The Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization, Landing Page Strategies & more in the June Orange Report

The Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization, Landing Page Strategies & more in the June Orange Report

by | Jun 17, 2020 | Digital Marketing, Past Newsletters, Technology

June 2020 ORANGE REPORT

For this month’s Orange Report, we’re sharing a few of our best and most recent blogs that speak on all things Magento, eCommerce, and Digital Marketing. Like always, we encourage everyone using Magento to make the most of its functionalities by incorporating the very best Magento extensions and news.

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Everything you need to know about eCommerce, digital marketing, and Magento.

The Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

While there are a number of risks and costs that come with optimization testing, for many companies, CRO is the single best thing you can do to increase your revenue.

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Six MORE Apparel & Accessories eCommerce Webstore Strategies for a Post-COVID World

If your apparel and accessories eCommerce site has hit a bit of a lull here are six MORE strategies to boost your site visits and get more conversions.

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CRO Testing is Expensive, but Worth It

Conversion Rate Optimization. No doubt you’ve heard of it by now but if you’re still not running tests on your website in order to improve your conversion rate… Why not? 
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Case Study: Medals of America Magento 2 Site Build

InteractOne provided an entirely new Magento 2 website to Medals of America that resolved their performance issues by cleaning up the backend of the site and eliminating unnecessary extensions.
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How to Build a Webstore That Matches Your Retail Space

How to Build a Webstore That Matches Your Retail Space

by | Jun 12, 2020 | Apparel, eCommerce

eCommerce is having a moment. We’ve always known brand websites are important for extending your business’s presence and reaching more customers. But with the uncertain future of experiential retail due to COVID-19, now it’s more important than ever. 

But it’s not enough for your brand to simply be online. Your eCommerce platform needs to accurately reflect your physical store. This means translating the positive experience customers have in your shop into a positive user experience, or UX, on your webstore. Google Search recently announced it will be favoring websites with great UX, so now is the time to shape up. 

Fortunately, regardless of whether you’re a consumer or a provider, we are now in “an environment where imagination and technical ability, not wealth, are the only barriers.” Meaning, if you have the drive and commitment to succeed online, you can.

Here are six actionable tips for how to better reflect your fashion brand’s physical store online.

And don’t forget to check out Part 1.

Eliminate clutter

Think of your eCommerce storefront like your physical retail store: both work best when they’re clean and minimal. Clear out the cobwebs by streamlining your eCommerce storefront. Make your offers immediately apparent. Don’t confuse your customer with lots of information—keep it simple, and focus on your central product(s) and ethos. If you’re a sustainable brand, such as United By Blue, put that information on your homepage, with a link to click through to another page with more detail. By sticking with basic information, you ensure your homepage is not only user-friendly, but that it also loads quickly.

Ensure your logo is front and center and easy to read

You have your logo pride of place on your store’s front window, door and sandwich board; that same approach needs to be taken with your web store’s homepage. Ensure your logo is high resolution and scalable, so that it is mobile-friendly. Test that it displays well on both desktop and mobile, and try visiting your website on different mobile devices to minimize any bugs. It may sound simple, but by branding your eCommerce store correctly, you ensure it communicates the same level of professionalism as your retail store.

Keep a consistent visual language

Use the same colors, textures and themes that you thoughtfully chose for your retail store in your online store. And if you don’t have colors or textures? Keep that same simple palette online. Whether they’re online or offline, all of your customers should be reading the same visual language from your brand. This consistency is key to creating a harmonious experience and gives returning customers the assurance that they’re in the right place. New customers will also feel confident when they see this cohesion across your website, social media pages and in photos of your retail store. What’s more, they’ll trust that this same commitment to quality translates to your products.

Mimic the layout of your physical store

Make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for by ensuring your online store’s layout echoes that in your physical store. That means if you generally greet shoppers with new season items, then show them special ranges or collaborations, followed by older items and accessories, or sale items, this same customer journey needs to be replicated online. You can also carry this product hierarchy over to your navigation bar and/or dropdown menu. Keep it cohesive to avoid confusion.

