Davide Consonni: Best Practices to Improve Customer Experience and Conversions

Best Practices to Improve
Customer Experience and
MMeeeett MMaaggeennttoo PPoollaanndd 22001144
Conversions

Who We Are
• Leading eCommerce industry provider of high-quality,
multi-channel ecommerce solutions and specialized
consultancy services with Magento CE and EE
• Magento Associate and PayPal Partner
Meet Magento Poland 2014
• 24+ Partners

How We Serve Merchants
• Top full stack eCommerce provider
• Strategic and tactical digital marketing services
• Website development
• Digital application creation
• CMS solutions provider & implementation
consultants
• Our ultimate goal is to reduce friction involved with
ecommerce processes in order to unlock merchants’
greatest sales potential

What We’ll Speak About Today
• Best practices for:
– Online Promotions
– Customer Loyalty Programs
– Inventory
– Shopping Cart
– Shipping
– Delivery & Tracking
– Returns
– Checkout & Security
– Payment Options

Best Practices:
Online Promotions
• Coupon codes, free
gifts with purchases,
and remarketing
techniques are all
effective tactics to
increase conversions
and revenues for
eCommerce stores.

Best Practices:
Online Promotions
• Nearly 2/3 of shoppers utilize discount codes for online purchases.
• Coupons allow also merchants to track data for particular campaigns or
segments of buyers.
• To get started, try offering a coupon at user registration to be applied to
the user’s first purchase. This action will decrease the number of users
who are “just browsing” by creating the psychological need to take
advantage of a deal.
• For repeat users, merchants should assess what a customer has
purchased in the past and offer coupons that appeal to that particular
customer’s preferences and budget.

Best Practices:
Online Promotions
• Free gifts both encourage your customers
to make purchases while also making
them feel special – two important
ingredients in creating a unique and
positive customer experience.
• Customers will often spend more in order
to qualify for a “free gift.” The item offered
should fit in with the customer’s segment
in order to be perceived as valuable.

Best Practices:
Online Promotions
• Free gifts should be determined by:
– Brand or manufacturer of items already in the
customer’s cart
– Catalogue category of items already in the
customer’s cart
• Merchants could also allow free gifts
according to cart sub-totals and /or any other
rule (or their combinations) offered by
powerful Magento shopping cart price rules

Best Practices:
Online Promotions
• Remarketing campaigns are emails or
advertisements designed to recapture
users who browsed your website without
making a purchase.
• A recent study from PPC Hero showed
that remarketing efforts made up more
than 16% of their test subjects’ total sales
revenue.

Best Practices:
Online Promotions
• Retargeting should occur via email, display advertisements, or
social media ads within 24 hours of unconverted users’
browsing sessions and can include a reminder of the items
waiting to be purchased and/or discount codes.
• Events that spur retargeting campaigns:
– Cart abandonment
– Registration to site with no purchases after a set amount of
days
– Wishlist creation and no purchases after a set amount of
days
– User’s birthday

Trend Alert:
Customer Loyalty Programs
• Customer loyalty programs encourage shoppers to develop
relationships with brands that may have few differentiating
factors, resulting in a higher customer lifetime value.
• Loyalty programs also:
– Improve customer retention through rewards and/or
vouchers
– Encourage increased spending to reach point thresholds
along with other valuable actions (newsletter signups,
email subscriptions, product reviews, brand advocacy)
– Improve brand image

Best Practices:
• Customer loyalty programs can be often very rewarding for
both merchants and customers. To get started, follow these
steps:
– Determine the earn rate: the ratio between money spent
and points earned
– Determine the spend rate: the ratio between points
acquired and saved money
– Redemption values: how many points, if any, customers
must collect before redeeming
– Excluded products: which products, if any, will be excluded
from the loyalty program
– Validity periods: how long points will be usable

Best Practices:
• Before putting your loyalty program in action, you must also
determine which events earn points. These include, but are
not limited to:
– Purchases
– User registration
– Newsletter and email signups
– Birthdays, anniversaries, or other special events
– Social sharing
– Product reviews
– Customer feedback survey completions
– Referrals

Best Practices:
• It’s of the utmost importance that
customers understand their participation
and standing in loyalty programs. Be sure
to:
– Create a dedicated loyalty points page with
a full summary of benefits, rules, and
exclusions (if any)
– Common exclusions: Categories, Brands

Best Practices:
• Merchants can encourage purchasing behavior
by creating reminders about points throughout
the customer journey.
• Place point values on product details pages to
let customers know how their purchase will
contribute to rewards & savings.

Best Practices:
• In addition to placing points on product
details pages, insert reminders on cart
summary pages also to reduce
abandoned carts.

