Happy new year! With a lot of big things on the way for Littledata this year, including new Connections to automate analytics for an even wider range of popular ecommerce apps and platforms, we wanted to take a moment to look back on the posts you found most useful with our current feature set. Last year we reviewed our top posts from 2017 and found that the focus -- not surprisingly -- was on Shopify and Google Analytics. This time around, our most-read and most-shared posts have really honed in on individual features and connections, especially for larger stores using one of our enterprise plans for full account management and unlimited automation. Interestingly, 4 out of the 5 top posts have a title in the form of a question. Perhaps a sign of 'plugged-in' (ie distracted) readers looking for a sense of engagement? 1. What's the real ROI on your Facebook Ads? For the past decade Facebook’s revenue growth has been relentless, driven by a switch from TV advertising and online banners to a platform seen as more targetable and measurable. When it comes to Facebook Ads, marketers are drawn to messaging about a strong return on investment. But are you measuring that return correctly? 2. Why don't my transactions in Google Analytics match those in Shopify? If we had a nickel for every time we hear this question! In this popular post, our partner manager breaks down common reasons for ecommerce data inaccuracy between Shopify and GA, and takes a look at how to fix those issues automatically. Find out the top 6 reasons for inaccuracy, including some orders never being recorded in Google Analytics! 3. New help center articles on Shopify tracking and ReCharge integration With detailed new articles on Shopify tracking and how our ReCharge integration works, the new Littledata Help Center quickly became a go-to resource for current customers and ecommerce managers this past year. Even before they become customers, many ecommerce industry folks are using the help center to get a clearer view of how to use Google Analytics effectively. We're happy to help! 4. Are you looking at the wrong Black Friday metrics? Paying attention to the right ecommerce metrics can help you establish the best customer base and shopping experience for long-term growth. But many retailers still focus only on the most popular metrics — especially during the online shopping craze of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (#BFCM). Over the next few weeks ecommerce managers will be obsessing over data, but which stats are the most important? Two popular metrics — ecommerce conversion rate and average time on site — may be misleading, so in this post our CEO recommends looking instead at longer-term benchmarks. 5. Average order value benchmarks 2018: how do you compare? Increasing average order value usually has a dramatic impact on profits and ROI from marketing spend. It is also a gift that keeps on giving, as optimisation in this area is something that can deliver ongoing results over the long term. The holiday shopping period in 2018 had us obsessed with one of our favourite ecommerce metrics: average order value (AOV). How does your site compare? This popular post includes a new infographic that breaks down the stats, using our set of private benchmark data about the ecommerce industry.  

Add-to-cart rate is a pivotal indicator of your ability to efficiently monetise your website. But are you doing everything you can to optimise your add-to-cart (ATC) rate? When a visitor adds items to the cart (or ‘basket’), they are revealing a high level of buying intent. As such it is a critical step in the purchase process, and is something that you should try to optimise. So what affects add to cart rate? And how might you go about improving it? Let’s explore why this is a crucial ecommerce metrics and take a look at what affects it. How to calculate ATC rate The formula is straightforward: you just need to figure out the percentage of visitors who have added an item to the cart / basket. You can track this via Google Analytics, if you’re using the enhanced ecommerce plugin, or directly via your Littledata dashboard, if you want to cut through the noise. Why is ATC rate important? Add to cart rate is one of the main metrics to keep an eye on if you manage an ecommerce site. It tells you so much about your product selection, pricing strategy, traffic acquisition tactics, merchandising, and user experience. For example, a sudden decline in ATC rate following an increase in marketing spend may be the result of targeting the wrong type of visitors after launching a new ad campaign. Or, it may be that your pricing is out of sync with the market. Likewise, if you’re charging for delivery then shoppers may look elsewhere to save on shipping costs. These things can be quickly adjusted, but only if you’re keeping an eye on ATC rate, and can figure out what is affecting any decline in click rates. How do I know if my ATC rate is good or bad? The average ATC rate is around 4%, though beauty, travel and retail sites tend to perform better than that. You can compare your own performance vs your peers via Littledata Benchmarks, which tracks performance data from a sample of more than 12,000 ecommerce websites. If you connect Google Analytics you'll be able to see your own data alongside the market average. We use AI to determine your category, though you can manually