Already on the rise before the pandemic, eCommerce surged in 2020 with more than one-quarter of the global population shopping online. In the first half of 2021, retail eCommerce sales in the U.S. reached ten percent of total US retail sales—almost $438 billion—outpacing quarterly sales in 2020. While this is good news for digital retailers investing in their eCommerce capabilities, keeping pace with consumer demand for a seamless mobile shopping experience is more important than ever.  

What Online Shoppers Want

Beyond a personal or emotional connection to a brand or product, consumers want a convenient and simplified ordering and check-out process, and they want to feel they are getting the best value for their money. Purchasing decisions will be made based on overall cost, a brand’s values, ease of purchase, cost of shipping, and local availability or in-store/curbside pick-up options.

A recent poll of 2000 US adult consumers showed that:

  • 53% plan to spend more than $1,000 on the holidays
  • 25% will do all their shopping from a mobile device
  • 50% will start shopping well before Black Friday
  • 54% are looking for gifts with a personal tie
  • 70% of consumers shop in stores and then search for a lower price online

Optimize Conversion Rates

We recommend reviewing your eCommerce strategy, including your digital marketing campaigns, landing pages, product pages, and check-out process.

  • Analyze how visitors are finding your site (keyword searches, referral sites, direct visits), how long they are staying on your site, what pages they are visiting, etc. We recommend Google Analytics. This is also a service we provide to our eCommerce clients, along with a complete digital dashboard for tracking and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs).
  • Analyze your conversion rates at every point from lead generation to a successful purchase and sales fulfillment.
  • Analyze how consumers are using your site to identify and prioritize opportunities that keep them coming back.
  • Conduct A/B testing of your holiday campaigns, both before and during holiday launches, to catch potential points of shopper frustration and identify each conversion point where you are either capturing or losing customers.
  • Use abandoned cart emails to recover incomplete transactions.
  • Include clear calls to action (CTA) and lead capture on landing pages. Only 2% of your web traffic will result in a sale on the first visit.
  • Send push notifications to bring customers back to your site.

Simplify Your Checkout Process

Speed and simplicity are top priorities for capturing online shoppers. Eliminating unnecessary text, buttons, and navigation not only presents a cleaner visual but helps to quickly guide customers to make a purchase. From adding items to their cart to selecting a preferred shipping and payment method, reviewing the order and shipping address, and completing the purchase, keeping the number of steps in your check-out to a minimum will enable a faster check-out. Offering multiple payment options will also help reduce abandoned carts and improve your completed transaction rates.

Optimize eCommerce for Mobile

One-quarter of US shoppers will use their mobile device for their holiday shopping in 2021 and mobile is quickly becoming the primary channel for browsing and purchasing. At the same time, these mobile consumers are more distracted, browsing while watching TV, sitting in a meeting, or attending an event. To capture mobile customers, retailers must deliver an easy-to-use mobile experience that is free of glitches, slow page loads and reloads, or other bugs. The check-out process must also be mobile optimized for fast and easy transactions. You can enter your URL in a page like the Google Mobile-Friendly Test to see how well your mobile site stacks up.

Here are the top features for a mobile site:

mobile features

SEO, Keywords, Key phrases

Optimizing your online store with the right keywords and key phrases that consumers are using to search for your products will help drive traffic to your site. Ninety-three percent of web traffic comes through searches. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner can help you identify your top keywords. Investing in Google AdWords as part of your overall digital marketing strategy is another effective means to drive traffic to your site

 As a full-service digital marketing agency, Fuze7 has extensive experience in eCommerce strategies and tactics that result in higher conversion rates. We invite you to contact us and learn how we can help you optimize your online store.