With a staggering 98% open rate, SMS marketing should be part of every DTC brand’s marketing strategy. The best part is that SMS marketing works well for both acquisition and retention. With Littledata’s new Postscript integration, you can better track which SMS campaigns are driving sales and exactly when and where customers are converting. Narrowing down campaigns to the channel level in Google Analytics 4 gives your business a single source of truth for attribution. 1 of every 5 orders is missed by merchants who rely solely on Shopify’s tracking, and this is getting even worse with recent privacy changes. With proper tracking of your SMS campaigns you can up your analysis of key ecommerce metrics gathered by Littledata like AOV, LTV, and more. Helping your team save time, money, and resources by setting up tracking or doing analysis manually. Littledata even lets you see which SMS campaigns perform best for different types of orders (e.g. subscription recurring orders, first time subscription orders, one off purchases, upsells).  Merchants continue to dive into channel data in order to optimize their campaigns and understand customer behavior. Knowing how channels are performing and contributing to key ecommerce metrics enables merchants have a better understanding and build custom reports in Google Analytics 4's newly launched exploration tool. Allowing merchants to have better insight and control over their data. A popular example is Funnel exploration which allows you to see direct or indirect steps around efforts like SMS and how they play a role in the customer journey. Benefits of using Littledata with SMS include: Single source of truth in Google Analytics. See which SMS campaigns are driving sales and exactly when and where customers are converting. Better marketing attribution. Littledata’s app magically stitches sessions together so you can understand performance across paid and organic channels. And build better audiences in Facebook Ads, Google Ads and more. Audience building. Littledata captures complete data about browsing behavior, checkout steps and purchasing behavior (orders, refunds, repeat purchases) for more accurate retargeting campaigns and audience building. Complete subscription tracking. Many subscription ecommerce merchants use Postscript to power their SMS/text marketing, and Littledata integrates with leading subscription apps like Recharge, Smartrr and Ordergroove to track recurring orders directly in Google Analytics 4 and tie them back to customer touch points like email, SMS and Facebook Ads. Littledata’s no code solution offers easy setup without the need for developers. Simply add the correct UTM parameters when setting up your Postscript campaigns and our app will start stitching sessions together behind the scenes. See for yourself with a free 30-day trial. [note] Learn more about our Postscript connection here [/note] Curious about how to succeed in a world without third-party cookies? Learn more about why top DTC brands are moving to server-side tracking.

More sales might be happening exclusively online this year. And retailers might be creating their own "sales day" events. But one thing that hasn’t changed with COVID-19 is the surge in Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) events around the globe. Black Friday might have started in the USA, but it’s now a popular shopping event in other countries too, especially the UK (where Littledata started). Shopify now supports multi-currency “stores” (one for each currency). In fact, Shopify Payments now supports over 120 currencies, and brands selling in multiple countries are promoting BFCM deals across all of them. [subscribe heading="Free ebook: Top 5 BFCM Benchmarks" background_color="grey" button_text="Get Your Copy" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/app/top-5-holiday-benchmarks"] Our Shopify Plus customers started preparing for these sales earlier than ever, some launching holiday promotions as early as October! Not only that, but the sales are seemingly endless. Glossy recently reported that 37% of brands will run holiday promotions for at least 8 weeks this year, and Littledata's Shopify benchmarks are already showing the signs of increased promotions: lower conversion rates but a lot more traffic, especially from social channels. (We also found last year that holiday promotions increased next season purchasing -- and I expect this trend to continue). Resources for Shopify stores doing multi-currency BFCM promotions With multiple country stores and a longer sales period, accurate data becomes even more important. These free resources will help you answer the questions in the back of your mind: are you tracking multi-currency sales correctly? 4 tips for Shopify Plus merchants selling internationally A common mistake of many companies is quickly jumping into international ecommerce without taking time to develop a proper strategy. Read these 4 tips to help your Shopify Plus business sell in a more cost-effective way. How Shopify Plus stores can set up multi-currency reporting in Google Analytics Our recommendations for what to track and how to track it. In this detailed post, Littledata’s CEO looks at the differences in analytics for single store and multi-store international setups.  Multi-currency tracking for Shopify Payments Many Shopify Plus merchants rely on Shopify Payments to manage multi-currency. For those stores, Littledata's multi-currency tracking is an out-of-the-box solution to get accurate sales and marketing data. This article outlines how Littledata’s multi-currency support works for different parts of the data processing. We use Shopify’s definition of presentment currency and shop currency. Overview of automated multi-currency tracking Are you selling internationally? If you're already selling internationally, it’s important to get tracking set up correctly before BFCM. Learn how to track sales in multiple currencies directly in Google Analytics, so you can scale the smart way during the busiest shopping season. [subscribe]