override our selection should you wish to do so. The key things to get right Your inventory is probably the first thing you should analyse. If your visitors are looking to purchase something that you don’t sell, then it’s game over. You can’t expect these people to click the add to cart button. After that, look at the specifics of your product offering. Are you pricing products competitively? Some competitor research will help you to bring your pricing into line with the market average. You should also review perceptions of trust. If your site isn’t trustworthy then people won’t want to buy from it. Conduct some user testing to find out whether you’re sending out the right trust signals. Merchandising also plays a huge part in driving up ATC rates. You need to do a good job of selling, and not just the product in question but also related products and add-ons. Up-selling and cross-selling strategies can improve ATC rates, as well as a bunch of other ecommerce metrics. I’ve already mentioned visitor intent, and that’s something that is going to play a big part in whether people add items to the cart. Are you targeting people who are ready to buy, or people who are not so far along the purchase path? There are of course very good reasons for targeting both, and it’s important to think about ATC rate in the context of multiple sessions and an elongated buying journey. Finally, there are a whole host of user experience pitfalls to dodge, and some optimisation tactics to test... How does the user experience affect ATC rate? If we put the product / pricing / people challenges to one side, we can focus on some of the onsite areas to address. So how might a poor user experience cause problems for prospective shoppers? Well firstly, there’s the simple matter of findability. Being able to easily find products is absolutely essential. That means providing shoppers with intuitive navigation, strong scent trails, excellent onsite search tools, and the ability to sort and filter items. Then, when it comes to clicking buttons, there are all sorts of basic things to get right. Button optimisation is the science of enticing clicks through good practice and persuasion, but it’s also about making sure that buttons can actually be clicked (especially for mobile users). There’s also the gentle art of copywriting, which is a proven winner when it comes to the things you can easily test. Words are incredibly powerful and tiny changes can have a dramatic impact on click rates, and all sorts of other metrics. So what can I actually do to increase my ATC rate? You can work your way through the above areas when conducting an ATC rate audit. Let’s also narrow our focus towards the onsite experience, as I have some specific ideas to help you optimise your buttons. I will outline these below. These ideas are taken from our button optimisation basics mission, which is aimed at improving ATC rate. So then, here are some simple ways to quickly optimise your add to cart buttons. Be sure to check out Littledata Missions for more proven ideas to help you increase the key ecommerce metrics… and online sales. Test, test, test! 1. Add some 'bonus text' within or below the CTA Spicing up your CTA with an extra message around it can work really well. ShipStation uses this tactic with their landing page, as shown below: If you weren’t already tempted to start your trial, you might become more willing after taking the 'no credit card required' message into account. 2. Allow shoppers to add items to cart on product list pages On product listing pages the primary objective is to get the user to buy, not to read information. As such, you should allow shoppers to be able to buy directly from list pages. It will provide a fast-track to the checkout for anyone in a rush to buy. Make your list pages scannable and use contrasting colours for ATC buttons to improve visibility. 3. Create great micro-copy Optimise your micro-copy and CTAs to ensure they never fall on deaf ears. Use of power words in every CTA and super descriptive headlines. 4. Design a button big enough to touch Fitt’s Law states that the bigger a button is, the easier it is to click on. Simple, really. And it usually pays off: studies have shown that increasing a button size by 20% lead to a jump in conversions. Optimising for a mobile platform is a key part of this, as a comScore study found that consumers spend 69% of time shopping on mobile devices. Buttons need to fit inside the screen and be easy to read, before they can be touched. Buttons should be large enough to be clickable, without distracting from the value proposition. 5. Leave enough space between tappable links Mis-pressing is common on mobile devices, as evidenced by all of your embarrassing typos. You don’t want your customers getting frustrated that their finger keeps pressing an unwanted button or link, so ensure that they're a) big enough and b) there is enough space is left between them. 6. Keep conversion elements above the fold Peep Laja has stated that content placed above the fold grabs 80% of our attention. As such this is the obvious place to start when optimising the key conversion elements on your website. Meanwhile, an eyetracking study by Nielsen Norman group found that 102% more attention is paid to information above the fold, compared to that placed below the fold. Things to optimise at the top of the page include your primary call to action, buttons, navigation, basket, personalised content, and merchandising. 