How accessible is my website? That’s a question everyone should be asking, but unfortunately not everyone does. Despite it being more than 30 years since the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law, website accessibility isn’t as universally common as it should be. 

A recent study of the top million websites found that 98.1% of home pages failed to comply with the leading set of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This is bad not only from an ethical perspective, but from a legal standpoint, too. Websites that don’t meet web accessibility guidelines are at risk of receiving an ADA penalty, and lawsuits are up almost 25% year on year. It’s also bad from a business perspective, as these websites are also most likely losing business to the one in four—or 61 million—adults in the US living with a disability. 

So how do you make sure your website and/or mobile app is accessible to people with disabilities? First, you need to know about ADA compliance and eCommerce.

Understanding the ADA

The ADA consists of five main titles, but Title III (Public Accommodations) is the main one that concerns eCommerce. It requires businesses that serve the public make “reasonable modifications” to their usual way of doing things in order to accommodate persons with disabilities. It also requires that they take steps necessary to communicate effectively with customers with vision, hearing and speech disabilities.

There has been some confusion among merchants because the ADA doesn’t specifically mention eCommerce businesses—probably because it was signed into law before eCommerce was really widespread. There are those who continue to debate whether the ADA applies to only companies that have brick and mortar stores as well as eCommerce websites, and not to eCommerce-only companies. But most courts agree that websites are accountable under Title III. 

Currently, the WCAG 2.0 guidelines are generally considered to be the standard, and the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group expect to publish the First Public Working Draft of WCAG 3.0 in January 2021, with the final version slated for after 2022. 

In the meantime, here are some things you can do to ensure your website adheres to the current guidelines.

How to make your eCommerce website ADA-compliant

• Support the latest browsers
  Visually impaired individuals are able to navigate websites through the use of a screen reader, which is software that reads the text and converts it to audio. However, websites must use code that is understood by screen readers. Most issues with screen readers occur because of browser compatibility issues, so making sure your site supports the latest browser versions is a good first step. 
• Ensure menus are navigable
  Menus on your website should be compatible with screen readers by using the tab key to go to the next element and shift+tab to go to the previous element. Menu buttons should be accessible using the left and right arrow keys, and drop-down menus should be accessible using the up and down arrows. 
• Add alternative text to images
  Alternative text must be embedded behind images and it must clearly describe the image. Proper headers must also be used. Otherwise, the screen reader will interpret it as “blank” or simply “image.” 
• Add sign language to your key videos
  Many deaf people who have been hearing impaired since birth cannot read written words, they “read” only sign language. Sign language can help make your videos more accessible for those people. 
• Include open or closed captions in your videos
  Regardless of whether or not you add sign language videos, you really should include captions or subtitles in videos on your site. This not only ensures your video content is accessible to everyone, it can also boost your views, since many people like to watch videos with the sound off. 
• Use high-contrast colors
  Low-contrast colors make it hard for visually impaired people to identify critical buttons or even differentiate between the foreground and the background. 
• Name your links with anchor text
  Using links that describe the page you’re linking to, as opposed to “click here”, not only improves your SEO, it also makes your website more accessible to people using a screen reader. 
• Make links visible and accessible
  Put your links in a contrasting color so that they’re visible, and ensure your pages are designed so that people can easily navigate to them using the arrow and tab keys on their keyboard. It should also be clear if links open in a new window. 
• Don’t use any design techniques that can cause seizures
  Make sure your website doesn’t use any content that flashes more than three times per second, as this is likely to cause seizures in people with epilepsy. 
• Have clear written content
  Use clear fonts with adequate spacing between letters. Organize your written content using descriptive headings, and use concise product descriptions. Also ensure the language you use can be programmatically determined. 
• Use practical form design
  Side-by-side information can be difficult for screen readers to parse, so opt for stacked designs with your forms. To be as user-friendly as possible, place labels or instructions outside of the field, so they can be referenced while they’re being edited by the user. Consider the length of the likely response and factor that into the design of each field. And always use asterisks to denote required fields. 
• Errors on forms should be clearly communicated
  When a user has to input information into a form on your website (such as shipping information), any errors that are automatically detected must be communicated clearly and described to the user. The user should be able to clearly identify which field is invalid. 
• Be adaptable and ready to help: Ensure your customer service is in working order and ready and able to help via a number of different mediums (phone, email, web chat), should your visitors need any assistance. If you’re called upon to make a change to make your website more user-friendly, be ready to rise up to meet that need.

