WEB4PRO Recognized as Ukraine’s Most Recommended eCommerce Developer

18 years ago WEB4PRO had a goal to provide great service quality for each customer. Now we are grateful to be an internationally recognized service provider. Here we are today, celebrating milestone after milestone. WEB4PRO set out to the eCommerce development world with one main objective, and that is to help brands and entrepreneurs reach success. It is with humble and grateful hearts that we announce that we were recognized as Ukraine’s most recommended eCommerce development company for 2021!

Established in 2003, we came together to help ease concerns that bug business owners. Filled with the finest project managers, designers, developers, and marketing experts, our team jive like a well-oiled machine, producing effective and powerful solutions for businesses.

Throughout our years in the industry, we’ve worked with countless clients from different industries and locations across the globe. Anywhere from consumer products, business services, education, medical, and real estate — we’ve elevated our clients to great heights.

This year, we’re absolutely honored to be recognized as part of The Manifest’s 2021 leading agencies!

To give you a better understanding, The Manifest is an independent business news platform dedicated to helping browsers navigate through the B2B space. The site is known for its incredible industry wisdom, blog-style content, and agency shortlists. This recognition from them means that WEB4PRO is among the top 15 most reviewed and recommended service providers in Ukraine!

Of course, we attribute this milestone to our clients who graciously review our services and constantly express their support to us. We are here today thanks to their trust, and for that, we are eternally grateful.

The road doesn’t end here though. We’re so excited to see what’s ahead for us. We can’t wait to unlock more achievements. Be part of that journey! Reach out to us and let’s connect.

WEB4PRO Is Recognized As Top Magento Developers by Clutch

WEB4PRO Receives an Award in Clutch’s Top Magento Designers & Developers

People nowadays don’t only look for companies that could help them grow. They also seek the ones that are client-oriented and responsible. Would you believe that there’s an e-commerce engineering agency that has those qualities? Well, WEB4PRO is glad to be among those.

Since 2003, our company has provided solutions and support in making our clients’ brands powerful and sustainable. We are an e-commerce advisor and reliable B2B partner. More than anything else, we help brands, merchants, digital agencies, and software development professionals produce effective practical solutions and customer-focused online stores. Every project we handle has one similar goal, and that is to share client’s values and help them realize the business ideas.

This year, Clutch, a B2B research firm specializing in ratings and reviews, awarded us as part of their top Magento designers and developers. We are very much honoured to receive this recognition from them. Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the clients who willingly shared their experience and their partnerships with us.

“WEB4PRO is a truly flexible team. They managed to adjust to our business requirements and show themselves as professional developers and as people who understand our business needs and could give valuable business advice and solutions. They met our budget and time-frames and preserved all features necessary for our business—a highly professional team of eCommerce engineers and managers.”

– Bashar Ballout, Business Development Manager, Lab Test & Tools Manufacturer

We’re happy to have received this award from Clutch and believe that trust is the core of a successful collaboration. So, don’t hesitate to reach out to us, and let’s co-create outstanding products together!

MADLADY: The Nordic Trendsetter

Swedish womenswear brand MADLADY has served trendsetters of the Nordic market since 2011. With its distinctive designs, materials and fits, the brand’s goal was to stand out from the competition and encourage women to develop their unique style. The wearer of their garments will instantly radiate confidence, as MADLADY serves a wide range of products that fit any lifestyle and mood. MADLADY is all about being unapologetically fun and effortless.

Brand’s unique selling point is the distinctive style of clothing that’s not sold anywhere else on the Nordic market. This womenswear brand is the perfect destination for fashion lovers between the ages of 18 and 30. Their advantage lies in having an unbeatable range of clothing that offers a wide variety for fashion-conscious individuals.

MADLADY is for trendsetters, women who dare to stand out from the crowd. The visual representation and brand positioning create a coherent experience – the MADLADY website looks just as unique as the garments they sell.

Unique Garments, Unique Website Design

The Home Page is well-structured – it’s effortless to navigate through their current influencer collaboration, the ‘Recommended’ section and the ‘Bestsellers’ list. The product titles are easy to read in bold and the colours used are easily associated with the MADLADY website. This kind of consistency creates trust and recognition. Creative font combinations and the contrast of black, white and pastels give the site a fantastic feeling – ideally in line with how they position themselves on the market. From the home page, we can navigate the top menu to News, Bestsellers, Categories, Collections, Instagram shop and Sale.

Intuitive Navigation And All The Useful Information You Need

Home Page

The Home Page features a clean design, and its navigation is very intuitive. The brand included a footer text on the website that complements what’s written on the About us page. Reassuring customers that it’s safe to shop at MADLADY is an excellent move. Including a few lines about their customer service and shipping time answers many frequently asked questions in advance.

Having transparent information about the shipping policy is always a huge plus. It’s a great idea to have it all right on the Home Page. MADLADY makes the user journey effortless by including all the necessary information to purchase securely and safely. There are no unanswered questions under the Returns & Exchanges, Delivery information, Gift card, About us, and Sustainability & Social responsibility tabs. It’s easy to get in touch with the MADLADY team.

Features That Help Create The Right Expectations

Category Page

At the bottom of the Category Page, we have a description that highlights the products’ features and styling ideas and all the occasions that MADLADY products are the perfect choice for. Including a not only informative but also keyword-rich description helps SEO efforts immensely.

We can sort the products with filters on the Category Page. Sale price percentages are highlighted in yellow – accentuating great deals so customers won’t miss them.

Product Page

On the Product Page, we can read a brief description of the features we can find here. We have a short description of the product specifics, and we can also see the size the model is wearing. Besides, on the product page, we can get more information on the fit, material, length, article number and brand right on this page. This way, the customer doesn’t need to take any further actions to find this important information. We can see that the available sizes are showcased in swatches, reducing the friction required to purchase the product.

There is a handy size guide as well. On the right-hand side, ‘Others also bought’ offers pieces users might like and helps the brand increase customer involvement and order generation.

Read more here on how to design a Product Page that converts!

Shopping Cart & Checkout Process

MADLADY offers various payment methods and a secure one-page checkout process – moreover, Klarna, especially popular in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, is also available. On the right-hand side, we can see the contents of our cart.

Effective Features That Will Help You Sell More

Products are not only sorted based on product types but also collections. This comes in handy, especially when users look for a specific product or pieces from a particular influencer collaboration. The ‘Collections’ tab navigates us to a page with all of the garments of said collections, and there we can sort them according to different criteria.

The product slider on the Home Page changes based on personal interests. For example, we were looking at a specific t-shirt and going back to the Home Page, the ‘Recommended’ section now mainly consists of t-shirts. Intelligent personalization features like this increase the chances of users finding what they are looking for.

‘Bestsellers’ list features one make-up product – this trick is effective because visitors can see that MADLADY sells make-up as well in case they weren’t familiar with the brand already. By reselling make-up products that appeal to their desired audience, they become a one-stop-shop for women’s style.

‘MADLADY tribe’ features Instagram posts from creators wearing their products – it gives instant styling ideas and creates trust in users to see real people wearing their clothes.

On the ‘Sale’ page, we can sort products based on category, price and size. It’s a fantastic idea to have all the products that are on sale under one tab.

Besides the sale price, they include the original price and the discount percentage as well.

Madlady On Mobile

The website’s loading speed on mobile is good, especially when we consider that high-quality pictures usually slow down the loading speed.

The tile sections look just as great as on desktop – very crisp lines make it easy to look through.

The mobile version shows the same information on the products as the desktop version – users won’t miss a thing even when they’re on the go.

When searching for products, the search bar auto-fills and offers possible search terms – this feature makes it easier for customers to get an idea of what to search for if they’re just browsing the site.

Optimizing your website to be fully functional and visually appealing on mobile has never been as vital as it is today. Though customers are always on the go, they still prefer websites with beautiful designs and handy features that create a fantastic user experience.

Conclusion

MADLADY can’t be influenced. She is the one who inspires. The brand’s buyer persona is this radiant, free-spirited girl who wears what she wants without a second thought. Perfect fit, material and unique ideas make the MADLADY garments powerful. This website is the one-stop-shop for women with a unique style who dare to be different. We believe MADLADY is an excellent source of inspiration that encourages you to be yourself — the most incredible version of yourself.

– Don’t be a chicken. Be mad. © MADLADY

John Henric Review: Website Features and User Experience

Thirteen years ago, Nicklas Nordbergh and John Ekström had a dream. Their goal was to craft accessories that take men’s style to the next level. Thanks to their immense creativity and the best possible craftsmanship, they reached their true potential, and now we are happy to introduce a powerful John Henric menswear brand.

It all started in Lund – a historical city in Sweden. At the outset, they created high-quality accessories, but later they branched out to produce clothing items and bags. This decision made all the difference for the brand – the company gained more exposure due to the production of clothing items. Jon Hencic’s creation process was inspired by Swedish and Italian fashion – to this day. They provide customers with a one-of-a-kind experience, thanks to the website’s luxury feel and garments.

John Hencic brand prides itself on creating “affordable luxury.” They employ small and often family-owned businesses instead of suppliers, making it easy for the company to manage its inventory and stay on top of seasonal changes.

Nicklas Nordbergh (Creative director) identified a gap in the market. He claimed that male accessories were overlooked – so he wanted to change the scene by creating fun and expressive accessories. His love of entrepreneurship drove John Ekström (CEO), and his goal was to create a niche accessory brand, which he had built from the ground up with Nicklas.

This John Henric review article will show you how the luxury feel of John Henric garments translates to the remarkable experience on their website and how these two components create a great user experience.

Overall Impression of John Henric

On the John Henric clothing website, we have a high amount of information, yet it’s easy to navigate the site. You’re going to find what you are looking for in seconds, as the well-structured layout makes it easy to read titles and product names. In addition, the website uses engaging visuals, so the user can easily browse any category. Also, if we start navigating using the top menu, we’ll see that some categories show a visual association with them.

Why this is useful: it decreases the time users spend thinking and finding the right product. Not to mention, it creates clear expectations.

In the following paragraphs, we will take a look at the desktop version of the website – the home page and navigation, the category page, and the product pages. Finally, we’ll examine the useful marketing features they employ.

