Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | Conversion Optimization (6)

It’s no secret that offering Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals can help you drive online store sales like crazy.

In fact, research shows that 30% of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas.

Why is that the case?

Because the limited-time discounts around the holidays create urgency.

Shoppers get their wallets out, eager to pounce on the best deal they can find. They feel like they can’t wait around to take action. If they do wait around, they’ll miss out.

Now, think about[...]

Cart abandonment plagues online stores of every industry, every day. Whether you’re the owner of a niche crafts shop or a popular, growing brand, you’re losing sales.

According to industry research, today’s average online shopping cart abandonment rate is an astonishing 68.63%. That means you’re losing nearly seventy out of every one hundred sales to abandoned shoppers, and more importantly, that your revenue is potentially only a fraction of what it could be.

Sometimes, when a customer is about to abandon their purchase, it won't take much to make them change their mind. If only you could catch them at that exact moment, before they close the tab and leave the page.

You could send them a quick offer to bring them back from the edge — say, 20% off, or free shipping, and then they'd smile and complete their purchase and you'd make a sale, rather than having yet another abandoned cart. The key is catching them at the right moment, and 3dcart introduced

Millions of retailers experience a huge number of lost sales every year due to cart abandonment – a whopping $18 billion, to be precise. That’s because 67.89% of all shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes a sale. If you’re an online merchant, you’re either knowingly or unknowingly feeling the effects of this worrisome statistic.

Yet despite the horror of this seemingly inescapable nightmare, all hope isn’t lost. While it may not be possible to prevent all instances of cart[...]

If you're a Bigcommerce store owner looking to switch ecommerce platforms after the recent hike to monthly prices, odds are you're sweating over the prospect of potentially losing years of hard work.

Your products, your customers, your web design: what's going to happen to your online store?

A digital receipt, delivered straight to your customer’s inbox, is a powerful marketing channel that many businesses fail to fully utilize. Email receipts are an easy way for small and large businesses to establish powerful call-to-actions and promote free, revenue-generating advertising.

While the primary purpose of an email receipt should always be functional and never marketing-oriented, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to incorporate tactics that will increase revenue. An excellent email[...]

For online retailers, increasing your Average Order Value (AOV) can be quite the tedious, challenging affair, especially when your sales depend on specific top-selling products. If you’re aiming to increase your average order value without increasing product prices, check out the following easy to implement tactics that will bump up your AOV while simultaneously promoting a positive shopping experience.

In marketing, the focus of many businesses is exclusively on attracting new customers. It’s an appealing and exciting route that many merchants believe will lead to higher sales and profits. While true, customer retention is just as critical to long-term success, and is actually much cheaper than acquiring new customers. In fact, the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 to 10 ten times more expensive than retaining an existing one! Unless you’re a new business just starting out, your existing[...]

Popups have earned themselves a bad reputation over the years. No doubt at some point or another you’ve earnestly sought the X of one of these intrusive windows. Their ill-timing presence often leads to browsing and shopping disruptions, provoking annoyance in the most patient of web surfers.

When you see a book on the shelf or a friend gives you one as a gift, does it ever occur to you that this is some sort of marketing ploy? For most, if not all--- hardly.

Well, it's for this reason that a lot of online marketing experts agree that ebooks actually make wonderful promotional tools for ecommerce. After all, they're basically designed to inform or entertain, not sell anything. This is why you ought to consider coming up with your own ebooks in order to market your business[...]

The eCommerce marketplace is a large and ever-growing swath that sees thousands of new entrants each day. According to Statista.com, between the years 2002-2013, eCommerce sales ballooned from just $72 billion to a staggering $322 billion per year. They are estimated to increase exponentially in the short years that lie ahead, as mobile shopping truly takes force. Anyone with motivation, a computer, an internet connection and something to sell can hop on the eCommerce bandwagon and become a[...]

On average, 75% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts and don't push through with their purchase. If you've been ignoring these potential buyers, you're missing out on a lot of business. 

If you’re an online store owner who fails to showcase amazing photographs of your inventory, then you mind as well take the money out of your wallet and set it ablaze.

If you want to thrive in the eCommerce Ocean, then I highly suggest you get behind the following tips for product photo optimization. Choose to ignore them and do so at your own peril.

For many of us, summertime is filled with sun-soaked days spent away from our computers. And while online consumers are reaching for golf clubs and tanning lotion instead of keyboards, e-store owners are experiencing a sharp dip in sales.

Auto-delivery (otherwise known as automatic delivery or automatic shipping) is becoming increasingly popular with online retail stores that are looking to generate more money from individual customers. Not only do auto-delivery programs help to build a brand’s customer base, but because it streamlines shipping, auto-delivery makes businesses more effective — and more profitable.