Conclusion

InteractOne has performed ADA compliance for several clients, and we are best suited to help companies who are on the Magento, BigCommerce and Shopify platforms. Talk to us today about how we can help you make your website fully ADA compliant.

After this most unusual year, innovation is the order of the day. We’re seeing a lot of creative responses to challenges old and new, and more modern technology being employed by brands of all sizes and industries. 

There’s a lot to keep on top of, so we’ve rounded up five top trends we’re noticing in eCommerce. Begin working with them now and you’ll keep your web store growing well into the New Year.

Free Shipping Is More Attractive Than Fast Shipping

Big websites such as Amazon have trained shoppers to expect shipping that is both fast and free, but that’s not a viable option for all brands and retailers. When there must be a choice made between the two, it appears that free shipping is far more attractive to shoppers than fast shipping.

According to a survey, eight out of 10 consumers would rather get free shipping than get their items faster. In fact, 73% said they would go to a brick-and-mortar store to purchase an item to avoid paying shipping fees. Buy online, pick up in-store (or BOPIS) is an increasingly popular option as in-store shopping that has been curtailed by COVID-19. Where possible, your store should aim to offer multiple options for shipping, with the knowledge that many shoppers are intent on avoiding fees.

Local Delivery Is a Growing Alternative to Avoiding Delays With Big Carriers

While many shoppers are more concerned with price than with speed, as the holidays approach, speed of delivery also becomes more of an issue for both retailers and shoppers. With the huge increase in online shopping this year, shipping is set to be even more strained this holiday season.

Savvy brands and retailers are already attempting to circumnavigate the expected delays with big carriers by forming partnerships with alternative delivery services. Some are quite unorthodox, like the beauty brands who are joining forces with Postmates, an app typically known for its restaurant delivery, which is launching a new shopping feature.

Other eCommerce websites are establishing their own local delivery services that are distinct from traditional carriers. This enables them to connect with their local audience and have more control over how they’re being delivered to. A number of businesses such as Rapidus have popped up to offer fast local delivery that aims to be both faster and more affordable than courier services. With so many shipping solutions now available, web stores are wise to consider their options.

Social Media Is Increasingly Splitting Audiences

Young and old shoppers are increasingly gravitating toward different social media platforms. 18 to 24-year-olds make up only 15% of Facebook’s users in the US, according to a survey conducted by Statista in August 2020. Meanwhile, 18 to 24-year-olds comprise 23% of Instagram’s users in the US. Instagram’s audience also skews more female than Facebook’s, overall. It’s clear that Facebook is waning with Gen Z, who are gravitating increasingly to TikTok and Instagram.

The social media channel that works for your brand will depend on the type of audience you have, or the type of audience you are hoping to attract to your web store. It also depends on the kind of content you want to share, as what works on one platform doesn’t necessarily work on another. Make sure you’re focusing on the right social media channel for your target market. If you haven’t already, define your goals and your audience, as their habits, needs and wants will affect what works for you.

Interactive Content Is a Powerful Engagement Tool

Video content is still big with both users and brands, who want to show off their products via instructional demos (often from influencers), speak directly to their audience, and get valuable user-generated content. But as users spend more time online, they want to not just be entertained, but engaged. One way to do that is with interactive content.

Quizzes and polls are a popular solution for engaging users who crave more interactive experiences with brands. Fashion brands can get their followers to choose their favorite outfit, product, pattern or color of an item with a poll or quiz on social media. These efforts could involve gamification, where rewards are given for feedback, or form part of the product development process, where users vote on a color and the most popular option gets manufactured and sold.

As in-store retail continues to be restricted, brands are increasingly embracing other forms of interactive content such as virtual reality or 360 videos of their showrooms or runway shows. This offers a more exciting, engaging alternative to a regular live stream, video or image slideshow.