John Henric Features Optimized For Success

Home Page & Navigation

The tile structure makes it very easy to navigate and look through various elements. They emphasized visuals – this way, the amount of information is not overpowering at all. Under the tile structure, we see a brief description of men’s accessories and how they can elevate any look. If you look closely, you can see how the brand uses keyword-rich text here. They also offer insight into styling the pieces.

Pro tip: using top keywords like John Henric will help your SEO efforts

Including a ‘What our customers are saying‘ block provides social proof about the brand. New customers will feel sure and secure about their choice. On the John Henric website, it’s especially well-positioned right at the bottom of the home page. Customer reviews are inevitable for a growing business. Read more about them in our guide

Features That Help Create The Right Expectations

Category Page

On top of the Category Page, we have a description highlighting the products’ features and styling ideas. Again, they use keyword-rich text here, which helps them achieve favorable Google search results.

We can sort the products with filters, and if we hover over the pictures, we can see the products from another angle and light. It helps customers create the right expectations and not spend time on products that they don’t like. Thus, it contributes to a more positive and smooth shopping experience. Besides another photo, they also have available sizes written over each product as we move the cursor over them. This way, shoppers can quickly see if the store has their size in stock, and if not, they can move on to the Google search results for products they like.

We can find a ‘star‘ icon near each product, allowing us to add the product to the wish list and return to this product later. Wish lists help brands return customers to their stores with the newsletter. They can also use this data for customer-focused advertisement campaigns.

Another trick they use on the Category Page: the brand shows discounts (30% off, etc.) to create urgency. This is how they show customers that they shouldn’t miss out on a great deal. It encourages faster decision-making. This trick works because we are psychologically coded to desire exclusive or only available things for a limited time.

This page has a ‘display mode‘ feature allowing us to scale the grid and get a larger view of products.

Product Page

We can find all the necessary information on the Product Page – the price, available sizes, product description, and specifications.

‘Model is also wearing’ is a section on the website where the various products that constitute the outfit are listed. Customers can purchase them as well. It’s a great way to encourage them to buy more if they like the look – or even the whole outfit if it is still available.

Under the product specifics, we have a ‘Recently viewed‘ section, reminding the customers of the products they already visited but might have forgotten about.

‘Recently viewed‘ and ‘Others also viewed‘ are features that brands use to encourage customers to stay on the site longer and possibly purchase more. The Recently Viewed feature can also come in handy when people are looking for one specific item, for example, a blue polo neck shirt. If the website has four different blue polo neck shirts, the customer can see them side by side after visiting their product pages.

Important elements that help customers develop decisions quickly and confidently are product return policy, delivery details, and size guide. It’s an advantage that they don’t take the user to another page but open a pop-up window, which is easily accessible right from the product page. Another good thing is size swatches – you can see all the available sizes at a time, which decreases the friction needed to buy the product.

One-step Checkout Process

John Henric uses a one-page checkout process, where we can see all the purchase details on one page before hitting ‘Proceed to card details.’ Having only one page makes the checkout process way faster than entering all of our details on separate pages. In addition, this makes it easier for the customer to review the order details and their personal information instead of clicking-through various sections to reach the payment method.

More and more people are aware of the importance of a secure checkout process – it always helps your objectives to have an SSL certificate on your website. In practice, it means that your website URL starts with ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://’ and provides a secure checkout.

Marketing Tactics You Should Try

John Henric offers Free shipping and Home delivery, which they state on top of their website – having a static note like this is a popular marketing feature. People don’t like surprises and hidden costs, but they appreciate clarity from the beginning of their shopping journey.

Products are not only sorted based on product types but also events like proms & weddings. This feature offers another excellent way for customers to look for the perfect outfit for an important day in their lives.

The Style Guide Page works as a shop assistant for men, helping them achieve a stylish look, select the right accessories, and wear them properly. Providing style ideas supported by pictures creates credibility for the brand and gives many ideas to customers. Having a wide range of beautiful products is essential to satisfy various tastes. Brands are expected to create inspiration and educate their customers on how to wear their products.

The wish list button for the products allows you to save favorite or most interesting products and simply add them later to the shopping cart – just like the clothes in the fitting room.

In this section we made a John Henric review of the best features that make the website on desktop stand out – now let’s see John Henric on mobile. Read on to see how they mastered mobile optimization – and how you can, too!

John Henric Review On Mobile

The website’s loading speed is just as fast on mobile as it is on desktop. This is key to customer retention as they tend to be discouraged by slow loading speeds.

The discount pop-up is proportional to the screen – seemingly small details like this contribute a lot to a luxury user experience.

The tile structure looks just as great on mobile as it does on desktop – on a smaller screen, we only have one column, but it is very easy to read. The Categories menu on mobile uses the power of tiny visuals to make its usage more intuitive. On a small screen, having a scrollable menu on the side is way more user-friendly than a static top menu.

The mobile version shows the available sizes of products on the category page if we tap on a product while scrolling. This is highly efficient when shopping on mobile because a split second is more than enough for the customer to see if the retailer has their size in stock.
On mobile, search suggestions offer the most searched terms – offering some great ideas to those just looking around on the site.

Another great feature here is the list of all available payment options – it’s handy for customers and allows the brand to offer the most convenient checkout experience. Users like transparency and predictability – this is an excellent example of a user-friendly checkout process.

Despite having many high-quality photos and all the information we need about their products, John Henric’s website has an excellent loading speed even on mobile. It’s safe to say that the website is optimized for smaller screens – it offers the same high-end web experience as the desktop version while also having all the features accessible.

How Shopify Online Store Will Help Your Brand Grow

When you decide to grow your business online, the path often starts with determining the right eCommerce solutions. Shopify online store is one of the options to help your brand go, scale, and grow.

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is a modern business-focused eCommerce solution. It is a cloud-based eCommerce platform for everyone who wants to start, grow, and scale their eCommerce business. With Shopify online store, you will enjoy benefits such as various marketing tools, payment gateways, effective product and store management, and analytics.Unlike other platforms that require hosting or website knowledge before use, Shopify offers tools and resources to sell online successfully for both beginners and experts.

Shopify features include:

• an admin panel to manage the website;
• a website builder helps you create an online store;
• a Shopify cloud hosting;
• a mobile-friendly look to provide a great digital experience;
• domain registration to create a catchy domain name for your brand;
• a shopping cart optimized to sell;
• advanced inventory and product management to keep full control over the products;
• the marketing features such as SEO, gift cards, free shipping, discounts to grow customer loyalty and brand awareness;
• advanced store management to connect various services, manage on the go, and discover more useful information about your customers;
• multiple languages support to communicate with a broad audience;
• a POS solution to sell in person;
• a complete blogging platform to create connections with your target audience;
• a handy dropshipping solution helpful in starting businesses or experience dropshippers;
• and more great solutions to help your brand grow!

Why Shopify Online Store Will Help Your Brand Grow

Shopify is an excellent choice for those who want to give an online business a try and see how it will work. You can launch your store quickly and sell right from the start. It requires fewer investments into web development and less time into education than more complicated and advanced platforms. It’s a great solution for beginners and experts. This is why:

Easy-to-Manage

Shopify platform is created with users in mind, focusing on the user and the business. It doesn’t require deep technical knowledge of web development, system administration, etc. All you need is to create your account, build your website with a handy block editor, choose the design, and add the content. It is all easy to do with an admin panel. It gives you building blocks for your eCommerce store, all necessary tools, and practical guides to create your eCommerce experience. If you need any help, you can always turn to the Shopify expert to get assistance right from your admin account.

You’ll save costs on website support and team education.

Fast-to-Start

Shopify allows launching an eCommerce website within a few weeks. We recommend you create a plan, evaluate your budget, decide what capabilities your store needs, prepare your content, and then start growing online.

After you choose your domain name, you can create a Shopify account in a trial version. During 14 days, you can see how it goes. So, you are free to look around till you come up with the decision whether you like this platform or not.

You’ll then be able to buy the subscription to one of Shopify plans, find and connect needed features, and select one of the beautiful themes in the Shopify Theme Store. If you add your authentic content, your online store will look different from the others, even with the ready Shopify theme. It will be a great start, especially if you are on a tight budget! If you want a unique look for your online store, professional designers and theme developers from all over the world are at your service.

You save time for project development and start to earn faster.

Business-Focused

Shopify is not just a platform. It is a whole ecosystem that unites entrepreneurs and experts: brand owners, Shopify experts, and digital specialists. You can always connect with professional people ready to help your business grow. This platform focuses on your business and provides you with all the necessary tools to grow successfully, save you time and money, and grow your business income.

It doesn’t matter whether your first try or you already run a successful business using another platform. Shopify allows you to launch quickly and on a budget or migrate without too many efforts. Shopify is not an open-source platform. There is no way to modify its backend, but you can add all the required features with particular apps. In most cases, you’ll need help with creating the custom theme – if you want a unique design or if you’d like to delegate some tasks.

Various reporting tools allow you to analyze business results, create marketing campaigns, and see all about your store management.

The platform focuses on optimizing your business results.

Mobile-Ready

Shopify provides fully mobile-optimized commerce. Mobile eCommerce sales account about 50% of total eCommerce sales. Our customers want to shop right on the go. It is now essential to make sure that the brand website mobile-optimized as mobile traffic has increased significantly. Fortunately, the themes on Shopify are optimized for mobile devices and provide a responsive mobile experience.

You reach a large audience of mobile users and grow conversion.

Growth-Oriented

The in-built SEO functionality of Shopify will help your brand rank well in Google search results and bring more traffic.

Shopify app store offers various marketing tools, from integrating your store with social networks and advertising tools, such as Facebook, Google shopping, Google ads, Instagram, to an email newsletter and customer reviews.

Moreover, if you don’t have the time for digital marketing or find it time-consuming, Shopify provides an in-built kit to help you. It works as a virtual assistant, performing marketing activities based on your sales, helping you grow and track progress.

You have all the tools you need to grow your brand right from the start.

How Does Shopify Work?

Merchants have the following options: they can create or buy an online store. Charging begins after a trial expires.

Shopify uses a monthly subscription model, offering to choose among three plans. They will cost you $29, $79, or $299 per month. They differ in their feature list and purposes.