6. Lower the commitment (‘shop now’ vs. ‘buy now’) One A/B test compared conversions between three versions of a CTA, which were: “buy now”, “order now” and “add to cart”. The latter saw a significantly increased conversion rate (approximately 11%) in all three sites tested. “Add to cart” does not imply the act of kissing goodbye to your cash quite as much as the other variations do. A shopper may feel much more inclined to react positively to this lower level of commitment. 7. Place risk-reducing messaging next to buttons and CTAs The only way a customer is going to purchase your product is by making them feel comfortable enough to click on all the buttons that stand in their way. Copyblogger emphasises the importance of risk-reducing messages around buttons. It found that one small variation in text produced 34% more conversions than a version that didn't provide any reassurance. 8. Use "click triggers" adjacent to buttons and CTAs It would be great if every visitor to your site would follow your well-intentioned CTA and add things to their carts. Fortunately, it has been shown that this could happen more often if you provide a nudge or two. Nudges can be as simple as declaring potential savings should a customer buy your product during a sale. Other click triggers which can boost your site’s performance include ones which eliminate doubt, simplify the purchase process or provide some kind of guarantee. 9. Use a text call to action for your ‘add to cart’ button Many studies have shown that it’s better to use text within the button as a call-to-action, as opposed to an icon (though you can use both). One such test was undertaken by Fab, which replaced a small, icon-focused button with a larger, text-focused button. This simple test increased ‘add to cart’ clickthroughs by a seriously impressive 49%. 10. Use action words for button labels The language you choose for your CTA can have a real impact on its performance. Words like ‘get’, ‘try’, ‘go’ and ‘add’ are all well worth testing. Start your button optimisation mission today Littledata has a range of Missions to help optimise things like ATC rate. You can launch the button optimisation basics mission directly in the app! We’ll measure the results in your personalised dashboard, and will suggest a bunch of other optimisation ideas to help you improve overall ecommerce performance. In doing so you will also get access to all of the other lovely Littledata features and tools. What’s not to like?

Littledata has launched the first Shopify Flow connector for Google Analytics, enabling Shopify Plus stores to analyse customer journey using a custom event in Google Analytics. In addition to Littledata's native connections with Shopify, Shopify Plus, Facebook Ads, ReCharge, etc., we have now launched a beta version of a Flow connector for Google Analytics. What is Shopify Flow? Flow is an app included with Shopify Plus, which enables stores to define automation pathways for marketing and merchandising. Think of it as an ‘If This Then That’ generator just for Shopify. For example, after an order is marked as fulfilled in Shopify’s admin you might want to trigger an email to ask for a review of the product. This would involve setting a ‘trigger’ for when an order is fulfilled and an ‘action’ to send an email to this customer. How do you use Littledata Flow actions? You install Littledata's Shopify app along with Shopify Flow Every time an order is created in your store we send it to Google Analytics, along with information about which customer ID made the order (nothing personally identifiable) You add Littledata's actions to your Flow Every time the order or customer event is triggered, even for offline events, the event is linked back to Google Analytics In Google Analytics you can then: Segment the customer base to see if these actions influence purchasing behaviour Visualise when these events occurred Analyse the customers making these actions: which geography, which browser, which marketing channel (in GA 360) Export the audience to retarget in Google Ads (in GA 360) Export the audience to run a website personalisation for using Google Optimize How do you set the actions up in Flow? Google Analytics customer event – can be used with any customer triggers, such as Customer Created Google Analytics order event – can be used with any order triggers such as Order Fulfilled, Order Paid, How else could I use the events? You can now link any of your favourite Shopify Apps with Flow connectors into Google Analytics. Some examples would be: Analyse if adding a product review leads to higher lifetime value    Retarget in Google Ads after a customer's order is fulfilled   Set up a landing-page personalisation for loyal customers (using Loyalty Lion connector) How much does this cost? The Flow connectors are included as part of Littledata’s standard subscription plans. You’ll need Littledata’s app to be installed and connected to link the events back to a customer – and to get reliable data for pre-order customer behaviour. Can Littledata set up a flow for a specific app? Our Enterprise Plans offer account management to help you configure the Littledata Shopify connection, including the Shopify Flow connectors. Get in touch if you have a specific app you'll like to make this work with.  

