Reasons to Test

Just about any open question is a reason to test. Testing’s real value, however, is far more than simply settling disagreement about the color of a Buy Now button. Testing puts your customers’ experience at the center of your decision making. Rather than rely on gut intuition or the most fiercely held opinion on the team, testing allows your company to ask your customers to tell you the answer that works for them. That gives you the ability to make business decisions based on hard data from real customer experiences. Careful testing is an essential part of your ongoing optimization efforts.

Resistance to Testing

Given the granular nature of user data now available to any online company, setting up and running a test is not technically challenging. Resistance to testing is often based on a lack of will by decision makers in the company. Most reluctance to testing comes from a fear of losing revenue. Especially at the ends of quarters, or when other pressures are mounting for a company, it can be difficult to have the confidence to find your most optimized cart. Resistance can also come from a general fear of the unknown, from the attitudes of the highest paid person in the room or from previous testing experiences. Once the buy-in exists, however, the process for running a test is simple.

Testing Methodology

Strategic Goal

Todd Garcia, Senior Account Executive at cleverbridge, walked us through the process for establishing a test.

He recommends you begin the testing process by defining your strategic goal. For instance, Garcia once ran a test where the strategic goal was to raise the revenue associated with a particular product. While that goal was clear, there was more than one way to achieve it. Establishing this test required some discussion about which changes to implement. As he discussed the test with the software merchant, they began to flesh out a hypothesis for the test.

Hypothesis

Garcia noted that, “It’s important to define a hypothesis that is testable and results can easily be defined through data analysis. Meaning, your hypothesis should be based on realistic KPIs for that specific test.” In this case, the hypothesis was that they could raise the average order value of the product by removing the field to enter a coupon code in a shopping cart.

Test

In order to have meaningful results, do not simply implement your change and compare it to historical data. Garcia explained, “Customers act differently in different times of the year, different days of the week, different hours of the day, etc., … so it’s important to test your variations in real time.” Your original design becomes your control design. The control shows you how your current design performs during the same time period and under the same conditions to your test design. The test design is implemented alongside your control, and customers are diverted to one design or the other.

Assess

How did the two variations of your page perform? Did one do better? How well did your hypothesis live up to the results? In this case, it turned out the hypothesis was incorrect. Average order value did not increase or decrease in any significant way with the removal of the coupon field. This negative result did, however, have a surprising result.

At the start of the test, the conversion rate was expected to remain constant. Remarkably, the conversion rate increased by 10 percent. The results indicated something very specific about customer behavior  when presented with the option to enter a coupon code. More customers completed their purchase when they were not prompted to enter a code.

We can only guess what was happening in the minds of the customers, but it could be that some were abandoning their cart to search for coupon codes and not returning. Perhaps they did not find the code and gave up. Perhaps they found a discount from a reseller, and were not buying the product directly from the publisher. Or perhaps they were finding a different product altogether. In any case, removing the obstacle to converting kept a greater number of customers engaged with this client’s product.

Outcomes

In discussing the outcomes of the test, Garcia noted, “My hypothesis was proven wrong, which is totally fine because something even cooler came out of it. Online retailers include the coupon code option because they would rather have customers come back with a coupon than not buy at all. But based on the results of the test, they’re just not coming back. The test teaches us that if customers are in your cart, they want to buy. So don’t push them away.”

Keystone

Good business intuition is essential to any successful enterprise, but those gut feelings can sometimes prove incorrect. The potential risk of running tests is far outweighed by the value of confirming or refute your hunches with real data. Working with a solid methodology ensures your tests are meaningful, and your decisions based on the outcomes have a far better chance of helping you achieve your strategic goals.

Learn more about how to increase revenue with our Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization. 

The post A Funny Thing Happened During the A/B Test appeared first on cleverbridge.

You might think our shop keeper friend is putting himself at a disadvantage with his blindfold. Yet this same scenario plays out every day in countless online stores. The standard set of analytic tools most websites use provide only part of the picture.

Website Analytics: The Blindfold Basics

Most websites employ analytics to track activity on their site. The basic analytics toolbox allows you to see which pages customers visit on your site. Additional features allow site owners to use pageview data to optimize their site, which we discuss below. In each of these cases, however, the site owner remains blindfolded to whatever user activity happens while a customer is on a webpage.

Pageviews

Tracking pageviews is the most basic way to analyze your site. Connecting a tool like Google Analytics to your site allows you to see what pages your users are landing on and viewing. You can also see additional demographic information based on user location, web browser and device information.

