Customer retention at its simplest is the ability of a business to keep its customer base loyal. It’s also a vitally important metric — one that businesses rigorously track to see if their customers rebuy the same products, resubscribe to the same services, or continue to engage with their brand one way or another. But, keeping current customers happy is not easy — just ask an ecommerce store owner! Businesses lose significant revenue every year when customers jump ship to competitors. Why customer retention is crucial A good customer retention strategy helps a business create a solid plan for increasing customer value and nurtures the sales funnel. Focusing on customer retention can yield many benefits. Here are just a handful: Bigger growth potential - you need customers engaged and interested in your offerings to grow your business, including new products and services. Lower customer acquisition cost - always remember it costs more to acquire a new customer than to keep your current customers happy and buying. Higher customer lifetime value - making relentless efforts to retain customers creates an emotional bond that strengthens the buying relationship, which will result in a more engaged customer base. The “wow” factor - a satisfying customer experience can help boost word-of-mouth marketing, since 87% of customers share their good experiences with others. Of course, you need a well-planned, long-view strategy to nurture your customers and build strong relationships that achieve these benefits. Below are 11 highly effective strategies to help you build a customer retention plan that will boost loyalty and drive revenue. 1. Educate customers about your business One of the best things about ecommerce is that your customers’ relationship with your business is almost completely online. So, they’ll likely be more receptive to hearing about your products and services via online promotion. Not every customer, particularly first-time buyers, will be aware of what your business is all about. Likewise, their loyalty will depend on how much they know about — and trust — your brand and products. Your website, social media pages, and ecommerce store should have accessible, high-quality content that: Explains how your products are used Demonstrates their benefits Answers customers’ frequently asked questions For example, this online mannequin seller went to great lengths in making sure their website is packed with detailed information, including product specifications, reviews, a detailed company history, shipping information, their lowest prices guarantee, bestseller lists, and FAQs. All their current promotions are displayed strategically, and they even have a “Why Buy From Us” page. To excel at educating new customers, follow these basics: Keep it simple by writing your product information so it’s easy to understand. Use unique strategies for your buyer personas which vary in age, preferences, and buying behavior. Start blogging to provide education and value to customers while also explaining your products and services. Hold webinars to answer buyer questions, demonstrate how your services work, and gather user feedback to make improvements. 2. Optimize your website for user experience Now that you’ve taken steps to boost your content and educate your customers, it’s time to enhance their user experience. This goes beyond basic information — it’s all about making your online store user-friendly, easy to navigate, and memorable, which will win customer loyalty. Using one of the top ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify or BigCommerce, is the best way to achieve this. They’re designed for flexibility and offer the plugins you need to optimize your online store. To optimize your store even further, you could enlist the help of expert User Exerience (UX) and User Interface (UI) designers to shape specific elements of your website and improve its navigation. A UX designer is responsible for making sure your website will function the way it should, while a UI designer designs the appearance of your website. A great user interface and user experience both have a huge impact on any visitor’s buying decision. Just how big, you ask? Consider this: It only takes about 0.05 seconds for visitors to form an opinion about your website (and whether they’ll stay or leave) 88% of visitors are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience 75% of online shoppers admit to making judgments on the credibility of a business based on its website design The key to making a strong first impression is to always optimize, optimize, optimize. Here are a few extra things you can do to make sure your new and current customers will have a great experience navigating your site: Minimize pop-ups by only using exit pop-ups to reduce cart abandonment rate. Simplify your check-out process (this is critical!) Reduce the steps customers need to take before making a purchase (i.e. use shorter fill-out forms and minimize clicks for completing transactions.) Ensure your site loads in five seconds or less. Optimize your site design for mobile devices, as most traffic comes from them. Highlight pieces of content that are dynamic and of high quality. 