Voice Search Is on the Rise

Gen Z may not like to talk on the phone, but they will happily talk to a voice-activated ordering system to order a pizza. According to Statista, 26.1% of consumers made a purchase on a smart speaker in 2019. And they’re not just buying food or everyday household items this way. Shopify reports that apparel is also bought via voice nearly as often, which suggests that consumers may start doing more voice shopping in the future. After all, 35% of all US households are now equipped with at least one smart speaker.

Get ahead of the crowd by using conversational keywords that people are likely to speak rather than type. Ideally you’ll increase your rankings in Google’s featured snippets, which are the short answers that appear first when a user searches Google with a question. This is what tends to be delivered when voice search is used. Voice search is predicted to keep growing, so with good voice search engine optimization, you’ll be sure to attract more traffic to your web store.

Conclusion

After the year we’ve had, CEOs and CFOs are going to demand more data-driven marketing than ever before. Stay up to date and incorporate these trends into your day-to-day operations and you’ll stay ahead of the curve. As always, we’re here to help. Reach out to our team to implement new solutions to power your web store into the New Year.

Mobile devices connect more than 4.5 billion people to the internet—that’s over half of the global population! People are also spending an inordinate amount of time at home these days, which means a significant amount of shopping is being conducted via cell phones. 

Mobile eCommerce was expected to grow 20% in 2020, and expected to surpass 50% of total US eCommerce sales in less than two years—there is a huge opportunity for online retailers. Take this time now to optimize your mobile experience ahead of the holidays to reduce cart abandonment and enhance your web store’s checkout and overall shopping experience.

Read on for advice on how to create a superior mobile eCommerce experience and seize the moment this holiday season brings.

Provide a Seamless Mobile Checkout Experience

There are so many potential obstacles in your way as an online retailer—don’t blow it right before the finish line! A smooth checkout experience is crucial for conversions. Unfortunately, 85% of cart abandonment on mobile happens at checkout. This checkout conversion problem results in a whopping $1 trillion in abandoned checkouts in the US alone, and more than $10 trillion globally each year.

The biggest reasons for mobile cart abandonment are requiring a shopper to create an account (34%), having a long or complicated checkout process (26%), and not enabling a shopper to calculate their order total up front (21%), according to a study.

This is why it’s so important to offer guest checkout on your web store, particularly during the busy holiday season. Third-party payment solutions can also ease issues and provide a more seamless mobile checkout experience. Enable services such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay and Apple Pay to make it easy for shoppers to swiftly make their purchases, without having to pull out their credit card. Offering these eCommerce options also adds an extra level of credibility, and saves your customer from having to enter their shipping information too, as it’s stored with their payment information.

Optimize Everything for Mobile

52% of 18-to 25-year-olds in the US prefer to use a smartphone to buy physical goods online, according to Forrester. This means that eCommerce sites that cater to mobile browsers have a huge advantage, by catching customers where and how they shop.

To drive conversions with these shoppers it’s important to fully optimize your mobile shopping experience. After you’ve ensured your checkout experience is safe and easy to use, look at the rest of your purchase flow. Retarget interested shoppers with a thoughtful strategy aimed at people who have expressed interest in your product in the past. You also need to send abandoned cart notifications to reel back shoppers who dropped off along the way. Often cart abandonment is caused by slow load times, so increase your site performance to ensure you’re maximizing your traffic.

Look out for any gates that may be obstructing your purchase funnels. You want to be guiding customers from interest to intent to purchase. Gates create friction in the shopping experience where customers are forced to input information or take an unwanted action—don’t make people answer surveys or add personal information where it’s not necessary. Offer product-page checkout or instant checkout as an alternate checkout option to increase the speed with which shoppers can purchase.

Use Deep Linking

Deep linking is a powerful way to increase conversions through seamless user experiences across paid advertising, email, SMS campaigns, referral programs and more. By facilitating relevant experiences, you can generate higher conversion rates and retain more customers.

