UPDATED for 2021: How to Prep Magento for Peak Performance during the Holidays

UPDATED for 2021: How to Prep Magento for Peak Performance during the Holidays

by | Aug 19, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, eCommerce, Technology

Summer is flying by and it’s time to plan for the holiday shopping rush. As experienced Magento developers, we are very familiar with merchants turning to us for direction and help with how to get their sites ready for the holiday season. We’ve seen merchants experience 2/3 more traffic or process double (or triple) the number of transactions during November and December compared to the rest of the year.

Notably, the Magento Business Intelligence group found that merchants acquire up to 59% more customers during the holidays compared to the rest of the year. That’s a lot of new site traffic. Can your Magento site handle that big of an uptick in new visitors? With nearly 60% more new customers preparing to visit your website in a couple months, it would be smart to run performance tests now. 

Tip 1 – Page Load Speed Optimization

%

of shoppers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

%

of shoppers abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load.

%

of shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to buy from the same site again.

Magento can be a very involved platform to work with. Most Magento instances are so customized that there is no other site exactly like another. That dynamic creates several potential points of failure if your code and server configuration are not optimized to work together. Module conflicts, unoptimized CSS/JS, and any potential server-side issues need to be identified and resolved. Unresolved code issues can cause major page speed performance issues and become detrimental during an otherwise very profitable time of the year.

If your site shows signs of performance issues and slow load times now, how will it perform during peak traffic times come November? It’s critical to perform site load tests before the real traffic influx begins. Contact your hosting company before performing any tests and work with them and your development team to identify any possible issues with server resources. 

It’s also important to note that page load times and user engagement metrics contribute to your PPC quality score. Those holiday PPC campaigns could take a hit if load times are poor. Key engagement metrics to monitor are bounce rate, time on page, time on site, and pages/session. A fast site will also help your PPC cost-per-click and impressions. In addition, we’ve also seen load times have a positive or a negative effect on SEO. Page load speed is critical across the board for the success of your site.

Tip 2 – UX/UI Optimization

Not only is site traffic at its peak during the holiday season, but customers’ tolerance and attention levels are low, as they tend to be in a hurry to complete their holiday shopping activities. Make your site easy to navigate and streamline the browsing experience for customers by removing conversion blockers. Bounce rates are naturally higher during the holidays as people quickly window shop and bargain hunt. Optimize poorly performing pages, ensure page load times are at their best, and keep your product offering up to date to avoid high bounce rates.

A quick way to optimize under-performing landing pages is to identify your lowest bounce rate landing page(s) in Google Analytics. Analyze those lowest bounce rate pages and try to find ways to improve engagement across your site. Of course a more thorough review of your shopping experience (complete with A/B tests) would be the most beneficial for optimization. However, there are valuable opportunities available for improvement that can be discovered through a Google analytics review.

The maintenance of products and pricing is also vital.

    • Keep catalog images, product descriptions, prices, inventory, and shipping rates clear and updated. 
    • Ensure your pricing is competitive. Have import/export templates set up so you can easily update pricing on the fly. That way, you’re not scrambling when a competitor suddenly has a flash sale. 
    • Make sure your strongest products (best selling, best price, or highest inventory) are easy to find for customers on your category and landing pages. 
    • In addition, make sure your upsell, cross sell and related products are all set up and relevant to each other.

Don’t Ignore Mobile Traffic

Magento can be a very involved platform to work with. Most Magento instances At least a third of your traffic during the holidays is going to be from mobile devices. Mobile sales will account for more than half in most retail industries. Perform a thorough, unbiased review of your mobile shopping experience from the homepage down through the checkout process. Remove any conversion blockers, consolidate any redundant pages or steps in the checkout. Do not mark any checkout fields as required unless they really are required. Finally, make sure chatbot and email sign-up pop-ups are disabled on mobile!

Tip 3 – Security Optimization

Site security is also critical for overall site performance during the holidays and always. If your Magento site isn’t upgraded to the latest version or is missing Security Patches, you are at risk for security issues. We’ve encountered several merchants over the last year or so who have ignored security or bug patches. Or, merchants have severely delayed the upgrading of their Magento sites. By ignoring Magento Security Patches or avoiding updates, merchants are opening themselves up to a much larger problem. Problems like legal indemnification since many maintain publicly that they are PCI compliant while leaving gaping security holes in their site’s infrastructure. 

Beyond the cost and headache of what a data breach could do, merchants could lose a solid portion of customers. In fact, 31% of customers terminated their relationship with a targeted business after a breach was discovered. No merchant wants to be the next Target fail. Make sure your Magento site is upgraded or patched as soon as possible.

Tip 4 – Review and Test

It’s important to be proactive about performance testing to be prepared well in advance of holiday traffic. Merchants need to test the shopping experience on their site.  Be sure that the browsing process, shopping cart and checkout is a seamless experience for your customers.  

Review your site analytics. Verify that key engagement metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, time on site, and pages/session are performing well. Look for dips in data and bottlenecks. Pull data from the prior holiday season. Review what issues you had and where your site could improve. In addition, note what worked well for your site and look for ways to improve based on positive metrics. Analyzing your own data can save a lot of time and solve a lot of puzzles when it comes to customer experience and site performance issues.