3. Build a strong social media strategy According to a data collected by Statista, almost 92% of US marketers in large companies use social media for marketing purposes. These big companies spend a huge chunk of their marketing budget on paid social media ads. Source: Oberlo Facebook and YouTube are the two most popular social media platforms in the world right now. On just these two alone, you can share new products and establish a brand culture by engaging in conversations with potential customers. Whether you’re working with a social media marketing agency or running campaigns yourself, keep these strategies in mind to harness the full power of social media: Showcase your personality. Don’t just post content for the sake of it. Build a brand persona that makes it easier for potential customers to remember and recognize you. Make use of visuals. Captivate your audience by creating engaging videos, images and infographics. Use hashtags, mentions, and direct comments to monitor your customers. Hashtags serve as “identifiers” associated with your ecommerce store. The ultimate goal is to make your unique hashtags as popular as the brand itself. Form collaborations. Team up with a social media influencer your audience loves or another brand from your industry that isn’t your competitor. Collaborations can expose your store to new audiences and will also strengthen your credibility with loyal customers. Share content created by your customers. Positive feedback from your satisfied customers acts as social proof for potential buyers. Encourage your happy customers to share pictures and videos featuring your products to their social media, tagging your brand. Wild, a sustainable deodorant maker in the United Kingdom, regularly shares their customers’ Instagram photos featuring the product. This is a great example of user-generated content marketing. Just make sure you’re not violating any social media privacy policies. To be on the safe side, always let the account owner know you’re using their content. 4. Provide multiple delivery options Customers always love more options and convenience — especially when it comes to delivery. Many ecommerce stores provide same-day or expedited shipping options for customers who want to receive their orders as soon as possible. For example, this online lingerie store offers free shipping for orders over $80. That’s pretty common, right? However, they also offer free international shipping on orders over $150, as well as same-day shipping if you place your order before 4 PM EST (not including holidays). They even have a discreet shipping option that makes the package safe to ship to home or work. Making these options available will make your customers feel like they’re truly cared for. You can also consider expanding options for returns and payments, as well. 5. Incentivize customer referrals Putting together a customer referral program brings two benefits with one action; it attracts potential customers and rewards your current customers. In terms of sales potential, referral programs can be significantly more valuable than other strategies. And they’re not that expensive, either! In fact, 54% of businesses say it costs less than other marketing channels. Take for example this amazing customer referral program by self-showing rental company Showmojo. This is how it works: They give their customers a referral link When a new user signs up with that link, they immediately save $50 The customer who originally referred them also gets a $50 credit if the referral stays with ShowMojo for 45 days The customer gets another $50 credit if the referral stays with ShowMojo for 145 days Customers can repeat this referral process as many times as they’d like Source: ShowMojo By rewarding both a current and new referral customer, you build a stronger bond with both, thus increasing loyalty. 6. Use targeted and personal marketing campaigns Personalization has always been one of the strongest marketing tactics, and with good reason — the effects of putting out a more personalized message are long-term. In fact, 70% of consumers say a company’s understanding of their personal needs influences their loyalty. So, simply using your customer’s name or making that extra effort to collect more personal information can make your advertising copy, push notifications, or email campaigns more effective. Below are simple yet powerful examples of personalized marketing you can try to boost customer retention: Display personalized offers to returning visitors Change store navigation based on visitors’ preferences Send personalized emails or notifications based on customers’ behavior Sort recent products by level of interest Recommend product categories based on browsing behavior Remind shoppers of recent engagements Suggest complementary products or show product recommendations 7. Offer excellent customer support Studies have shown that only 1 out of 26 ecommerce customers will complain if they’ve received bad customer service. The other 25 will most likely just leave without saying anything. Source: SuperOffice So, if you want to acquire and retain customers, ensure you offer them the stellar support they need. What are some of the ways to improve your customer support? Build a customer care team for inquiries, complaints, and clarification. Give customers an easy way to reach you, or try using a contact center. Streamline your order fulfillment processes to reduce common problems. Actively listen to customers so you can identify issues and create a solution. 