Native deep linking solutions exist for both Android and iOS, but for more robust, universal deep linking tools, it’s recommended to use a holistic attribution provider. AppsFlyer’s OneLink is one example that leverages attribution data to generate a single link that can automatically detect a user’s device, channel, platform and app state (installed or not), so that you can then send them to the optimal web or app page.

Your shoppers are probably using multiple devices to browse and then purchase from your store, so this holistic attribution data can give you valuable insights into their entire user journey. This includes finding out the specific web, app and owned marketing touchpoints that drove them to engage with your store. You can then use these insights to optimize your marketing and segment your audience, in order to target and deliver personalized messaging to them across channels and devices.

Conclusion

These are just three strategies for implementing a highly optimized and successful mobile shopping experience. If you follow these tips, you’ll take convenience to the next level and exceed your customer’s expectations in an age where personalized, seamless experiences are key to a satisfying and successful mobile shopping experience. If you’d like a tailored approach to your business’s mobile holiday strategy, reach out to us today.

We are living in crazy times. No matter where we go, we are being bombarded with an enormous amount of content, leading to sensory overload. As an eCommerce player you need to ask yourself, ‘Is my website a part of the problem?”

No matter what segment of the ecommerce industry your webstore is in, there are an astonishing number of sites completely overloaded with useless tools, elements, and features.

It’s bad enough to have these pointless elements on a merchant’s site, but when you consider the negative impact of overcrowding and distraction, these seemingly harmless features are likely costing visitors and conversions. A frustrating user experience (like an overwhelming website) is often pointed to as the reason a potential customer leaves a website prematurely.

We want to help stop the madness. In an online world where everything is happening all at once, let your website be a respite for your visitors’ weary eyes.

In this guide we’ll how to analyze your eCommerce site and identify which  unneeded elements are most distracting.

Henry David Thoreau (yes, the woods guy) once said, “our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” 

Replace “life” with “website” and you’re looking at the entire theme of this article. Your website visitors are just like you, or any other human being: past a certain threshold, the more information there is to look at, the more difficult to process it all can be.

As brands continually add elements to their website, visitors in favor of quantity of information. 

On any given page, there should be a clear path for a website visitor. On a blog post, the goal of the page may be to encourage them to read another blog post, or perhaps to navigate to what the company has to offer besides their words. If it is a product page, ideally you’d want a visitor to add that product to the cart. There is always a natural next step, and it is up to the website developers and owners  to make that step clear and easy to access. But if your site is too cluttered, it will leave visitors lost and confused. Here are five commonly used elements that can distract customers from easily moving through the buying process:

1. Automatically Sliding Carousel

When one element is moving on an otherwise stationary page, it draws the eye away from something that a visitor might have been looking at or about to click.

The biggest culprit of the automatically sliding carousel is the home page. Oftentimes a company will have three incredible heroes and they just can’t choose between them, so we want them all to cycle through. Our advice? Choose one.

If you can’t choose, then at least prioritize and let your visitors scroll through them at their own leisure (but be sure to be tracking engagement on the arrows).

In all honesty, we haven’t  seen a product page automatic image slider since 2017, but in case you still have one of those, disable that automatic slide too.

2. To Much Content

A design team is a beautiful thing, and working together they can create wonderful images for every page of your site – but don’t let design run wild on your site.  

When a  page features too many photos or graphicsyou may be deluging your visitors with a flood of unneeded images – even if they are beautiful and engaging by all standards. One example of having too many photos is when they  cause products to be pushed down below-the-fold on a category page.

3. Social Media Links

Social media is, for better or for worse, an integral part of many peoples’ daily lives. However, on your website, social media is a distraction. 

Many product pages carry social media sharing links in the hopes that a visitor will provide some free publicity, but it just doesn’t happen very often. We checked the data across 10 different ecommerce websites with social links on the product page, and found that not one of them had even moderately used social links. 

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is this: remove the links from your product page. If someone has a burning desire to share your product on social media, they will still be able to copy and paste the URL. For everyone else, remove the icons and therefore increase their focus on what we all actually want them to do: make a purchase . 