Run perform load tests and user-based browsing tests to make sure your site is ready for any expected (and unexpected) traffic spikes. Performance tests and implementation can be a test and tune process. We’ve worked with merchants with complicated, and not so complicated, infrastructures. It can take time to locate the cause of issues and bottlenecks. Sometimes “simple” tasks can cause hiccups that take time to diagnose and find the ideal configuration. Performance tests need to be conducted long before the holidays to be successful and in place before the traffic picks up.

Get started now – or very soon.

If you are missing patches or haven’t reviewed your analytics in a while, don’t fret. Merchants still have time to get started on performance testing to get an idea of what they will need to have in place come October and November. Contact us to learn more about performance testing options or to get help with your UX/UI optimization. Or, give us a call to talk to a Magento expert: 513-469-3345.

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Harmonic Convergence: Creating Customer Bliss Through The Perfect Giveaway

Harmonic Convergence: Creating Customer Bliss Through The Perfect Giveaway

by | Aug 18, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, Digital Marketing, Technology

Successful growth in eCommerce is an art form.

Doubt it? You can find thousands of sites out there that are perfectly competent when it comes to what they sell and how they operate, but they fail to find the magic key that opens the door to sales success.

The difference, in many cases, comes down to failing to capture the imagination of would-be customers. Building a brand comes by making an impression. One approach that has helped many brands get past this challenge is the use of viral giveaway campaigns.

A viral giveaway campaign is when a brand uses its social platforms to, well, giveaway a promotional item to select participants, often  requiring social engagement and/or a participants contact information. You know those fishbowls at checkout counters that collect business cards for a free item? It’s a digital version of that. Viral giveaway campaigns can do wonders for building your customer list — if they are executed in a smart and disciplined way. Outgrow reports on a number of impressive results tied to these campaigns in 2021 alone, such as promotions that cost just 18 cents per click, contestants spending 2 minutes plus on the contest app and more than 62% sharing the contest with at least one friend.

That all sounds great, but viral giveaways have been around for a few years now, meaning there’s enough known to show there are right ways and wrong ways to go about this process. In the rest of this blog, we’ll explore what has been learned.

Building Brand Through Giveaways

The operational pieces in creating a successful viral giveaway campaign should be built on two principles:

  1. Make participation for the customer as simple as possible
  2. Make desirability of the contest align with the customers you are seeking

No matter how compelling your offer, it is always going to have to compete in a marketplace teeming with content vying for people’s attention. Once you are fortunate enough to grab that interest, you need to make action steps as simple as possible, and the benefit those actions could lead to as desirable as possible.

Giveaways can take many different forms. For the vast majority of eCommerce sites, the scope of viral giveaway you will be considering will be modest. The total value of prizes being offered could be in the range of $1,000 or less. Even at that level, you can still produce great returns from your campaign in terms of growing your customer base. Key factors which will play into the chances for success are if the promotion of the giveaway is creatively appealing (i.e. not the “same old same old” that every other contest is pushing), if it has elements which make it fun to participate in and if the appeal of the giveaway is genuine enough that people will feel good about sharing it with their friends. You want your giveaway promotions to be easily shareable.

The site Startup Bonsai offers a very good observation that you should keep in mind as you conceive of how your viral giveaway could work: People don’t necessarily like buying from brands, they like buying from personal recommendations. That is a key part of the appeal to consider in how you can make your giveaway a viral experience.

If your giveaway has a gamification aspect — that is, people’s participation is incentivized so their chances of winning grow by becoming more involved in the giveaway — you may consider creating a social share site for users. They can track their progress and see how they are faring as they pursue rewards that are part of the giveaway.

Another aspect that has proven value as viral giveaway strategies have matured is the use of a deadline element to drive participant action. You can keep prospective customers thinking about your brand longer if the appeal of the giveaway offer has hit home with them, but they also know that they only have a limited amount of time to act.

One other good point to keep in mind — don’t think just because your viral giveaway is designed for your social channels that you shouldn’t also be supporting it through your more conventional assets. Promote the giveaway through your email contact with existing customers — it still produces the best percentage in response rates of any outreach. You also need to consider the best ways to promote the giveaway to visitors landing at your site. A pop-up welcome mat message is a tactic that many companies use.

Tips for Deciding on the Right Offer

A successful viral giveaway will have at its heart an intriguing prize offer. Deciphering what this will be for your giveaway is a true make-or-break decision in how you will succeed in connecting with the customers you most desire.

Designing a giveaway is really an opportunity to demonstrate to  targeted customers that you understand what they are looking for. This is how brands connect with customers. From your perspective, it is a prime opportunity to identify interested potential customers that you know will have a specific area of interest that could be developed into a buying opportunity. From the customer’s perspective yours is a fresh voice whose potential lies in offering a product that will solve their problems in a responsible way.

An important point to consider as you think about how your viral giveaway will be structured is that the contest is not necessarily limited to only what you offer. Exciting and creative offerings often come in the form of a package of products centered around a theme. Think in terms of partners who offer related products to what you sell. You may already have existing relationships with some of those brands, or it could be a matter of reaching out to a company that you feel has this element of commonality.

It can also pay to think creatively when envisioning partnership possibilities. These case studies can give you some ideas on just how effective thinking creatively can be in generating exceptional amounts of response to your campaign.