8. Start a customer loyalty program Starting a customer loyalty or reward program is as straightforward as customer retention gets. Through cashback, discounts, and other perks, you’re incentivizing customers to do business with you. Some of the effective loyalty programs that you can include in your customer retention strategy are: Exclusive deals to loyal customers Exclusive lifetime membership Coupons Cash-back offers Welcome gifts to new shoppers Rewards points for redeemable products or perks When launching a loyalty program, make sure to only adopt personalized programs that make the customer appreciate your brand. 9. Don’t just engage for the sake of it Engaging with customers becomes more real to them if you show the desire for genuine interaction. Effective communication is the hallmark of brand loyalty. Communication can be encouraged by sending text messages, surveys, and social media invites to your customers. You should also provide information on other ways they can reach out to you, but make sure you’re willing to answer those messages. Place social media icons and integrate a chatbot on your store website to make this process easier. 10. Learn more about your most loyal customers To understand more about loyal customers’ average spend and frequency of store visits, most marketers use the Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM) model. The metric establishes consumer behavior using those three quantitative measures to determine how customers behave when navigating through a store. Using the RFM model, you can rank a customer on a scale of 1-5. The most valuable customer is the one with the highest score in each category. 11. Use a subscription model Following a subscription (or recurring revenue) model is becoming increasingly popular in many industries, not just ecommerce. Source: Subscribed Institute Subscription models can come in many forms, and have gained traction across a wave of industries, from coffee to fashion and beauty. If you are going to commit to a subscription model, you should prepare to track key touchpoints of your website in a different way so that you maximize the value from your most important subscription metrics. Conclusion Retaining your customers boils down to one crucial goal: making your business the obvious choice for customers over anyone else. That means you should always be willing to try new approaches — as long as they help keep your existing customers coming back. Remember, it’s easier to make current customers happy than to look for new ones. What are the steps you’ve taken to make sure your customers are loyal to you? This is a guest post from Burkhard Berger, founder of Novum. You can follow him on his journey from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors on novumhq.com. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.

We've spent a lot of time on the blog lately focusing on Littledata's Plus plans made for larger DTC brands, including headless setups. But what about those merchants who are not quite there yet, but poised for rapid growth? You guessed it, there's a plan for that. Littledata's new Grow plan is now available for Shopify stores sending data to Segment or Google Analytics. It comes with some solid perks, including priority support and the ability to track up to three country stores for one low price. How do you know if it's the right plan for your Shopify brand? As a modern data platform focused solely on ecommerce, Littledata tracks over 5 million orders per month for ecommerce brands around the world. So you might say we've seen it all. But there's no one-size-fits-all solution. There are a few different things to consider before choosing a modern data platform, and it's important to pick the right plan on that platform to make sure you have the support you need without any hidden fees or surcharges. Grow isn't designed for account management or analytics training. Those are only available on Littledata Plus. But it is designed to unlock the full potential of our data pipeline, at a lower cost. The ideal Grow plan user has a solid customer base, a proven product mix, and is ready for the next phase of growth. You are probably a good fit for Grow if: You have identified accurate data as a KPI or OKR (ie. have a company initiative to take data seriously, whether that came from identifying a Shopify/GA mismatch or a more general drive to make data-driven decisions this year)You have an in-house analyst or ecommerce manager who can make use of the data we sendYou are doing 7-10k orders per month (the Grow plan currently supports anywhere from 6-12k monthly orders, and in our experience 10k is the "sweet spot", an inflection point for DTC success)Are prepared (or preparing...) for rapid growth! Maybe you're planning a global expansion or getting ready to launch a long-awaited subscription product. Maybe you're just doubling down on marketing spend, but aren't yet sure how to track and understand your customer lifetime value. Grow plans are here to help you get accurate data so you can make better decisions, eliminate wasted spend, and double down on the ecommerce marketing that's working best. (How do you know what's working best? That's why we built Littledata). Learn more about Littledata pricing and find the plan that's right for you.

