration failure could stop customers from being able to give you money.
However, without hearing about these types of issues through customer tickets, or through an error detection platform, your team will miss out on countless sale and conversion opportunities. Your potential customers are going to get frustrated, and your business growth will suffer.
While customers may not be quick to fill out a support ticket, they certainly have no problem talking about it online and with others!
Brand engagement on Twitter, especially when it comes to poor experiences, is a big thing now. More and more, brands are being hit with public tweets complaining about errors prospective customers are experiencing.
In a world where word-of-mouth recommendations and customer reviews rule as king, having tweets like these attached to your brand can be detrimental.
How can support teams avoid this kind of publicity, better mitigate incoming tickets, and make their lives easier, all while helping to create a seamless eCommerce experience? By utilizing eCommerce Monitoring Technology to be more proactive.
Using Error Monitoring Software to Maintain Site Health
Having a website monitoring system in place, one that detects all customer-impacting site errors, can be one of the most helpful tools you could give to your support team.
With software that can identify every customer-impacting error on your website, the support team can rest assured that the site is operating as expected, and when it isn’t, they will be alerted to it immediately without having to wait on customers to do it for them.
Error monitoring platforms, like Noibu, also provide the added benefit of collecting all the data needed to resolve an error. This not only helps in decreasing time to resolution, but it also helps support staff understand the error itself. Access to this level of data also allows support staff to directly tie customer tickets back to detected errors, which helps them better address customer complaints.
With tools like Noibu in place, online retailers and their support teams have seen impactful changes in their ability to maintain a healthy site, grow their business, and decrease the number of tickets coming into their support team.
For Champion, the team was able to move off of user-generated error reports and onto a more proactive approach: “I think the impact that has been positive is that we have been able to resolve and address issues, without waiting for customer generated tickets, proactively and become better aligned on the impact of what we’re working on.” This has resulted in an 18x ROI for the company. Read the Case Study →
For Scrubs and Beyond, the team noted that their number of complaints went from 5 or 6 tickets a day down to 1 every couple of weeks. Quite impressively, the team has achieved a 123.36x ROI since partnering with Noibu’s error monitoring platform. Read the Case Study →
For Moschino, their Customer Experience Specialist noted a definitive decrease in error reports from customers after partnering with Noibu: “when we started the collaboration, the customers were reporting a lot less errors… no news is good news.” The Italian fashion brand has achieved an ROI of 99.57x with the platform. Read the Case Study →
For DLT Trading, it only took a matter of days for the team to experience a “significant reduction in customer complaints” after getting the platform set up. The company has seen a 47% growth in sales and has achieved an ROI of 13.01x. Read the Case Study →
Click below to learn more about how Noibu has helped top eCommerce brands like Barstool Sports, Carrefour, and more!
While the main reason eCommerce and retail businesses want to eliminate site bugs is to create the clearest, frictionless path to purchase, is this the only reason why a business should focus on website health?
Many retail and eCommerce professionals fall for the fallacy that if their website isn’t their main revenue generator, and is rather used as an information centre for potential customers or partners, they don’t need to invest in site health and maintenance. However, an error’s impact goes far beyond the loss of an online sale: it reaches into brand reputation, trust, loyalty, and longevity.
Website errors are more common than you think
Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, website errors are more common than you think. In fact, in a study conducted into the top online retailers in the US, UK, and Germany, over 3000 bugs were identified on just 52 websites over the 2019 shopping holiday season.
There are a multitude of ways for these errors to get introduced into an eCommerce system, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about (if you’d like to learn more about how errors happen, you can check out this blog). What we are here to discuss is why retail companies with an online presence need to start paying attention to site errors, regardless of whether or not their website is a main revenue driver.
If your website generates revenue in any capacity, site errors can cost you a lot of money
If your eCommerce site is your company’s main source of revenue, or even if the website only accounts for a small portion of your revenue, anything that is blocking customers from interacting with the environment as planned can be incredibly detrimental to your business, and can cause you to lose online sales.