Goals

Analytics tools also allow you to track goals by defining desired outcomes and tracking your achievement. You have a goal of signing up customers for a newsletter. In the registration process, you display a confirmation page after a customer signs up. When the user views the confirmation page, your analytics will show a goal completion. Combining goal tracking with pageviews shows the visitor flow across different pages on your site: where they land, where they go next and where they drop off. A well designed set of goals optimizes customer engagement on your site.

Ecommerce

If you sell online, your ecommerce data show how many sales you have made, what your revenue is, etc. Including ecommerce in your goal tracking ties pageviews to revenue. Like our shop keep in his blindfold, you can hear the customer enter your store and you can hear the cash register ring them up. But you are still oblivious to customer behavior inside the store — data which can be used to optimize customer engagement and revenue even more.

Removing the Blindfold With Event Tracking

Event tracking codes can be embedded into almost any element on a webpage. This includes, but is certainly not limited to:

• Clicking on page elements (e.g., buttons)
• Adding or removing products from the shopping cart
• Viewing recommendations, user reviews or additional information in the cart
• Downloading free trials
• Opening invoice files
• Entering coupon codes
• Viewing specific elements (e.g., a don’t-leave-layer)
• And more …

Keystone

Basic analytics provide you only so much data. Including event tracking codes on your site is like removing the blindfold from the shop keeper’s eyes. You no longer have to rely on a turnstile tally of how many users landed on your pages, because you can observe every action your customers take inside the page.

The post Remove the Blindfold With Advanced Analytics appeared first on cleverbridge.

via GIPHY

This post from HubSpot details seven last minute Black Friday tips to prepare your website. Their tips run the gamut, especially looking at whether your site can stand up to the notorious Black Friday traffic. Author Jeffrey Vocell says, “One of the big concerns for marketers and respective IT folks around this time is a surge in traffic. Many websites can see multiple-times the traffic that is standard during other times of the year, and it all happens over the course of a few days.”

Read the whole article to see HubSpot’s last minute recommendations for how best to manage your site traffic, your site speed, your site security, your return policy or other consumer information, promotions and site SEO for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Of course, your work doesn’t end when your customers place their orders. Be sure your ecommerce marketing remains on track through the rest of the year with HubSpot’s handy Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Calendar 2015. If you’re selling physical products, for instance, they provide this helpful list of shipping deadlines, reproduced below.

Want more? Download our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials today. 

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy — Last Minute Black Friday Tips appeared first on cleverbridge.

Online sales are an important opportunity for growth. Online merchants face a number of technical hurdles that they’ll need to confront in order to accept payments from their customers over the Internet. The more you understand the complexities of accepting payments online, the better you can steer your company to the best payment solution for you.

In this article we’ll cover some of the basics of online payments, shopping carts, payment gateways, and some helpful tips on how to choose your merchant account provider.

How Do Online Credit Card Payments Work?

In order to accept payments online, a business needs three key elements: a shopping cart, a payment gateway and a merchant account. Businesses can work with a single merchant account provider to set up their cart, gateway and merchant account, or may contract with separate providers for each feature independently.

A shopping cart allows customers to verify the items they want, and to enter payment and personal information. Once they enter their credit card information in the company’s shopping cart, that information is immediately received by the payment gateway. The gateway verifies the payment data and transfers this information from the merchant bank to the issuing bank or processor over a secure and encrypted Internet connection. This process assigns the business’s merchant account ID to the transaction, crediting the sale to them so that they ultimately receive payment.

What Is a Payment Gateway?

Aside from having a shopping cart, a business that wishes to take payments online must also have a payment gateway integrated with their cart. The payment gateway is a stand-alone piece of software that serves as a secure link between a company’s website, its merchant account and a customer’s issuing bank. Typically, a merchant account provider will deliver the merchant a payment gateway, but merchants with very specific needs may obtain one independently from a payment gateway developer. However, most merchant account providers offer an array of integration options for shopping cart software that will meet a company’s specific needs.

What Is a Merchant Account?

In order for a retailer to offer credit card processing options to their customers, they cannot simply obtain a contract with card issuers directly. Rather, they must obtain a merchant account with a merchant account provider. Since the credit card companies do not contract directly with merchants, a merchant account provider acts as a middleman connecting a business to the credit card companies.