This week, we're continuing our Q&A segment: Lunch with Littledata! We recently caught up with Chase Clymer, Co-founder of Electric Eye, to chat about the Shopify world, headless commerce, decision-making during COVID, Shopify analytics, and more. Chase also leads the charge at Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast where he provides store owners with honest, actionable advice to grow their business. A number of Electric Eye's clients use our Shopify app for Google Analytics, and as a matter of fact,we recently partnered with Honest Ecommerce to assemble a list of the 8 best apps to help you scale in 2020, whether you run on Shopify or Shopify Plus. Let's dive right in! Q: How did you start Electric Eye? We borrowed the name from a Judas Priest song when clients got confused who to send money to for projects. We started the way most agencies start -- by complete accident. My partner Shawn and I ended up with a handful of freelance ecommerce clients, all on Shopify. We were tackling improvements and marketing and eventually it evolved into a business. That was about 5 years ago. We still have the same core values, with a few extra now. We started because we wanted to run a business that made us happy and truly helped people.  Q: Has your offering changed during the pandemic? Our focus has been on ecommerce and the pandemic has really highlighted the importance of ecommerce, so we've been a bit busier lately. Our offer has not changed at all: we increase sales for ecommerce brands. We create Shopify-powered sales machines with strategic design, development and marketing decisions. We have been a little more friendly when it comes to terms for our clients, as some of them need to make investments now to pay off later.  Q: Is headless ecommerce just a passing fad? That's a great question. I don't think headless ecommerce is a fad. I've been learning all about it lately from our Lead Developer. It has its place, but like everything in technology, it's just a tool. No tool will fix underlying issues. Using all the buzzwords on your store build won't make your product not suck or fix your marketing. Focus energy there.  Using all the buzzwords on your store build won't make your product not suck or fix your marketing. Focus energy there.  [tip]Did you know Littledata tracks headless Shopify setups in both Google Analytics and Segment?[/tip] Q: What's one episode you'd recommend for merchants who haven't yet heard your Honest Ecommerce podcast, and why? I'd probably recommend our most popular episode with Joe from Speedboostr where we talk about optimizing Shopify stores and automation. In this one, I feel like I've finally hit my stride and as someone who can actually host the podcast (haha).  Q: And one more just for good luck? Our second most popular episode is actually the first episode we ever recorded with Kurt Elster. We chat about 'revenue optimization' for Shopify stores -- and who doesn't want to make more money?  [tip]Check out Littledata's co-founder Ari Messer's chat with Chase in Honest Ecommerce episode #21[/tip] Q: Why are so many musicians interested in tech? I think it comes down to the DIY nature of most bands. You're so broke, you have to learn things just to get them done. I believe a lot of brands should do that too. Learn the basics about anything you're going to hire out so you can talk effectively about how your investment is going to create a positive ROI.  Q: When's the best time to hire a Shopify expert? After you've found product / market fit. Simply put, this means you're seeing real sales from actual customers. This would be a good sign you've got an actual business. Nobody is going to build a business for you. It takes hard work, and you've got to do that work, or you're not going to get any results.  Q: How important are analytics to your clients? What tools do they use?  Analytics are extremely important and I could rant all day about certain ones in certain places, but in short, we try and focus on three main KPIs: Conversion rate Average order value (AOV) Traffic These three numbers run an ecommerce business. I've got a video on YouTube where I go more in-depth about it. Improving those metrics is where you should focus your time and energy. Shout out to lifetime value (LTV / CLV) as well, but that's getting a bit more complex haha.  [tip]Selling by subscription? Here's how you can calculate LTV in Google Analytics for your Shopify subscription store[/tip] As far as tools go, Google Analytics is an amazing tool. It's free and more robust than almost anything else on the market. It's just a bit overwhelming to set up and use correctly. We also pull a lot of numbers straight from native applications or advertising solutions, such as Klaviyo and Facebook Advertising.    Quick links Littledata's partner program for Shopify Plus agencies and tech partners Headless Shopify tracking with Littledata Import Facebook Ad Costs to Google Analytics for complete marketing data Resources for COVID-19 and ecommerce

What are you doing on 15 July? Asking us Shopify questions, that's what! Join Littledata, CartHook and Electric Eye for a Shopify expert roundtable. This summer has seen virtual events galore for the Shopify world, and we really like the AMA (Ask Me Anything) format. So Littledata is excited to join our friends at CartHook and Electric Eye for a virtual Shopify meetup on July 15. It will be a Shopify expert roundtable with the option to submit questions in advance, and plenty of time to chat. At this meetup, the panel of Shopify experts—consisting of Jordan Gal of CartHook, Chase Clymer of Electric Eye and Honest Ecommerce, and our own Ari Messer—will answer questions asked by attendees. At the request of past Meetup attendees, the event will be held during the workday (so yes you can practically be paid to attend!). [tip]Have a question for the panel? Submit your questions online here.[/tip] Event details When: 1:30pm ET on 15 July 2020 Where: Zoom! Who: Ari Messer (Littledata) and Jordan Gal (CartHook), hosted by Chase Clymer (Electric Eye) Sponsored by Shopify and Klarna You can register for the event here About Shopify Meetups Shopify Meetups are hosted by Shopify Experts to share knowledge with the growing Shopify enthusiast community. This also includes those who work predominantly on Shopify Plus. The meetings are free and open to everyone. Education and value is the focus of these Meetups, with each event featuring speakers and offering networking opportunities. Attendees range from seasoned ecommerce experts to budding entrepreneurs. What to ask Really any Shopify questions are fair game. Actually, scratch that, anything about ecommerce in general is good too! Interested in ecommerce trends during COVID? We've got the data. Wondering how to choose the most important metrics for your store? Ask away. Looking for more technical details about how Shopify, CartHook and Littledata work (together or apart)? Now's your chance to dive in deep. How to register You can register for the event here. It's a free online event and anyone can register. See you then!