With #BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) just a week away, we wanted to share recent data findings that should help you stay on track with your weekend sales goals. Whether you run your store on Shopify, Shopify Plus, Magento, BigCommerce or another platform, the following ecommerce performance metrics are prevalent to your store. [note]Want to know where your store stands during this holiday sales season? Check out our top 5 holiday ecommerce benchmarks. It's a free ebook![/note] From top-of-funnel shopper behavior to conversions and everything in between, know where you stand before the year's biggest sales weekend hits: Shopper behavior benchmarks Average add to cart rate Littledata surveyed 564 stores in October 2019 and found the average add-to-cart rate was 5.2%. What is a good add to cart rate? Anything more than 9.0% would put you in the best 20% of stores we benchmark for add-to-cart rate, and more than 12.4% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor add to cart rate? Add-to-cart rate of less than 2.3% would put you in the worst 20% of stores, and less than 1.7% would put you in the worst-performing stores. How to optimize / Things to consider If your site is above 9.0%, you have an above average proportion of users adding products to their cart. If they are not following through with checkout, could they be checking prices or delivery options on other sites? To sell more, you must first boost the number of browsers considering purchasing. Reevaluate some of the more common problem areas: Pricing Images User reviews Delivery options Checkout completion rate Checkout completion rate is essentially the inverse (opposite) of add to cart rate, as it measures how many checkouts actually went through and were recorded as successful sales. Littledata surveyed 543 stores in October 2019 and found the average checkout completion rate was 45.2%. What is a good checkout completion rate? Anything more than 63.1% would put you in the best 20% of stores we benchmark for checkout completion rate, and more than 71.3% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor checkout completion rate? Checkout completion rate (all devices) of less than 27.3% would put you in the worst 20% of stores, and less than 21.9% would put you in the worst-performing stores. Desktop vs. mobile If your site has a checkout completion rate (desktop) of between 34.1% and 66.1%, then you are average compared with this benchmark. With less than 25.9%, your store is definitely underperforming. For mobile, a rate between 23.9% and 57.5% is average, while any rate under 18.3% is underperforming. How to optimize / Things to consider If your checkout completion rate is hovering somewhere above 63.1%, you can focus more on  increasing adds-to-cart. On the other hand, losing customers at the last hurdle is costly for your store. If you find your store below 27.3%, look in detail at payment options, delivery options and usability to ensure customers in all countries can complete the process. [subscribe] Ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks Average mobile conversion rate Littledata surveyed 1,107 stores in October 2019 and found the average mobile conversion rate was 0.9%. What is a good mobile conversion rate? Anything more than 2.2% would put you in the best 20% of stores we benchmark for mobile conversion rate, and more than 3.3% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor mobile conversion rate? Mobile ecommerce conversion rate of less than 0.3% would put you in the worst 20% of stores, and less than 0.1% would put you in the worst-performing stores. How to optimize / Things to consider If your store's mobile conversion rate is already above 2.2%, trying to improve conversions beyond this rate may yield diminishing returns. If your current rate is lower than you'd like (whether before or after Black Friday sales), consider: Increase the conversion rate with more attractive product pages and product images Improve your checkout process and checkout flow Install Enhanced Ecommerce tracking to identify exactly where your blockers lie Average desktop conversion rate Littledata surveyed 1,095 stores in October 2019 and found the average desktop conversion rate was 2.0%. What is a good desktop conversion rate? Anything more than 4.8% would put you in the best 20% of stores we benchmark for desktop conversion rate, and more than 7.1% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor desktop conversion rate? Desktop ecommerce conversion rate of less than 0.8% would put you in the worst 20% of stores, and less than 0.3% would put you in the worst-performing stores. How to optimize / Things to consider Similar to mobile conversions above, trying to improve conversions beyond a rate of 2.0% may yield diminishing returns. However, the same tips above for mobile also apply to desktop conversation rate optimization, including installing Enhanced Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics. Average revenue per customer Littledata surveyed 1,087 stores in October 2019 and found the average revenue per customer was $98 (USD). What is a good revenue per customer? Anything more than US$ 252 would put you in the best 20% of stores we benchmark for revenue per customer, and more than