Best Practices:
Inventory
• Merchants may run low on (or completely
out of) certain items from time to time. To
set proper expectations for customers, it’s
best to show availability of products that
may be running low.
• If an item is out of stock, merchants
should allow customers the option of being
waitlisted.

Best Practices:
Inventory
• Some merchants may want to continue
selling items though they are out of stock.
To do this, merchants can take advantage
of options such as the Magento Backorder
Facility.
• In these cases, merchants should let their
customers know if an item will ship
immediately or at a later date.

Best Practices:
Ajax Shopping Cart
• All parts of the user experience must be
simple, intuitive, and aesthetically-pleasing
– even shopping carts.
• Ajax shopping cart provides a beautiful
user experience without losing
functionality.

Shipping
• Shipping expenses
play a major role in
ecommerce
conversions
– Up to 96% of
consumers are more
likely to make a
purchase when free
shipping is offered

Common Shipping Policies
• Free shipping – no
minimum purchase
– Most effective as a
limited time promotion
• Free shipping – with
minimum purchase
–Widely used without
time limits

Best Practices Spotlight:
Free Shipping
• Tests have shown up to a 90% lift in
conversions when offering free shipping
• Several best in class ecommerce
merchants highlight additional amount
needed to qualify for free shipping
– Spurs purchasing behavior

Shipping Promotions
• You can attract even most customers
and/or clear old inventory with item-specific
shipping promotions

Delivery Options
• Allow your customers
to self select the
shipping options to
cater to a wider range
of buyers
– 46% of online buyers
have abandoned carts
due to undesirable
delivery options

Delivery Options
• Many merchants realize
a high ROI when offering
an array of delivery
options
• Amazon appeals to
consumers across the
board with shipping
ranging from standard,
low-cost delivery to
expedited, premium
delivery

Trend Alert:
Click and Collect
• Paying online and picking purchases up
in-store has become a quickly growing
trend among merchants with both
ecommerce and brick-and-mortar
operations.
• Retailers have seen a significant lift in
conversions and customer satisfaction
using this method.

Why Offer Mixed Commerce?
• By coming into a store to pick up goods,
customers experience personal, human
interactions with store personnel.
• Customers also save on shipping costs by
picking up their own item(s).
• Customers will leave the store with branded
packages that other consumers will see (as
opposed to an unbranded package delivered
directly to customers’ doors).

Alternative: Pick Up Points
• Some customers prefer to choose a parcel pick
up location that may be closer than a branded
store. Merchants can use services like IndaBox
to help customers choose a pick up location that
is near to them and that can be accessed at the
customers’ preferred time.
• Customers can choose the nearest pick up point
or enter an address to find others. IndaBox even
generates a map to make picking up purchases
easy!

Best Practices:
Parcel Tracking
• Improve your customer experience
by always:
– Send a tracking number for
each purchase in the context of
the shipping confirmation email
– Provide a dedicated parcel
tracking section in the context
of the user area

Best Practices:
Product Returns
• As a rule of thumb, always make return
policies accessible from all pages of your
online store

Above and Beyond: RMAs
• Best in class merchants offer RMA
functionality to streamline returns and
provide greater customer convenience.

Best Practices:
Checkout
• One step checkout promotes:
– Low-friction purchases = higher conversion
rates, lower cart abandonment
– Creation of customer accounts (data
collection for better segmentation &
targeting!)

Best Practices:
Checkout
• Merchants should be sure to include the
following elements even in one step
checkouts:
– Comments field: to collect data, feedback,
and special instructions from customers
– Discount field: customers tend to purchase
more when using discount codes; allow
them to enter this information easily during
the checkout process

Best Practices:
Checkout
• The point of purchase is
one of the best times to
collect customer email
addresses for newsletter
subscriptions – particularly
if the newsletter
subscription comes with the
guarantee of discount
codes, promotions, or new
inventory alerts.

Best Practices:
Security
• Merchants who maintain PCI compliance
and SSL certification reassure online
buyers and boost conversion rates.
• In some studies, as many as 61% of
online shoppers have decided not to make
a purchase from a website because it was
missing a trust seal.

Best Practices:
Payments
• Consumers prefer to pay in electronic payment methods they know and
trust more:
– If your store sells globally, consider offering country-targeted credit
card gateways
• Best-in-class ecommerce companies allow customers to self-select
from several payment options, including:
– Bank Transfer
– Credit Cards
– PayPal (Pro, WPS, Express Checkout)
– Cash on Delivery
– Electronic Bank Transfer (SOFORT and similar ones)
– Payment at time of delivery/collection
• PayPal Pro provides for a better and more seamless experience

Thank you!
• For more information, please contact
info@advancedlogic.eu
or visit
www.advancedlogic.eu

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