Along with who else you might try and partner with, you are also going to have to make some decisions about what social channels are right for your offer. Here’s an article and accompanying infographic that gives you an overview of how other companies are deploying viral giveaway techniques as they go down this same road.

Do Something With the Data

Once you reach the end of your viral giveaway, you are going to be sitting on a pile of results generated by the contest. Don’t just assume all of it is equal. Contests are going to produce returns that are mixed in quality. You’ll need to take the right steps to make sure you are getting out of the process what you hoped for going in when it comes to adding on to your customer base.

Screening for returns with fake data, such as a bogus email address, will be a must. Plenty of guidance is out there already in terms of best practices for eCommerce merchants to make sure they are dealing with actual verifiable customers. You also will want a screening process in place to make sure you are not just adding duplicate emails that are already in your database. Applying the same kind of guidelines you use for keeping your existing list healthy makes sense for the new data churned up by your viral giveaway.

A few final points for closing the loop when it comes to your contest is following up with offers of discounts and other benefits to those new potential customers you’ve just gained. You know something specific now about where their interests may be directed. For instance, one of our favorite formats we’ve seen for viral giveaways is known as the wish list format — that is creating a contest where those who enter will be choosing among a series of products to tell you exactly what they are most interested in. That’s the kind of opening you were hoping for when you started down the road of creating a giveaway. Be active, be persistent and be creative in trying to court these new potential sources of business. 

Just like all endeavors you need to protect your company from any legal issues when running a viral contest campaign. There is a lot of grey area and you need to make sure that any contest you host isn’t going to put you in the crosshairs of any regulatory group. We recommend working with a legal or marketing company that has familiarity with this world and can best set you up for success long-term. 

Viral giveaways are a path for creating new business that go hand-in-hand with eCommerce. People who are seeing your offer are already engaged in accessing that information through some kind of electronic device. They are in your realm. Come up with a great offer with true appeal for them, and the returns could be just the catalyst that drives your sales results to the next level.

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The August 2021 Orange Report

The August 2021 Orange Report

by | Aug 10, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, Past Newsletters, Technology

August 2021 ORANGE REPORT

The August 2021 Orange Report features our best & most recent blogs and guides on Magento, Big Commerce, eCommerce, and Digital Marketing.

Here Come the Holidays – Tips to Keep Fraud Away

Minimize your exposure to fraud risks and keep fraud from becoming a disruptive factor in your relationship with your actual paying customers.

READ MORE

Subscription Sales Success: Tools We Recommend

ou will learn what tools are needed to make Subscription Sales offerings a reality for your customers and a money-maker for you.

READ MORE

Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

Your site speed could be hurting your search rankings, users’ experience, site traffic, and conversion rate. Time to get that fixed.

READ MORE

Metrics Matter; How Tracking Data Improves Business

Ensure your analytics are set up correctly so that you can begin to digest the data based on your goals.

READ MORE
Metrics Matter; How Tracking Data Improves Business

Metrics Matter; How Tracking Data Improves Business

by | Aug 6, 2021 | PPC, SEO, Technology

We know from everyday life that tracking data helps us to improve performance and reach our goals, whether it’s our credit scores or the miles we run. When we don’t have data, we’re blindly guessing at how we’re performing. It’s like trying to navigate without a map—you’re likely to get completely lost or take the same path multiple times unless you have the data that shows you where you’ve been or where you’re going. 

eCommerce operates the same way—we don’t know how well we’re tracking against our goals unless we have accurate, up-to-date analytics that can be checked frequently. But when we are in possession of that data, we have our business road map. Data provides valuable insights that enable us to compile reports, compare results and achieve our goals. 

In this blog we will discuss how to ensure your analytics are set up correctly and also how to digest the data based on your goals.

Ensure Your Analytics Are Set Up Correctly

Data should be the driving force behind every marketing decision and activity, but you need to ensure your analytics tracking is accurate and that attribution is set up correctly before you rely on those reports. 

For example, you might set up Amazon Pay on your eCommerce website and decide you want to track what kind of visitors utilize that payment method. However, if Amazon Pay was attributed to referral traffic in analytics, that would need to be resolved before you could rely on those attribution reports. 

It only takes one data point being off to throw everything else out of whack.You must ensure everything is set up correctly before you begin.

Set Specific Goals

Tracking data is about more than just checking your page views and visitors to see how much traffic your website is getting. To really learn and grow your business, you need to set specific goals to measure specific actions that users take on your website. As the great business manager Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” 

As an eCommerce website, you could have a number of goals, including increasing sign-ups or account creations, but your main goal will likely be increasing your conversion rate and other revenue related objectives. To do that, you will need to track micro-conversions and engagement leading up to a purchase. That means you will want to look at the time on page, exit rates on specific pages, product performance, checkout behavior, and individual goals you set up in analytics.

Measure Your Achievements

Depending on your goals, there are a number of things you can measure or track that are relevant to any eCommerce business. Let’s take a look at some of the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) you should measure on a continuous basis.

  • Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors that end up making a purchase. eCommerce conversion rates tend to average around the 1-2% mark. Aside from sales, conversion rates can also apply to any action that you want a customer to take, from signing up for your subscription emails or clicking on a specific button. 
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): tells you how much you are spending for each new customer acquired. Understanding this data helps you to optimize your advertising expenses.
  • Bounce rate: shows the percentage of customers leaving your site within at least 15 seconds. Paying attention to your bounce rate can help you establish how well your homepage and landing pages are performing and may show you where modifications need to be made to improve this. 
  • Average order value (AOV): tells you your customer’s spending behavior when they visit your site and is one of the most important metrics to keep track of when it comes to your business.
  • Cart abandonment rate: shows the percentage of shoppers that are adding a product to their cart and then leaving your site without making a purchase. Knowing your rates can help you optimize your checkout process and initiate actions to recover buckets of lost sales.

Keeping an eye on these metrics can help you determine where you should be focusing your advertising spend, or partnerships you could potentially form with other websites to increase traffic and grow your audience. And keeping tabs on your search results enables you to tweak and improve your SEO, which can improve your traffic volume and quality. 

Check out our blogs Six eCommerce eMail KPIs Merchants Need to Measure for Success and How to Analyze Google Ads Data After the Death of Average Position Ranking for more information on measuring your achievements with data.

What analytics tool should you use?

Whether you are a small or medium-sized business, an easy-to-use customer analytics tool that meets the needs of your eCommerce business goals is highly recommended. A few available options to consider include:

  • Google Analytics is best for eCommerce businesses who want to analyze their website traffic and receive some metrics such as sales conversions, product performance, customer acquisition, and various customer behavior. The best part about this tool is that it is completely free and customizable. 
  • Search Console is best for eCommerce businesses who are looking to track the overall health of their website. 
  • Crazy Egg is best for eCommerce businesses whose goal is to optimize their conversion rate. This consists of tracking customer moves and seeing how visitors interact with their site to help build an overall better experience.
  • SEMRush is best for eCommerce businesses looking for direction to help improve their SEO strategy (monitoring keywords and rankings) and grow their online visibility faster.

Conclusion

Nowadays we have so much data and so many ways of measuring our performance that it can almost seem overwhelming to begin with. But one of the worst things you can do as a business owner is to overlook your data and continue to operate blindly. 

If you’re feeling inspired to set some goals and grow your business, our team can help you identify some valuable targets and set up accurate tracking to monitor your progress and achieve your objectives.

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Holiday Season 2021: Tips to Keep Fraud Away

Holiday Season 2021: Tips to Keep Fraud Away

by | Aug 4, 2021 | eCommerce, Technology

In Part One of our Subscription Sales blog series we covered why you should consider adding this offering to your eCommerce platform. Here in Part Two, we’ll talk more about how you can make such an offering a reality for your customers.

(Here’s the 10-second recap from Part One: Subscription Sales are booming in popularity for eCommerce competitors because they can create a recurring revenue stream that makes customers happy and, once operational, require little additional management oversight. And here is the full first article if you’d like to catch up.)

Let’s take a look at solutions offered by two of the most popular eCommerce platforms, Magento and Big Commerce, in supporting a Subscription Sales option for you.

Take Your Cues from 2020

The logical place to start in planning a strategy for your 2021 holiday season is a look back at your site’s performance during this same span in 2020.

No doubt, 2020 was a year unlike any other we’ve seen in the brief history of the eCommerce era. Fueled by the realities of the pandemic, online holiday shopping spending surged by a whopping 32% last year.

You surely looked at the good that came to your site once the holidays passed, but did you do proper diligence examining negative issues like fraud? That kind of analysis is the place to start for your 2021 holiday planning. The site Payments Journal suggests two very good questions you should be asking:

  1. What kind of transactions generated the most fraudulent activity on your site and through what channels did they come in from?
  2. What negatives resulted from this activity that hindered your ability to serve your legitimate customers?

You need to be looking at the act of prioritizing fraud prevention for the 2021 holidays now as what it really is — a way to safeguard all your business transactions, for the benefit of both your business but also your true customers.

Is Fraud on Your Radar Now?

We’ll take it as a given that you are deploying some level of fraud protection now. Yet, it’s important to ask yourself what you are learning from those efforts. Do you just accept that a certain amount of fraudulent activity comes with the territory, just as any business is going to have some losses? Or are you taking a bigger-picture approach and considering how your efforts to prevent theft could also be spilling over to prevent sales?

A perfect example of where this can occur is in activity known as false declines. It occurs when an actual paying customer gets blocked from checking out because something about the transaction has tripped your fraud protection. Data from Magento shows just how damaging this can be — your newest customers, the ones  you have worked so hard to attract, are 5-to-7 times more likely to have transactions declined by fraud tools, and up to 40% of those who go through this ordeal will go on and make their purchase from one of your competitors.

Clearly, this is a vulnerability you want to have a handle on going into the holiday shopping period.

Striking the right balance when it comes to chargebacks is another challenge. You have banks and credit cards on one side who are monitoring your chargeback ratio to make sure you are being vigilant in protecting against fraudulent sales. On the other side, you have the interests of customers, who have high expectations to get through the buying process with as little friction as possible.

Because so much is riding on keeping parties on all sides of this equation happy, you need to be frequently monitoring this component of your business. And the odds are that if you don’t have a good strategy and are struggling with this in August, it could be a much more troubling problem when sales volumes skyrocket in November.