At best, errors can cause frustration with customers, leaving them with a sour taste in their mouth. At worst, errors can block potential customers from completing their checkout flow.
Either way, when customers aren’t served that perfect experience, performance metrics go down and the potential for online-sourced revenue diminishes.
This is obviously a huge concern for retailers whose main source of revenue is from their eCommerce environment, but…
What about if your site isn’t your main revenue generator?
Even if your site isn’t your main revenue generator, it still matters how it looks and performs. Why? Because site errors can impact:
– Your reputation with customers. If customers find that you are not providing them with a good experience, they can easily go elsewhere to make their purchases or do business with another company.
– Your trustworthiness among customers who are looking for information about companies like yours online before making decisions on who they want to buy from. If customers are presented with a broken website, their expectations have already not been met, which could lead them into believing that this will be the same case if they purchase a product from that provider.
Both of these can impact the overall growth of your business in a big way. They diminish the likelihood a prospective customer will return to (or even begin to patronise) your store, and greatly decrease the chances that they will refer their peers. What’s worse is that often, customers will also take to social media to express their dissatisfaction with a poor experience, which further amplifies a negative opinion of your brand.
Customers may also leave negative reviews because of their experience – and those reviews can hurt future growth by scaring away potential buyers who read them before making a decision about whether or not they should buy from you. With such a huge emphasis on customer ratings and satisfaction in the industry today, negative reviews are a glaring red flag for consumers.
Site errors can impact visitors’ trust in your brand and their loyalty to it
Think about how you feel when you see a spelling mistake in an article or report. It takes away a bit of your confidence in that piece, doesn’t it? The same can be said for a site with errors.
Impressions matter, and unaddressed site bugs lead to prospective customers having a sense of distrust and unreliability around your business. This can be a dangerous combination for any business!
If a visitor encounters an error, they may assume that there are other issues with the website, and the company, that they haven’t noticed yet. They may fear that the company doesn’t pay attention to detail or care about customers’ experiences. This breeds a lot of negative emotions and makes it incredibly difficult to foster ongoing loyalty from both existing and prospective customers.
Don’t let bugs get in the way of growing your business
The most important thing to remember is that your site’s main purpose is to provide a great customer experience, regardless of whether or not it’s the main point of sale for your business. If your eCommerce site doesn’t look professional, reliable, or trustworthy, you risk seriously damaging your brand.
The bottom line of all this is that website errors are not just a nuisance. They can have a real impact on your business, whether or not your website is being used to drive the majority of your sales. Your website can be your most important marketing tool if it’s well maintained, but if it’s riddled with errors, customers won’t find it easy to use or trust your brand.
So even if you don’t think errors matter because they’re not directly blocking revenue – they do!
Posted on February 13, 2023
Now is a really exciting time for folks in the eCommerce space: online retail sales are expected to rise to over $6.5 Trillion this year as shoppers become more and more accustomed to the ease at which they can access products and services without leaving their home.
At the same time as the industry’s collectable revenue is growing, the space is also getting increasingly competitive. As of 2023, there are an estimated 12-14 million retail stores online, so it’s more important than ever to be able to stand out from the crowd.
In order to stand out, though, companies need to employ a multitude of tools and techniques to enable specialized functions, automations, personalizations, growth strategies, and more. And these tools are all out there, the only trouble is being able to identify which platforms and softwares bring about the best results, which ones other eCommerce professionals are using, and which ones suit your company’s needs best.
We scoured the internet to see what everyone else was recommending, spoke to our high-performing eCommerce customers, and rounded up the best of the best tools for you.
Here’s a breakdown of the 47 tools our eCommerce customers love that help their teams create new assets, analyze performance, gain insights, and optimize their website.