The truth is that Google Analytics and Shopify need a little help to play well together. Most marketers use Google Analytics to track performance, but having a good data collection setup -- even for basic essentials like transactions and revenue -- is harder than it looks. As a Partner Manager at Littledata, I work with a wide variety of apps and agencies, especially Shopify Plus Partners, who are in turn working with marketing managers and ecommerce directors. One of the most frequently asked questions I get from those marketers is “Why don’t my transactions in Google Analytics match those in Shopify?” So in this article I’d like to take you on a journey, explaining what could cause this, how it can affect marketing and how to get accurate data that matches your actual money in the bank. Top 6 reasons for inaccuracy There are many reasons for differences in tracking results, but let’s take a look at the top 6 reasons. 1) Some orders are never recorded in Google Analytics Usually, this happens because your customer never sees the order confirmation page, and most commonly this is caused by payment gateways not sending users back to the order thank you page. 2) The Analytics / Tag Manager integration has some errors Shopify has an integration with Google Analytics but it is a pretty basic one, tracking just a few of all the possible ecommerce events and micro-moments required for a complete picture. Although Shopify’s integration is meant to work for most standard websites, there are those who build a more personalised theme. In which case they would require a custom integration with Google Analytics. (Here’s what you can track with Littledata’s Shopify app) 3) A script in the page prevents tracking to work on your order thank you page Many websites have various dynamics on the thank you page in order to improve user experience and increase retention. But these scripts can sometimes fail and create a domino effect preventing other modules to execute. Such errors can stop Google Analytics from tracking the event. 4) The user has opted out from Google Analytics tracking This instance is not encountered as often, but it’s worth mentioning that some users can opt out of Google Analytics tracking with the help of a simple browser add-on. Features like this work by adding bits of JavaScript code into every website the user visits which will prevent the Google Analytics tracking code from capturing user-related data. This also means that GA will not drop any cookie nor will send any data to its servers. [subscribe heading="Fix tracking automatically" button_text="Get the Littledata app"] 5) Too many products included in one transaction Every time a page on your website loads, Google Analytics sends a hit-payload to its servers which contains by default a lot of user data starting from source, path, keywords etc. combined with the data for viewed or purchased products (name, brand, category, etc). This data query can get quite long if the user adds products with long names and descriptions. But there is a size limit for each hit-payload of 8kb, which can include approx. 8192 characters or information for about 20 products. Where this limit is reached, Google Analytics will not send the payload to its servers, resulting in lost purchase data. 6) Too many interactions have been tracked in one session This inconsistency is not encountered as often, but it needs to be taken into account when setting up Google Analytics tracking. One of Google Analytic’s limitations for standard tracking is that a session can contain only 500 hits. This means that interactions taking place after the hit limit is reached will be missed by Google Analytics. How a data mismatch damages your bottom line We have found that 8 out of 10 Shopify merchants have only a 70 - 80% accuracy rate for transactions and revenue in Google Analytics mostly due to the reasons mentioned above. In other words, 80% of Shopify merchants are missing at least 20% transaction data! Statistically, small or even medium-sized merchants dealing with four-figure monthly revenue can be very affected by the missing data because they are more likely to take bad marketing decisions based on segmented data. Hyper-segmentation is counterproductive if you’re working with bad data. And for larger business which rely heavily on Google Analytics to make data-driven decisions, accuracy is an absolute must. Imagine having a 20% inaccuracy margin when dealing with six or seven figure monthly revenue! It kind of puts things into a different perspective, right? It would be quite impossible to know how much to invest & re-invest in marketing without knowing the actual ROI. But wait! There’s an easy fix Littledata’s Shopify app can automatically fix most of the tracking inconsistencies mentioned above. Here’s how our app works, it's like magic. First, the app adds a DataLayer on your website containing all the Enhanced Ecommerce events. Then it inserts a tracking script on each layout which captures every fired event as soon as it occurs, and then using Server Side tracking, the app listens for all transactions to ensure 100% accuracy. In addition to the guaranteed transaction accuracy, Littledata’s tracker attributes each sale by source together with granular user and product data. The app also sends custom information in 4 custom dimensions to understand KPIs regarding lifetime value (LTV). Sound pretty geeky? It is. But the cool part is that the app uses automation and machine learning to do all the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on growing your business instead of worrying about tracking issues. And the tech extends to all the apps you use. We include smart connections with apps like ReCharge and Refersion, to ensure accurate data about every marketing channel and product mix, including subscriptions. For example, our ReCharge connection automatically tracks both first-time payments and recurring transactions. This gives you accurate sales data and marketing attribution for those sales. Compare different tracking methods I know it may sound too good to be true, and this is why we offer a 14-day free trial so you can test the results by creating a Test Property in your Google Analytics account and compare data between Shopify’s standard tracker and Littledata’s advanced solution. Once you have accurate data, you can start benchmarking against other Shopify sites and optimising your website with data-driven decision making. Questions? Littledata is here to help. We built our smart ecommerce analytics app to simplify everything, and with a clear picture of your ecommerce data and access to automated optimization tools you can truly take your business to the next level. Are you ready for accurate data?

