Building A User-Centric E-commerce Strategy

A client came to us frustrated. They had thousands of website visitors per day, yet their sales were flat. No matter how much they spent on ads or SEO, the revenue just wasn’t growing. The problem? Traffic isn’t the goal - conversions are. After diving into their analytics, we found several hidden conversion killers: A complicated checkout process – Too many steps and unnecessary fields were causing visitors to abandon their carts. Lack of trust signals – Customer reviews missing on cart page, unclear shipping and return policies, and missing security badges made potential buyers hesitate. Slow site speeds – A few-second delay was enough to make mobile users bounce before even seeing a product page. Weak calls to action – Generic "Buy Now" buttons weren’t compelling enough to drive action. Instead of just driving more traffic, we optimized their Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy: ✔ Simplified the checkout process - fewer clicks, faster transactions. ✔ Improved customer testimonials and trust badges for credibility. ✔ Improved page load speeds, cutting bounce rates by 30%. ✔ Revamped CTAs with urgency and clear value propositions. The result? A 28% increase in sales - without spending a dollar more on traffic. More visitors don’t mean more revenue. Better user experience and conversion-focused strategies do. Does your ecommerce site have a traffic problem - or a conversion problem? #EcommerceGrowth #CRO #DigitalMarketing #ConversionOptimization #WebsiteOptimization #AbsoluteWeb

Testing user outcomes can reveal what users actually need. A key part of user-centered design is comparing what users want to do (needs) with what they actually experience (outcomes). When we talk about user needs, we’re often describing problems or gaps in their experience. Teams want to address these needs, but I often see them jump ahead and assume their design will automatically lead to better outcomes. Sometimes this is fine. However, it’s often where things go off track. Using intuition is part of design, but there’s a difference between imagining an ideal experience and actually testing whether it works. Here’s a simple way to think about it: USER NEED = Intention This is what users are trying to do. It reflects their goals, motivations or problems they want to solve. USER OUTCOME = Reality This is what users experience after using your product. It includes emotions, behaviors, and results. It may not directly address the user's need. Too often, teams assume that trying to create something that will help users will lead to a good outcome. But in reality: → The product might solve the wrong problem → Users may struggle to complete their task → The experience may lead to frustration or confusion If your work is mostly based on assumptions, here’s how to bring it back to the user need if you're faced with starting with outcomes the business has assigned: 1. Start with assumptions grounded in quick user research 2. Run small tests. We use Helio to collect fast feedback 3. Compare the results to the original need. Did users accomplish what they set out to do? UX metrics help you see where what users need doesn't match what they actually experience. Attitudinal metrics like satisfaction, expectations, usefulness, and engagement can point out the biggest gaps so you can focus on what matters to users. It's great to start with user needs, but the reality is that most teams begin with an idea of the outcome they want to achieve. That’s okay. As long as you keep checking in with users and adjusting based on the feedback you collect. #productdesign #uxmetrics #productdiscovery #uxresearch

Friday honesty: Customer-centricity is a lot harder to maintain than it seems. Even for those of us in Customer Success. The tendency is always to drift toward making our processes and focus company-centric rather than customer-centric. Don't believe me? Just look at one example of this: Customer Journeys. Many teams say that they have a defined Customer Journey. But rather than actually being oriented around the customer, for many the journey map is a list of activities from the company's perspective that are built around milestones the company cares about (contract signature, go-live, renewal, etc). I know about this, because I've been guilty of it in the past myself. I confuse my activity list with a customer journey and wonder why customers aren't as successful as they'd like. While important, that isn't a customer journey. It's an activity list. It's a rut none of us mean to fall into, but it's the natural drift because we live and breathe our own organization. So what do you do about it? How can you adopt a more customer-centric mindset in this area? TRY THIS APPROACH INSTEAD: 1. List out the stages your customers' business goes through at each phase of their experience with your product. Use these to categorize journey stage, rather than your contract lifecycle. 2. For each stage, list out what their experiences, expectations, and activities should be to get the results they want. Don't focus on listing what YOU do, but rather focus on listing what a customer does at each phase of their business with your product. List out the challenges they'd face, the business benefits they'd experience, the change management they'd have to go through, the usage they'd expect. Think bigger than your product here. 3. Then map what support a customer would need to actually accomplish these desired outcomes at each stage of the journey. Think education, change management enablement, training, etc. 4. Based on all of the above, you're finally ready to start identifying what your teams do to support the customer. ____________________________________________ Following a process like this helps build customer-centricity in 3 ways: 1. It causes customers to be the center of how you decide which activities are most important to focus on. 2. It empowers your team to become prescriptive about what customers should be doing for THEIR success. 3. It exposes what you don't know about your customers' business. And if you don't know something, just ask them. Don't make assumptions when you can instead talk to your customers directly. Avoid the company-centric drift, fight to maintain true customer-centricity however you can. This isn't just a nice to have in 2024. It's a business imperative that's important for any business to survive in this climate. But I want to hear from you! How do you guard your org from drifting to company-centricity? #SaaS #CustomerSuccess #Leadership #CustomerCentric