Shopify, Shopify Basic will be enough in most cases, especially for those who are just beginning their online business growth. These plans have some differences in the reporting system, the number of team members’ accounts, and some additional features.

Advanced Shopify provides additional features for scaling business, such as different locations, advanced reporting, custom-calculated shipping rates, international domains, and exchange rates management. It’s suitable for experienced companies that want to scale.

View the complete feature list on the Shopify website.

You can add useful features with Shopify apps and create an attractive design for your website by applying one of the Shopify themes or creating the custom one.

Shopify Apps

The Shopify App Store is a place where you’ll find various apps for everything, whether you’d like to include customer reviews, offer your products on social media, manage inventory and shipping, analyze results, or boost marketing effects, and more.

Many of them are free. You can add the desired feature by installing the app on your website.

Shopify Themes

The Theme Store has an extensive selection of themes and templates, among which you can choose the desired web design. There are various styles and layouts, offering each user a unique experience for a particular business niche. You can modify the theme with the theme editor in your admin panel.

How Much Does Shopify Cost?

The total budget that you need to launch your Shopify online store depends on your particular brand needs and basic costs:

Hosting: Shopify offers cloud hosting and no set-up costs for all plans.

Subscription: Shopify provides three basic payment options for businesses: $29, $79, $299.

Domain: You’ll need to buy an eCommerce domain that will cost you about $11 per year.

Apps: Apps differ in their cost. Of course, you can find helpful free apps. Most of the paid apps cost $20-$29. Others cost about $67 , a one-time payment.

Theme: Prices for Shopify themes vary from free to $180 one-time.

Setup: Most advanced eCommerce platforms require knowledge in website engineering and coding expertise to get started. Shopify offers a choice: you can launch and set up your website by yourself using their helpful guides or request the Shopify expert for help. This work cost also differs and will depend on the agency’s or developers’ hourly rate and hourly project estimation. Rates vary from $30 to 150 per hour.

So, lets’ calculate:

Minimally, the Shopify store launch will cost you about $500 if you buy about ten apps, a basic plan, a $180 theme, and set up your store by yourself.

How Can You Grow Your Brand with Shopify?

Shopify is a business-focused solution that can help you solve various business tasks:

Sell Online Everywhere

Shopify offers the opportunity to start selling quickly and set up an online store within several days. With its help, you can sell on the website and social media. It allows you to transact in person with the Shopify Point of Sale (POS). You can manage all these from a user-friendly interface.

Get Paid Instantly

With Shopify payments, you can keep track of all your transactions and orders from anywhere. This feature is preinstalled with your account and will start working the moment you activate it. You will start accepting payment instantly while skipping third-party activations.

With an active Shopify account, Shopify payments will show you a complete overview of your entire finances and the needed things to prepare your documents.

Start with Dropshipping on Shopify

Jumpstart your business by dropshipping on Shopify. It works straightforward and conveniently. You’ll not pay for additional shipping logistics, and Shopify dropshipping will ensure that your customers receive their products unscathed. Your dropshipping supplier will automatically receive your orders, prepare them and finally ship the orders to your customers.

Unify Your Sales with Shopify POS

Shopify POS allows you to handle your entire inventory management from the Shopify cloud. It will help you save time and make smarter decisions with a comprehensive and detailed report. Besides, it will also save you the hassle of third-party restrictions and accept payments.

Drive Marketing & SEO for Shopify

SEO can get your brand to the top of the pages of search engine results, and as a result, bring significant and relevant traffic. Utilizing SEO for Shopify is an organic way of growing your company’s exposure, which would then play a huge part in how shoppers can easily find your store. Shopify offers various SEO-friendly features, and the higher your ranking, the more traffic your online store will get.

Enhance Shopify Shipping

A fulfillment service is a network of third parties that prepares your orders for you and ships them. If you don’t want to have to deal with delivery or have evolved beyond your current warehousing capabilities to a point where manually moving goods is impossible, opting for fulfillment Shopify is a fantastic choice.

You can take control of your Shopify Shipping from your location to any part of the globe without an extra fee.

Create a Blog for Your Brand

Content marketing and a blog will help your brand highlight your goods and services, educate your customers and create a connection with them. Consistent blogging will show your customers that you have invested in your brand and are eager to help your customers make the right decisions. It is a powerful tool to connect new and loyal customers who want to discover what your brand offers. The default blog on Shopify is free, easy to use, and covers the blogging basics. Another option is you can link your blog from an external platform from within your Shopify online store.

Work on Customer Loyalty with Gift Cards

To attract new customers and retain old ones, you can employ a loyalty program. This method resonates well with shoppers, and you can easily use gift cards to conduct social media contests and giveaways.

Motivate return visits by adding Shopify gift cards into your loyalty program, either as discounts, birthday rewards, or in your brand awareness campaign.

Grow Trust with Customer Reviews

You can automate your review collection for service and product reviews, add a TrustBox widget, and collect reviews from your previous customers via Shopify’s incorporation with Trustpilot. Trustpilot helps you automatically collect your customers’ reviews. Your customers can share their experience with the world and your sales can be greatly influenced by their reviews because buyers will definitely look for feedback before making any purchase. This way you build trust with your customers and grow your brand equity.

To sum all this up, get inspired by Shopify store examples where you’ll see the great stores created for different product categories and niche markets. Use Shopify sitemap to learn all you need to know about this solution and see how you can grow your business by industry.

How to Collect Customer Reviews for Your eCommerce Business

Nowadays we all need more than high-quality services and excellent products. Our expectations grow, and we are looking for a deeper connection with brands. Customers create relationships with brands, follow their philosophy, and need trust. One of the essential ways to get more trust is collecting customer reviews!

While shopping online, our potential customers cannot physically interact with our products and brand. However, they can read the verified reviews and get complete information about our businesses. Social proof in the form of reviews is one of the most powerful tools to gain new customers’ trust.

Importance of Customer Reviews for Brands

According to stats, 88% of customers trust online reviews when choosing the brand. They consider reviews at the same level of trust as personal recommendations.

These numbers tell us a lot. With genuine customer reviews, we can cover many crucial marketing tasks and grow our brand positive power.

Build Trust Between Brand and Customer

Potential customers often feel uncertain regarding the online business they have never interacted with. This is why we should invest our efforts into building customer’s trust, and genuine customer reviews help. When people come online and see positive reviews about a brand, it increases their credibility, and the potential customers feel much more confident. Once there’s trust, then getting customers becomes easier.

Get Honest Feedback for Growth

Analyzing how well people love and patronize your brand encourages your business growth. When you get honest answers from your customers about your products or services, no matter positive or negative, it helps. When customers give honest feedback, it’s a great chance to evaluate your brand efforts and see the areas for your growth. Always pay attention to the feedback about the things you need to improve. This is a big help that customers even not loyal can do for us. Remember, if we want somebody to grow, we show what needs improvement. If we are indifferent and don’t want to help somebody – we keep silent and pass through. The feedback is a valuable resource.

Predict Customer Loyalty

Customers that leave you reviews are often loyal ones. Other customers could make purchases and leave. Some of them don’t give feedback, and it’s hard to predict their reaction. If so, try to ask about their experience using various communication channels before leaving the online review. You can personally ask about their opinion: by phone, in the personalized email newsletter, or via messengers. When you hear lots of points that need improvements – it’s valuable information for the plan and helps predict how likely it’s the right moment for asking about the review.

If we deal with an eCommerce review, we deal with a more complicated system and a larger number of customers. This is a tip: you can set up an automated email that asks to evaluate your company’s experience. If the customer gives you a good mark, the automated script can show them the suggestion or link to the online review page. If the mark is bad, you know that and make conclusions. But the automated system doesn’t ask the customer about the full online review right away. We often met such examples in Apple App Store apps.

Grow With a Word of Mouth

What people say online about a particular business is what others use for making their purchase decisions. A brand with multiple positive reviews will more likely get more trust and more purchases than competitors. At the same time, negative reviews can stop customers from making the purchase. But! No one is perfect – people understand this. If you reply to negative reviews sincerely and consistently, it can increase the trust even more.

Social proof represented by customer reviews helps your business be trustworthy and stay ahead among even the strongest competitors. Genuine and verified customer reviews are the long-run investment into the brand growth and awareness.

How to Ask for Customer Reviews

Sometimes it becomes a bit challenging to ask the customer for a review. First, we feel uncertain; second, we need a plan to do that with many customers, scale it for the whole business, and last: people tend to spend time on their priorities. The review is a priority for us, but often not for the customer. That’s why our customers will more likely leave a review in two cases: if they are emotionally impressed, feel happy, and want to share their experience, or if they can get some bonus for their allocated time. Some useful points will help you to prepare and make this process more simple after you do them.

Define the Purpose

We already know the importance of customer reviews. However, we also need to know what we need the reviews for. Is it to improve our services or to get a positive online review? If you need to find the growth points, motivate your customers for honest feedback! Ask about the things they think you need to improve, how likely they will recommend your brand, etc. By doing this, the aspect of your business that needs improvement will be known to you. On the other hand, if you decide to increase positive online reviews quickly, use a different approach. Evaluate customer loyalty first, and start with the most loyal and potentially-loyal customers. Try strategies that help you predict the opinions and grow customer satisfaction. Work on the growth points to show that you hear your customers and become better for them.

Choose Your Approach

To get the desired outcomes, you must engage in proper timing to ask for customer reviews. If you ask customers for reviews at the wrong time, they may drop negative reviews for you. So, look for clever ways to ask for reviews from your customers and at the right time. At what point should you then ask customers for reviews?

These are some indicators of the right moment for the online review:

• repeat purchase and order;
• some time left after the first purchase, and creation of a new wishlist;
• spending much time on your website specific product category;
• sharing a coupon code with a friend;
• referring your brand to friends;
• purchase and delivery.

Now you know when it’s a right time to ask for reviews. Then you need to get prepared to test and scale.

Make Up Your Model and Script

Prepare emails, messages, and request scripts to ask for customer reviews.