Adobe Commerce is a powerful eCommerce platform that enables merchants to create, manage, and optimize their online stores. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools to help businesses build and maintain an effective online presence. With Adobe Commerce, merchants can easily create their own website using the drag-and-drop website builder, manage product catalogs, accept payments from customers, track orders and shipments in real-time, and much more. Adobe Commerce also provides integrated marketing solutions to help businesses reach out to new customers and increase sales. With its advanced analytics capabilities, merchants can gain insights into customer behavior to better understand their target audience and make informed decisions about how best to market their products or services.
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2. BigCommerce
Description
BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that provides an end-to-end solution for setting up and managing an online store. The platform allows businesses to create their own custom website with features such as product catalogs, payment processing, order management, and more. With BigCommerce, businesses can easily manage their entire eCommerce operations from one place. It also offers powerful tools to help businesses grow their sales by optimizing their website for search engines and creating targeted marketing campaigns.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based eCommerce platform that enables businesses to quickly and easily build, manage, and optimize their online stores. It provides features such as website building tools, payment processing, order management, customer data management, analytics, and more. With Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s powerful suite of tools, businesses can create an engaging shopping experience for their customers while also increasing sales and revenue. In addition to its comprehensive set of features, the platform also offers integrations with third-party services such as payment gateways and shipping providers. This makes it easier for businesses to expand their reach and offer a personalized shopping experience for their customers.
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4. SAP Commerce Cloud
Description
SAP Commerce Cloud is a comprehensive eCommerce solution that enables businesses to quickly and easily build, manage, and scale their online stores. It offers a powerful website builder with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to create stunning websites without any coding knowledge. Additionally, SAP Commerce Cloud provides various features such as product catalogs, order management, payment processing, customer service tools, analytics & reporting modules and more that help merchants to run their business in an efficient manner. With SAP Commerce Cloud’s advanced features and capabilities, businesses can create a seamless shopping experience for their customers while increasing their sales and profitability.
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5. Shopify (and Shopify Plus)
Description
Shopify is a website builder that provides an all-in-one eCommerce platform with features such as payment processing, inventory management, and customer service. Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level solution that provides more advanced features such as custom APIs, multi-channel integrations, and scalability. Both Shopify and Shopify Plus offer businesses the ability to quickly set up their online stores with minimal effort. With these solutions, businesses can easily customize their store design, manage orders, process payments, track inventory levels, provide customer support services, and more.
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6. Wix
Description
Wix is a website builder that enables businesses to create and manage eCommerce websites. It provides users with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, allowing them to create professional looking websites without any coding knowledge. Wix also offers a range of features specifically designed for eCommerce, such as payment gateways, product pages, shopping carts, and more. This makes it easy for businesses to set up their online store and start selling products or services quickly. Wix also provides marketing tools that help businesses promote their products and services online. These tools include SEO optimization, email marketing campaigns, social media integration, and more.
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Pricing
Business Basic: $27/mo Business Unlimited: $32/mo Business VIP: $59/mo
7. WooCommerce
Description
WooCommerce is a popular eCommerce platform that helps businesses create an online store. It is a website builder and plugin for WordPress, which makes it easy to set up and manage an online store. WooCommerce has a range of features that make it attractive to business owners, such as payment gateways, shipping options, product management tools and more. It also offers customizable themes and templates to help businesses create an attractive website. With WooCommerce, businesses can quickly set up their own eCommerce store without having to hire a web developer or learn coding skills. This makes it an ideal choice for entrepreneurs who want to get their business up and running quickly.
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eCommerce Research Tools
To identify new growth opportunities, to learn about competitors, and to find new niche opportunities.
8. SEMrush
Description
SEMrush is one of the most popular SEOs tool for eCommerce marketing. This tool helps businesses research, analyze, and monitor themselves and their competitors in the digital space. It provides valuable insights into the performance of your competitors so that your marketing and product teams can make informed decisions about their own strategy. With SEMrush, you can find out what keywords you and your competitors are ranking for, get an overview of content gaps, and analyze backlinks. Additionally, SEMrush offers features such as social media monitoring and keyword research to help you optimize your eCommerce campaigns.