Magento considers this kind of risk one of seven problems they identify as growth-killers for eCommerce operations.

Other Action Steps on Fraud to Consider

Limiting the damage that comes with fraud has human elements to it.

You, of course, want to have a high-performing anti-fraud component built into your eCommerce operations. Most of the time today that is going to involve some level of AI technology. However, you can’t simply expect to let that technology run on autopilot and consider the matter fully contained.

Your customer service personnel can be an important part of your fraud defenses — if they are being trained in what to look for. Now is the time for that training to ramp up. A customer service rep well-versed in how your site operates and also in the type of tactics that fraudsters often resort to can be a key aspect in your anti-fraud efforts.

The value of human involvement also goes up another level in your operations when you make fraud identification a priority Those whose jobs involve monitoring business flows and trends for your eCommerce operation also have a role to play. In their case, they need to be aware of how your anti-fraud programs work. They also have to be able to recognize unusual activity and discern when trends are developing that are pointing to a possible increase in fraud.

The best backstop you can offer in successfully supporting both your anti-fraud software and your employee efforts is to review your operation’s anti-fraud policies and make sure they are appropriate for the kind of business you are engaged in. It is not a one-size-fits-all type of consideration. Those opportunists looking to commit fraud would love to find loopholes in your operational policies that make their efforts easy. It’s part of your job to make sure you aren’t helping them in this regard.

Work Now So You Can Fully Enjoy the Holidays Later

You’re hope is that you are going to be very busy once the holiday season rolls around. And the odds are great that you will be, one way or another. You will be busy selling your products and building your customer base by making people happy, or as the alternative you don’t want, you’ll be busy putting out fires because your sales process is falling victim to those engaged in fraud. 

One study from last year showed that fraud attempts in eCommerce were up by 69% year over year. Simply relying on the same anti-fraud approaches you used during the 2020 holiday season will likely leave you at risk for becoming part of that sad statistical group later this year.

Now is the perfect time to make sure your exposure is as limited as you can reasonably make it. Make it your goal — have your updated fraud strategy fully ready to roll before that day arrives when you see the first Christmas decorations of the 2021 season showing up in a store near you! If you would like assistance with that effort, we’d be happy to help.

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Subscription Sales Success: Tools We Recommend

Subscription Sales Success: Tools We Recommend

by | Jul 28, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, eCommerce, Technology

In Part One of our Subscription Sales blog series we covered why you should consider adding this offering to your eCommerce platform. Here in Part Two, we’ll talk more about how you can make such an offering a reality for your customers.

(Here’s the 10-second recap from Part One: Subscription Sales are booming in popularity for eCommerce competitors because they can create a recurring revenue stream that makes customers happy and, once operational, require little additional management oversight. And here is the full first article if you’d like to catch up.)

Let’s take a look at solutions offered by two of the most popular eCommerce platforms, Magento and Big Commerce, in supporting a Subscription Sales option for you.

Magento Extensions and Plug-In Options

eCommerce merchants whose sites are built on the Magento platform will find a couple of popular options that bring Subscription Sales into reach:  the Advanced Subscription Products extension from Aheadworks and the Subscriptions and Recurring Payments tool offered by Magenest.

Aheadworks is a well-established provider of Magento-compatible products. For those seeking to add Subscription Sales options to their platform, they offer a well-conceived and well-executed option. Wide flexibility is offered for creating and altering Subscription Sales options from both the customer’s side of the transaction and from the seller’s side. Interfaces are clean and easy to navigate.

Here’s a view of the overview screen for managing subscriptions.

A look at a page that allows customers to monitor subscriptions they have chosen.

Skin-care site Lancer offers a good example of what Subscription Sales offerings can look like from the customer’s point of view.

Another plug-in option for managing Subscription Sales in Magento is Magenest’s Subscriptions & Recurring Payments tool. It offers similar functionality to the Aheadworks extension. It also includes a straightforward tool for allowing customers to set up subscription orders for customers who buy a product at regular intervals, which has become a particularly popular offering within the B2B sector. Plan flexibility appears to be a real strength with this plug-in.

BigCommerce Plug-In Options

Tools are available to support and fuel  eCommerce Subscription Sales in SAAS platforms like BigCommerce as well. The Aneto Subscriptions Manager plug-in for BigCommerce offers much of the same functionality as we’ve already seen from the Magento offerings.

Here’s a look at the overview screen for this plug-in.

The Aneto Subscriptions Manager plug-in brings key functionality that drives BigCommerce platform Subscription Sales success. eCommerce merchants are able to create multiple subscription packages and have the flexibility to divide product offerings up into grouped categories. Value offerings popular with customers such as the ability to include free products and discount coupons in your packages are other capabilities included with this plug-in.

Conclusion

Subscription Sales Models show few signs of slowing down as a growing sector in the eCommerce landscape. Data from the Subscribed Institute showed that in 2020, the subscription sales sector grew 11.6%, including accelerating to a 21% growth rate in the fourth quarter of the year. If you haven’t done so already, you should consider how your eCommerce business could add Subscription Sales to your offerings. Please contact us for assistance in getting your subscription functionality set up and running.