Draft a plan which conveys information about the following important parts:

• tools you’ll use to ask for the review;
• platforms for collecting reviews;
• who at your team is responsible for this part of work;
• the right time and context for the review;
• how much time is needed to leave a review;
• a clear and short step-by-step guide for the customer;
• what benefits the customer gets for their effort;
• what to write in your request message;
• how to work with objections;
• what to do in case of negative review, how to respond;
• how to thank the customer and add value

Prepare all this point beforehand and be ready for any cases. You should also include the means of communication to be used, whether by email, telephone, or social media. After you think out your plan, it’s time to combine it into a powerful script and take action.

Pro Tip: We found this online book very useful and helpful to prepare and effective plan and start collecting reviews, and recommend it to you:

Ultimate guide to Customer Reviews by Craig Stoss, Sarah Chambers, Yaakov Karda

 Encourage Giving Positive Reviews

Leaving a review must be simple and valuable for both sides. If it’s not, make everything you can do to help your customers and make it easy for them. Explain how simple it is to drop reviews for you and don’t forget to give incentives. Make it clear enough in the emails you send: give discounts, gifts, or bonuses for every review customers drop for your business. This way, you will motivate them towards leaving reviews for you, and grow loyalty to your brand.

Test on a Customer Focus Group

Running a test of your plan on a small group of customers will help to show how effective it actually is. The results gotten from this test running shows you areas that need improvement in your plan before testing it on a larger number of customers.

Automate the Process

The next stage after test running your plan is setting up people who will execute the plan. Asides from using people for this, you could automate the process. This will include the use of different tools that helps you to send emails and messages automatically. Tools such as Magento, Shopify, or review platforms such as Trustpilot.

Respond to Both: Positive & Negative

Treat every feedback you get from customers as valuable information. Negative feedback could influence your feelings, but it could be a true pointer to areas that need to be improved. Learn how to answer them quickly, thoughtfully, appropriately, and respectfully. Then, for happy customer review quotes you receive, give a quick response to them, and appreciate the reviewer concisely. Encourage them to refer people to your brand, sign up for a re-purchase, or find you on social media.

Sometimes Giveaway

This tip is not the typical one regarding the review. However, sometimes we should give more to get more. Make some unique touches and give personal presents to your loyal customers. Try to evoke their positive feelings. This way, one day, they will come by themselves and tell the world about your brand, and how genuinely kind and useful it is.

Be Responsible. Think Big

It is also not directly about reviews. But that counts for a lot. Nowadays, people, fortunately, stand for a responsible attitude to nature and resources, people and environment. As a brand, you should respect their values and share these values as well. Shared values and beliefs are keys to sympathy, trust, and a deep connection. As a result – you’ll get a lot of positive reviews organically.

Where to Collect Customer Reviews

On Google

Google allows you to collect reviews and helps promote local companies on Google Maps. All you need to do is to inform your clients about how easy it is to drop reviews. You could also request reviews using a short URL specific to your brand. Your reviews will be seen right near your listings in Maps and search helping your brand gain trust and stand out on search results.

For whom:

Local businesses and anyone who wants to grow brand awareness online and offline.

Pros:

• Allows genuine reviews to be posted;
• Adds visual rating on Google search results;
• It is a trustworthy platform;
• You can always respond to the review and also flag if necessary.

Cons:

• You can’t moderate or delete a review on your own. Be careful with unfair competitors, spammers, and highly unsatisfied customers.

Look at the example of London’ brand The Hummingbird Bakery. They have an offline store and a website, collecting reviews on Google:

On Amazon

Amazon is another giant platform for Amazon eCommerce merchants.

For whom:

eCommerce businesses that sell on Amazon.

Pros:

• Aggregates all of your product reviews in a central place for ease of viewing;
• Monitors review systematically and this way, you can quickly spot negative reviews;
• Helps you to identify the reviewer to sort out concerns related to negative reviews.

Cons:

• You can’t moderate or delete reviews (the same thing as with Google).

On Shopify

Shopify is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world, the choice of numerous eCommerce brands. It provides a number of cool marketing features for business, including collection of customer reviews.

For whom:

eCommerce brands on the Shopify platform only.

Pros:

• The Product Review app for Shopify is free;
• Has many automated tools and features that can be integrated with other review platforms;
• You can delete, manage, and reply to product reviews from the Shopify admin panel.

Cons:

• Reviews are manageable and this may evoke some concerns about their fairness.

Look how Package Free does this at its Shopify-based online store:

or

On Review Platforms & Social Networks

For whom:

Any type of business relevant to the focus of the particular review platform.

Pros:

• Platforms are famous and trustworthy;
• Additional promotion and lead-generation channel;
• Most platforms allow integration with eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify, Magento;
• Your brand stands out among the other brands collecting reviews on the same platform;
• Platforms carry out high-level verification process to detect spam or purchased reviews;
• Social media platforms request account login to leave a review;
• Other customers can see the personality of the reviewer and even turn to their personal recommendation by connecting with them.

Cons:

• In most cases, you can’t moderate and delete reviews.

List of The Best Platforms to Collect Review

You can use all these platforms or better focus the efforts on the one that has more trust of your target audience and aligns better with your marketing strategy.

Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a famous world review platform helping businesses proactively collect reviews from customers. It enables the user to send out emails to customers inviting them to send their reviews about the business. They also allow the customer to keep the reviews third-party verified by writing both the product and seller reviews.

TestFreaks

This platform also helps businesses to collect customer reviews and help to complement this by writing seller reviews for them.

Feefo

Feefo is one more great platform for your business. Their team values integrity and is dedicated to connecting great businesses with their customers.

Reviews.io

Pay attention to one more great platform designed for the eCommerce businesses and their customers who can share their reviews and experiences.

Instagram

Yes, our well-known and loved Instagram. It’s really a super-creative platform, especially for the eCommerce businesses. Besides being super-powerful in terms of product presentation, it also can be used to collect emotional and genuine customer reviews. What’s cool is that you can moderate them, create posts with them, collections of stories, and ask clients to tag you!
Look how this works for Swedish fashion giants, Tretorn:

How you can do this:

• check your DM’s for messages sent by their customers which could be reviews;
• track responses from customers to their brand’s Instagram stories;
• keep an eye on your comment section;
• keep track of how many users share their experiences with other followers especially when the brand is tagged/ mentioned in the comment;
• keep an eye on the Instagram page of their followers as some of them could express their views about your brand on their personal pages.

The only con is that your customers must use Instagram. But it’s hard to imagine people who now don’t use Instagram at least just for researching, inspiration, and shopping online. 🙂

Also, YouTube and TikTok are great platforms to get additional audience and video-reviews.

Pro Tip: Google your competitors to find out the platforms they use and pick the ones that work best for your business.

Tretorn: The Iconic Swedish Brand That Makes The World a Better Place

Born out of Scandinavian weather, from rubber galoshes’ maker to the second oldest sneaker manufacturer in the world, from tennis balls to rubber boots, from the first luxury tennis shoes to the rain jacket from the sea – it’s all about Tretorn, a 130-year-old sustainable Swedish brand that changes the world for the better.Tretorn’s story started in the Dunker family and their rubber factory to help farmers face Scandinavian weather challenges. Swedish engineer Johan Dunker founded the Tretorn factory, and later his son, Henry Dunker, continued their family business. He succeeded in building a powerful brand with care about his workers and customers.Henry created a comfortable environment for his workers where they crafted functional and contemporary products. In 1962, he was Sweden’s wealthiest man. He and his wife Gerda always served the purpose of supporting people. They donated the entirety of their fortune to their native city of Helsingborg and left us a heritage of Tretorn’s tradition.Over the years, Tretorn created iconic products and contributed to the tennis story, preppy style, and the Olympic Games. Tretorn invented its eco-essentials and became a world-famous brand that protects nature and creates innovative sustainable products.

Today we’ll have a chance to look at the Tretorn story’s most inspiring moments and visit its regional websites. We’ll look closely into Tretorn’s global online experiences and the best features that show care about the customers and make them love this brand.

We’ll consider two of Tretorn’s websites: Tretorn Europe and Tretorn USA. Both of them are created with respect for customers and the best practices of UI design. The approach to both websites is a bit different but has many similar traits. We’ll focus on the best of them.

Brand’s Tradition & Heritage

Both websites have stylish designs in the traditional Scandinavian style. We can enjoy lots of whitespace, balanced accents, harmony in colors, and nothing extra to let us focus on products and our choices. At a glance, we can see that Tretorn is a brand with a long history.

EST. 1891 Sweden

It claims on both websites right under their logo: EST. 1891 Sweden. It’s just the numbers, just facts. But think: what feelings and associations does this information evoke?

For us, that means Tretorn is a native Swedish brand that creates a long story and cherishes tradition. This is how the brand strengthens its positioning by telling us about its long experience, acquired mastery, and native traditions, just in three short words.

Tretorn’s Heritage

When we visit Tretorn EU, we can learn many inspiring facts about the brand on its pages. One such page is Our Heritage, bringing us to the memories of Tretorn’s long story.

When you read them one by one, the degree of respect for this brand and its creators grows and multiplies at each stage. There is no better way for a brand to get closer to its audience than telling the story – true and sincere.

Customer-Centric Features

Tretorn cares about their customers and shows that care even on their website pages. Several useful features that prove this deserve our special attention.

Tretorn US: Accessibility Mode

Tretorn is a sustainable and responsible brand, making their website experience convenient. In their footer, we can find accessibility mode to adjust colors, visuals, and font sizes, turn on assistance with reading and focusing, adjust the website for blind users, etc. There are plenty of settings that make this website flexible and accessible.

This feature is powered by assesssiBe and can be connected to any website to run an accessibility interface. That’s a great solution that shows the brand’s care and responsibility.

Tretorn US: Wishlist

Tretorn added a little ‘heart’ button for the Wishlist access in the right bottom corner to create an engaging shopping experience. We can access the wishlist at any moment and add items while shopping with any device – desktop, tablet, or mobile.

Usually, we can find the wishlist access button somewhere near the shopping cart button at the top of the page. But here, the wishlist is always in view and stands out, reminding customers about their wishes. When we get to the wishlist page, there is a minimalistic wishlist itself with a possibility to add items to the shopping cart and two more interesting features:

• You can send this wishlist to someone via email. It’s quite useful, isn’t it? It’s especially useful when you are thinking about the ideas for your Santa for ‘what I want for Christmas’? 🙂
• You can add your email and connect the data about your wishlists from all your devices and sync your shopping activity.