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world appears to have changed dramatically. But remember: we're all in this together. With hundreds of Shopify apps and agencies around the world joining forces to make a difference, there are plenty of free resources available to help you stay afloat and try to get a handle on what to do -- and what comes next. In this post we look at where merchants can turn for help, share some resources for honest projections about the industry, and ask what the crisis really means for ecommerce, especially Shopify stores that rely on subscriptions for revenue. Ecommerce trends John Kenneth Galbraith once said that the function of economic forecasting is "to make astrology look respectable." In the wake of the chaos invoked in markets by the novel coronavirus, nobody knows for sure what will happen, but there are many in the ecommerce world who are looking closely at the data on a daily basis to figure out where the overall trends might be. At Littledata, we've been analyzing our own benchmark data in more detail (see our open access ecommerce benchmarks), broken down by industry sector. In our first round of analysis we found that around 30-35% of Shopify stores overall are actually seeing an uptick in revenue & order volume, especially in the Food & Drink and Health & Fitness sectors -- even if revenue is growing at a slower pace. This matches Klaviyo's findings below, where about a third of ecommerce sites were seeing higher revenue after the first month of stay-at-home orders and social distancing. Yet there are still a few unknowns, as well as a range of outliers in certain verticals, like seemingly random successes in online fashion during the crisis. That said, the major unknown in my view is still the supply chain timeline: When will we feel the first major "supply chain hit" across sectors? As brands adapt wholesale strategies to the new environment, will over-discounting or confused omnichannel strategies come back to bite them? On the flip side, can independent warehouses like Perishable Shipping Solutions (PSS), which focuses on food and beverage, and even Shopify's own fulfillment network, handle the major uplift in demand? Even if customers adapt to purchasing gift certificates, exclusive pre-orders and other "delayed" products, will restaurants and retailers be able to fulfill the demand once things open up again? And some labels are flexible. Pantry staples are growing in several categories and there's been a lot of industry chatter about "DTC pantry" products, especially among millennials and wealthy urbanites. But this is pretty broad. What defines a DTC pantry staple? Subscription coffee brands like Dripkit and Groundwork should obviously be there, but what about adult beverages like Kin? [subscribe heading="A note about Littledata and COVID-19" background_color="grey" button_text="Read More" button_link="https://www.littledata.io/app/covid19"] So maybe it's not actually about the sector at all. Brands that have paid attention to truly speaking directly to consumers (not just in their product marketing but literally in their messaging) -- along with those who have moved production and fulfillment closer to home -- are doing the best right now. Maybe they'll even give Amazon a run for its money. Key resources for ecommerce news during the pandemic Perhaps it's ironic that there actually is a lot of fake news out there. And that's not the worst of it. Everyone on Facebook is suddenly an armchair epidemiologist, and economists are changing their predictions every few minutes. So where can you turn for accurate ecommerce news? In addition to essential ecommerce newsletters like LeanLuxe and 2PM, these five online resources are absolutely essential for brands that want to stay on top of Shopify news and ecommerce trends during the crisis: Shopify's COVID-19 response page Shopify's COVID-19 response has been really amazing. They're offering $200 million in small business funding, a community forum, plus extended features like gift cards and localized delivery options. They have also set up a dedicated weekly email newsletter for case studies and insights relating to COVID-19 (You can sign up on the main page linked above). Klaviyo insights Klaviyo is a popular email marketing tool used by many of our enterprise customers. Through surveys and analysis, Klaviyo is "taking a daily pulse on what’s happening in the ecommerce world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic". The best part: you can submit your own info to take part in the analysis. See daily trends and how it all fits together. Modern Retail Modern Retail always does a stellar job keeping track of major trends, especially for larger DTC brands and innovators. And that reporting power continues through the