Shopify values its partnership with merchants and supports them throughout their journey. Recently, the Canadian e-commerce platform released findings from the research co-conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BSG). The research aims to help merchants improve conversion optimization on their Shopify stores.
“E-commerce has grown in both volume and importance in recent years. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, commerce of all kinds moved to digital platforms, and today online shopping activity remains well above its pre-pandemic levels,” the study states along with a graphical representation to explain key metrics for e-commerce growth before and after the coronavirus pandemic.
It adds that Shopify stores get shoppers from different sources on a daily basis. With evolution at such a high pace, shoppers “expect a seamless, tailored shopping experience across multiple channels and devices”.
The need of the hour is to know the customer’s needs and the technology to fulfill them. Technological advancement not only ensures smooth checkout flow and safe online purchases but also motivates shoppers to pick one store from a highly competitive lot.
The study reveals what we have always built for and known to be true: drivers like an optimized checkout experience, the use of accelerated payment methods, and selection of relevant customizations have a dramatic impact on conversion.
Harley Finkelstein, President, Shopify
About the Research
The research team from Shopify and BCG studied over 220,000 e-commerce sites to collect over one billion data points. This helped the researchers to find “key drivers of the conversion process in which online shoppers become online buyers”.
According to Shopify President Harley Finkelstein, conversion is “at the heart of commerce,” adding that everything at Shopify is based on conversion.
“It was important for us to conduct a rigorous study on how sellers can optimize their conversion rates through key factors like the platform they use and the integrations and customizations they make. The study reveals what we have always built for and known to be true: drivers like an optimized checkout experience, the use of accelerated payment methods, and selection of relevant customizations have a dramatic impact on conversion,” Finkelstein said in a press release.
The @BCG ecommerce conversion study is out. Read the findings for yourself 👀 https://t.co/HYEs2UwiCd
— Harley Finkelstein (@harleyf) June 16, 2023
Stephen Robnett, BCG partner and managing director and leader of BCG’s e-commerce practice, spoke on strategies that sellers need to adapt to improve customer experience.
“E-commerce has grown in both volume and importance in recent years, becoming an integral part of consumers’ shopping habits,” Robnett said.
“All e-commerce businesses can benefit from adapting strategies such as driving loyalty, investing in personalization of the customer experience, and investing in an innovative and well-engineered e-commerce platform. Small changes to the shopping experience can have a huge impact on a seller’s business and turn browsers into buyers online,” he added.
The study finds that most of the factors of conversion optimization are beyond the seller’s control. However, there are six major areas, which the seller can directly influence.
1. Sources Matter
As mentioned above, customers land on a website from various sources on the internet. However, the research finds that organic sources help much more than paid or promoted sources. “Organic channels such as word-of-mouth or social media recommendations have a clear edge over paid channels in overall conversion rate, particularly for smaller sellers. Traffic that arrives through strategically deployed integrations linked to the site can also produce a higher conversion rate.”
Shopify merchants are advised to use “external integration” on mediums like social media, customer reviews, email marketing and user experience integrations.
2. What’s in the Basket
The research added that carts with five to ten items result in higher conversion. “In fact, the conversion rate can increase by as much as 63% when a customer who initially puts just one or two units in the cart continues to shop and ends up with more than ten items,” the research says.
3. Checkout Experience
In a competitive e-commerce market, it is of utmost importance to provide a flawless checkout experience. It should be easy and secure for customers to complete the online purchase.
“When a customer nears the checkout stage, any step that doesn’t work in a way that feels secure and convenient can be a deterrent. Return customers tend to appreciate autofill of known or easily predictable information such as shipping and billing addresses.
“Fraud detection, although essential to the customer’s peace of mind and security, should not impede the checkout flow. It is also wise to avoid forms that include blank coupon code fields, which can introduce elements of doubt,” the study says.
4. Easy Payment
While choosing payment methods, sellers must think of the target audience. Popular payment methods like Google Pay, Meta Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Shop Pay and Apple Pay help improve conversion rates by 50 percent.
5. Customization
The research finds that websites customized for a specific audience get higher conversion rates. “Generally, websites with front-end customization—such as a simplified user experience, obvious gateways to specific products, and an appealingly uncluttered product page—achieve higher conversion rates than those with back-end customization only.”
Customer loyalty programs also help merchants increase overall conversion rates. However, the study warns that “sellers can also consider such customization options as tag manager tracking, analytics support, and targeted incentives to build a customer’s basket.”
6. Site Performance
The biggest factor in the control of the merchant is site performance. In a fast-paced era, everyone like to shop in seconds. “Improved speed at every step correlates with higher conversion rates across most industries. At the lower funnel stage, customers will tolerate slightly slower performance on the way to completing a purchase—though only to a point,” the research says.
“We have noticed a significant increase in the conversion rate, starting from the moment the checkout experience begins, when customers can complete the full checkout process in less than 90 seconds. If the process takes longer, the lower funnel conversion rate may decrease by around 47% on average,” it adds.
How Fast Should be a Site?
In research conducted by Digital.com, 53 percent of online shoppers expect a loading time of less than three seconds from online stores. The study further revealed that half of these shoppers would abandon their cart after choosing what to buy if the pages do not respond fast enough.
Apart from the conversion rate, a slow site speed also affects search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience. To fix this, one must do speed optimization for the Shopify store. It is a process of reducing the length of time a web page takes to load on your Shopify store. A web page can load as quickly as in seconds or fractions of seconds.