US$ 558 would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor revenue per customer? Revenue per customer of less than US$ 49 would put you in the worst 20% of stores, and less than US$ 36 would put you in the worst-performing stores. How to optimize / Things to consider If you're averaging more than $252 (USD) revenue per customer, your product price may be high. This does not necessarily skew the data, but is probably the reason you're in the top 20% of stores for this metric. On the other hand, if you find yourself making less than $49 (USD) per customer, consider doing the following: Increase the average checkout value by cross-selling other products? Offer free shipping above a minimum threshold Increase pricing on selected products Add and manage post checkout upsells through popular apps like CartHook [note]If you're looking to optimize your post checkout experience, our new and improved CartHook connection accurately segments your sales by source, medium and affiliation with 100% accuracy. ?[/note] Marketing campaign benchmarks Average bounce rate from email campaigns Littledata surveyed 2,110 sites in October 2019 and found the average bounce rate from all email campaigns was 44.9%. What is a good email campaign bounce rate? Anything less than 30.3% would put you in the best 20% of sites we benchmark for bounce rate from all email campaigns, and less than 22.2% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor email campaign bounce rate? Bounce rate from all email campaigns of more than 60.5% would put you in the worst 20% of sites, and more than 69.4% would put you in the worst-performing sites. Desktop vs. mobile If your site has a bounce rate from email campaigns (desktop) between 55.5% and 25.5%, you're within the industry average. If your campaign bounce rate is above 66%, your campaigns are underperforming. On the other hand, if your campaigns on mobile are experiencing bounce rates between 63.5% and 36.2%, you're in the middle of the pack. Any bounce rate over 72% is underperforming for this benchmark. How to optimize / Things to consider If your campaign bounce rate is under 30%, chances are you either you have a highly engaged email list, or your messages and landing pages are well-designed and written; your visitors are sticking around! If your bounce rate is worse than 60.5%, your emails may be driving traffic, but quality of traffic is far more important than quantity of traffic. If you're not driving high-potential buyers through your campaigns and to your product pages, you're not giving yourself the best chance at a conversion. Average bounce rate from Google Ads Littledata surveyed 1,351 sites in October 2019 and found the average bounce rate from Adwords on desktop device was 39.7%. What is a good Google Ads bounce rate? Anything less than 22.8% would put you in the best 20% of sites we benchmark for bounce rate from Adwords on desktop device, and less than 15.8% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor Google Ads bounce rate? Bounce rate from Adwords on desktop device of more than 60.6% would put you in the worst 20% of sites, and more than 70.0% would put you in the worst-performing sites. How to optimize / Things to consider If your site's desktop bounce rate is sitting below 23%, a solid portion of your Google Ads traffic are engaging on your landing pages (which means your chances for conversion increase). However, if your Google Ads bounce rate is above 60%, there are a few things to focus on: Improve the first impressions of your landing pages (copy, product listings, images, etc.) Move key content higher up the page Increase the page load speed [note]With a smart analytics audit from Littledata, you can see where you stand with key performance metrics like page load speed.[/note] Average referral rate from Facebook By 'referral rate from Facebook', we're referring to a certain volume of traffic, either from Facebook's website or tagged with Facebook (Facebook is now the second biggest referrer after Google). Littledata surveyed 2,035 sites in October 2019 and found the average referral rate from Facebook was 2.9%. What is a good referral rate from Facebook? Anything more than 9.0% would put you in the best 20% of sites we benchmark for referrals from Facebook, and more than 20.1% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor referral rate from Facebook? Referrals from Facebook of less than 1.4% would put you in the worst 20% of sites, and less than 1.2% would put you in the worst-performing sites. How to optimize / Things to consider If your Facebook referral rate is above 9%, you may have an underestimated figure. Unfortunately, Google Analytics tracks untagged Facebook app traffic as "Direct". Luckily, our Shopify app fixes this problem by properly attributing marketing traffic and conversions so you exactly which channels are working for your store. On the other hand, if your referral rate is less than 1.4%, consider your ad spend on Facebook: is it targeted at the right type of shopper? Are you utilizing retargeting to bring visitors back to your site? Average referrals from Twitter Littledata surveyed 189 sites in October 2019 and found the average referral rate from Twitter was 2.0%. What is a good referral rate from Twitter? Anything more than 4.1% would put you in the best 20% of sites we benchmark for referrals from Twitter, and more than 7.8% would put you in the best 10%. What is a poor referral rate from Twitter? Referrals from Twitter of less than 1.3% would put you in the worst 20% of sites, and less than 1.2% would put you in the worst-performing sites. How to optimize / Things to consider If your referral