Furthermore, you can quickly access the ‘Help’ form and ask your questions. The form itself has structured fields with the possibility to choose the topic for your request.

Time-Saving Category Page

Category pages on Tretorn’s websites have a minimalistic look, well-thought-out navigation, and intuitive filters that quickly help us find the needed product.

Tretorn EU & US: Hover Effects

Both websites have the same interesting feature on the category page. We can hover the product image and see how it looks from a different angle. This way, we get more information quickly and don’t need to visit a product page if it is not exactly what we are looking for.

Tretorn US: Design Views & Quick Shop

The Tretorn US goes even further and provides a great feature for quick product selection and shopping. We can change the product design and see how it looks right on the category page, even without page reloading!

In addition, we can click ‘Quick Shop’ and see the shortened version of a product page appearing in the pop-up. It includes only the necessary product parameters needed for shopping.

That means our shopping experience becomes even more convenient. We save time as a customer: there is no need to visit the product page to view available design options and go shopping. Really cool!

The Tretorn US is created great from the visual point of view and usability. All design elements are intuitive, including filters on the category page. They use not only text but also visual identification for each option available. This way, the customer can shop more quickly and complete their goal faster – it’s exactly what Tretorn needs: more happy purchases.

Let’s move to the product page and highlight the most interesting things there.

Intuitive Product Page

On both websites, we can see a great product presentation:

• High-quality product images and views from different angles show us the product at its best. The Tretorn US even provides the possibility to scale the image by hovering;
• Informative product description gives us a full product overview: short and minimalistic on the Tretorn US and structured in tabs on the Tretorn EU;
• The Tretorn US provides the possibility to add the item to the Wishlist, yet this feature is not available on the Tretorn EU. Instead, they make the ‘Add to Basket’ button bolder.
• The link to the Size Guide helps us pick up the right size quickly on the product page.

All features are great. However, we want to draw your attention to these details:

Both websites provide visual swatches for product size and color selection. This way is better than a traditional drop-down menu. With swatches on the product page, the customer can see all available options right away and saves time, reducing the number of clicks needed to select and purchase the product.

Another great thing is that all product options that are out of stock are blocked. We can see what particular options are available for the product. This way we save time and create the right expectations.

Inspiring Brand Story

Finally, one of the most exciting parts of each website is how the brand communicates its values, story, and positioning.

Tretorn US: 3 Towers

On the Tretorn US, the brand invites us to learn about their ‘3 Towers’, find new trends and old traditions, and read inspiring stories from their journal. This way the brand builds an emotional connection with its customers. ‘3 Towers’ Page introduces a short legend about the Tretorn brand. It turns out that “Tretorn” is Swedish for ‘Three Towers.’ Furthermore, there are three T that Tretorn tells us about: Trends, Traditions, and Tales. This page is beautiful and engaging, and it’s the only chapter on this website that tells us about the Tretorn brand. It seems that here Tretorn wanted to focus on a customer. They make customers their main heroes. It’s not a trivial approach to delivering a brand story, especially for such a large and famous brand.

So, how can we learn more about Tretorn? We should visit their main website for the European market. Get ready. You can dive into their story as an interesting book.

Tretorn EU: About The Brand

We must visit their chapter about the brand. This is a necessary step for anyone who wants to learn about this brand and understand their values, message, and hard way to become those they are now – one of the top world-famous fashion brands.

Sneakers Timeline brings us to the history of Tretorn’s sneakers transformation, Tretorn’s key moments that determined their future and brand growth.

Tretorn’s Journal is a place for stories about travelings, discoveries, initiatives, and things that help the brand and its advocates change the world for the better.

And the most inspiring, involving, and emotional pages that prove how this brand makes a difference are Eco-Essentials Manifest & Timeline. They tell us the stories about how innovation, responsibility, and talent create products with care about our planet and future generation. Anyone who wants to discover Tretorn’s products must visit these pages and learn the story behind their innovation, Leftover Project, Raincoat from the sea, and sustainable products made of recycled materials.

Tretorn proves that the brand values and purpose delivered on the website can build a strong connection with customers, inspire changes, and show what the brand is in its core.

In this website overview, we wanted to show the most interesting features that provide an engaging user experience and strengthen the brand’s position in people’s minds. Both websites provide a convenient mobile experience and allow us to shop on the go. They both have a beautiful minimalistic design with a customer in mind focusing on products and the key shopping goals.

The website for the European audience is ‘a home’ of Tretorn’s online presence. It includes all the information about the brand’s history. Still, Tretorn’s website for the US market looks modern, engaging, and provides many useful and fresh features.

The Tretorn online experience is made with love for customers, respect for traditions, and a high purpose in mind.

eCommerce Sustainable Brands That Make a Difference

Many brands around the world today already see the importance of sustainability. If we’ve learned anything in the 21st century, it’s that sustainability is vital. Without it, such problems as global warming, polluted seas, wildlife endangerment, and the loss of essential planetary resources will decidedly become more pronounced.

Sustainability is important, and some brands take this mantra to heart. Thankfully, the need to make a profit is not the sole drive for every brand. There are many companies and business organizations that incorporate sustainable brand values in their day-to-day activities. Among other things, we’ll be taking a look at them in this article.

What Is a Sustainable Brand?

To qualify as sustainable, a brand must balance the human factor with the financial and environmental ones.

A sustainable brand is the one that incorporates the principles and values of environmental sustainability in its actions, product creation, and service provision without hindering customer satisfaction.That is, for a brand to be deemed sustainable, it must:

• Hold itself to such high standards that it only uses environmentally safe raw materials. But, this shouldn’t automatically translate to lowering the quality of products. Adherence to environmental safety measures and guaranteeing customer satisfaction aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
• Develop and use unique processes, tools, delivery methods, strategies, knowledgebase, etc. These innovative thinking products must contribute to environmental safety without neglecting the importance of social and economic factors.
• Communicate and relate to the public so that its sustainability inspires other brands and customers to follow in its footsteps. After all, one brand being sustainable in an ocean of non-adherents doesn’t quite make for a healthy planet.

If a brand can do all these, while continually finding new ways to create and maintain sustainability, they will fit perfectly into the definition of a sustainable brand.

Sustainable Brand Values

Every brand that fits into the description of sustainability has the following values.

Eco-Friendliness

The ingredients and raw materials that a brand uses for its products or in the process of rendering its services form an essential part of its sustainability. As such, sustainable brands always make it a priority to use all-natural ingredients.

As a customer, this should be relatively easy for you to detect. For example, if you’re looking to purchase a skincare product, you can take a glance at the ingredients list. A sustainable brand will have such natural ingredients as aloe vera, argan, shea butter, etc.

An example of such a brand is the makeup brand, W3ll People. This makeup company uses cruelty-free and natural cosmetic products to nourish and soothe the skin while offering the desired results.

W3ll People and their Come Clean Project

For brands whose products can’t precisely use natural products, their value might differ slightly. Nevertheless, it will still involve some form of environmental friendliness, either in use or disposal.

This value directly impacts the health of customers in different ways across different industries. In skincare products, for example, it will lead to improved health and reduced risk of cancer. This will happen because there are no inorganic materials contained in the product.

Also, environmental sustainability brands deftly concentrate on running their business, not to harm the environment in any way. Indeed, they may not sell the same products everyone else does. But, they help create a more sustainable environment by planting trees, donating, recycling, etc.

Fair Pay & Fair Trade

One of the central values of a sustainable brand is that they treat people right and pay them well, too. Refusal to do so will amount to taking advantage of people.

A genuinely sustainable brand doesn’t resort to the poor treatment of its workers. For them, fairness in payment is non-negotiable. An example of a sustainable brand that meets this description is ASOS.

ASOS about responsibility

The benefit of this fair pay to humanity is evident. People no longer have to work like slaves and be rewarded similarly. With fair compensation, any working individual can afford a good standard of living.

Philanthropy

Every sustainable brand aims to give back to society and the earth in one way or the other. Ordinarily, it can be in the form of monetary gifts like donating money directly to eco-friendly groups.

But, philanthropy doesn’t necessarily need to come in the form of hard cash. Some brands demonstrate this value by organizing key events and programs for the public. Among other things, these events will help educate people about the environment alongside the other factors involved in ensuring sustainability.

Walmart does this. Every year, they make millions of dollars in donations towards economic development, environmental sustainability, and communities’ advancement through construction and engagement projects.

Walmart Foundation making a difference

This value helps make the world a better place by giving the people and groups that need it the most. It is arguably one of the most important values as it supports humanity at its weakest.

Of course, there is a truckload of values that guide sustainable brands outside the ones mentioned here. But, these are three of the most common.

Sustainable Brand Activations

Brand activation is any activity, event, or program that enables your brand to relate to customers directly. The purpose of brand activation is usually to create a lasting community of customers who are passionate about your brand.

To apply it to sustainability, we’d say that sustainable brand activation applies all the sustainability principles to interact more closely with the community.

Top Sustainability Brands That Make a Difference

Sustainable brands focus on helping society, making the world a better place, and inspiring others. The following examples are proof that there are sustainable brands out there:

Toms Sustainable Brand: Shoes

In 2006, Blake Mycoskie decided to visit Argentina. While there, he shockingly noticed that many children didn’t have any shoes to wear. At this point, he got the idea for a company that’ll help make a difference.

TOMS: One For One

He created TOMS, a brand that donates a pair of shoes to kids for every pair of shoes bought from the company. Today, TOMS has donated more than 60 million shoes across the world.

For One, Another – TOMS

What’s more, is that TOMS protects the planet by being primarily vegan. From their shoe-packing boxes to their shoe-creation materials, this company is truly sustainable.

TOMS about sustainability initiatives

Adidas Sustainable Brand: Shoes

Despite its roots in Germany, Adidas is one of the most widely-recognized shoe brands globally. With over 900-million products created yearly, this brand is a big deal in the business world.

Despite its size, however, Adidas has a long history of sustainability. As early as 1989, the brand saw fit to ban CFCs’ use in creating their products.