Have clear, high quality photos

You wouldn’t leave your products lying flat and lifeless on a display cabinet in the front of your store, so why would you have low-quality, lifeless product photography on your webstore? The key is to have clear, high-quality mannequin or display photos, as well as high quality flat-lay photos. Plain white backgrounds allow your products to really shine, and won’t distract your customers. The more your photos accurately represent your product and show people exactly what they’re buying, the more likely they are to click “add to cart.”

Make it mobile-friendly

More than half of online shoppers make purchases using a mobile device, so while you spend hours making sure your desktop site is beautiful, ensure you also pay attention to how it scales to mobile, and remember to optimize each page. Think of it like how a shopper takes a glimpse of your retail store through the window—they might click on it for a second, and if it loads badly, they’ll click out. First impressions are crucial, and these are increasingly happening on mobile. Users who have a negative experience in your mobile store are said to be 62% less likely to purchase from you in the future. So make sure your eCommerce site is up to scratch. Progessive Web Apps (PWAs) are all the rage in the eCommerce industry. They replicate the app experience on a mobile browser for a fraction of the cost and commitment of a Native App. Now is the perfect time to implement a PWA to your digital offerings. To learn more about PWAs you can check out our recent blogs here.

Conclusion

By taking the same care with your eCommerce storefront as you do with your physical storefront, the greater your chance for success online. Represent your range online as you would in-store—with your unique style, care and attention to detail. For help on how to make your webstore better reflect your retail store, click here to speak to a member of our team.

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The Best Magento Amazon Integration

The Best Magento Amazon Integration

by | Jun 2, 2020 | eCommerce, Technology

There is no shortage of Magento marketplace integrations available. In addition to a number of third-party alternatives, Magento has released their own Amazon Sales Channel integration product. Magento  continues to develop new features for their tool, but it’s still a fairly new feature and limited to only Amazon. More popular options are channel integrators, such as Channel Advisor and SellerCloud, but we’ve learned separate integrations like these require more budget and patience than any merchant should have to tolerate.

Avoid Separated Apps

When managing a bidirectional synchronization, it is most efficient to have as few endpoints as possible to avoid multiple potential chokepoints. The biggest drawback for Magento merchants using other SAAS solutions is managing two integrations and two separate catalogs in different interfaces. For example:
  1.  There always ends up being data, content or images in one system that don’t sync across all platforms which lead to  fishing expeditions when making updates and optimizations.
  2. It takes additional time and resources to determine if something failed to sync between Magento and the SAAS software, or the software and Amazon.
    • SAAS solutions and marketplaces have APIs to communicate with each other, and experience downtime or issues with APIs just like any other software.
    • Troubleshooting why an order didn’t import or why inventory is incorrect takes time, which can cause delays in resolving issues, drastically affecting your marketplace seller rating.

A Direct Integration is Easier to Manage

A module sitting within Magento simply has fewer opportunities to fail than a separate SAAS solution. Think about all of the elements that are in-play: inventory, pricing, product names, images, orders, and tracking to name a few. With a 3rd party app, any time you make a change in Magento, those changes have to be synced with the 3rd party software and then again to the marketplace. For example if you update an image within Magento and it’s not appearing on Amazon, you now have to begin troubleshooting two different endpoints.

Our Recommendation

Having our fair share of experience in this field, we recommend M2E Pro over any other Magento-to-marketplace integration. It’s the most mature solution, being the original Magento to eBay integration, and then evolving to other marketplaces including Amazon and Wal-Mart over the years. Other module developers have built Amazon and marketplace integrations as well, such as Mageworx, Webkul and Mag-Manager, but those solutions aren’t as feature rich, easy to use or mature as M2E Pro.

M2E Pro is open source, which means it is customizable to match any functionality you already have set up within Magento. For example, we have worked with a number of auto parts and accessories retailers to import fitment records and data with eBay Motors and Amazon Automotive.

Their customer support is stellar, providing software support and training for all subscribing merchants. Since M2E is a very mature solution, there is a large community forum and knowledge base with up-to-date documentation and training. M2E also provides a managed services option, if you would like to have one of their account managers responsible for listing strategy and optimization. 

Some merchants think they need to go with a 3rd party SAAS solution if they want someone to manage their marketplace account and listings, but that simply isn’t true. While M2EPro does offer managed services for additional fees, you have the option to manage your account directly or use any provider you wish. Please contact us if you would like more information regarding Magento integrations, marketplace on-boarding or listing management.