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Pricing
Entry: Free Pro: $119.95/ mo Guru: $229.95/mo Business: $449.95/mo
9. Ahrefs
Description
Like SEMrush, Ahrefs is an online SEO tool for marketing professionals. The platform helps eCommerce businesses gain insights into their competitors’ strategies, track the performance of their own campaigns, and optimize their websites for better search engine rankings. Ahrefs can be used to monitor keyword trends, analyze backlinks, and identify potential link building opportunities. It also provides detailed analytics on website performance, social media engagement, and more. With Ahrefs’ advanced features, businesses can gain powerful insights into their target audience’s behavior and preferences.
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Pricing
Lite: $99/mo Standard: $199/mo Advanced: $399/mo
10. Sparktoro
Description
Sparktoro is a marketing research tool that helps businesses gain insights into their audience and competitors. It enables companies to access deep consumer insights, find influencers and build better campaigns. Sparktoro offers an array of features such as audience segmentation, competitor analysis, content discovery, and more. With its powerful search engine, it can quickly scan millions of websites to provide accurate data about your target customers. Sparktoro also provides comprehensive reports that can help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategies and campaigns.
JungleScout is a powerful eCommerce platform that helps businesses of all sizes to succeed on Amazon. It provides a suite of tools and resources to help you research and analyze potential products, manage your inventory, track sales, optimize your listings, and much more. JungleScout can be used by both established brands looking to expand their presence on Amazon as well as new business owners who are just starting out. With its easy-to-use interface and powerful analytics capabilities, JungleScout is the perfect tool for any eCommerce business looking to succeed on Amazon.
Brandwatch is a consumer intelligence platform that provides insights into customer behavior, demographics, and trends. It helps companies in the eCommerce, marketing, and research industries to better understand their customers and make informed decisions. Brandwatch collects data from millions of sources including social media, blogs, news sites, forums and more. It then uses advanced analytics to uncover insights into consumer behaviors and preferences. This data can be used to inform marketing strategies, product development decisions, customer service initiatives and more. Brandwatch also provides a range of tools for monitoring brand health, tracking competitor activities and identifying influencers in any given market or sector.
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eCommerce Business & Management Tools
To manage projects, daily operations, finances, and logistics around the eCommerce site.
Project Management Tools
13. Monday
Description
Monday.com is a project management tool that helps teams keep track of their projects and tasks, plan and organize their workflow, and collaborate with each other. It provides an easy-to-use dashboard with customizable columns, boards, views, and more to help teams stay on top of their work. The platform also offers integrations with other popular software tools so teams can easily share data and collaborate in real time. Monday.com is designed to make project management easier for teams of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises.
Trello is an online project management tool that helps teams and individuals stay organized and on top of their tasks. It is a digital platform that enables users to create boards, lists, and cards to keep track of projects, plan events, and organize tasks. Trello lets you add comments, assign tasks to team members, attach files, set due dates, and more. It also allows you to integrate with other third-party apps like Slack and Google Drive. With Trello, you can easily keep track of your projects while collaborating with your teammates in real time.
Fellow is a project management software that helps companies keep track of their projects, plan for the future, and organize their teams. It provides features such as task lists, timelines, and collaboration tools to help teams work together more efficiently. The software also offers a wide range of integrations with popular productivity tools like Slack and Google Calendar. With Fellow, eCommerce companies can easily manage their projects from start to finish while staying organized and on top of deadlines.
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Pricing
Entry: Free Pro: $6/mo Business & Enterprise: Custom
16. Asana
Description
Asana is a project management tool that helps teams stay organized and keep track of their projects. It enables users to plan, organize, and collaborate on projects from start to finish. With Asana, teams can manage tasks, set deadlines, assign tasks to team members and track progress in real-time. It also offers advanced features such as project templates and automated workflows for streamlining processes. Asana makes it easy for teams to collaborate on projects by providing them with the tools they need to get things done efficiently.