Adidas: sustainability history

Even now, in 2020, they’ve publicized their sustainability strategy. As always, they’re shifting to a 100% recyclable material-use for their products and managed to make millions of shoes of ocean waste.

Adidas Parley Collection at Road Runner Sports

Gucci Sustainability Brand: Perfumes & Fashion

Gucci is a luxury brand that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars in today’s economy. One of their most notable sustainability feats is that they are one of the first brands to start using the EP&L account.

This account is the Environmental Profit and Loss account. It aids in the monitoring of greenhouse gasses in the business. What’s more, Gucci has created a 10-year sustainability plan for themselves and turn society’s attention to the necessity of protecting our environment.

Gucci for HOME

Gucci about their sustainability plan

This will help them to slash the emissions of greenhouse gasses in half by 2025. So, if you’re asking yourself the question, ‘Is Gucci a sustainable brand?’ the answer to that is yes.

Tretorn Sustainable Brand: Clothing

Tretorn is a Swedish sustainable brand that deals with clothing. You can see a mind-blowing example of their sustainability in their Leftover Project.

Tretorn’s Leftover Project

In this project, the company bought leftover fabrics from different manufacturers and reused them to make limited edition. This is just one of the many efforts towards sustainability this company makes.

Tretorn – Rain Jacket From The Sea

Prada Sustainable Brand: Perfumes & Fashion

As a fashion industry member, Prada is one of the best examples of what a sustainable brand should look like. This is hardly up for argument, considering that the brand scores up to 85% in certified and recycled paper.

Prada’s Re-Nylon Project

Alongside this, 100% of their energy is made from renewable sources in Italy.

Prada Group’s Sustainability commitment

Inspiring eCommerce Sustainable Brand Examples

These days, the world is moving further towards a vastly digital civilization. To that effect, we have multiple eCommerce stores and shops.

Some of them are still committed to maintaining sustainability. By all standards, this is incredibly inspiring. A few of these brands include:

Filippa K

Filippa K is one of the top fashion sustainability brands that run online today. The company was founded in 1993 and has grown since then to become a vast Scandinavian name.

Among other things that drive Filippa K, the need to protect the environment and ensure sustainability in its other ramifications ranks very high.

This includes social and economic responsibility. To do this, the company ensures that it uses a significant proportion of eco-friendly substances.

They mainly focus on making their wears with organic cotton.

Filippa K’s sustainability framework

Alongside this, the company makes it a priority to treat and discharge wastewater properly as part of the supply chain. With its mission of mindful consumption and prolonged sustainability, this company is nothing short of inspiring.

PAPER London’s Swimwear

This is an excellent example of a UK sustainable brand. Philippa Thackeray is the creator of PAPER London’s Swimwear. He believes that everyone should take actions within their power to save Mother Earth.

With that mission in mind, his company uses recycled fishing nets to create their swimwear. Keep in mind that otherwise, these fishing nets will take no less than 600 years to go through the full decomposing process.

Paper London about ECONYL

100% Pure™

This is another company wholly dedicated to promoting sustainability. As the name suggests, it boldly proclaims a dedication to creating top-quality products accessible to the public.

100% Pure about sustainability

With Susan Wang as its founder, its mission is direct — to create the healthiest and purest products while acquainting the world with the essentiality of being 100% pure.

Collina Strada

Hillary Taymour established Collina Strada over a decade ago. The company is based in New York and is significantly dedicated to including sustainability in its operations.

Collina Strada and their sustainability mission

To demonstrate this, Hillary Taymour, their founder, entered into a partnership with The OR. The OR is an organization in the United States striving towards a future of sustainability.

Collina Strada and SwatchOn’s Sustainable Collaboration

Pandora

This company came into being in 1982. Over the years, Pandora has established itself as one of the world’s leading corporate sustainability brands today. Despite its popularity and immense size, this company doesn’t take the environment or the people it serves for granted.

Pandora’s commitment to sustainability

We can see this in Pandora’s use of gold as well as silver for their jewelry. These two materials can undergo recycling without losing their quality. What’s truly unique about this company is every single one of their products will be made from fully recyclable materials by 2025.

Pandora to only use recycled gold, silver

Sustainability Brands Community

More people are becoming increasingly inclined toward the idea of sustainability. By all means, this is excellent for our environment.

As a demonstration of total dedication to sustainability, different individuals and organizations have come together to create communities.

An example of such is the B-Corporation.

B-Corporation Association

B-Corporation is a global community of 3500 corporations across 74 different countries and 150 industries. These companies always make decisions geared to positively affect the environment, their workers, as all as customers, among others. They’re legally required to do so.

Sustainable Brand Conferences

To raise awareness about sustainability, different organizations worldwide organize conferences at other points in a year. A few of these conferences include:

World Sustainability Forum

This conference took place between the 15th-17th of September 2020. Also, It has held every other year for the last seven years. Its main agenda is to birth sustainable development methods in the long term for regions, people, and the entire planet.

Sustainability Week

This program holds from October 5th to October 9th, 2020. It’s designed for sustainability professionals, academics, and government officials. Among other things, it teaches you how we can cut down on our emission of carbons.

SB Paris

Beyond offering the experience of a conference, this event wants to make a real impact. It aims to be a platform for action takers who work to make the world a better place.

Sustainable Brand Index

This is the most significant sustainability study in all of Europe. It ranks B2Cs and B2Bs annually based on their sustainability level. With over 1400 brands across 35 different countries, this is a genuinely massive pool of information.

How Your Brand Can Deliver Value

As a brand focused on sustainability, there are tons of ways for you to deliver value. Here are some of them:

Save Resources and Recycle

This is a no-brainer if you’re looking to make the world a better place truly. You understand the nitty-gritty of your business. As such, ensure that at every turn, you’re saving resources instead of wasting them just because it’s easier to do so.

In the same way that brands like Prada and Pandora recycle plastic and precious metal, you can also recycle resources.

Take Care of The Environment

In this regard, you need to act responsibly. Do your best to go for safe means of generating energy so that your office isn’t an emission station for CFCs.
Alongside that, don’t dump waste improperly. Furthermore, you can take care of the environment by organizing community programs daily clean and recycle waste at a dumpsite. These, among many others, are the ways you can care for the environment.

Help Those Who Need It

Sustainability goes beyond just caring for the earth. You need to help humanity, as well. As a company, you can create foundations to provide for those who need it.

Even without foundations, you can make donations to better the lives of people. Besides being a kind thing to do, this is very sustainable. According to a study, as a small company, you can donate an average of 6% of your profits.

Give a Touch of Green

By this, we mean that you should plant trees. Think of it as giving back to the earth. Multiple websites allow you to do that.

Some of them are:

• Ecosia
• One Tree Planted
• Tree-Nation
• Trees
• Plant-for-the-Planet
• Nature
• Team Trees
• International Tree Foundation
• The National Forest

Care About Your People

Sometimes you’ll hear stories of companies taking advantage of their employees and maltreating their customers.

If you’re looking to create a sustainable brand, this shouldn’t be you. Always pay attention to your human factor. Treat your people properly, cultivate integrity, corporate values, trust, and care about each other. Always respect people’s rights, value talents, and provide a friendly environment for cooperation with employees, partners, and customers.

Make a Difference Daily

It can be as little as posting content that will inspire others to be more sustainable. On the other hand, it may be as big as donating millions of dollars to organizations that will use it properly. However, no matter what it is, ensure that you make a difference every day. We are also always on your side, and will never stop making a difference for you.

P.S. Finally, we invite you to watch this deep and emotional video by Thai Life Insurance to feel what it takes to make the world a better place.

Unsung Hero by Thai Life Insurance

eCommerce Checkout Optimization for Higher Conversion Rates

What makes the eCommerce store successful? It’s a combination of many factors, such as a beautiful design, fast page loading, excellent customer service, etc. All this contributes to a great customer experience. The user starts their journey on the product page or a home page. If this journey is successful, they end it on the checkout page, one of the online store’s key pages. Today we’ll talk about things that help brands build a successful checkout flow and make an eCommerce checkout optimization to grow your results.

eCommerce Checkout Page Elements

There are several essential elements that we can find on any checkout page. All of them are useful and help us make the purchase step by step.

Contact Information

The contact form requests the information about the customer: their First Name, Second Name, email, phone number. It’s needed to identify the customer and provide the delivery. Also, this information is highly valuable for brands and gives them access to their customers’ data. eCommerce brands can use it to upsell and cross-sell, inform their customers about new products, advertise, and make personalized offerings using various channels.

Shipping Information

The form fields that the customer needs to fill out about shipping include the shipping address and delivery methods. This block also gives an overview of the delivery price for each available delivery method and shows the time needed for the delivery.

Order Summary

The order summary is about costs, and it should be clear and understandable. It summarizes all costs that the order includes: product prices, shipping costs, taxes, discounts, and Total.

Payment Methods

Payment methods allow the customer to select the preferable way of payment. This section usually provides selection buttons and logos of payment methods to indicate the payment gateway and save the customer time.

Payment Information

It’s a short form that asks the customer to fill out the information needed to purchase with a selected payment method: PayPal account details, or a card number, expiration date, and CCV code, and address. This step requires the highest security level from the online store.

Confirmation Buttons

Pushing those buttons by the user are the goals that bring the store conversions. Those buttons turn a visitor into a customer. So buttons must be engaging, provide a bold call to action, and be notable among all that information on the page.

As we can see, there are just a few elements on the checkout page. They are simple enough, but they still need to be well-thought-out. All should be in place.

eCommerce Checkout Page Best Practices

Let’s consider what makes a checkout page design successful and grows our customers’ trust.

Minimum Number of Steps

First, remember the principle: no one wants to spend their time. People don’t want to overthink, especially doing any actions online. We should keep our customers in mind and make their shopping experience as convenient and fast as it could be. Where we can make a difference is our checkout!

Decrease the number of checkout steps to a needed minimum. There is no need to create large and heavy contact forms that request too much information. When requesting the credit card information, ask only for the necessary data:

• Card number
• Name on card
• Expiration date
• Security code

Also, let the user fill in these fields quickly. Think about the following micro-interactions:

• Avoid autocorrections;
• Allow copy-pasting;
• Disable auto-formatting and autocorrect for the key fields;
• Show a clear error message and what necessary field the user needs to fill.