Ecommerce stores can learn a LOT from brick and mortar. 'Digital marketing' isn't really a thing anymore - it's just marketing. Software and the internet ate the world. The lines between physical and digital are blurring, if they still exist at all. And the best brands treat their ecommerce experience a lot like an IRL store. → Personalization: Just as a good retail salesperson in a physical store can help a first time shopper or remember a returning customer’s preferences, ecommerce platforms should leverage data to personalize the shopping experience. → Immersive experiences: Brick-and-mortar stores have the advantage of creating sensory-rich environments. Ecommerce stores can replicate this by investing in high-quality content, virtual try-ons and 360-degree product views. There used to be an excuse that your product is 'difficult to sell online', but it's been busted. If people buy sunglasses, mattresses, and cars online - then you can definitely find a way to make your product more immersive. → Trustworthy customer service: For many shoppers, a helpful store assistant can make or break a sale. Ecommerce stores should focus on excellent customer service through live chat, and responsive customer support that goes the extra mile. → Leverage Data for continuous improvement: Physical stores often use foot traffic and sales data to optimize store layouts and merchandise. Ecommerce stores should use website analytics to understand customer behavior, optimize the sales funnel, and refine the user journey. It’s a no-brainer for brands to gather heat maps and customer feedback to unlock valuable insights into improving the online shopping experience. → Omnichannel: Successful brands integrate their online, offline, and marketplace channels to create a cohesive shopping experience. Features like BOPIS, Buy with Prime, and seamless returns across channels can enhance customer convenience and satisfaction. → Community engagement: Brick-and-mortar stores often serve as community hubs, hosting events and fostering a sense of belonging. Ecommerce brands should build communities with their audience so customers can engage with each other, as well as with the brand directly. → Innovative tech stack: IRL stores are investing heavily into technology, from POS to loyalty and beyond. Your ecommerce experience should feel fresh, easy, and exciting if you’re going to stand out in a sea of competitors. Ensuring that promotions, loyalty programs, and customer data are unified across channels strengthens brand consistency. Anything I'm missing?

Been working with a prominent surf brand this year to reset their digital playbook. Here's 3 things we've seen work really well which has resulted in a 55% increase in revenue YTD vs. last year. 1. Traffic x Conversion Rate x AOV = Revenue This can't be overstated enough. If your site conversion rate is below 1.5% you have to invest in improving it. A good converting website is usually not sexy, and that's ok (see no. 3 below for more on this). Start with the site experience and look at it on mobile through the lens of a new customer. Remove points of friction, quickly answer customer questions, and make getting to checkout easy. Focus first on home page, collection page, PDP, navigation, and cart/checkout. Then move to customer service pages, return/exchange process, etc. It sounds trivial, but you'll be amazed at how easily you can gain a quick .25% in conversion rate with minimal effort. 2. Performance Max Google's Performance Max is loathed by many as a black box (which it is) and therefore untrustworthy, but we've found two key ways to make it work incredibly successfully: Product feed optimization and setting focus on new customer acquisition. By leveraging all the product data points available from Shopify, you can juice a product feed to make Google very happy and reward you with high-performing shopping ads. It's a bit of effort up front, but once complete starts to pay dividends. There's also a somewhat hidden setting to turn on new customer acquisition focus. This can help avoid save on ad costs from people who may have purchased anyways and just clicked the first ad they saw. Before enabling this, provide the account with a list of current customers to exclude (use Klaviyo's integration to keep the list up to date in realtime). Last month we turned it on for one client and we saw Google Ads conversions from new customers increase 62% vs. prior month. 3. Premium Photography Such an important yet often overlooked component to a winning strategy is high quality product imagery. Going back to site UX - if your product photography is not high quality, does a good job showing the detail of the product, or on-model, it will take a toll on conversion rate, especially if you have a high AOV. A website doesn't need to be custom or flashy if the photography is high quality. You can grow a brand online to $20m+ annually with a Shopify theme like Prestige and let the product photography do the heavy lifting. With a channel like Meta ads, there's no greater lever you can pull than testing creatives. Lately we've been seeing that tight crops on product features and text overlay has been working well, but we're always testing and refining. Use Advantage Plus campaigns to test lots of creative types at once to find what works, then double down on that.