Once a business has contracted with a merchant account provider, who in turn has a contract with the credit card issuers, the merchant can begin accepting payments by credit and debit cards. There are several merchant account providers out there to suit a given businesses’ processing needs, but most attempt to distinguish themselves by offering unique features or underwriting guidelines. So before seeking out a merchant account provider, a business should first determine its specific needs.

Factors may include how a business plans on accepting credit cards (e.g. point of sale, mobile phone or tablet, phone order, or ecommerce), which types are credit card brands a business plans to accept (e.g. MasterCard, Visa, Discovery, Amex, etc.), and if a business requires additional processing features such as online processing gateways, accounting software integration, gift card processing or chargeback prevention packages.

How Do I Choose a Merchant Account Provider?

Merchant account providers tend to distinguish themselves in three ways: the types of payment gateway integration they provide, variety of payment options available, and the security features they support.

There are a few types of payment gateway integrations to choose from. The two most popular types are known as direct integration and third party payment processing. Direct integration seamlessly integrates a businesses’ shopping cart with the payment processor. This means that customers stay on the same website for their entire transaction. The fees for this option are slightly higher, but is preferred by most merchants because of the seamless checkout process it offers customers.

With third party payment processing, the customer is directed to the payment processor’s website to complete their order. Once the payment is approved, the customer is then automatically returned to the company’s website. Though this option tends to be less costly for merchants, some customers feel nervous providing payment information to a separate checkout site, which can increase your cart abandonment rate.

Whichever type of gateway a company chooses, they should make sure that it supports all of the credit cards and currencies your company plans to process. This is especially important if a business plans on selling internationally, or works in an industry, such as energy or healthcare, where customers often use niche types of credit cards.

Merchant account providers further distinguish themselves via the security features they offer. Most use a trusted source to meet payment data security compliance standards, such as PCI-DSS. This ensures that a cardholder’s data is protected and maintained through a secure network. PCI-DSS is the industry standard and is becoming ubiquitous. A company should, at any rate, verify the compliance standard with a potential merchant account provider before agreeing to use their gateway.

Processing payments online is one of the quickest routes a business can fall victim to fraud, often through chargebacks. For this reason, many merchant account providers specializing in online and ecommerce businesses offer additional services designed to reduce or avoid chargebacks. These services include providing gateways that use security card codes (CVC2 and CVV2) to verify a customer’s possession of a credit card during an online order. This feature can limit the amount of transactions processed by credit card thieves in possession of a stolen credit card number and not the physical card itself.

Additionally, an address verification system (AVS) can help a business identify suspicious orders processed with inconsistent address data. AVS matches the customer’s credit card billing address with the address provided at checkout. Gateways and processors differ significantly in the number of chargeback and fraud prevention measures they offer. If a retail business is prone to fraud or sells big ticket items, make sure to select a processor that will assist in minimizing fraud and chargebacks.

Conclusion

By enabling online payment processing, businesses can expand their customer base geographically and demographically. In an era of compressed margins and increased competition, having the opportunity to expand their market reach is well worth jumping the hurdles necessary to accept online payments. With the right provider, your customers will rest assured that their data is safe, and your business can expand with confidence.

Learn more about the complexities of managing online payment processing by downloading our complimentary white paper. 

The post Online Payment Processing 101 appeared first on cleverbridge.

As you know, dear readers, we enjoy the occasional real world observation. We take a real life ecommerce event, found in the wild, and analyze it for inspiration for our own ecommerce activities. For this blog post, we’re going to see how a well-known brand (Starbucks) uses content marketing to create online sales.

One form of content that Starbucks uses is a blog. They use it to publish content about the history of Starbucks and the best way to make an espresso. This is stuff that makes their readers more informed and engages their passion. Then they use email to let subscribers know about these blog posts. And if you’ve been reading this blog lately, you know how important we consider email marketing to the end goal of generating revenue.

The Email

Anyway, I got this email from Starbucks. It had a pretty bland subject line (“Let’s all raise a cup (and a million trees) to…”), so I am not sure why I opened the email in the first place, let alone scrolled down through it. But there I was scrolling through the email when I came upon this section ordering me to look at their new coffee blog:

For some reason, I followed their suggestion and started browsing the content in the blog. The blog includes various kinds of posts, and I thought this was a good strategy — provide a variety of content for different audiences.

Some of the posts focus on telling the history of the brand, providing the names and faces behind the success of Starbucks. It’s evocative of time and place and smell and taste. The post certainly has a vision and a message. “We love coffee,” it says. “And we try to share our passion with others.” This type of post is good for recreating the Starbucks experience and increasing engagement with the company.