Checkout page really means one page with a short form and order summary that the user can read, fill in, and confirm within a few minutes.

Various Payment Methods

The variety of payment options allows the customer to make a purchase decision quickly. Brands aim to include several most popular payment methods, such as Credit and Debit Card, PayPal, Payoneer, Stripe, American Express, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Braintree, etc.

Lack of available payment options often results in conversion drops. There is a vast difference between spending several dollars and allowing hundreds of dollars to leave your bank account. Customers frequently face difficulties when they can’t find the payment option that suits their particular case. It’s good to carry out some research and add payment methods available for the customers in your target locations.

Order Summary in Local Currency

Talking about today’s digitalized world and the situation with COVID restrictions, brands notice the online purchases’ growth compared to the offline. Online shopping becomes international. But also customers still trust and even give more trust to their local brands. That means people from various target locations can visit your online store and make purchases. Brands should adjust and use this opportunity as never before.Convert prices and order total into your customer local currency. This way, you show your care and help the customer. It’s hard for the customer to calculate the prices in their local currency and include all taxes and currency conversion rates in their calculations. It’s hard for them to understand clearly what price they need to pay and whether they have enough money in their bank account. Help and do that for them!

Transparent Shipping Costs and Taxes

The total on the checkout page summarises all the costs included in the order. However, the order summary must list all additional costs, such as taxes and shipping. Free shipping is a competitive advantage for many brands and a reason for customers to buy products in a particular store. Customers want to see how much delivery costs at your online store. Also, shipping costs and taxes may differ depending on the customer location and the delivery method chosen. So, the user must always have the choice and decide what suits them best.

Multiple Shipping Options

As mentioned before (about the variety of payment options), the same goes for the shipping options. First, shipping costs usually differ depending on the delivery method used. Second, different people tend to trust particular delivery methods and prefer their advantages. For example, someone needs lower costs and is ready to wait a bit. Another person needs to get their order as quickly as possible to make a present for some holiday. Know your customers and always give them flexibility and choice.

And to sum up, let the numbers speak:

Great Customer Journey Before

The first impression counts for a lot. But the sum of many small interactions across the website count even more. Provide a great customer experience at all stages: from the home and product pages to the checkout and customer support. This way, you increase the loyalty of your customers and lead them to the purchase in a great mood 🙂 When they saw a great product page, quickly added all needed products to their shopping cart without any distractions, chances for the successful checkout will grow.

Analyze your customer behavior with the Google Analytics funnel tool and observe which steps of the buying process have room for improvement. You just find out at what stages your customers usually leave before the purchase. It could be product pages, a shopping cart page, or even a checkout page, meaning that these particular pages hide some reasons that stop your customers from placing the order. This is where you can start your conversion optimization.

Such services as Hotjar can give you an overview of the customer experience on your website. It shows the user interactions’ heatmap, and you can see whether some elements need changes, testing, and analysis.

High Data Security

Implementing data security technologies on the website is essential for all businesses that deal with payments. Use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) on the website to secure payment operations from data theft and hacking. SSL helps increase the security level of digital communications on eCommerce websites and provides data encryption. Also, enable two-factor authentication combining the request of two security factors such as the information that the user has (e.g., a credit card number) and who the user is (e.g., a fingerprint, face ID, etc.).

Protect your payment operations with a firewall. A firewall blocks any unauthorized access to the online data. Also, the website should have https authentication to secure your website communications over the network.

Engaging and Convenient Buttons

Confirmation buttons on the checkout page should not scream, but they need to be well-notable and be in the right place. There is some difference between pacing the buttons on desktop and mobile devices – you can test and find out the best and the most convenient place for the buttons. On mobile devices, the button size must be large enough to tap with a finger.

The button color also plays an important role and influences conversions. We know that red or green buttons are often used to catch attention and create urgency. But there is a cultural difference between the meaning of colors in different countries. That’s why we should take it into account when designing the store view for customers in our target locations. Furthermore, most stores nowadays use minimalistic colors in grey, black, and white that still catch attention but don’t put pressure. A/B testing is helpful here to find what works best.

eCommerce Checkout Steps Optimization

When we already know some of the best practices for creating an effective checkout page, let’s consider practical steps to optimize the checkout flow and grow the conversion.

Engage with Product Pages

We all know that customers start their journey somewhere on the product pages or a home page. That means their experience on the product page significantly influences their readiness to checkout. Make an excellent product presentation with a high-quality product description and images, provide outstanding customer support via live chat, offer beneficial bonuses, and share your brand values with customers. This way, you grow their trust and desire to shop in your store. Create a great impression right from the beginning and support that feeling on the checkout!

Add Trust Signals for Credibility

We often talk about growing customer trust, and that’s where we really can make a difference. Our customers need trust signals at all stages of their journey. They need to see https:// in your website URL to know that your website is secure. They also need to see customer reviews to know that others trust your brand. Again, you can grow credibility by showing logos of brands responsible for web and payment security, such as Norton, McAfee, etc.

Data protection policy and cookie policy, following GDPR principles, also help increase customer confidence in your online store’s safety.

Remove All Destructors

The checkout stage is a step that leads to the conversion. That’s why you should focus customer attention on this goal. Different banners, pop-ups, links, colorful elements, or additional widgets can distract the user and take away from the primary goal. That’s why make your checkout page clear, minimalistic, and consistent.

Omit Unnecessary Links

All additional links, banners, and other unnecessary information are not for the checkout page. Focus on the key actions: fill in the form and confirm the order. All other links can be placed on the product pages, home page, and additional marketing pages. The checkout page must have only one call to action – make a purchase and confirm the order.

Be Careful with Promo-Codes

That’s a tricky moment. Promo codes are useful when used wisely. Be careful when offering the field to enter the promo code on the checkout page. When users see that field, they don’t have promo codes and experience ambiguous feelings in most cases. It’s something like: ‘This order may cost fewer. I don’t have a promo-code. That’s not fair. Where can I get it?’. So, you see.
For example, this is Forever 21’s checkout page:

1. Their promo code field is pretty bright and catches attention. That will not work for many brands and will distract from the purchase. But maybe, Forever 21 builds some of its competitive advantages and marketing tactics on this offering.
2. They tell you how to get these discounts. You just need to invite a friend and get a gift (probably, a promo code for the discount).

One more good tactic is to add a small link with a question such as ‘Have a promo code?’ This way, you don’t bring too much attention to this feature, but people who have a promo code will look for that field and find it. Others will not even notice it and continue their shopping.

Suggest Free-Shipping Options

The free shipping option helps you grow customer loyalty and even increase the order total in many cases. You can offer free shipping for the orders starting from the X sum. So the customers will add a few more items to their shopping cart and get free shipping. You can also offer free shipping for sharing the link to your online store on social networks or for the first order or the review. As we saw in previous stats, 70% of customers EXPECT free shipping options. That’s why it becomes the must-have for modern eCommerce stores.

Use One-Step Checkout

One-step checkout technology means that the customer makes a checkout with one step on the one page. They only need to enter contact, payment, and shipping info to one online form and confirm the order. It saves time and therefore helps grow conversion.

Save Credit Card Detail

Implement saving credit card and contact options, so the user will not need to enter them again during the next purchase checkout process. And don’t forget to admit this as a benefit for not registered users.

Don’t Force to Register

Brands benefit from user’s registration by getting access to their data. However, don’t push pressure on users. Most of the new visitors will not purchase at the store from their first visit. Some of them need to make immediate purchases on the go. Let them do this! Later they will register if they like the experience with your brand. You can provide several convenient options:

Offer Benefits for Registration

We can start collecting emails beforehand. You can show the pop-up or a banner offering various benefits for creating an account for the new customers. They could be a promo code for a 20% discount, the ability to save contact information and preferences, free delivery, etc. Motivate your new customers to stay with you.

Allow Guest Checkout

Even with beneficial offerings on your website, some users will not still be glad to register. They may need to make a quick purchase or don’t have enough trust for your brand for the first time. That’s normal. We should be flexible and provide a guest checkout option. This way, our customer will need to enter just the necessary information: contacts, delivery address, and payment details, and that’s all. This information will not be stored in your database and will be applied to only particular orders.

Look how Tom Tailor uses all the three options! They offer login for their customers, allow new customers to shop as a guest, or encourage them to register to make the next shopping more comfortable by saving orders and login information.

Return Your Customers

Another useful way to simplify the checkout process, return your customers, and grow your conversion rate is to remind your customers about their abandoned carts, viewed products, wish lists, and preferences. You can use various marketing channels or a combination of them for these purposes.

Email

A large number of users abandon their carts and don’t complete the purchase process. You can send them friendly automated reminders via email with links to their saved abandoned carts. This way, your customers return to your store and complete their orders.

Remarketing Ads

With Facebook and Google remarketing ads, you can show ads to your customers based on their previous purchases, preferences, and saved wishlists. It’s one of the most effective ways to advertise your products because your ads are personalized and based on interests. Install Facebook pixel or set up Google Adwords code on your website and launch engaging ads according to your budget.

Messengers & Phone

Connect with your customers via messengers or phone and inform them about your discounts for their preferred products. This way, you motivate the customers to buy products now because something stopped them from purchasing some time ago.

There are plenty of ways to improve our customers’ experience, but they all need testing, and some of them need an individual approach to different customer groups. To sum up, let’s look at some of the best eCommerce checkout examples.

eCommerce Checkout Examples

ASOS

ASOS provides three options to check out: you can log in to your existing account, register using Google, Facebook, Apple, or Amazon account, or use guest checkout. We tested their guest checkout option:

So, what good we can see here. First, it’s a one-step checkout where you can make the checkout on one single page. Next:

1. ‘Secured with Norton’ badge telling the user that the website is safe.
2. Order summary with visual identification of added items and a total.
3. The delivery country field allows us to find and select the country.
4. The short form requests only the necessary information: delivery address, delivery options, and payment details. All this is summarized with a friendly green ‘Place Order’ button. There are no distractors; we can see just a clear and consistent form.
5. And a tricky moment: a well-notable field about promo-codes and vouchers. Maybe, the ASOS team knows what they do and have enough promo codes to satisfy their customers’ expectations. 🙂

Tiger of Sweden

Tiger of Sweden is a powerful Sweden fashion brand with a long history. Their website is an excellent example of a high-quality product created with care about their customers.