Drift is a conversational marketing and chatbot platform. As well as allowing users to manually build out complex journeys within the tool, the software also leverages natural language processing (NLP) to understand customer queries and respond with relevant information. This helps businesses save time and money by automating customer service and sales processes. Drift also provides an intuitive interface for customers to interact with the chatbot, making it easier for them to find the answers they need quickly. With Drift, businesses can provide a personalized experience for their customers while increasing efficiency and reducing costs.
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Pricing
Premium: $2500/mo Advanced & Enterprise: Custom
18. QuickBooks Online
Description
QuickBooks is an accounting software that helps companies manage their finances. It offers features such as invoicing, budgeting, and tax preparation. It also allows users to track their expenses and income. QuickBooks provides a comprehensive view of a company’s financial health, enabling them to make informed decisions about their business. It also helps businesses manage cash flow by providing detailed reports on sales and expenses. With QuickBooks, eCommerce companies can easily keep track of their finances and make sure they are running smoothly.
Veeqo is a cloud-based inventory management system designed to help eCommerce companies manage their stock levels, orders, and shipping. It provides an easy-to-use interface that allows users to quickly view stock levels, set up new orders, and track shipments. Veeqo also helps automate manual processes such as order fulfillment and product returns. With its intuitive design and powerful features, Veeqo can help eCommerce companies save time and money while increasing efficiency.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Free
20. Spocket
Description
Spocket is a dropshipping platform that eliminates the need to hold inventory and erases upfront costs for retailers. With Spocket’s carefully vetted partners, eCommerce businesses can access a global network of suppliers, get great deals on products, and benefit from fast shipping times that keep customers happy. The platform also provides automated shipping and fulfillment, allowing merchants to save time and money while expanding their reach.
ShipStation is a web-based shipping solution that helps eCommerce companies streamline their order fulfillment process. It provides an easy-to-use platform that allows users to manage, process, and ship orders quickly and efficiently. ShipStation integrates with over 150 of the most popular marketplaces, and offers features such as automated order processing, label printing, tracking updates, supplier-assignment, and more. With ShipStation’s wide range of features, eCommerce companies can save time and money by automating their shipping process.
Webgility is a software solution that helps eCommerce companies streamline their checkout process. It provides a unified platform for all the activities related to payment processing, order management, and inventory tracking. The software integrates with popular eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and Bigcommerce, and with accounting solutions such as Quickbooks Online or Desktop. Webgility also offers features like real-time analytics and reporting so that businesses can have better insights into their performance. With Webgility’s help, eCommerce companies can save time and resources while increasing customer satisfaction through faster checkouts and better order management.
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Pricing
Pro: $109/mo Advanced: $199/mo Premium: $399/mo
23. A2X
Description
A2X is a powerful tool that helps eCommerce companies manage their financial data. Built with eCommerce accountants at the center of the platform, it automates the reconciliation process, providing accurate and up-to-date financial information. A2X integrates with Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, and Walmart, allowing accountants to move away from spending countless hours tediously downloading files and poking around in spreadsheets. This enables eCommerce companies to save time and money while ensuring accuracy in their accounts. In addition, A2X can help with tax compliance by automatically generating all the necessary documents for filing taxes accurately and on time.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Sales-channel dependant Prices from $19/mo to $149/mo
24. Gorgias
Description
Gorgias is a customer service software that helps eCommerce companies provide better customer service. It offers features such as automated customer support, live chat, ticketing system, help desk automation, and more. With Gorgias, eCommerce companies can streamline their customer service process and deliver faster response times to their customers. Gorgias also provides powerful insights into customer behavior and preferences so that companies can better understand their customers and tailor their services accordingly.
To grow awareness and demand, to engage with new customers and test hypotheses, and to increase traffic and drive sales.