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Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

by | Jul 21, 2021 | eCommerce, SEO, Technology

Having a fast-loading, high-performance website is crucial to your eCommerce business. But why? Because the speed of your page plays a vital role in your conversions, user experience, and Search Ranking. Unfortunately, too many website owners place a priority on having too many bells and whistles and an overly sophisticated website design, both of which slow your site, instead of focusing on performance. 

Think about it like this. If you go to sit down for a meal at a restaurant, slow service from the waiter often results in poor reviews and fewer return visits. Similarly, when you sit down to browse a website, slow service can drive you away and potentially steer you towards a competitor. If it’s annoying for you to wait for dinner at a restaurant or for a website to load, think about how your site visitors feel. 

In this blog, we will discuss some best practices to ensure your eCommerce site speed is not hurting your search rankings, users’ experience, site traffic, and conversion rate. But first, it is important to understand what site speed is and how to measure it.   

Site Speed Defined

CSite speed often referred to as Site Performance or page speed, is how quickly your eCommerce browser can load fully. Poorly performing sites that render slowly in a browser can drive users away. Conversely, sites that load quickly will typically receive more traffic and have better conversion rates. 

Why Your Website Speed Matters

Your site speed is important for the overall user experience you are trying to create. If your site takes a long time to load you will tend to have a higher bounce rate and lower average time spent on your site due to this low speed. The example below from Google shows how longer load times have been shown to affect your conversion and bounce rates negatively.

Speed Test Tool Recommendations to Help Your Site’s Performance

Before you can begin to make any fixes, you first need to know where your site is in terms of speed. The speed that you need to be looking at is your time to first byte (TTFB). This determines the time the server sends your browser’s very first byte; which Google states should be 200 ms or less. You can easily measure your TTFB and other speed metrics by using a load time testing site. Below are some that can help you with this:

Each of these tools will assign a score to your site based on Google recommendations and provide you with tips on improving your site’s performance.  When it comes to site speed testing, it’s important to pick one tool and stick with it. Each has its own set of different metrics and therefore you can’t compare one tool’s test results to another. In addition, you should run multiple tests to ensure that your results continue to improve your user’s experience.

Factors Affecting Your Site’s Speed

Your site speed relies on many factors and determining which of them are affecting it will help you improve its speed and ranking. Here are some of the most common problems that prevent sites from loading faster and lead to potential customer loss. 

Compressing/optimizing large images: Loading large images is one of the main issues to cause your site to run slow, especially for mobile users. You can use Gzip, a software application for file compression, to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes. Such services will result in compression without loss of quality, and therefore your users will not even notice the difference in their experience if using a desktop versus mobile.

Reduce redirects: Each time your page redirects a user to another page, it increases their waiting time. Reducing your redirects will help reduce the HTTP request-response to complete and speed up your site page.

Reduce themes and plugins: The more widgets and plugins you utilize on your site, the longer it takes to load them. First, make sure you are only using the ones that you truly need. You’ll often find that Developers and untrained team members may have left Themes and Plugins operational that no longer serve your benefit. Second, if you are using a WordPress template, try to keep it simple and only use Plugins created by reputable WordPress sources that have been recently updated, such as Cornerstone 4.0.

Improve server response time: The optimal server response time is under 200ms and should be constant over multiple users. A response time beyond 200 ms is a sign that requires something to be fixed. To improve your server response time, you can either pay for new servers and equipment which could get expensive and still not solve the problem or you can look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them.

Use a content distribution network: Content distribution networks (CDNs), also called content delivery networks, are networks of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of your site’s content. A CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content including HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. While a CDN does not host content and can’t replace the need for proper web hosting, it does help cache content at the network edge, which improves your website performance.

Poor hosting location: the hosting company and server that you decide to use to store your website can have an impact on your site speed. Therefore, it is important you choose a host where all of your assets can be housed in one location and a plan that matches the needs of your website. If your data has to travel a significant distance to arrive where it is needed, this results in a high amount of network latency. For instance, if a website’s HTML and CSS files are hosted in a data center in Ohio, and its images are hosted in a data center in Florida, a user on the west coast will have to wait while all of these files travel thousands of miles to their device.

Bringing it All Together

Your site speed has a vital role in generating traffic. The factors that affect that traffic generation are interlinked with one another. If you find that your site is taking too long to load, don’t panic. We can help you to determine any factors that might be affecting that speed to increase your clientele, improve your user experience, retain existing users, and increase your conversion rate. 

Ready to streamline your site’s performance?

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The July 2021 Orange Report

The July 2021 Orange Report

by | Jul 13, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, Past Newsletters, PPC, Technology

July 2021 ORANGE REPORT

Solving Supply Shortages, Subscription Sales Models & more in the July 2021 Orange Report.

Marry Your Customers: Subscription Sales Lock up Long-Term Success

With the right eCommerce plan and platform you could add a new and lucrative sales model to your business: Subscription Sales

READ MORE

Stuck with a Supply Shortage? How to Keep Customers Happy During Disruptions

The threat of a disruptive crisis won’t ever go away, but there are precautions you can take to protect your customer from the impacts of the unexpected.

READ MORE

Cryptocurrency Potential: Loyal Users, Instant Payments and Low Fees

Cryptocurrency awareness and understanding could help forge a valuable opportunity for your business, today and into the future.