rate is less than 1.3%, go back to social marketing basics: are you targeting the right audience? Are you utilizing retargeting or perhaps lookalike audiences? Twitter targeting is slightly more precise than Facebook (since you can target specific keywords, keyword groups or actual account followers). During #BFCM, don't just take these benchmarks as arbitrary numbers — treat them as goals! Just a week from the chaos, remember to track your progress closely. You can even try Littledata free for 14 days to test its powerful tracking fixes during even the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday, often referred to as BFCM, make up the biggest weekend in the calendar year for ecommerce stores. With sales topping $10B in 2018, that number is widely expected to increase in 2019, especially with this year’s dates falling much closer to payday. The pie is very large indeed, and every Shopify and Shopify Plus merchant wants a piece. But to reap the benefits of BFCM and enjoy a big sales weekend, there is much preparation necessary, including using the entire ecommerce marketing toolbox.  Here are four foolproof tips for a successful BFCM weekend for your Shopify store. These tips are especially relevant for Shopify Plus merchants, as the competition is really heating up this year, with more money on the table--to win or to lose. Especially with the help of accurate reporting, you can make the largest gains without drowning under increased customer demand. Make data-driven decisions to drive ROI With increased competition to gain the attention of potential customers, tight marketing budgets and high customer acquisition costs, the dependence on high-quality data has never been more crucial. The foundation of your planning should be driven by analysis on your customers, their personas, their buying habits and their digital behaviour.   Using historical data of your customers with the highest lifetime value (LTV) and the lowest customer acquisition cost (CAC), you can refine your target audience ahead of BFCM in order to drive high-volume, targeted traffic to your store with campaigns that have the highest potential ROI. Google Analytics is a great place to start your digging. With the raw data in GA, you can build reports in Google Data Studio, which will display the metrics you need to build your audiences.  Littledata’s Shopify app does just that. By ensuring your store data is 100% accurate when you see it in Google Analytics, the app helps Shopify and Shopify Plus stores make better, data-driven decisions before, during and after BFCM sales. [subscribe] Focus on remarketing campaigns It’s more than likely your prospective customers are already shopping around and conducting product research ahead of BFCM.  Most online shoppers in 2019 make smarter purchasing decisions and spend more time finding both the right product and the best deal before making purchases.  Engaged customers who have already visited your store and are familiar with your brand are more likely to purchase from you. They’ll also have a lower CAC and higher conversion rates.  Data-driven retargeting campaigns on Facebook Ads, Google Display Network and Twitter Ads will give you the best ROI, which is why planning ahead and collecting accurate data in the weeks leading up to BFCM is crucial.  Pay particular attention to recent email subscribers, abandoned cart users and frequently returning visitors — these are the people with your product fresh in mind. Optimize your site with A/B tests Test, test and test again. Whilst many ecommerce businesses make large changes once or twice a year, the most successful stores are continuously testing and optimising small changes, which lead to big results over time.  Optimising your Shopify or Shopify Plus store in the weeks leading up to BFCM is critical; spend time running A/B tests with tools like Google Optimize, which allows you to seamlessly run multivariate tests and property tests. With these types of test results for your product pages and CTAs, you’ll have sufficient data to either prove or discount your assumptions on user behaviour and web design elements like button color, calls to action, site copy and more.  The best marketers never assume or guess shopper tendencies; instead, use measurable data from A/B testing to make data-driven decisions. You data should also inform the types of tests you run. For example, if 70% of your traffic is coming from mobile, then spend most of your time optimising and testing for mobile.  If you actually are optimising for mobile, some quick tips: make sure your navigation is clear and easy to use and the checkout is smooth. Shopify data shows that more purchases were made on mobile than desktop in both 2017 and 2018. Supercharge your page speed Website speed is incredibly important for BFCM.  Shoppers are looking to get in quick and are more likely to leave your store with a load time over three seconds. To combat slow-loading pages (including your Shopify product pages), use tools like Google Lighthouse and Page Speed Test to get a loose idea of your average site performance.  [note] For a more in-depth benchmark and for step-by-step tips on improving page speed, check out this recent case study.[/note] Small fixes such as compressing images and videos can help, but some stores go further — shutting off all non-essential apps or creating superfast AMP landing pages just for BFCM weekend.  The oft-forgotten speed metric? Your customer support response time. With a mammoth increase in traffic and more orders coming through your pipeline, you’re bound to see a spike in customer inquiries. It may be necessary to increase your support team size for BFCM in order to deal with these requests quickly. This will help ensure that no inquiry goes untouched and your cart abandonment rate is minimised.   [note] Cart abandonment is no joke, especially on the biggest day of the year for online retail. Check out these 8 tips for minimising your cart abandonment.[/note] Get the most out of BFCM with data you can trust In order to make the most of BFCM, Shopify stores and Shopify Plus stores need to plan ahead this month to ensure they’re working from trustworthy data.  Not only does data drive persona building and decision-making, but it’s the bedrock for successful ecommerce.  Littledata’s Shopify app provides the data solution that merchants need for everyday store performance, accurate marketing attribution and user behaviour trends.  Try Littledata for free today so you have plenty of time to operate with accurate data before BFCM — it’s just around the corner! Installing the app takes just 5 minutes, and you’ll see accurate numbers in Google Analytics within 24 hours.  [subscribe]

Typically, online shoppers aren’t engaging with your products because they’re not engaging with your page. To truly optimise conversions, you need product pages that visually appeal, ooze customer value and surpass common industry benchmarks. Once you start optimising your Shopify product pages, it’s off to the races. But on-page optimisation more of a marathon than a quick sprint to test and launch. Just like CRO, product page optimisation is a continuous, analytical process of reviewing, changing, testing and refining. Optimisations help you discover: What your customers find most appealing What your customers like and care about What about your brand makes your customer trust you What ultimately encourages your customer to purchase If you’ve had trouble optimising (or seeing positive results from) your product pages in the past, there’s no reason to get discouraged — there is always room for improvement. For online merchants, the following reminders are the key to Shopify product page success: 1) Establish product page goals Before you create a product page or make changes to your current landing pages, be clear about what you want to accomplish with the page. Every online merchant wants to increase store sales. But many Shopify store owners have more specific, actionable goals to work towards, such as: Increased sign-ups More user engagement Higher monthly page views When planning your changes, think about what success looks like for your product pages. 2) Know how to measure your content Whether your page is more of a content pillar page, category page, or a long product page with plenty of detail, there’s one easy way to measure engagement: track how far down the page users scroll. For your store, reporting should be as straightforward as possible. In other words, when you make changes to your landing page, focus on tracking only the metrics that matter to your product. These are the metrics that yield the most return to your business. Want the other 6 keys to success? Our free ebook, 9 best practices for your Shopify landing pages, contains proven techniques and advice from top ecommerce brands, Shopify merchants and Littledata customers. With our ebook, you’ll be on your way to more store traffic, product views and orders.   [subscribe heading="Get the free ebook" background_color="green" button_text="Download it free" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/app/ebook-shopify-product-pages"]

According to Baymard, 69.57% of online shoppers abandon their cart. That means that for every three people that add an item to their cart, two of those people end up not purchasing. As a store owner, this can be extremely frustrating. You’re running a business, so you want to see sales — not abandoned carts. On the other side of the coin, however, I can assure you that your customer was frustrated, and this is exactly why they abandoned their cart. While there are a million reasons why a customer would abandon their cart, there are a few common threads and factors for mounting frustration. The good news? They’re all easily measured with data and improvable with some common sense. [subscribe heading="Try Littledata free for 14 days" background_color="grey" button_text="start my free trial"] 1. Your mobile site experience sucks As an agency owner, I see a lot of websites. Yet it still surprises me how many ecommerce brands suffer from this issue. Over 50% of all traffic to ecommerce sites is coming from a mobile device, yet many brands are perfectly fine with letting their customers suffer through an almost unusable mobile experience. This is an extremely common cause of cart abandonment. If you’re curious, you can look within Google Analytics to see how many people abandon carts on different devices. While most websites are ‘responsive’ these days, that does not mean they’re usable or easily navigable. Have your parents, your siblings, or your significant other run through your online experience and try to purchase a product, and you’ll see the shortcomings in your mobile experience. Responsive design hardly considers the goals of an ecommerce website. When a store design is not user friendly, this leads to higher abandoned cart rates. 