Other posts were how-to videos. This type of post is what I consider effective thought leadership content. It’s highly educational. Starbucks is not worried that customers will abandon them once they learn how to brew the perfect cup of coffee. Even though they are giving their customers industry secrets for free, Starbucks is betting that customers still want a coffee experience that is much more enjoyable and effective than they could ever create on their own.

Increasing Revenue by Way of Content

But of course, the journey doesn’t end at the blog post. This is content marketing after all, and the goal is to persuade the reader to buy something. Upon completing each blog post, the visitor is offered a chance to connect financially with an item mentioned in the blog post, like this coffee press (points off to Starbucks for misspelling coffee in the example below):

After clicking on the Buy Now button, the reader lands in a nice clean shopping cart, complete with cross-sells and an enticing pop-up message with a discount in the bottom-right corner of the page:

Now what happens if you don’t convert then and there? Don’t worry. Starbucks will not let you forget you were once interested in something you saw on one of their blog posts.

Two days later, I received another email with the subject line that said, “Did you forget something?” The body of the email informed me that I had some products in my shopping cart that I could still buy.

Keystone

It’s interesting to think about how I went from an email to a blog post about the history of coffee beans to an ecommerce checkout process. If you are responsible for driving traffic from different parts of your website into an online store, you should think about the stories you want to tell and how they’re going to “drive profitable customer action.” When you start thinking like this, you stand a better chance at engaging your customers with content to drive sales.

I assume if you’re reading this that there are times when you wonder how to use content to sell products. Tell us what you thought of this example, or better yet, show us one of yours.

The post How a Famous Brand Uses Content to Drive Sales appeared first on cleverbridge.

For the September Ecommerce Digest, we’re going to dig into localization, Klarna’s debut in the U.S., the role of shopping carts in subscription commerce, omnichannel shopping challenges, and the impact of chip-and-PIN cards on ecommerce fraud prevention.

Global Ecommerce and Localization

Website Localization Must-Haves For Global Ecommerce | Forrester Research

In this blog post from Forrester Research, Lily Varon writes about what you need to succeed in global ecommerce. This is a topic that is dear to us, and we are happy to see a report detailing global expansion issues like domain names, global gateways, global user interfaces, language elements on a web page, multilingual SEO, customer support best practices, and localized currencies and payment methods.

Alternative Payment Methods

Klarna Launches in the U.S. | Re/code
Speaking of localization … payments! Klarna is a popular payment provider for online Swedish shoppers. Klarna is a compelling payment option because it assumes all the risks of fraud instead of the merchant. If you are looking to gain customers in Sweden, one of the best things you can do is add Klarna to your checkout process. But now Klarna is looking to expand its operations into the U.S. Which merchants will start offering this type of payment for customers outside of Sweden? Will it make a significant impact on conversion rates? It will be interesting to see if Klarna’s attempt at global expansion will disrupt the ecommerce market.

Shopping Carts and Subscription Commerce

Why the Shopping Basket Is the Next Big Thing in Digital Commerce | Demandware
This blog post from Demandware advocates that merchants should “persist that basket,” that is, they should not neglect the great power of the online shopping cart to drive sales and retarget bouncing visitors. We do not disagree that the cart is a crucial element of ecommerce success. But just as conversion rates are less relevant in today’s subscription dominated market, so is a narrow focus on shopping carts. The real question is, “How are you messaging customers before and after they create a cart?” Today’s subscription dominated market demands attention to the entire customer lifecycle — not just the cart.

Content Marketing

Primer by Google Is Here to Make You a Better Marketer | NewsCred
Looking to learn more about marketing automation or creating relevant search ads? This interview with Hope Friedland, Content Lead at Primer, showcases a new educational app from Google. It is a handy library of content that helps people learn the ins and outs of digital marketing. It is designed to be consumed by mobile device users on the go, and it is highly interactive. Aside from the educational content, this app also serves as a source of inspiration to marketers thinking about alternative ways of educating their audiences and communicating brand value.

Omnichannel Shopping

MasterCard Busts Myths of the Omnichannel Consumer | PYMNTS
We love the image offered in this post of today’s digital shopper as “a patient, skilled, value-seeking missile.” Based on MasterCard’s The Retail CMO’s Guide to the Omnishopper, PYMNTS explains that customers research their purchases piecemeal: over time, in both physical and online spaces. Even in the digital world, they search across different devices and through different channels. The main point here is to consider where your customers are viewing your messages, and to make sure those messages are consistent.