READ MORE

More Time is Needed; Google Delays Cookie Withdraw

On Thursday, June 24, 2021 Google announced they were delaying their plans to kill third-party tracking cookies in Chrome.

READ MORE

Marry Your Customers: Subscription Sales Lock up Long-Term Success

Marry Your Customers: Subscription Sales Lock up Long-Term Success

by | Jul 9, 2021 | Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Technology

Why do people get married? Love is the obvious answer, but a number of other pragmatic factors play into it, as well. You just realize it is the best fit for you in so many ways going forward, and you choose to formalize the long-term arrangement.

Long-term relationships driven by the same dynamics can similarly blossom between eCommerce vendors and their best customers. Those “marriages” come in the form of a  Subscription Sales Model.

Almost everyone recognizes this model, even if you don’t know it by name. Dollar Shave Club enjoys huge sales as a Subscription Sales business. So do dozens of other brands like BarkBox and Blue Apron.

You may already be having substantial eCommerce success. But do you know how to add on to your existing business by embracing this emerging, lucrative channel? With the right eCommerce platform in combination with the right expertise, it can be easier than you think.

Growth Through the Roof

Conceived of and executed properly, adding a Subscription Sales option for your customer base delivers efficiency and satisfaction to both seller and buyer. According to Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index, subscription business revenue has grown 437% over the last nine years. That kind of growth, made possible by improving eCommerce models and technology, only results from an idea whose time has come.

So how can you tap into that model from your current eCommerce efforts?

Build from Strength

The search for answers begins by identifying the core parts of your business where results are strong and opportunities are apparent for regular, recurring sales. Those areas produce proven demand, and they mark the sweet spot of opportunity in the market that you can build from. The fundamentals of the value of your product and what you offer that others can’t match become the foundation for Subscription Sales successes.

Adding a successful Subscription Sales component to your eCommerce menu can feel like a trip to the promised land – it becomes a recurring revenue stream that makes customers happy and, once operational, requires little additional management oversight.

Identifying Key Functions

Settling on a pricing model that works efficiently for you and appeals to your customers may be the biggest decision that will determine your success in this process. There is no “one size fits all” option. The four most-common Subscription Sales pricing models, according to ProfitWell include:

  • Fixed/flat-rate model
  • Tiered pricing model
  • Per unit/user model
  • Usage model

What choice you make that fits best with your business operations and the products and services you offer within that selection are your business – literally. You need to make these decisions, though, with an eye to what makes the arrangement easiest for your customers while at the same time not putting you in a position to have to completely reinvent your existing business operations.

Keeping Your House in Order

If you are up and running as an eCommerce merchant already, you have made arrangements to address essential business functions. Ideally, you want the decisions you are making while implementing  your Subscription Sales offering to be compatible with how you handle those functions currently, and also to fit in smoothly with the software platform that is the foundation for your eCommerce site.

Finding the right Subscription Sales model that will integrate with operational areas like inventory control, customer data management, billing and payment options will go a long way in determining just how much benefit this new arrangement will produce for you.As a sampling of the many ways these areas can interact and produce benefits for your business, Quora has identified nine key areas that all impact how you proceed. Reviewing these,  you’ll notice how interrelated they all are as the questions that underpin eCommerce in any form. Offering Subscription Sales gives you a chance to consider the relationships in these areas if they could be in optimal alignment so you could offer your best service levels to your best customers.

Making It eCommerce

Once you commit to pursuing a Subscription Sales offering, you’ll need to look at one final major question: How will this work from the perspective of how you are doing things now?

If your operation currently runs on a platform that is open source or an SAAS offering, you have options for taking that last step to joining the ranks of Subscription Sales providers. In Part Two of this blog, we’ll discuss what those options are and what factors can help you make the best decision for your continuing eCommerce success. 

Get in Touch

Connect with one of our experts today to discuss your eCommerce needs!

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Cryptocurrency Potential: Loyal Users, Instant Payments and Low Fees

Cryptocurrency Potential: Loyal Users, Instant Payments and Low Fees

by | Jul 7, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Technology

Interest in cryptocurrency is growing, and fast. With some major brands like Visa recently announcing their adoption of this digital payment method, it is getting harder to ignore the impact crypto and blockchain technology could have on your eCommerce business.

Whether you’re just starting to learn about cryptocurrency or exploring how to accept this method of payment in your online store, it is important to keep on top of the trend that is unfolding. After all, awareness and understanding could help forge a valuable opportunity for your business in the future.

While some retailers might be skeptical about accepting crypto as they see it as a risk to their business, some see it as an opportunity to increase their bottom line. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks that cryptocurrency presents, while also taking a look at how to accept them as payment on your online store.

Before diving into the pros and cons, it is imperative to first know what cryptocurrency is and why it is growing in popularity around the globe.

What exactly is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is decentralized digital money, based on blockchain technology. Unlike the U.S. Dollar or the Euro, there is no central authority, like banks or governments, that manages and maintains the value of a cryptocurrency. Instead, these tasks are broadly distributed among a cryptocurrency’s users via the internet; which is part of why it is growing in popularity with corporations around the globe.