In March 2018, after a long digital drumroll of anticipation, Google announced that it was rolling out mobile-first indexing. What does this mean for your SEO? In short, if your ecommerce site isn’t optimised for mobile, you’re losing out on a huge source of traffic. Source: Google After much research into the way people are now interacting with search engines, the conclusion is that there has been a marked shift towards mobile. In typical Google fashion, what searchers want, searchers get. So, it was decided that mobile would be a top priority. But how dramatic has this turn towards mobile been? The answer is definitely substantial enough to warrant this new shift in Google’s priorities. According to this Statista report, in 2018, 52.2% of all web traffic comes through mobile channels. While that is indeed significant, it is not the most telling fact about the current state of mobile traffic. What is even more noteworthy is the steady pace with which this form of traffic is increasing. The same Statista study shows a rise from 50.3% the year before, which built on 35.1% in 2015. This is not a trend which is fly-by-night. As you already know, when it comes to eCommerce, the success of your business depends on keeping up with search engine best practices and ranking criteria. These best practices can help you boost your ecommerce search traffic. With this in mind, you simply cannot afford to ignore mobile-first. Before I tell you how to adopt this for your eCommerce store, it’s necessary to explore what mobile-first indexing entails. Let’s dive in. What is mobile-first indexing? In a nutshell, mobile-first indexing refers to a method of search engine ranking that makes use of the mobile version of websites to organize SERP items. Google looks for relevant data to decide how best to answer the questions their searchers are asking. If the army of crawling bots find relevant information on your site, you may be moved up the ranks. In the past, Google rankings were based on desktop versions of websites. With mobile-first, the move is towards crawling and indexing mobile sites, rather than their desktop companions. This means that websites must be responsive and suitable for use on mobile, or mobile versions must have the same comprehensive content as the desktop. If you are breaking into a cold sweat as the realisation dawns that all your SEO efforts have been concentrated on your desktop site, take a deep breath. As Google has said, the move is gradual, and will not happen without notification in the Search Console. If they deem your site ready for the move over to mobile-first indexing, you will receive the following notification: Source: Google It’s important to note at this point that the Mobile-first index is not a separate index. Google continues to only have one index, as it always has. The shift means that the mobile version of websites will be prioritised, rather than being a move towards an additional type of indexing system. But how can you optimise for this change? 3 key steps to mobile optimisation 1. Switch to one responsive website As Littledata recently outlined on this blog, moving to responsive web design can be a very good move. What is this responsive design I speak of? Quite simply, it refers to web design that works well across a range of platforms. It prioritises user experience to ensure that the person interacting with your site is able to navigate it with ease, regardless of which device they use. A major perk of this is that whomever is in charge of the upkeep of your store does not have to monitor two (or more) different versions of your site. They have one site to take care of which will, if intelligently-constructed, work for an optimal user experience. If you do prefer to keep things separate, make sure that you pay attention to the mobile version of your site, rather than it merely acting as a subsidiary of your desktop site. As we will look at in step 3, it’s not a given that your SEO efforts will migrate over to the mobile version without some cognisant intervention on your part. 2. Get speedy Hopefully, page loading speed has already been a major priority when it comes to your SEO efforts. Sales in the eCommerce sphere are highly dependent on being able to keep your shoppers engaged and open for conversion to a sale. If your page does not load quickly enough, your customers will not stick around. Note: Check out these case studies on HubSpot for examples of how the speed of your site can affect your profit margins. When it comes to mobile-first however, page load speed is even more integral to your success. It is most certainly a top priority for Google in terms of how they allocated their ranking positions, and should be for you too. Luckily, there are numerous methods to both test and increase your page load speed: Start by looking at what Google’s very own Search Console has to offer. Through their Webmaster Lab Tools, you’ll quickly be able to see how well your site is performing and whether you need to step up your game. Third party tools such as Think With Google can be excellent accompaniments to other Google Analytics tools when it comes to deciphering how your site is faring. Ensure that your web design is not slowing down your whole operation. If you don’t have the technical knowhow yourself, get a developer to run an audit to see