Social Tools
25. TikTok Ads
Description
TikTok is a popular social media platform that provides great opportunities for viral eCommerce marketing. It has become increasingly popular among Generation Z, making it a great place for eCommerce companies to market their products. With TikTok, you can engage with prospective customers in a fun and unique way, creating content that stands out from the crowd. You can also use TikTok to promote your products through influencers and user-generated content. By leveraging the power of TikTok, you can reach more potential customers and increase sales for your business.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Average TikTik Ad CPM: $10
26. Buffer
Description
Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that helps businesses manage their social media campaigns. It allows them to schedule posts to be published on multiple platforms at once, so they don’t have to manually post each message. Buffer also provides analytics, so businesses can measure the performance of their campaigns and optimize them for better results. Additionally, Buffer offers insights into trends and topics related to their industry, helping eCommerce businesses stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the field.
Hootsuite is a powerful social media scheduling and management tool that helps businesses manage and track their social media presence. It enables users to schedule posts, track brand mentions, and analyze engagement across multiple channels. Hootsuite also provides detailed analytics on how well your posts are performing, allowing you to identify which content works best and adjust accordingly. With Hootsuite, eCommerce businesses can easily create an effective social media strategy that will help them reach more customers and increase sales.
Yotpo is a platform that helps businesses to collect and manage reviews from their customers. It enables businesses to leverage customer reviews, ratings, and photos for marketing purposes. Yotpo helps brands to increase trust among potential customers by displaying authentic customer reviews on their website or other channels. Yotpo also offers features such as review filtering, automated email campaigns for collecting reviews, product recommendations based on user reviews, and more. With these features, eCommerce businesses can create a more personalized experience for their customers and build trust with them. Yotpo also provides analytics and insights so that businesses can understand how their customers feel about their products or services.
Smile.io is a loyalty and rewards program that helps eCommerce companies increase customer engagement and retention. It allows customers to earn points for their purchases, referrals, and other activities. These points can then be redeemed for discounts, free shipping, exclusive products, or other rewards. The platform also provides tools to track customer behaviour and preferences so that companies can tailor their loyalty programs accordingly. With Smile.io, eCommerce companies can easily create personalized experiences for their customers while increasing customer loyalty and sales at the same time.
ReferralCandy is a referral program software solution that helps eCommerce companies increase their sales and customer loyalty. The software helps eCommerce professionals run and manage their referral programs, which encourages customers to refer their friends and family to the company’s products or services. ReferralCandy provides tools for tracking referrals, sending rewards, and analyzing results. It also allows companies to customize their referral program to meet their individual needs. With the platform on hand, eCommerce companies can easily create a powerful referral program that will help them drive more sales and increase customer loyalty.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Premium: $47/mo Plus: $239/mo Enterprise: Custom
Testing and Experimentation Tools
31. Optimizely Web Experimentation
Description
Optimizely Web Experimentation is an incredibly useful A/B Testing tool for digital marketers. The platform allows them to run A/B test experiments on their website and measure the results in real-time. This helps them to make data-driven decisions about their marketing campaigns, and work towards increasing conversions. Optimizely also provides insights into customer behaviour, allowing marketers to understand how visitors interact with their website. They can use this data to optimize the user experience and create more effective marketing campaigns. Additionally, Optimizely allows marketers to track the performance of different campaigns so that they can see which ones are working best for them.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Custom
32. AB Tasty
Description
AB Tasty is a website optimization platform that helps eCommerce businesses improve their marketing efforts. It does this by allowing them to run A/B tests on their websites and track the results. This helps them understand what works and what doesn’t, so they can make informed decisions about their marketing campaigns. AB Tasty also provides tools to personalize content for each user, helping marketers target the right people with the right message. By using AB Tasty, eCommerce businesses can optimize their website performance and maximize their ROI from online marketing campaigns.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Custom
Campaign Automation and Management Tools
33. EngageBay
Description
EngageBay is a comprehensive CRM platform that combines all the essential tools needed for marketing, sales, and customer service. It offers an integrated suite of features such as email marketing, lead management, customer support and more. With EngageBay, businesses can easily manage their customers in one place and track their progress over time. The platform also provides insights into customer behaviour to help businesses make better decisions about how to engage with their customers. EngageBay is a great tool for businesses looking to streamline their customer engagement process and increase ROI.