2. Your product pages don’t provide enough information The next commonality with cart abandonment is all too simple, but it’s one of the leading causes. It boils down to the customer having a question about the product: How big is it? What is it made out of? How much does shipping cost? How long until I can get it? What’s your return policy? Is it waterproof? Your product page needs to answer every question a shopper could ever have about your product. There are so many advantages to ecommerce, but the main disadvantage is that the customers are not holding that product in their hand. So, they can’t answer a lot of those questions on their own. You need to be their five senses in describing that product and your policies so that the customer can make a completely informed purchase decision. If I have more questions than answers, I’m not buying. (Not sure how to fix your product pages? You can get my 8-point guide on product page improvements by joining our mailing list here.) Some of the questions your customers have might not be obvious. Being so close to the product and the brand often puts blinders on business owners. An easy way to solve that is by asking your customers! You can use apps like Hotjar to ask your customers questions on why they’re leaving a product page. 3. Your apps, files or images are slowing down your page load speed The last issue to tackle: your page load speed. This is something that is often overlooked by people new to online businesses. If your website takes too long to load, I’m out of there. There are quite a few reasons why this would happen, but the main reasons are typically 1) too many apps and 2) content not sized properly for web. Apps are amazing, and I frequently recommend them to our clients to solve requests. What's not amazing about apps is their tendency to add bloat to your website. That’s why I highly recommend never installing an app unless you absolutely need it. The more apps you have installed, the more data that is being loaded on every page, and the slower your website will be. Uninstalling apps does not necessarily mean that the underlying code is deleted either. Take this as a warning. Additionally, oversized video and photos kill load times. I know that lifestyle photography you shot for your new collection is beautiful, but a five megabyte photo on my mountain 3G connection takes entirely too long to load, and I’m now browsing Twitter because I got fed up with your store. People are impatient. They do not want to wait, they want things instantaneously. You can view and track your site speed in Google Analytics to get some ideas on where you can improve those metrics. Ecommerce reporting and data tracking is key. Fix customer frustrations, fix your cart abandonment problem Customer frustration is the root of most abandoned carts. Your customers want a quick, mobile-friendly, simple experience — so create one! This is a guest post by Chase Clymer, Co-Founder at Electric Eye and Host of Honest Ecommerce. Chase is an ecommerce expert making brands more money every day. He's also a fan of islands, tacos, and Magic: The Gathering.

It might be a familiar sinking feeling - why do users keep deciding at the last minute not to buy an item? There are a whole range of reasons that online shopper abandon their shopping carts. You might not be able to do anything about the majority of these reasons, but if you are seeing a high cart abandonment rate then it is definitely something you can actively work on minimising. In this post I dive into shopping cart abandonment: what it is, why it matters, and how to minimise it using proven practices from successful ecommerce sites. What is the average rate of cart abandonment? The Baymard Institute has compared reported cart abandonment from 41 studies, to conclude that the average rate stands at 69.57% in 2019. However, reports varied wildly over the years. In 2010, Forrester Research calculated that cart abandonment stood at just 55%. At the high end of the scale, AbandonAid stated in 2017 that cart abandonment occurs 81.4% of the time. Is your average checkout completion rate below the industry average? How to calculate cart abandonment rate Fortunately, there is no need to consult a mathematician when it comes to calculating your cart abandonment rate. To find the percentage of users who have not completed a purchase after adding an item to their cart, you must divide the number of complete purchases by the number of carts created: 1 - (Complete purchases/Carts created) x100 After doing this division, subtract the result from 1 and multiply by 100 to get your percentage. Fortunately, there’s no need to get the calculator out. You can easily monitor ecommere analytics with Littledata’s Shopify app. Connect this to Google Analytics to make the most out of tracking user movements - in this instance, when they removing products from the cart. Why might a cart get abandoned? There is no simple answer to this question. The truth is, carts get abandoned for a variety of reasons, although the recurring theme is that a lower abandonment rate means a more intuitive and trustworthy store. A high proportion of people browsing your store might be doing so in the hope of coming across a hidden discount, to compare prices or to check your stock against competitors. Some might even be compiling a wishlist for the future, with almost no intention of purchasing your product now. In short, there isn’t a lot you can do about this type of shopper. Focus, then, has to turn to the shoppers who would have made a purchase, was it not for an element of your site or checkout process that led to them scurrying away. As part of the Baymard Institute’s research into cart abandonment, it conducted a survey of over 2,500 US adults asking why they abandoned their purchase after passing the stage of adding an item to their cart. Many of the factors above can be countered by making tweaks to the checkout process. Take the second largest influence - “the site wanted me to create an account”. By offering a guest checkout option where an account