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.

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 I recommend looking instead at longer-term benchmarks. Here's how it all breaks down. Littledata's ecommerce benchmark data now contains indicators from over 12,000 sites, making it an ideal place to get a realistic view of Black Friday stats. Last year we found that the impact on Black Friday and Cyber Monday was larger in 2017 than in 2016. Using that same data set of 440 high-traffic sites, I dove into the numbers to see how this affected other metrics. Metrics to avoid I think that overall ecommerce conversion rate is a bad metric to track. From the leading ecommerce websites we surveyed, the median increase was 30% during the BFCM event last year...but nearly a third of the stores saw their conversion rate dip as the extra traffic didn’t purchase, with this group seeing a median 26% drop. Some stores do extremely well with deals: four sites from our survey had more than a 15-fold increase in ecommerce conversion rate during BFCM, and nearly a quarter saw more than double the conversion rate over the period. But the real question is: will tracking conversion rate hour-by-hour help you improve it? What could you possibly change within in day? Another misleading metric is average time on site. You may be looking for signs that the the extra traffic on the holiday weekend is engaging, but this is not the one to watch. The time on site for visitors who only see one page will be zero, which will mask any real increase from engaged visitors. Where to focus instead Now, do you know what good performance on funnel conversion metrics would look like for your sector? If not, have a look at Littledata’s industry benchmarks which now cover over 500 global sectors. Littledata’s benchmarks also include historic charts to show you how metrics such as add-to-cart rate vary for the average retailer in your sector month by month. Next try the ‘speed’ performance page to see how fast a user would expect a site in your sector to be. If you see site speed (as measured in Google Analytics) drop below average during Black Friday trading it’s time to pick up the phone to your web host or web operations team. Then, are you tracking return on adverting spend for extra Facebook Ads you're running during the quarter? Ad costs will spike during the peak trading period, and you make not be getting the same volume of traffic conversion into sales. Here are some quick pointers. Facebook Ads. Littledata’s Facebook Ads connection will ensure accurate data, with a dedicated Facebook report pack for automated insights. Shopify. If you're running your site on the Shopify platform, read up on which metrics are most important for Shopify stores and check out Shopify's BFCM Toolbox for seasonal online marketing. Missions. Use Missions in the Littledata app to make permanent improvements to your user experience. BFCM may be over before you can make the changes, but customers will keep buying the rest of the year. For example, can you increase add-to-cart rate with tips such as highlighting faster selling items or recommending an alternative to out-of-stock products? So focus on some clearer metrics and I hope Black Friday brings you every success!

We recently flagged up 15 proven techniques to help you increase average order value, which is one of the fastest ways of growing ecommerce revenue. Many of Littledata's customers use the Shopify platform, so I thought I'd take a look in the app store to see what's available to help implement some of these techniques. I found dozens of great apps that can be used to quickly test some of our ideas. In doing so you might just increase conversion rates and other key metrics too. Below are 15 of the best ones - click on the screenshots to check them out in more detail. Many of these apps are paid-for, though normally offer free trials, and in any case the monthly cost is low. You should make back your investment and then some. I've focused on the apps that have high review scores. By installing these apps and launching Littledata's optimisation missions you'll be able to quickly improve ecommerce performance. Do let us know how you get on! CartHook CartHook's app allows you to create a customisable one-page checkout, which helps to simplify the user experience and can improve conversion rates. It also allows you to upsell, by showing customers relevant products after they have completed their initial purchase. CartHook also provides you with the option of showing customers a final thank you page. You can also use the app to build custom funnels for each product. Neat. Littledata integrates seamlessly with CartHook's one page checkout so you can track every part of the ecommerce sales flow. Enquire This app allows you to show customers post-purchase surveys, to help gain valuable insight into what made them buy. You can ask customers all kinds of questions. The default is 'How did you hear about us?', but other questions can help you profile your customers, to gather feedback, testimonials, reviews, or to segment email lists. Use the survey data to refine your marketing efforts, in order to attract the right kind of buyers. Plus, I've heard through the grapevine that a Littledata - Enquire integration is coming soon. Stay tuned! Cross Sell As you might have already gathered, this is a comprehensive cross-selling app. Persuading customers to add more products to their cart is a proven way of increasing average order value. With Cross Sell, you simply hand-pick the products you want to attempt to cross-sell