crisis. They are paying attention to everything from warehouse conditions to high-ticket DTC exercise brands and the remarkable surge in alcohol delivery in the US (it's been a long time coming). Flow.io blog As we see an increasing number of merchants moving toward multi-currency sales, Flow Commerce has become an essential Littledata integration partner. Flow's blog is an excellent resource for anyone wondering how international payments, shipping and supply chains will be affected by COVID-19. WeMakeWebsites blog WeMakeWebsites isn't just one of our favorite agency partners, they're also insightful analysts of their own data as one of the best-known Shopify Plus agencies in London and New York City. On the WMW blog, they have been paying special attention to purpose-driven brands are differentiating themselves in the current climate. How we're adapting at Littledata At Littledata we've always been a remote-first culture, but now, like many, we've gone totally remote. We're dedicated to sharing as much of our knowledge as possible via this blog and our ebooks and other public resources, like our podcast interviews and help center. We've made some significant changes very quickly: Extended free trial from 14 to 30 days on all plans Free consultations for merchants on any platform Involvement in multiple agency relief programs for struggling brands and the Offline2On initiative, helping merchants get online fast Curating lists of brands giving back during coronavirus (is your brand doing something unique to help? Get in touch!) During the time of coronavirus, we're adapting our products, services and work culture, and supporting our customers and employees in every way possible. Find out more about Littledata's response to COVID-19.

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.

What an amazing year it's been already! With a focus on smart connections for ecommerce analytics, Littledata is scaling quickly. We recently closed a new funding round and are firing on all cylinders, ramping up our agile product development, marketing outreach, career opportunities and conference participation. Here's the latest news from Littledata HQ. Littledata closes new angel funding round We're excited to announce that Littledata has closed a new angel funding round. We will be using the new funding chiefly to enhance product development and inbound marketing. Funding is a tricky thing. Too many companies make big claims without building a viable product, or estimate markets that don't actually turn out to exist. We've taken the opposite approach, building automated tools that solve real problems faced by major ecommerce brands. After all, the fanciest reporting in the world is useless if you can't trust your data! In other words we've been conservative with our funding because we believe in establishing deep product-market fit, and this new round comes at a perfect time. I've long said that bootstrapping builds better startups. For a bit of Littledata history, check out CEO Edward Upton's appearance on the Ecommerce Fastlane podcast, and his take on six challenges in developing a Shopify integration. New connection: Shopify to Segment We worked closely with the Segment team to create the ultimate Segment connection for Shopify and Shopify Plus. Segment offers a powerful Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) that lets you clean, collect and control customer data. Our Shopify app for Segment users fixes tracking automatically, and lets you use Shopify as a Segment source. Benefits include: Server-side tracking for 100% accuracy Capture every customer touch point, including checkout steps, sales data and customer lifetime value (LTV) Push Shopify customer data to hundreds of Segment destinations Set up in minutes for any Shopify store We're hiring! With great things on the horizon, Littledata is seeking the best talent across departments in London, NYC and Romania. Check out our job postings for an up-to-date list. Our values include: Agile development New technologies Open collaboration Happy people We're looking for brilliant team players who are ready to build the next generation of analytics apps. Google Analytics knowledge is essential. Ecommerce experience is a plus! Conference season We all might live online these days, but our team culture values meetups IRL. If you're heading to Shopify Unite in Toronto this June, or ReCharge's ChargeX conference in LA in September, send us a note - we'd love to see you :) Should you go to that ecommerce conference? How to decide. There's never been a better time to join the Littledata family, whether as a partner, customer or team member. Growth has never been stronger - and customer happiness continues to be our most impressive statistic. Thank you for joining us on the journey to better data!