Omnisend is a powerful marketing tool that enables eCommerce businesses to reach their customers with automated campaigns. It provides a suite of tools for email, SMS, web push notifications, and social media outreach. With Omnisend, businesses can create tailored campaigns based on customer behaviour and segmentation criteria. They also have access to advanced analytics and reporting features to help them measure the success of their campaigns. Omnisend also offers integrations with popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento to help businesses easily manage their outreach efforts.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Entry: Free Standard: $16/mo Pro: $59/mo
35. Campaign Monitor
Description
Campaign Monitor is a company that specializes in email marketing solutions. It allows businesses to design and send personalized, automated emails to customers in order to increase engagement and generate more sales. With Campaign Monitor, businesses can create targeted campaigns that are tailored to their specific needs and audience. The platform also offers powerful analytics to measure the performance of campaigns and understand customer behaviour.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Basic: $9/mo Unlimited: $39/mo Premier: $199/mo
36. Active Campaign
Description
Active Campaign is a company that provides marketing automation and customer relationship management (CRM) software. It helps businesses to automate their marketing activities, manage customer relationships, and track customer engagement. Active Campaign offers a wide range of features such as email marketing, lead scoring, contact segmentation, website tracking, personalization, digital advertising, and more. It also provides advanced analytics to help businesses better understand their customers and optimize their campaigns for maximum success.
Klaviyo is a powerful marketing platform for eCommerce companies that helps them to grow their business by providing personalized customer experiences, automated email and SMS campaigns, and in-depth analytics. Klaviyo can help companies create targeted email campaigns that are tailored to each individual customer’s needs and preferences. Additionally, it provides insights on customer behaviour so that companies can optimize their campaigns for better performance.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Entry: Free Email: $45/mo Email & SMS: $60/mo
38. Constant Contact
Description
Constant Contact is a company that helps businesses engage with their customers and grow their business. The company provides a comprehensive suite of tools to help businesses create, manage, and measure their online presence. This includes social media management, email marketing, landing pages, online forms, digital advertising, and more. Constant Contact also offers educational resources to help businesses better understand how to use these tools effectively. With Constant Contact’s services, businesses can maximize customer engagement and increase sales through targeted campaigns.
Google Ad Manager is a powerful tool for eCommerce marketing. It allows businesses to easily create, manage and optimize their Google Ads campaigns. With Google Ad Manager, businesses can target their desired audience with precision and increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. Furthermore, it also helps businesses to track the performance of their campaigns and make necessary adjustments accordingly. Google Ad Manager is an invaluable tool for eCommerce marketing as it allows businesses to take advantage of Google Ads features such as remarketing, dynamic ad targeting, and automated bidding strategies. This makes it easier for them to reach the right customers with the right message at the right time and drive more traffic and sales.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Average CPA for eCommerce is $45.27 for Search Ads and $65.80 for Display Ads.
Other Marketing Tools
40. HubSpot Marketing Hub
Description
HubSpot is a premier marketing tool for businesses. The platform helps marketers create, manage, and optimize their online presence in order to drive more traffic and more sales. With HubSpot, eCommerce businesses can easily create campaigns, track customer behaviour and engagement, segment audiences for targeted messaging, and analyze their results. It allows eCommerce businesses to build stronger relationships with customers while increasing the traffic to the website.