is not necessary, this 34% of respondents will be one step closer to purchasing the product in their cart, and avoiding the dreaded stage of checkout abandonment. What goes into a better checkout process? It’s fine to say that the checkout needs to be streamlined in order to reduce cart abandonment, but what does this actually mean? What are the characteristics of a site that experiences relatively low checkout abandonment? This is specifically about what happens after a user has added a product to their cart - optimising add-to-cart rate itself is a different stage in the purchase funnel that we have talked about before here at Littledata. The first thing to take a look at is the intuitiveness of your buying process. After adding a product to cart, ensure that the following trail resembles a standard ecommerce store. This might mean identifying a clear “checkout button”, followed by payment options and providing delivery address, then reviewing the order before submitting. Any significant change to the standard process could throw a user off balance. Making your store as trustworthy as possible is another key step to reducing cart abandonment. Check that the secure payment icons are visible when checking out, and a money-back guarantee will always send a customer’s confidence skyrocketing. Offering incentives to complete a purchase also does the trick. As mentioned, shoppers may be on your site as part of a price comparison tour, so making a 10% discount visible from the outset will make your site a winner in the eyes of many a potential customer. In a similar vein, you should make sure that product and delivery details are easy to locate and understand. Adweek shows that 81% of shoppers conduct detailed research before buying a product, so make this task easier for them. Please don’t include any last-minute delivery charge shocks. Another thing to consider is the mobile-friendliness of your checkout process. The statistic that half of all ecommerce revenue will be mobile-based by 2020 is banded around a lot, but shouldn’t be ignored. If a site is near impossible to navigate on mobile, you can be sure of frustrated cart abandonment. 8 ways to minimise cart abandonment I want to give you a list of specific ideas that you could implement on your site. These have all been taken from Missions - our new optimisation tool. Each mission consists of a pack of ecommerce optimisation tips on a certain subject, complete with evidence and studies found by our researchers. The following eight tips, of course, have all been taken from our “Minimise Cart Abandonment” mission. Steeped in proof, we like to take a step away from gut feel. These tips have all reduced cart abandonment for other sites, and I am sure that some of their effects can be replicated. 1) Send cart abandonment emails This one really is the only place to start. We will of course take a closer look at tweaks you can make to your sales funnel, but targeting people who have already abandoned their carts is a crucial way of reviving a potential sale. Ecommerce site owners are becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities provided by email marketing. Hertz are one company making the most of this practice, reporting that 37% of people who opened a cart abandonment email went on to make a booking. In the past, so much money would have been left on the table by users who abandoned carts. Now, it’s so easy to send a personalised email to every customer who abandons their purchase on your site. This is all about remembering that not everybody who abandons a purchase does so on bad terms. They may simply have gotten distracted, or left the purchase for a later date. A friendly nudge back towards your buying funnel might be just what they are after! 2) Trigger exit surveys and live chat at key moments If a user is on the brink of exiting a site in frustration at not being able to find what they want, a live chat session could keep them around. Some classic stats served up by BoldChat suggest that live chat is the preferred method of communicating with a business for 21% of shoppers. If you manage to solve a customer’s biggest doubts, they will be one step closer to completing a purchase. In turn, exit surveys allow you to gather the opinions of customers who abandoned their cart. Why didn’t they make a purchase? Gold dust. Easily identify recurring themes and patch these things up so fewer potential sales slip through the net. A handy tip for exit surveys - give people open-ended questions to answer instead of preset options. According to Groovehq, this will increase response rate by 10%. 3) Use address lookup technology to minimise typing Form-filling is dull. Customers know this as well as anyone, and will often go to great lengths to avoid it. If your checkout funnel is littered with unnecessary forms to fill, more than a couple of potential customers will run like the wind. Of course, a customer’s shipping address is central to completing their order. To make this easier on them, some accurate address lookup technology such as Loqate will squash the time it takes to get things done. Anything you can do to make the form-filling process as pain-free as possible is a surefire way of reducing your cart abandonment rate. Hotel Chocolat, after introducing address lookup, reported a 19% uplift in the amount of people completing each stage of their checkout funnel. 