Fraud Prevention

How Chip-and-PIN Credit Cards Protect Consumers From Fraud | NPR
This interview with security expert Brian Krebs discusses the  impact of this switch and notes the difference in the European and American cultures of using credit cards at physical stores. Many countries adopted chip-and-PIN credit cards a while back, and the U.S. is slowly catching up on this important security improvement. However, as we explained a year and a half ago, blocking one avenue of fraud is sure to send the fraudsters looking for another way to steal your customers’ personal information and money. Krebs notes that it is not just online shopping carts that are affected by a new surge in fraud activity: New account fraud and account takeovers are going to occur too.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The post September Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.

This infographic, courtesy of vouchercloud, highlights some of the reasons customers abandon carts, and shows how you can influence visitors to convert at a higher rate. It makes the case that merchants should pay special attention to things like site speed, web design, product video and customer reviews to facilitate conversions.

Other abandonment issues include length of checkout process, fees and charges tacked on to the end of the checkout process and registration requirements. Additionally, make sure things like newsletter or email signups are double-opt-in instead of pre-checking them.

For more information on reducing cart abandonment, facilitating conversions and raising average order values, check out our guides to ecommerce essentials.

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy – The Psychology of Online Checkout [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

Interestingly, it begins by stressing images over copy: No matter how much effort you devote to crafting the perfect message, visitors are more likely to remember what they see rather than what they read.

Site navigation is also important to your business. If users can’t find what they’re looking for, how effective can you really be at selling? A great idea here is to have a section of your site devoted to featuring your newest products. This practice ensures that visitors are only looking at the latest and greatest things that you offer.

Regarding the content on your site, the infographic wisely advocates that businesses start blogging if they haven’t already. It’s an excellent way to increase your traffic flow and keep visitors informed. Another interesting point about content is in reference to your About Us page. According to this infographic, visitors who click on this page will convert at higher rates and spend more money than those who don’t.

Point number 12 touches upon a subject quite dear to us, and details some of the reasons for the average high cart abandonment rate on ecommerce sites. Ascertain that you are doing everything you can to optimize your shopping cart and bring those numbers down.

Additionally, the infographic makes a strong case for promoting site security, enhancing your web presence through social media, and implementing an affiliate program to increase sales.

In the comment section below, tell us what you think are the most important features of creating a successful online business.

Infographic by Ecommerce-Platforms

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy – Creating a Successful Online Business [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

Now imagine you set in motion a plan to optimize conversion rates, and you end up increasing them a mere one percent. You’ve generated an extra $13,500 in gross revenue each year. But what if you are able to raise your conversion rates even more?

Conversion rate optimization does not just impact revenue. They also indicate an improvement in the customer experience, which we know to have an important impact on customer loyalty. Because the Internet has increased the power of customers by giving them the ability to choose from a wider range of products, your customer experience is going to play an important part in keeping your customers satisfied.

But it is not easy to get started with your conversion rate optimization tests, especially when it comes to deciding on what element of your site to test. Your options are almost limitless and may encompass pricing, the amount of pages in your checkout process, and calls to action (CTAs) – which include copy, shapes, color and placement on the page.

This week on The Conversion Show, Mike Batko and Justin Rondeau are going to teach you different ways you can optimize your ecommerce shopping cart, including:

• International payment preferences
• Best practices for displaying field forms
• How to identify and remove barriers from your checkout process

Sign up to listen to this webinar, and start turning your data into insight that gives you the power to make good business decisions about your ecommerce.

The post Ecommerce Ear Candy – Five Ecommerce Tricks Your Cart Needs Now appeared first on cleverbridge.

Just in time for the holiday season of November and December, when you know store visits are going to increase with gift seeking consumers, we’re offering you a few good guides on ecommerce essentials. These short guides will assist you in improving both your mundane and exciting ecommerce needs.

For those of you with freemium and free trials products we have a guide on generating revenue from free users, and another that teaches you how to effectively convert users in-app.

One of these guides comes along with 13 pro tips on reducing cart abandonment and there is one with advice about increasing your carts’ average order value.

In harmony with the market for this time of year, we have a guide for holiday season ecommerce. And, as VAT laws update next year, we’ve got a guide for that too.

We know you’re really busy, that’s why we wrote these short guides for ecommerce essentials. Check them out to learn practical tips for livening up your ecommerce performance.

Download your guides now!

The post Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials appeared first on cleverbridge.