E-commerce revenue leakage doesn’t usually occur because of one fatal weakness. Rather, capital trickles out through minor points of friction that exist throughout the customer journey. Companies often invest a lot of money in getting more traffic without even realizing that there’s a leaky bucket underneath.
In concentrating on some underappreciated points, such as optimizing complicated checkout interfaces, utilizing dynamic average order value (AOV) boosters, enhancing search discovery, utilizing multi-channel post-purchase retention tactics, and performing e-commerce UX audit, companies can discover some overlooked conversion barriers and generate significant profits from them.
Rather than looking to increase your profitability by doubling your marketing spend, the fastest way is to ensure that you maximize the amount of money being made from the traffic that you already have. This starts with pinpointing where there is friction within the customer buying process. We can identify the key areas of revenue leaks for you now.
Post-Purchase Revenue You're Leaving on the Table
For most businesses, the order confirmation email is seen as the endpoint. It’s really a new beginning.
The average order confirmation and shipping email has an open rate of between 60 and 90 percent, which is much higher than the marketing email open rate, but is not used for upselling or cross-selling purposes. It can easily be converted into a profit-generating tool with a single click-through option.
Post-order up-sell processes (where a complementary product is offered to the customer just after checkout) increase the average sales value without increasing the acquisition costs.
Restock reminder. Do you send messages just prior to when your customers are going to run out of whatever it is that they need? One tip could dramatically raise your rate of repeat purchases.
Site Search That Isn't Pulling Its Weight
Users who use search convert significantly more than those who browse since they know what they are looking for. However, site search is usually one of the least considered features when constructing an ecommerce website.
Common leaks include:
- Searches that yield nothing at all (no alternative suggestions either)
- No autocomplete, no tolerance for typos
- No control over merchandising to show certain results first
- No thing to track searches that users perform on non-existent products (direct indication to add new products) Pull your "zero results" search query report this week. It's often a goldmine of unmet demand hiding in plain sight.
Underpriced or Poorly Structured Shipping
Shipping cost is the most commonly mentioned cause of cart abandonment. However, the remedy doesn’t lie in “shipping at no cost.” This solution is subtle and could eat up margins. Rather, the solution lies in:
Test the free-shipping threshold a bit above your existing average order value to encourage customers to add one more item instead of leaving due to the cost of shipping.
Display the threshold as soon as possible; do not wait till checkout – use a progress bar ("Add $12 more for free shipping") in the cart drawer.
Re-examine flat vs. calculated shipping if you are selling products that vary greatly in terms of weight or size; mismatched shipping costs will either discourage customers from buying smaller items or subsidize larger purchases.
Mobile Experience Gaps
If you have a high number of visitors coming to your site from mobile devices but low numbers of visitors converting into customers via mobile, that is where your opportunity lies. Some of the reasons why that is happening can be long page loading times, checkout forms not being optimized for mobile keypads, product images making your product page heavy to load on a cellular connection and CTAs placed off-screen. Test your most popular pages for mobile speed – every extra second counts.
Product Page Information Gaps
Not all customers who can’t find answers to their queries reach out to the support team. In fact, many of them simply abandon. Check these pages for:
- Information about sizing and fit (a big contributor to cart abandonment and returns)
- Shipping and return policies are clearly stated without leaving the page.
- Reviews and pictures posted by users that earn their trust
- Helpful product videos or specifications (particularly important for more thought-out purchases)
Segmentation in Email and SMS
The majority of stores still send the same campaign to all contacts on the list, irrespective of any purchase activity, browsing behavior, or value of the customer to the store.
It is a waste of an opportunity to:
- Send win-back campaign emails to lost customers only.
- Form a VIP group for the best-selling customers by offering them first access or special offers.
- Send browse abandonment emails to those who viewed the product but didn’t add anything to their shopping cart.
Campaigns that have been segmented always perform better than those that are generic in both open rate and revenue generated per e-mail sent – the tools for this are available in almost all contemporary e-mail software programs.
Where to Start
There's no need for you to solve everything at once. Begin by selecting three metrics this week: your cart abandonment rate, your zero results search queries, and the difference between mobile traffic and mobile revenue. The one that has the greatest discrepancy compared to the benchmark is where you will start your next sprint.
Your current traffic is the most cost-effective growth lever at your disposal. Before spending any more money on acquiring customers, be sure you aren't giving away those who were already there.
A Faster Way to Find Where You Are Losing Revenue
Checking your checkout process manually, site search, mobile speed, and product pages is something that your team will not have the time for. But UX Audit Tool provides a quick and easy solution for this task by using artificial intelligence: just enter the URL of your website, and in minutes, you will get a comparison of your website with industry standards, information about the problems in the performance of your website, and the real monthly losses due to these problems. And all for free, no need to sign up.
Run your free e-commerce ux audit now and see exactly what it's costing you.
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