if your server speed, content configuration, or baseline coding is placing any obstacles between your users and an instantly-loading page. 3. Ensure your SEO tactics are still powerful If you have spent a lot of time and energy ensuring that your desktop site is fully ”SEOd”, make sure that your efforts carry over into the mobile iteration of your eCommerce store. Here’s a very brief checklist: Is all that beautiful content you created crawlable in the mobile version of your site? Those titles and descriptions that you put so much effort into? Make sure all your metadata carries over! Is the mobile version of your site verified with Google’s Search Console? Some final tips As an eCommerce shop owner, your concerns are not only getting customers to your site, but ultimately converting them. When it comes to mobile, there are specific trends that CROs are highlighting when it comes to transforming your customers into paying ones. In this comprehensive analysis by Shopify, they take an in-depth look at a study done by inflow on Mobile Conversion Optimization Features used in Best-In-Class Retailers. What is particularly useful in this report is what they refer to as a don’t and a do in terms of what is currently leading to optimal conversion rates for eCommerce business owners. As a parting gift, I’d like to share these two insights with you as ways to bolster your own efforts. In summary: Say no to hero slider images. In-depth research into mobile conversion rates has illustrated that customers are less than moved by them. Usher in the age of the top navigation menu. A relatively unused feature in the eCommerce world, all the data is pointing towards its efficacy in terms of mobile conversion rates. The takeway... Point 1: Don’t panic. Google will notify you if they’re switching you over, and will prioritise sites they deem more ready. Point 2: Start thinking with an on-the-go mindset. Make sure your store’s UX for mobile is as streamlined as possible. Make sure that your SEO efforts have carried over. Point 3: Don’t stop at optimising your mobile site for traffic - optimise for conversions too. Understand what will compel mobile customers to a sale. Good luck!   This is a guest post by Charlie Carpenter. He is the co-founder and CEO of Kite. He is a mobile advocate with over ten years of industry experience. After working for large and small agencies for many years, he co-founded Kite; a software solution for print-on-demand, zero inventory merchandise, and personalised photo print goods. As well as an entrepreneur, Charlie is a seasoned product strategist with experience of various types of digital projects which include: Responsive and Adaptive Websites, Mobile & Tablet Apps, Hybrid Apps, Cross Platform App development. You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn, and follow him on Twitter.

The holiday shopping period has us obsessed with one of our favourite ecommerce metrics: average order value (AOV). How does your site compare? A new infographic breaks down the stats. Increasing average order value usually has a dramatic impact on profits and ROI from marketing spend. It is also a gift that keeps on giving, as optimisation in this area is something that can deliver ongoing results over the long term. What does ‘average’ look like? Well, that’s going to depend on your sector, as well as the level of optimisation maturity reached by your peers. There’s not much point comparing the AOV of a small jewellery site with a large travel website. It doesn’t tell you anything meaningful. It’s more interesting to deep dive into your niche, and the good news is that we have some sector-specific ecommerce benchmarks to share with you, based on data from the 12,000+ ecommerce websites that have connected to the Littledata app. Below is a visualisation to show you some of our numbers (there's much more to explore within the app). Compare your own performance To see your own data alongside the industry averages, simply hook up your Google Analytics account with Littledata, and the app will show you how you’re performing relative to your peers (it’s free to connect). The app will also show you benchmarks for the other key ecommerce metrics, alongside AOV. No doubt you’re also interested in things like conversion rate, checkout completion rate, product list CTR, and so on. Are you benchmarking your ecommerce site in the best sector to help you increase revenue? We use the IBM Watson API and some smart logic to categorise websites automatically, though you’re able to manually override that should you need to do so. For example, you can compare against similar sized SEO-driven websites in your location, or look specifically at retailers in your vertical (eg. health and beauty products by subscription). Underperforming? We’ve got your back... There’s no need for panic if your numbers don’t look as good as your peers, as the Littledata app will recommend specific optimisation ideas via our new Missions feature. You can launch missions to improve your ecommerce performance and increase sales. I'd love to know what you've done to increase average order value. Do leave a comment below if you have tips to share. PS. Feel free to share this infographic, or include it in your own blog posts, as long as you include a link back to this post and our main website (www.littledata.io).