The cryptocurrency that started them all, is the one you are probably the most familiar with, Bitcoin; which was created in 2009 in a bid to decentralize the financial sector. Up until 2011, it was the only cryptocurrency in operation, but there are now more than 5,000 different cryptocurrencies in worldwide circulation, according to CoinLore. Some of the most noteworthy ones you might want to be aware of include Ethereum, Litecoin, and the living meme Dogecoin.

Cryptocurrency and the technology behind it are gaining traction in the eCommerce industry, and fast. But what are the benefits you should be aware of when considering accepting this type of payment on your online store?

Key benefits for considering cryptocurrency

A lot of trends come and go, but crypto seems likely here to stay, in some form. Not only can it help your eCommerce business expand its customer base but it can also increase its target audience, streamline your customer experiences, and more.

  • Fast transactions + user checkout experience smoother: Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrency, is a distributed ledger that allows for quicker, more direct transactions that can help streamline your business cash flow. And for consumers, the immediate processing of cryptocurrency means orders can be shipped instantaneously and arrive sooner. Let’s walk you through an example. You are considering purchasing an SUV from a dealership. If you want to pay for your new vehicle the conventional way with cash or a credit card, you would have to deal with a financial institution; which comes with a lot of potential frustrations and wait time. However, if you choose to pay with a cryptocurrency, not only is it convenient and secure, but there is no middle man, no hold on the transaction and the payment is transferred instantaneously. This is already happening at independent dealerships around the country as customers are paying in full for their vehicles, instantly with cryptocurrency. 
  • Increase in traffic + opportunity to widen target audience: While many people buy cryptocurrencies as an investment instead of an actual payment method, others love buying products with cryptocurrencies because of the lower costs associated, more secure checkout, and the ability to have full control over their funds. By embracing crypto transactions you can widen your target market to these buyers leading to an increase in new customer traffic. It will also make it easier if you are looking to expand globally since crypto is not tied to a specific country’s exchange rate. This allows you to sell to merchants no matter where they are in the world with a single digital standard.
  • Lower transaction fees compared to other options: The industry standard transaction fee from third-party gateways is normally 2.9% + $0.30. This fee is significantly reduced for cryptocurrencies to 1% if not lower; which is good news for you and your bottom line as it can help make your business more profitable.
  • Clean, secure data: Blockchain technology not only increases accuracy but also decreases fraud. Unlike most traditional financial institutions, crypto transactional and consumer data is never saved on a single centralized service making it very difficult to steal or counterfeit. Also, crypto transactions do not require customers to input personal identifying information, which reduces the risk of fraud in digital transactions. You might find this beneficial for your marketing efforts. It might also help to avoid wasted spending.
  • Crypto users are also very very loyal: The flexibility of having this payment option on your site enables customers to pay the way they want to, which provides a better all-around shopping experience and helps to increase conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment.
  • Rise in value: Some of you might see the volatility of cryptocurrencies as a risk, which we will go into more depth in the next section, whereas some might see it as an opportunity for growth. The pie graph below from CoinMarketCap is just one example of how quickly Bitcoin, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, has risen in value over the last couple of years:

Potential Setbacks of Incorporating Cryptocurrency Are Low

Despite cryptocurrencies being the latest trend in the online retail sector, there are pitfalls and reasons to be skeptical.

  • Price volatility: We mentioned above that cryptocurrencies are currently on the rise in value, but the uncertainty of whether that upward trend will continue poses a risk for both businesses and consumers. In addition, if the value of a cryptocurrency has fluctuated since the time a consumer purchases and returns a product, things could get tricky.
  • Customer confusion: According to a survey by Cardify, only 17% of investors that have bought cryptocurrency “fully understand” the value and potential of cryptocurrency. Not only do customers not fully understand the value, but they don’t understand how to use them. For instance, most consumers see cryptocurrency as an investment instead of an exchangeable asset. This perception will start to shift itself as more companies start incorporating crypto as a payment option similar to Tesla and Visa.

Payment Gateways Options for Accepting Cryptocurrency on Your Site

If you are considering accepting cryptocurrency on your site, here are some options to think about:

Magento 2 Payment Processing Service Options: ShapeShift is the newest third-party service offered on Magento 2 that processes transactions on your behalf. It aims to provide a fast, private and convenient way of swapping cryptocurrencies. This payment method allows you to accept Bitcoins, Ethereum, Litecoin, and over 300 other digital currency options.

Shopify Payment Processing Service Option: BitPay automatically converts payments to a currency of your choice (eight currencies available) and sends them directly to your bank account. A couple of cons of using BitPay is that they charge a relatively high transaction fee of 1%; which you will not see with ShapeShift and they only accept Bitcoin.

BigCommerce is also looking into developing an app that accepts crypto. Be sure to keep an eye on their progress in the event it meets your needs.

Bringing it All Together

If you are looking to expand your market share while also offering your customers a faster and more secure way to pay for your products and services, cryptocurrency could be the answer.

Keeping up-to-date with this trend will help you to adapt your eCommerce strategy quickly and get ahead of the competition. Ready to take your eCommerce site to the next level and incorporate cryptocurrency as a digital payment option? Connect with one of our experts today to discuss your needs!

Get in Touch

Connect with one of our experts today to discuss your eCommerce needs!

Contact Us