If you must have social media links, our recommendation would be to place them on the confirmation page. After a visitor has purchased your product, asking them to share will no longer affect the buying process, as they have already successfully completed the purchase.

4. Endless Product Thumbnails

While we’re on the product page, let’s talk about product images. You have them, you need them, your visitors love them. What’s the problem? The problem is  that your visitors love them – a little too much. 

Viewing any mobile click-map, it will be apparent that tapping through all of the product images is one of the most utilized customer journeys out there. If you ascribe a conversion rate to those clicks, though, you’ll see it’s almost always among the lowest on the entire page.

Product thumbnails on mobile lead to high quantity and low quality engagement. Why is that?

People love interaction. There’s definitely some neurotransmitter getting released when you click on something knowing full well you’re going to get a new and exciting image. The problem is, the reward isn’t nearly as exciting as our brains want it to be. It’s the same product we were just looking at, but from a slightly different angle.

So what’s the solution? On mobile devices, replace your thumbnails with a Dot Slider.

What we want to do by removing the thumbnails is discourage our aimless monkey/human behavior. There are some visitors who truly do need to see the product from different angles, but most of us are just pressing buttons to see what will happen. 

Keep your extra images, but simply replacing the thumbnails with a simple Dot Slider will do wonders for your conversion rate.

5. Cart and Checkout Header

Distractions aside, you’ve managed to get your visitor to add an item to the cart – congratulations! 

Now the real trouble begins. The average cart abandonment rate hovers somewhere around 80%. That is to say, of all of the visitors who have gone through your website, identified a product they liked, and added it to the cart… 80% of them do not complete that checkout process.

In the cart and checkout process, it is beyond imperative to not provide too many options and elements to click on, but to encourage a smooth, seamless transition to transaction. 

Every company’s cart and checkout process and display is different, but something that nearly everyone has in common is a site header. On the cart and checkout pages, the header is fairly unnecessary – you’re encouraging people to keep browsing your site when in fact you want them to just check out. Talk about mixed signals.

On the cart page, keep your logo, keep account information… but that might be it. As long as there is still a way to navigate out of the cart and checkout page (clicking the logo to take the visitor to the home page, for instance), a less distracting header will help move visitors along the checkout process with more speed and ease.

One of our clients asked us to A/B test this idea before implementing. We ran the test for both desktop and mobile visitors, and even though the types of headers are different, the results were the same.

A simpler header in the cart led to a higher conversion rate and made our client over $5,000 in just three weeks of testing.

If you’re not ready to remove the header from your cart page, at least take a baby step and simplify the checkout header down to the absolute basics. You’ll thank us later!

Still not convinced? Run a test

Simplify, simplify

Small, simple changes can keep your website as it should be – clear, clean and with a sense of direction. 

Our recommendations come from years of testing experience, but if you think you might be the exception to the rule, we encourage you to run a test and see for yourself (you can use the free version of Google Optimize or contact us to help). 

Take a close look at your website and see what else is not aiding you or your goals. We have seen enormous amounts of revenue gain come from unexpectedly simple removals and changes. 

Our takeaway advice is this: keep your website free from distraction and your visitors will continue on with their purpose to purchase. Happy deleting!

1. Automatically Sliding Carousel

When one element is moving on an otherwise stationary page, it draws the eye away from something that a visitor might have been looking at or about to click.

The biggest culprit of the automatically sliding carousel is the home page. Oftentimes a company will have three incredible heroes and they just can’t choose between them, so we want them all to cycle through. Our advice? Choose one.

If you can’t choose, then at least prioritize and let your visitors scroll through them at their own leisure (but be sure to be tracking engagement on the arrows).

In all honesty, we haven’t  seen a product page automatic image slider since 2017, but in case you still have one of those, disable that automatic slide too.

2. To Much Content

A design team is a beautiful thing, and working together they can create wonderful images for every page of your site – but don’t let design run wild on your site.  

When a  page features too many photos or graphicsyou may be deluging your visitors with a flood of unneeded images – even if they are beautiful and engaging by all standards. One example of having too many photos is when they  cause products to be pushed down below-the-fold on a category page.