Conclusion

If you need to know more about marketplace integrations and how to get the most out of your eCommcerce site, contact us today. We’re open and servicing all of our customers during these turbulant times.

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CRO Testing is Expensive, but Worth It

CRO Testing is Expensive, but Worth It

by | May 5, 2020 | eCommerce

Conversion Rate Optimization. No doubt you’ve heard of it by now but if you’re still not running tests on your website in order to improve your conversion rate… Why not? 

The number one reason we hear as to why clients don’t invest in conversion rate optimization is, you guessed it, the cost. If this is you, keep reading!

Unfortunately, they’re right. On-site optimization testing comes with a myriad of costs – the platform, the labor, and not to mention – what if your test fails and you lose money in real time?

But while there are a number of risks and costs that come with optimization testing, for many companies, CRO is the single best thing you can do to increase your revenue. 

So yes, CRO testing is expensive. But it is so worth it.

Instead of spending money on new traffic (which only lasts as long as you pay for it), investing in CRO means you’re investing to increase the entire website’s conversion rate, thus doing what is necessary to get more out of each visitor. In addition, if you’re doing it correctly, Conversion Rate Optimization will even improve your search engine efforts!

It’s known that lower bounce rates and higher engagement rates lead to higher organic search rankings. These are metrics that you can measure alongside conversion rate improvements as you are testing. But the SEO/CRO connection is a conversation for another time. Stay tuned for an additional blog post on that topic!

The best part of CRO is that it’s directly measurable. SEO is hard to measure as most benefits come about after a few months and often don’t have a super clear cause and effect, but when you are running on-site optimization tests, you get actual real-time insights as to what changes are moving the needle.

If that isn’t enough to convince you, a survey across almost 3,000 CRO users showed an average of 223% return on investment. Of course, results will differ for every company, but if you have a strategic CRO team working for you, it is possible  to surpass those results. 

Here’s a real example of one of our clients:

Discovering CRO

Last year, we suggested five A/B test templates to our client, who decided to run all of them. These A/B tests were not chosen based on data or any specific needs of our client – it was completely random.

For context, here are quick descriptions of the five A/B tests we chose: 

Two of the tests were focused on the product page and moving the location of the SKU:

    • On the Control site, our client had their SKU located at the top of the product page – next to the price. This Treatment page tested moving the SKU down into the “More Information” box:

WINNER: Treatment page 

Product Title Location

    • On the Control page our client’s product title was located below the product image. This Treatment page tested moving the title to the top of the page, above the main product image.

WINNER: Control Page

Sticky Header

    • Similarly to the aforementioned Sticky Add to Cart test, this test was mobile only. When a visitor would scroll up and down the page, this template tested out the benefits of having the header remain “sticky” and always remain visible.

WINNER: Control mobile page

Cart Total

When a visitor to the Treatment page had at least one item in the cart, the total cart value would display as a bubble on the cart icon in the upper right hand corner. 

WINNER: No clear results

Quick Checkout 

    • This Treatment site focused on the “Checkout” button, to see if different verbiage could impact conversion rate. The template simply changed the verbiage from “Proceed to Checkout” to “Quick Checkout.”

WINNER: Treatment

Unsurprisingly, two of the tests were immediately identified as losers, and traffic was stopped on them within the first two weeks (lost about $1,500 in revenue – yikes!). 

However, the other three tests looked promising enough to continue and these ran through the remainder of the 60 day trial. Of the final three, Move SKU and Quick Checkout proved to be extremely positive, each touting a statistical significance of 98% increase in conversion rate. The Cart Total was a wash as we saw no distinct statistical change in performance in either direction. 

We were thrilled – when testing at random, a 50/50 chance is about as good as you can hope for.  

As mentioned before, the best part about CRO testing is that you can directly measure successes and losses in real time. Just as we could see how much we lost, we can see how much extra revenue our client made during a test. 

In 60 days, the Move SKU template generated  an additional $16,500, and the Quick Checkout generated over $12,000! 

If you’re floored by those numbers, remember that this was only the additional revenue generated during the two month trial period. The beauty of CRO testing is that by the end of the test, you have ideally identified a better-performing version of your website. This new and improved website has a higher conversion rate and revenue per visitor (and whatever other metrics you measured), so the winnings keep on coming!