In two high-profile data breaches this year – at Ticketmaster and British Airways – over half a million credit cards were stolen via a compromised script inserted on the payment pages. Google Tag Manager is a powerful tool which enables you to insert any script you want onto pages of your website, but that power can used against you by hackers if you're not careful – and below we’ll look at how to stop GTM being a security risk on your payment pages. Firstly, how did the hackers get the card details from these sites? And how is it relevant to GTM on your site? Security firm RiskIQ has traced the breach to a compromised Javascript file which skimmed the card details from the payment form. So when a user entered their credit card number and security code on BritishAirways.com (or their mobile app) those details were posted to a third party server, unknown to British Airways or the customer. This is a high-scale equivalent of placing a skimming devices on an ATM, which reads one card at a time. In Ticketmaster’s hack the script was one loaded from a chatbot vendor on their site, Inbenta. Inbenta claims not even to have been aware the script was used on payment pages. The changes to the script were subtle: not breaking any functionality, and in BA’s case using a domain ‘baway.com’ which looked somewhat authentic. To protect your site against a similar attack you obviously need to lock down accounts used by your developers to change scripts in the page source code, but you also need to secure GTM – which can be used to deploy such scripts. We have a few rules at Littledata to help reduce risks in using tag management on payment pages: 1. Use pixels over custom JavaScript tags on payment pages You probably need a few standard tags, such as Google Analytics, on payment pages but try to avoid any custom scripts which could possibly skim card details. Many non-standard tags use JavaScript only to create the URL of a tracking pixel – and it is much safer (and faster) to call the tracking pixel directly. Contact the vendor to find out how. (Littledata's Shopify app even removes the need to have any script on the payment pages, by hooking into the order as it's registered on Shopify's servers) 2. Avoid loading external JavaScript files in GTM Many vendors want you to load a file from their server (e.g. myvendor.com/tracking.js) from GTM, so they can update the tracking code whenever they want. This is flexible for them, but risky for you. If the vendor gets hacked (e.g. with Inbenta above) then you get compromised. It’s less risky to embed that script directly in GTM, and control version changes from there (although a fraction slower to load the page). Of particular risk is embedding a tag manager within a tag manager – where you are giving the third party rights to publish any other scripts within the one tag. Don’t do that! 3. Lock down Edit and Publish rights on GTM Your organisation probably has a high turnover of contract web developers and agencies, so have you checked that only the current staff or agencies have permission to edit and publish? It's OK to have external editors use 'workspaces' for version control in GTM, but ideally someone with direct accountability to your company should check and Publish. 4. Blacklist custom JavaScript tag on the payment pages You can set a blacklist from the on-page data layer to prevent certain types of tags being deployed on the payment pages. If you have a GTM container with many users, this may be more practical that step 3. 5. Remove tags from old vendors There are many thousands of marketing tools out there, and your company has probably tried a few. Do you remove all the tags from vendors when you stop working with them? These are most at risk of being hacked. At Littledata we run a quarterly process for marketing stakeholders opt-in tags they still need for tracking or optimisation. 6. Ensure all custom JavaScript tags are reviewed by a developer before publishing It can be hard to review minimised JavaScript libraries, but worth it for payment pages if you can’t follow rules 1 and 2. If you’re still worried, you can audit the actual network requests sent from payment pages. For example, in Chrome developer tools, in the 'Network' tab, you can inspect what requests sent out by the browser and to what servers. It’s easy for malicious code to hide in the patchwork of JavaScript that powers most modern web experiences, but what is harder to hide is the network requests made from the browser to external servers (i.e. to post the stolen card information out). This request to Google Analytics is fine, but if the domain of a request is dubious, look it up or ask around the team. Good luck, and keep safe with GTM!