3. Social Media Links

Social media is, for better or for worse, an integral part of many peoples’ daily lives. However, on your website, social media is a distraction. 

Many product pages carry social media sharing links in the hopes that a visitor will provide some free publicity, but it just doesn’t happen very often. We checked the data across 10 different ecommerce websites with social links on the product page, and found that not one of them had even moderately used social links. 

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is this: remove the links from your product page. If someone has a burning desire to share your product on social media, they will still be able to copy and paste the URL. For everyone else, remove the icons and therefore increase their focus on what we all actually want them to do: make a purchase . 

If you must have social media links, our recommendation would be to place them on the confirmation page. After a visitor has purchased your product, asking them to share will no longer affect the buying process, as they have already successfully completed the purchase.

4. Endless Product Thumbnails

While we’re on the product page, let’s talk about product images. You have them, you need them, your visitors love them. What’s the problem? The problem is  that your visitors love them – a little too much. 

Viewing any mobile click-map, it will be apparent that tapping through all of the product images is one of the most utilized customer journeys out there. If you ascribe a conversion rate to those clicks, though, you’ll see it’s almost always among the lowest on the entire page.

Product thumbnails on mobile lead to high quantity and low quality engagement. Why is that?

People love interaction. There’s definitely some neurotransmitter getting released when you click on something knowing full well you’re going to get a new and exciting image. The problem is, the reward isn’t nearly as exciting as our brains want it to be. It’s the same product we were just looking at, but from a slightly different angle.

So what’s the solution? On mobile devices, replace your thumbnails with a Dot Slider.

What we want to do by removing the thumbnails is discourage our aimless monkey/human behavior. There are some visitors who truly do need to see the product from different angles, but most of us are just pressing buttons to see what will happen. 

Keep your extra images, but simply replacing the thumbnails with a simple Dot Slider will do wonders for your conversion rate.

5. Cart and Checkout Header

Distractions aside, you’ve managed to get your visitor to add an item to the cart – congratulations! 

Now the real trouble begins. The average cart abandonment rate hovers somewhere around 80%. That is to say, of all of the visitors who have gone through your website, identified a product they liked, and added it to the cart… 80% of them do not complete that checkout process.

In the cart and checkout process, it is beyond imperative to not provide too many options and elements to click on, but to encourage a smooth, seamless transition to transaction. 

Every company’s cart and checkout process and display is different, but something that nearly everyone has in common is a site header. On the cart and checkout pages, the header is fairly unnecessary – you’re encouraging people to keep browsing your site when in fact you want them to just check out. Talk about mixed signals!

On the cart page, keep your logo, keep account information… but that might be it. As long as there is still a way to navigate out of the cart and checkout page (clicking the logo to take the visitor to the home page, for instance), a less distracting header will help move visitors along the checkout process with more speed and ease.

One of our clients asked us to A/B test this idea before implementing. We ran the test for both desktop and mobile visitors, and even though the types of headers are different, the results were the same.

A simpler header in the cart led to a higher conversion rate and made our client over $5,000 in just three weeks of testing.

If you’re not ready to remove the header from your cart page, at least take a baby step and simplify the checkout header down to the absolute basics. You’ll thank us later!

Still not convinced? Run a test

Simplify, simplify

Small, simple changes can keep your website as it should be – clear, clean and with a sense of direction. 

Our recommendations come from years of testing experience, but if you think you might be the exception to the rule, we encourage you to run a test and see for yourself (you can use the free version of Google Optimize or contact us to help). 

Take a close look at your website and see what else is not aiding you or your goals. We have seen enormous amounts of revenue gain come from unexpectedly simple removals and changes. 

Our takeaway advice is this: keep your website free from distraction and your visitors will continue on with their purpose to purchase. Happy deleting!

Henry David Thoreau (yes, the woods guy) once said, “our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” 

Replace “life” with “website” and you’re looking at the entire theme of this article. Your website visitors are just like you, or any other human being: past a certain threshold, the more information there is to look at, the more difficult to process it all can be.

As brands continually add elements to their website, visitors in favor of quantity of information. 