4) Give shoppers the option of using a guest checkout Finding the option to “checkout as a guest” is starting to come as naturally to customers as looking for the “add-to-cart” button. Research from the Baymard Institute indicated that 30% of all shoppers abandon their purchase immediately upon viewing a registration process. Not even a second thought! Similarly to tip #3, this is all about saving time on the customer’s side. If they have a product in their basket and are willing to pay for it, the last thing you want to do is shove a registration form in their face. 5) Use dynamic retargeting to recover lost sales Stella & Dot saw their average order value increase by 17% when targeting customers with more relevant ads. This is all about employing technology which is able to accurately create a picture of a customer’s browsing experience, so that they can be targeted with adverts to match their interests. Although female lifestyle and fashion website Stella & Dot were more focussed on increasing their average order value, dynamic retargeting is a valid method of reducing cart abandonment by presenting individual users with adverts to match their activity. 6) Provide a one-click checkout Made famous by retail giant Amazon, a one-click or one-step checkout allows a user to immediately purchase a product if they already have their payment details registered on the site. The ability to avoid form-filling and save time is a godsend for shoppers - and the estimated $2.4 billion value of Amazon’s recently expired one-step checkout patent goes to show this. Other ecommerce sites have designed one-click checkouts of their own, finding that they do wonders for retaining customers within the purchase funnel. A case study by Strangeloop showed that implementing a one-step checkout increased conversion rate by 66%. 7) Be clear about delivery (especially free shipping) A joint study conducted by eDigitalResearch and IMRG found that 53% of cart-abandoners cite unacceptably high shipping costs as the reason for abandoning their purchase. Making sure that your shipping fees are blindingly obvious from an early stage in your purchase funnel will prevent any user frustration at discovering the cost just before payment, or simply not being able to locate this information at all. A study by Accent has shown that 88% of online shoppers expect free shipping to be offered to them in one way or another. Failing to meet this rising expectation will likely result in a chunk of abandoned carts. 8) Experiment with exit-intent popups It isn’t a coincidence that popups always appear just when you are about to close a page. Many sites use technology that detects an aggressive mouse movement towards the top corner of the screen - usually a sign that it will be closed down. These are a last-ditch attempt to keep a user browsing the site, but if they capture attention in the right way then they can work wonders in terms of saving a cart that was about to be abandoned. A common tactic is to offer a discount. Research from Beeketing indicates that 48% of ‘window shoppers’ would buy a product they were interested in if they were offered a limited-time discount. This works on the scarcity principle - a perceived rush to buy a product can prevent someone from abandoning their cart to come back at a later date. Reduce your cart abandonment today Packed with plenty of tips similar to the ones we have explored, the ‘Minimise Cart Abandonment’ mission will equip you with an arsenal of techniques to drive that statistic down and keep shoppers inside your purchase funnel until the very end. Littledata automatically benchmarks ecommerce sites so you can see how you compare, then recommends missions to optimise performance. Knowing your average checkout completion rate is a good place to start. Whether you're looking at a Shopify abandoned cart or abandoned carts on a different ecommerce platform, you can launch the 'Minimise Cart Abandonment' mission directly from your Littledata dashboard. Use the app to track progress as you test ideas to discover what works best for your site. And one final tip: don’t try to fix everything at once. Start with one of the tips above that’s most relevant to your current shopping funnel, and go - or should I say grow - from there! This is a guest post by Jack Vale, a UK-based freelance writer and ecommerce expert.

Add-to-cart (ATC) rate is a great indicator of your ability to turn visitors into buyers. When people click the Add To Cart (aka 'Add To Basket') button they are showing real intent to purchase. [tip]Learn how to increase your Add to Cart rate[/tip] There are lots of different things that influence this metric, from user experience factors to product selection, pricing, and merchandising. What is a good Add To Cart rate? As ever there tends to be quite a lot of variation from sector to sector. Some ecommerce stores might be more prone to window shopping, whereas others are geared up for impulse purchases. For example, home furnishings sites have an average add-to-cart rate of less than 3%, whereas beauty sites achieve almost 7%. The average for ecommerce in general hovers around the 4% mark, so if your site is wildly below that number then this is an area worth spending some time on. After all, increasing add-to-cart rate is almost certain to increase sales. I've analysed data from Littledata's ecommerce benchmarks, which tracks more than 12,000 ecommerce sites. The infographic below highlights Add To Cart performance data for a number of sectors. How does your site compare? Download our Add To Cart rate infographic Are you on track to beat the benchmark this year? If you don't see your sector listed above – or even if you do – try Littledata free for 30 days for full access to ecommerce benchmarking data in over 150 sectors.  We have dashboards for monitoring your key metrics, as well as real-time benchmarking and data audits to optimise your store performance.