If  revenue per visitor increases by, say, $0.04, it might not seem like a lot, but if you have 30,000 visitors each month, we’re talking about $12,000 in additional revenue each month.

With over $20,000 additional revenue generated during the testing period, and more than double that amount projected in each of the coming months, it’s no surprise that our client made the right call to invest in their future conversion rate optimization efforts.

Testing Strategically

 

While the above is absolutely a success story, remember, those tests were chosen at random. They could have all failed! Once our client officially hired InteractOne to help them with strategy, the testing success rate continued to improve. 

A/B testing can be vital to the success of your eCommerce site. The idea of letting your visitors decide what the website should look like/how it should function through real-world use is a phenomenal opportunity. And when you employ strategic data analysis to come up with informed hypotheses that drive your testing decisions, it is absolutely incredible what you can uncover.

When we run CRO tests for our clients, it’s not just the test that we’re running. It’s a complete analysis of the website’s data so our team has the best understanding of the site and its customers before we start the tests. Our hypotheses are driven by extensive health checks on the website, where we combine user experience (UX) testing with behavioral and quantitative analyses. This, combined with our past experiences in optimization, helps us identify areas on the site that have the greatest potential for improvement.

In these audits and analyses, it’s often normal to incorporate more than one test per page (also know as Multivariate Testing (MVT). This is not a problem and can be quite powerful, as long as appropriate measurement systems are in place!

If you thought the revenue lifts for the A/B tests were high, wait until you see how powerful an MVT can be. But we’ll get to that in another post.

Conclusion

Optimization strategy is the most important part of testing. You can test all the templates in the world, but if you are not being strategic, you’re just as likely to lose money as you are to improve revenue performance. This is what you pay for when you pay for CRO – not just the tools, but the people who know what to test so that you maximize your opportunity to increase revenue WHILE testing – not just after. If you thought the revenue lifts for the A/B tests were high, wait until you see how powerful an MVT can be. But we’ll get to that in another post.

Don’t get the wrong idea – random A/B testing can still accomplish very  much. Thomas Edison has famously touted “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

However, if you employ a little strategy and reason, you’ll be that much more effective. Nikolai Tesla was quoted, referring to Thomas Edison “If he had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.”

At InteractOne, we’re all for a little theory and calculation. 

To learn more about CRO, A/B Testing and our unique and measured approach to improving eCommerce, contact us today.

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The Rise of the Progressive Web App (PWA)

The Rise of the Progressive Web App (PWA)

by | May 5, 2020 | Uncategorized

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are the next big thing in the eCommerce world and for good reason. They provide a better mobile user experience and have proven to lower development & maintenance costs and increase conversions.

In this blog we’ll be exploring the current limitations of the mobile experience, both with sites that feature Responsive Web Design and Native Apps. And then, we’ll be analyzing the strengths of Progressive Web Apps and how they address the shortcomings of Responsive Web Design and Native Apps. 

To learn more about PWAs, check out our PWA Services page and read our most recent blogs Powering PWAs with the Payment Request API and What’s Next for Tech? PWAs, Headless eCommerce & Cryptocurrency

Check out our live PWA Demo Site too.

And, download this excellent Magento-produced piece, which dives deeper into a number of topics that we cover here.

Limitations of Responsive Web Design

RWD is a one-size-fits all grid system. A website with RWD scales itself to match each user’s screen, automatically resizing the website’s elements. While this does allow for a smoother, contextual browsing experience, there are a number of limitations that come with the RWD solution.

While RWD sites are functional, they are unable to take advantage of the unique features of a smartphone. Your camera, microphone and GPS services cannot be accessed by an RWD website. With an eCommerce webstore, this could prevent you from providing accurate shipping information or in-store local availability. Also, consider this impact on product reviews. The vast majority of people use their camera on their smartphone as their primary camera. With an RWD site lacking in camera access, you’re preventing users from uploading images of themselves and your product directly to their reviews. And, as we’ve covered in recent months, the importance of customer reviews and social confirmation are only growing. 