Henry David Thoreau (yes, the woods guy) once said, “our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” 

Replace “life” with “website” and you’re looking at the entire theme of this article. Your website visitors are just like you, or any other human being: past a certain threshold, the more information there is to look at, the more difficult to process it all can be.

As brands continually add elements to their website, visitors in favor of quantity of information. 

Henry David Thoreau (yes, the woods guy) once said, “our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” 

Replace “life” with “website” and you’re looking at the entire theme of this article. Your website visitors are just like you, or any other human being: past a certain threshold, the more information there is to look at, the more difficult to process it all can be.

As brands continually add elements to their website, visitors in favor of quantity of information. 

Henry David Thoreau (yes, the woods guy) once said, “our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” 

Replace “life” with “website” and you’re looking at the entire theme of this article. Your website visitors are just like you, or any other human being: past a certain threshold, the more information there is to look at, the more difficult to process it all can be.

As brands continually add elements to their website, visitors in favor of quantity of information. 

After a year unlike any other, we can all be sure of one thing: this is also going to be a drastically different holiday season. People’s lives have changed and, as a result, their priorities and shopping habits have also shifted. 

Despite all of the uncertainty, holiday shopping is charging ahead. The overall eCommerce conversion rate is up 6% from last year, and a study found that 20% of respondents had already started their holiday shopping in August. This will no doubt only increase as the holiday season goes on. 

But different times call for different approaches for brands and retailers, and with the increase in online shopping, eCommerce platforms need to be prepared. With that in mind, here are three strategies for a successful 2020 holiday season. 

Appeal to the Ethical Shopper

This year we’ve noticed a huge change in what consumers value, with a dramatic increase in buyers prioritizing health, sustainability and purpose-driven brands. According to Nielsen, over 80% of people feel that companies should help improve the environment, 68% of online shoppers deem product sustainability an important factor in making a purchase, and 77% of millennials prefer to buy from environmentally-conscious brands. Sustainability is at the top of consumers’ wish lists, so if you can prove that your brand is acting in an ethical and sustainable manner, you’ll come out on top these holidays.

Positioning your brand as sustainable and ethical could manifest itself in how you market your products, by promoting a “buy well, use well” mentality; less is more. It could also mean adapting your supply chain and incorporating recyclable materials and sustainable processes. You may want to use Product Information Management to enable shoppers to filter your products based on attributes they’re passionate about, such as whether it was made using sustainable materials.

Whatever you do, make sure you communicate your sustainability initiatives clearly on your website, social media and email and text marketing! Like this example from Christy Dawn:

Give the Gift of Philanthropy

Similarly to sustainability, a brand or retailer’s philanthropy is another hugely important consideration for shoppers in 2020. Research by Accenture Strategy finds that people are making careful choices to purchase from brands that stand for a purpose that reflects their values and beliefs. According to KPMG’s Global Retail Trends 2020, brands that demonstrate a positive impact on people’s lives grow 2.5 times more than brands with a low perceived impact. This means brands need to practice what they preach; rather than sharing a mission statement with vague goals, they need to take tangible actions to create a more equitable world.

Be one of the many brands that show they care through generous deeds, be it donating a portion of profits to food banks, providing a special discount for first responders, or giving away products to people in need. Some brands like Toms have been doing that for years, with their “buy one, give one” strategy.

Involve your customers in your efforts for even greater engagement via online surveys, social media or live chat. Use all available channels to share your fundraising efforts, but keep your customer preferences in mind to ensure you’re creating targeted, effective engagements. Whichever method you choose, demonstrate your purpose-driven values and you will be sure to win more loyal customers. Check out this example from Everlane.

Practice Mindful Marketing

Profit isn’t everything; we all know that. Show that you stand for more than just money and speak to the powerful moment we’re all in. This has been a year where multiple concerns have become top of mind. We’re also all dealing with sensory overload. According to Hootsuite, almost four billion people use social media today, which is roughly 51% of the entire global population.

All of us are online more than ever, and we’re all getting hit with more and more marketing messages in a variety of formats. You can’t—and don’t want to—just cease communication. But you can be more strategic about what you’re sending (and how, and when, and why).