Nosto is a company that makes personalized shopping experiences possible for eCommerce companies. The company’s mission is to make online shopping easier and more enjoyable by providing personalized recommendations and tailored content. Nosto uses machine learning algorithms to understand customer behaviour and preferences, enabling eCommerce companies to offer highly personalized product recommendations, dynamic pricing, and automated marketing campaigns. By leveraging Nosto’s technology, eCommerce businesses can increase customer engagement, conversions, and sales.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Unavailable (original minimum fee pricing quotes at $500/month)
42. Canva
Description
Canva is a web-based graphic design platform. It enables users of all skill levels to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. The company provides access to a library of more than one million photographs, graphics and fonts. It also offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface and access to professionally designed templates. Users can also collaborate with others in real time on designs. Canva provides a range of features for businesses such as marketing campaigns, digital signage, logo creation and more. It also offers integration with other popular software platforms such as Slack and Dropbox.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Entry: Free Pro: $16.99/mo Teams: $19.99/mo
43. Compressor.io
Description
Compressor.io is a powerful online tool that helps optimize images for faster loading on websites. The software reduces the size of images while keeping the quality intact, allowing retailers to upload hundreds of photos and graphics to the website without impacting site speed. Compressor.io also offers a range of features such as automatic image resizing, cropping, and compression settings for different formats like JPEG, PNG and GIF. This makes it an ideal choice for eCommerce professionals who want to speed up their page loading time without compromising on image quality.
G2 User Rating
N/A
Pricing
Entry: Free Pro: $50/yr
eCommerce Analytics Tools
To understand how well you are performing, to identify improvements, and to spot any leaks in the sales funnel.
44. Google Analytics
Description
Google Analytics is one of the most widely used tools to measure, analyze, and report on website data. It provides insights into the performance of websites and helps businesses make data-driven decisions. With Google Analytics, users can track website visitors, understand their behaviour on the site, and identify opportunities for improvement. It also helps in understanding user engagement and retention rates. Additionally, it can be used to measure marketing campaigns and understand the effectiveness of different strategies. With this information at hand, businesses can optimize their online presence and maximize ROI from their campaigns.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Entry: Free Google Analytics 360: $12500/mo
45. Zuko
Description
Zuko.io is an analytics software that specializes in optimizing eCommerce checkout forms. Their platform is designed to help businesses track and analyze customer behavior to identify where and why visitors abandon their forms. By providing data on each form field, Zuko allows businesses to understand their user experience (UX) issues and make data-driven improvements to increase their form conversion rates. Zuko’s product is user-friendly and easy to set up, with no need to tag each field individually. With just two tags, businesses can start using Zuko to improve their form experience and boost their conversion rates (meaning more sales!).
Pricing
Entry-Tier – £100 per month Mid-Tier – £250 per month Pro-Tier – £500 per month Enterprise – Custom
*Free Trial Available
46. Noibu
Description
Noibu is an eCommerce website monitoring and error detection tool that helps companies identify, prioritize, and resolve bugs on their websites. The software detects issues in real-time, allowing businesses to quickly address any customer-impacting problems. Noibu also provides detailed insights about the impact and cause of each detected error, helping eCommerce companies make better decisions about how to tackle their error backlog. With its comprehensive feature set, Noibu is an invaluable tool for any eCommerce company looking to stay ahead of the competition and maintain a healthy website.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Custom
47. Kissmetrics
Description
Kissmetrics is a powerful analytics tool that can help eCommerce businesses gain valuable insights into their customers’ behaviour and preferences. It provides real-time data and metrics to help eCommerce businesses understand their customers better, identify opportunities for growth, and measure the success of their marketing campaigns in dashboards. With Kissmetrics, eCommerce businesses can track user actions across multiple devices, measure the impact of marketing campaigns on revenue, and analyze customer segmentation to better target their marketing efforts. Kissmetrics also provides advanced features such as A/B testing, funnel analysis, cohort analysis, and more to help eCommerce businesses optimize their operations.
G2 User Rating
Pricing
Silver: $299/mo Gold: $499/mo Platinum: Custom
Summary
The eCommerce industry is experiencing rapid growth, and the best way to see your business grow alongside it is to take advantage of softwares available in the market.
With numerous platforms and technologies available for reaching customers, making them engaged with your content, and guiding them through the buying process, it’s crucial to determine which ones to implement in your setup.
We hope this guide has helped narrow down your options and point you in the right direction to start growing your business!