with each item. It comes with the “Smart Cart” feature which recommends cross-sells based on the last product that the user added to their cart. The app will also cover you when the ones you select are out of stock, by showing default products. Upsell Bundled Products Here's another app that does what it says on the tin. Use it to create product bundles. Bundling reduces cognitive load and can be incredibly persuasive, especially when discounts are on offer. This app allows you to package up related products so that customers can buy them with one click. You can create unlimited bundles with the same product, to test different ideas. Discounts can be applied as a set price or a percentage (we advise that you do both, but definitely the former). Countdown Cart This is a widely used countdown app, which has been very well rated. It lets you choose from a wide range of themes to suit your store. The app is free, lightweight and installs very quickly. Features include a classic countdown timer, which puts pressure on the shopper to purchase before the clock hits zero. It also makes use of real-time social proof by show shoppers how many people are viewing items, and how many times something has been sold. This can increase the motivation to buy. Enforcing principles of scarcity can lead to an uplift in conversion rates and AOV. Discounted Pricing You can generate more sales by offering discounted pricing at different thresholds. This app allows you to offer shoppers volume discounts, which is a proven technique to increase order values. Show shoppers how bulk buying becomes more cost efficient, and they might just add more items to their cart to qualify for the bigger discounts. The app allows these discount tables to be visible on all devices, and is quick to set up. AfterShip Returns Center Reduce friction between your shoppers and your store by allowing free returns. This helps to encourage higher spending by creating a ‘risk-free’ purchase experience. With the app, customers are able to submit return requests in a few clicks. The best thing is that you don't necessarily need to lose the spend, as you have the option of adding credits to a customer's account (as well as issuing a refund back to their bank account). Wishlist Plus Wishlist Plus allows users to add products to a wishlist without needing to be logged in. It also syncs wishlists across devices. These features help to remove purchase barriers, and when checking out a shopper may be tempted to add products that are sitting in their wishlist, which will increase order value. The app has gained a 4.9 rating on the Shopify App store, and the reviews reference the "excellent customer service" provided by the developers. Rewardify Rewardify allows you to add credit to your customer’s account when they complete certain tasks such as meeting a minimum spend, selecting a specific shipping option or buying certain items. All great ways to increase AOV. Gift Cards, Loyalty & Rewards You can use this app to offer deals such as a free $10 gift card with the purchase of a $100 gift card, or selling $100 cards for $85. Show these kinds of offers to the right people at the right time and you might just increase AOV. The app also allows you to send gift cards to other people, and to use store credit as an upsell tool. Product Reviews Product Reviews is a simple app that provides a platform for social proof - a key psychological phenomenon to keep in mind when trying to increase AOV. It sends review scores to Google to enhance your listings, and you can also determine which reviews to show and hide. Gift Wrap Plus Many shoppers are happy to pay a few extra pounds to have their products gift-wrapped before they arrive. Installing this app allows you to offer that option, and it is one which can definitely increase your AOV. The app allows for extras such as gift messages, and lets you see your best performing gift-wrap styles. Ultimate Sales Boost Here's another app that focused on urgency and scarcity to boost conversion rates and average order value. It has plenty of features to help you improve merchandising, calls to action, and highlight social proof, such as low stock warnings and 'recently sold' alerts. The app is easy to use and configure, which helps to explain its 4.9 star rating. Smart Shipping Bar Use this to promote shipping offers via a bar at the top of the page, which updates as items are added to the cart. It will show customers when they qualify for free shipping. This is excellent for any store that offers free shipping when a minimum order amount has been reached, such as $50. And that's a proven way to increase AOV. Littledata Before optimising your store you must make sure that you have accurate data, in order to measure the results. We've found that almost nine out of ten Shopify stores have a broken analytics setup, so the chances are that you'll need to make some tweaks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE4nzZycVLE#action=share The Littledata Shopify app fixes your tracking automatically. It also provides benchmarks against over 12,000 ecommerce sites, so you can compare your own performance vs your peers, and includes a suite of AI-based reporting. What should you do with all that data? Littledata's new Missions feature recommends specific ideas to help you improve the crucial ecommerce metrics such as AOV, add to cart rate, product list CTR, checkout completion, and conversion rates. Missions provide step-by-step instructions for proven ways to optimise sales and conversions. Work your way through the missions and get ahead of the pack!