Start building meaningful connections with consumers through mindfully crafted social media and email marketing. You can do this by emphasizing real-time conversation over promotion—seizing opportunities to engage in moments and on topics of importance to people, instead of simply trying to sell products.

Approach your communications with empathy and imbue your brand with the humanity that you have as a person. This year has been traumatic for many—prove you’re trustworthy. Don’t shy away from important topics. Take a stance, provide tangible value, and maintain your consistent, yet evolving, brand voice.

Conclusion

The future may still be uncertain, but we hope this blog provides some guidance to help you prepare your brand for what we all hope will be a very busy holiday season. If you’d like any personalized assistance getting your web store ready for the holidays, please get in touch with us today.

At InteractOne we’ve been singing the praises of progressive web apps, or PWAs, and the many advantages they bring to eCommerce websites of all shapes and sizes. PWAs are websites that provide users with the look and feel of a native app, straight from a mobile browser.

As we’ve outlined before, PWAs offer a number of benefits, whether you’re running a web store for a pharmaceutical brand or another kind of eCommerce website. PWAs enable a greater user experience, they can increase conversion rates and overall revenue, and they’re less costly to develop and maintain than a native app. 

The Background Surrounding PWAs

Because PWAs are not apps, they’re not required to be submitted to the Apple App Store (or the Google Play Store) for approval. This means they don’t fall under the purview of Apple or Google, so they aren’t held up by these stores for their lengthy review periods. It also means they don’t provide traffic or fees to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. 

As CNET points out, “native apps are integral to Apple’s business,” whereas for Google, “keeping people on the web is key.” This suggests that the lack of oversight, control and ability Apple has to profit off PWAs is the reason why they have been imposing increasingly severe limits on them.

“It starts coming down to app store politics and revenue,” Peter Sheldon, Senior Director of Strategy at Magento, told CNET. “If you make web apps as good as [native] apps, where does the app store revenue go?”

The Current Issues Facing PWAs

Recently, Apple announced that the Safari browser would not support a number of web application programming interfaces—16, to be exact. This included Web Bluetooth, Web NFC, Network Information, Proximity Sensor and Geolocation Sensor, to name just a few (read the rest of the APIs here.) This meant that developers would have an even more uphill battle in creating and implementing powerful web apps. 

Apple also announced, via a blog post about enhancements to their Intelligent Tracking Prevention, that they will be “deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site.” Some in the industry claim that this sudden change—from no storage limit to a seven-day storage limit—seemed extreme and unnecessary.

What is Apple’s Reasoning for Restricting PWAs?

Apple is limiting PWAs in an effort to discourage their development. They claim that their goal is to protect users’ privacy, as they say the web APIs enable advertisers and data analytics companies to develop scripts that fingerprint people as well as their devices. 

User fingerprints are small scripts that are loaded and run in a user’s browser, and are used to measure their responses to websites. Marketers develop user identities based on these unique responses. While this is obviously useful for companies seeking to measure their websites’ engagement and success, this seems to be a point of contention for Apple.

What Can Be Done About It?

Developers have been attempting to come up with various workarounds to some of the challenges they’re being presented with, and some have been sharing their ideas. One wrote that he believes that PWAs can be made to “work without a backend component by storing all data for a given user at the user’s own machine,” therefore getting around Apple’s privacy concerns. 

Another developer proposed an idea on Apple’s Developer forums to “create an app that proxies push notifications for various apps,” to get around the core issue of Apple not allowing push notifications for PWAs. 

Apple has yet to make a statement about whether or not they will allow push notifications for iOS, and this is causing friction. At least one petition has been started to call for push notifications to be implemented. Developers are calling for the company to at least communicate their intentions on this matter, so that they can then create a native app or move forward in some other way.

Conclusion

To their credit, Apple is intent on providing fast, secure and private browsing. But they are attempting to do so at the expense of developers’ freedom to create more user-friendly online experiences. It comes down to a conflict of interest, and unfortunately one side has more power than the other. Only time will tell whether compromises will be made.