Mobile users also have different intents, interactions and expectations than desktop users. By using an RWD to ‘fold down’ your desktop into a condensed mobile version you’re unable to meet the unique needs of mobile shoppers.

RWD sites also drastically increase load times and, if the mobile user isn’t connected to a dedicated internet connection, this can quickly cause a data drain. This is due to the fact that RWD sites download the same code to display on mobile as it does on a desktop.

Limitations of Native Apps

Unlike RWD sites, Native Apps are built specifically for the features and functionality of smartphones and to meet the needs of mobile users. They feature simplified navigation and visual orientation tailored for mobile users. They also have access to the features of a smartphone like the camera and GPS. But while Native Apps do not suffer from the same problems as RWD sites, they come with their own unique set of disadvantages.

The biggest impediment to Native Apps is downloading the app itself. The act of downloading any app is a major (albeit one-time) commitment on the part of the mobile user. Users must go to their app store (Apple Store or Google Play Store), search for the app, find the app, select the app, download and install the app, register the app and login to the app all before being able to actually use the app.

In addition to the time commitment there is also the data commitment that comes with downloading an app. If the mobile user isn’t connected to an internet connection, then they are forced to dedicate a significant amount of cellular data to downloading an app. This is a commitment that many mobile users are either unwilling or unable to do. And even if a mobile user is connected to WIFI that doesn’t mean they’ll have the memory space available on their phone to complete the download. Smartphones all have a finite amount of space, much of which is taken up by a user’s personal photos, music and podcasts. They may not want to sacrifice their personal content for your app.

A fully functioning ecommerce app can be quite expensive to develop as well, especially if you’re building one for multiple platforms. Your Apple Store app and your Android app will each have unique requirements based on the platform. For smaller eCommerce stores the development of an app can run between $50k and $100k and some come run as high as $500k. And even if you get an app built, tested and uploaded to the App store, there is no guarantee that it will be embraced by your users or drive sales. In fact, a recent Forrester report showed that 4% of mobile commerce transactions in 2018 came from mobile apps and 49% of smartphone users download zero apps per month. In addition they only account for 5% of all online traffic and convert at 2.8%.

The Power and Potential of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Customers are searching for an app-like experience that transcends the limitations of apps. That’s where Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) come into play. PWAs provide an engaging and smooth user experience that has been shown to increase conversion rates and accelerate growth. PWAs combine the best of both your ecommerce website and mobile app functionality. Here are a few of the benefits that PWAs add to your eCommerce capabilities.

Studies show that if your mobile pages are taking longer than 2 seconds to load then your customers are likely to take their business to a different site. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to get them connected to what they’re searching for. PWAs do not require a mobile web browser to re-render or shrink down the site, meaning that pages load faster and transitions are smoother.

PWAs are readily available to any smartphone user on any web browser. There is no need for any sort of additional download. Meaning that your customers no longer have multi-step installation and data roadblocks between them and a smooth, clean mobile shopping experience. PWAs are great for customers who have low bandwidth or limited data plans. This allows your customers to avoid heavy data usage associated with app downloads. And customers who use PWAs on their mobile browser don’t need to take up much space on the smartphones themselves. The data commitment for a PWA is a fraction of a native app.

PWAs make it easy on the development team too. A single codebase is used for both mobile and desktop. A PWA doesn’t require a seperate desktop solution, eliminating the time and resource investment that come with the development and maintenance of a native app. Your website will have a lower cost of ownership and a quicker time to market once your development standards have been established. The cost of a basic Magento PWA begins at $10,000 but can go as high as $35,000 with an average development time of two months. While, that commitment is nothing to scoff at, it is remarkably less than the time and money required to develop and maintain a Native App.

Your PWA is also able to be deployed, unrestricted, since there is no need to go through an app store. Meaning you are not bound by the terms and agreements or revenue share agreements demanded by these platforms. Additionally, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, nearly all web browsers on iOS and Android support PWAs.

Conclusion

Overall, PWAs simply make for a better customer experience. They minimize required touchpoints, allowing for a faster browsing and checkout experience. With a streamlined purchase process PWAs boost shopper engagement, leading to revenue growth and higher conversion rates. 

To learn more about PWAs and to implement one of your own, contact us today and let’s bring cutting edge technology and a more dynamic user experience to your site.

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