Over the past few months we’ve been working on a new feature for Littledata users. Our new Missions feature is a data-driven recommendation engine for ecommerce optimisation. The Missions concept is simple, yet powerful. First, you connect Google Analytics in order to see how your site is performing relative to the benchmarks in your sector. Then, if you are underperforming in any given area, the app will suggest some specific optimisation missions. Now, you might think that in 2018 the vast majority of ecommerce websites are serious conversion machines, but that’s simply not the case. Most websites remain woefully under-optimised and are leaving way too much money on the table. Checkouts are abandoned, users bounce before pages load, forms are left uncompleted, and so on. This is becoming a big problem, given the competitive landscape in many sectors. Acquiring new customers is increasingly expensive. A surefire way to make your marketing budget go further is to optimise your website, but where should you start? This is precisely where Missions comes into play: you launch individual missions and work your way through the suggested tasks to improve ecommerce performance, metric by metric. Missions: website optimisation made simple We’ve spent a lot of time researching optimisation techniques that have been shown to work for other companies. That’s not to say that they’ll definitely work for you, but proven ideas are usually well worth testing. We now have hundreds of actionable ideas, which have been clustered together into launchable ‘missions’. Missions are aligned to key ecommerce goals, such as increasing average order value, product list CTR, add to cart rate, checkout completion rate and conversion rate. Individual missions cover areas such as persuasion, merchandising, user experience, copywriting, pricing, CTAs, findability and trust. And since Littledata is good at measuring the little data, you’ll be able to see the results of your efforts within the app. Who should use Missions? Missions is for anybody that wants to optimise a website. It can be used by large digital organisations, SMBs and micro businesses. It is particularly useful for agencies with multiple clients, especially where there are recurring optimisation tasks over multiple websites. The ideas in each mission include guidance on who should be involved in implementation. Roles include ecommerce manager, web developer, copywriter, marketing strategist, and UX designer. How to launch a mission Start by connecting Google Analytics, so we can help you measure success and prove ROI. Once connected we’ll run a quick check to make sure your analytics setup is in good shape (the app will suggest fixes, if anything is awry). You can then compare your performance against your peers, to identify areas that are ripe for improvement. We’ll show you this at the top of your dashboard: By drilling down into each of the above categories you’ll be able to see the detail. As an example, let’s look at the main metrics in the ecommerce category. You’ll see your own data alongside ecommerce benchmarks from your sector (based on data from more than 12,000 websites). This makes it easy to compare and contrast performance. It looks like this: In the above example you can see that ‘add to cart rate’ and ‘conversion rate’ are both considerably lower than the norm. Both of these areas are ripe for improvement. Another metric in the ecommerce category is average order value. For this particular sector the average is $28, and while this particular website is doing reasonably well, it isn’t yet a top performer. Increasing AOV is one of the quickest ways of growing revenue, so we can launch the following mission: So, this first mission - ‘Average order value fundamentals’ - will help you to incrementally increase AOV. It includes ideas in areas such as product bundling, cross-sells, up-sells, wishlists, pricing strategies, personalisation, social proof, and so on. Here’s what the mission looks like - note that each tip can be expanded to reveal more information: You can work your way through the mission and implement (or skip) the ideas. Press the ‘mark as complete’ button to start tracking performance. Once you have done that we will start monitoring performance: Reach your goals, faster Missions should generate considerable - and provable - ROI for the SMBs, corporates and agencies that use it. Work your way through the missions to improve the customer experience, and remove the friction from the buying process. The first iteration of Missions is natural next step for Littledata. Our long-term goal is to develop Missions into an AI-driven optimisation engine for ecommerce teams. We hope you’ll join us for the ride. People trust Littledata to audit, fix and automate reporting. They also use our benchmarks to check and compare their performance, relative to their peers. And now, with Missions, digital teams can set about actively increasing ecommerce revenue. We hope that Littledata Missions will help you to fast-track your goals and KPIs. Give Missions a try today and shoot for the moon.