Their checkout page illustrates a great example of an effective checkout process. They also provide a one-step checkout on the one page and make the shopping process really convenient for the customer.

1. They provide two options to check out: as a guest or as a member.
2. Customers that register get free shipping. Remember about encouraging users to register?
3. The order summary’s clean and minimalistic look allows the users to place the order without any distractions.
4. Pay attention to a small link offering to add a coupon. The brand doesn’t put it to the spotlight, so the users who don’t have coupons don’t overfocus on that moment.
5. Benefits and guarantees serve as trust signals for the customers.
6. We can see the forms that request only the necessary information. The first one asks for the shipping address.
7. We scroll down and can choose the shipping method. It’s good that there are several options available, and each one provides a clear description of the time needed for the delivery.
8. Then we need to choose a payment method. There are several options shown with visual logos. The user doesn’t need to overthink. Tiger of Sweden provides the most popular methods, such as payment by card, PayPal, and even Klarna to pay later. We just need to enter the data, and that’s all.
9. The ‘Order and Pay’ button has a perfect call to action. First, it indicates a goal to order. And second, it informs the user that the payment will be carried out now. So it creates the right expectation. As you can see, its design is minimalistic in black and white, but still well-notable.

These checkout pages both look great on mobile. So you can take them as good examples.

We hope this information was useful for you and will help you build an effective checkout flow to grow your conversion and brand power.

Our credits*: We are thankful to the eCommerce Expo UK 2020 for sharing the useful insights and knowledge about today’s retail and digital world. And our special thanks to Ebru Keskin, Payments and Fraud Expert from FinTech 360, for her report ‘How to achieve higher conversion rate and checkout optimization by localization.’ Thank you, guys, for making a difference.

The Guide on eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

The concept of the eCommerce conversion rate is one that all business owners need to monitor. Regardless of the type of eCommerce website, it has one single goal. That goal is to sell as many products or services as possible. And then, sell more.

To achieve this goal, entrepreneurs and business owners need to take specific measures. These measures will be the result of a close analysis of the users’ behavior. This is why many business owners are on the hunt for how to increase eCommerce conversion rate.

With an increase in eCommerce conversion rates comes a commensurate increase in revenue. Subsequently, it means the business will make more profit while also expanding its reach and audience.

This guide to eCommerce conversion rate optimization will offer more understanding. It explores the formula, and finally, it provides detailed insight into the factors that affect it and the best eCommerce conversion practices to stimulate positive change.

With knowledge of conversion optimization tips, entrepreneurs and business owners can take their business to the next level. The best part is the smallest changes can lead to fantastic results.

What is eCommerce Conversion Rate?

Before making any changes, it is essential to know what the eCommerce conversion rate is. Here are the major highlights:

eCommerce Conversion Rate Definition

Google defines the eCommerce conversion rate as the ratio of the number of transactions to individual sessions on a website. Typically, for an eCommerce conversion case study, the best option is to express it as a percentage.

It is essential to know that purchases may not be the only metric that defines conversion. Other examples include:

• Email signup
• Social media shares
• Users inviting friends and loved ones

However, in eCommerce, we usually track purchases.

eCommerce Conversion Rate Formula

To get the eCommerce conversion rate for any business, the owner will have to use a formula. Not to worry, it doesn’t require genius math skills.

Simply divide the overall number of purchases by the number of all visitors to the website. Then, the next step is to multiply this number by 100%. For effective results, eCommerce businesses should do this over a regular timeframe, e.g., monthly.

Say a website has 100 visitors and nine purchases over a month, the eCommerce conversion rate will be 9%. With proper eCommerce conversion rate optimization as the goal, analytics tools will prove useful.

Such tools as Google Analytics will monitor the total amount of conversions and visits to a website. These tools can present periodic conversion statistics. This way, eCommerce website owners do not have to make complex calculations.

What is an Average eCommerce Conversion Rate?

Knowing the average eCommerce conversion rates for your particular industry help to create the right expectations and set measurable goals. The numbers may differ depending on the product market, the time needed to decide, and the products’ price.

eCommerce Conversion Rate Benchmarks

According to Littledata, eCommerce conversion rate benchmarks range from 1% to 4%. However, it’s not enough to develop an optimization strategy using this number alone.Numbers may differ from the above depending on the country, season, devices, and other variables. Hence, the best option is to know the key performance indicators for a business. Variables like the target audience, geographic area, and market penetration will affect each business differently.

eCommerce Conversion Rate by Industry

Below, we present the average eCommerce conversion rates for different industries:

Source: IRP Commerce

eCommerce Conversion Rate by Country

Part of how to increase eCommerce conversion rate is to take geography into account. The average conversion rate in France will differ from that of the United States — even for the same product.

Source: Ecommerce-Europe

The reasons behind this level of disparity from a country to the country include the following:

Market Maturity

Markets in countries with established eCommerce businesses will have higher conversion rates. This will be in stark contrast to a country where the economics of eCommerce is still shaky. For 2020, we can see the following tendencies and numbers about eCommerce growth in the world, according to Statista:

The USA:

265 million eCommerce users and $411 000 million of revenue:

The UK:

57 million eCommerce users and $97 000 million of revenue:

Germany:

62 million eCommerce users and $88 000 million of revenue:

Sweden:

8 million eCommerce users and $12 000 million of revenue:

China:

962 million eCommerce users and $1 116 000 million of revenue:

As we can see, China and the USA significantly grow their eCommerce revenue and number of users and are promising regions for eCommerce business.

Purchasing Power

Economic growth and development, inflation rates, and consumption behavior are factors unique to a country. Furthermore, they have a bearing on conversion rates. This is why eCommerce conversion rates differ by country.

Payment Accessibility

The availability of payment options in a country can guide how to increase eCommerce conversion rates.

Different countries have varying payment options. Hence, limited payment options will come with an inevitable drop in conversion rates.

eCommerce conversion statistics

The b2b eCommerce conversion rates for different industries tell a story of their own. Using these figures, eCommerce business owners can know the target conversion rate to aim for.

Retail eCommerce Conversion Rate

Depending on the niche, eCommerce conversion rates will differ. According to research from Adobe Digital Index 2020, these are the conversion statistics for different niches.

Source: Smart Insights

Fashion eCommerce Conversion Rates

According to Littledata, for fashion eCommerce conversion rates, any figure higher than 2.9% is great. In fact, with this number, the business is in the top 20% for this niche. Conversely, figures less than 0.29% will mean the business is in the bottom 20% worldwide.

B2B eCommerce Conversion Rates

According to DigitalCommerce360 eCommerce conversion rate benchmarks for b2b businesses range from about 6% to 8%.

Mobile eCommerce Conversion Rate

Every day, more shoppers start their journey into the eCommerce conversion funnel with a smartphone. About 54% of website visits come from a smartphone. This data from Zukio gives greater insight into the mobile eCommerce conversion rate:

Source: Zuko

What is a Good Conversion Rate for Social Media?

The best eCommerce conversion numbers for social media should sit around 0.71%. Anything far from this figure, and there is a need to make drastic optimization measures.

What is the Average Conversion Rate for Instagram?

Like for websites, the answer to the average eCommerce conversion rate for Instagram will depend on the industry. Overall though, the conversion rate for Instagram is 3%.

And by the way, Instagram shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s another great eCommerce channel that helps sell products on your website. People come to Instagram to see the real photos and how they work in action and ask some questions. But then they often come back to the website to make a purchase or do it right on Instagram.

What is a good conversion rate for eCommerce in General?

A functional eCommerce conversion funnel should see thousands of visitors. With this influx of visitors, it’s usually possible to expect the sale of 1%-2%.

What Influences the eCommerce Conversion Rate?

eCommerce conversion statistics are not random numbers. They are under the influence of certain factors. Let’s see what these include.

Speed

Shopping online is all about convenience. The average eCommerce customer wants a high level of convenience and speed. They want to scroll through a catalog using fast website search features, structured categories, and easy navigation. Also, they want eCommerce website pages to load fast.

According to Hubspot, bout 47% of eCommerce customers want a webpage to load in less than 2 seconds. For reference, here’s how page speed affects average eCommerce conversion rates:

Source: Hubspot

Page loading is not the only area where speed is vital. eCommerce conversion rates have a close relationship with how fast customers can visit the website, get help from customer support or live chat features.

Furthermore, customers want to be able to shop fast, make payments, and checkout speedily. More importantly, they want a fast delivery too. Depending on how fast an eCommerce business is in these categories, its conversion rates may increase or fall.

Impression

For those wondering why my conversion rate is dropping, the answer may lie in the website’s aesthetic impression. The website design and outlay is the first thing visitors will notice. Therefore, if these are subpar, it will reflect in the conversion rate figures. eCommerce businesses should strive for a beautiful website design.

Also, there is a need to incorporate organized product presentations into the design. Here’s a beautiful website presentation from clothing giants ASOS:

ASOS, Fashion, UK

Website design makes an impression, but it must work to lead the visitor to the goal — purchase. This must be as quick as possible.

Needs

As much as people buy products because they need them, they also buy them due to emotional connections. In many cases, they don’t exactly need the product.

However, due to a connection to the brand, they always seek out products from the brand — even when it’s not readily available. Remember, how one day we see that cool footwear, want it, and explain to ourselves that we need it to start running. Or look at your smartphone and recall that you bought it to increase your productivity (not because it’s so beautiful)

This is all in the brand message and voice. Depending on the kinds of messages a business sends out via social media, email, or other media, customers may relate more with the brand.

For instance, Coca-Cola excels in this regard. Their brand promise “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift” speaks of a mindset — a lifestyle even. It’s why its audience is always so quick to buy Coca-Cola drinks. They don’t exactly need it. But, the company gives them a reason to want to be a part of the community.

Coca-Cola, Drinks, Worldwide

Price

The price of the product/service on sale is a critical factor that determines eCommerce conversion rates. Sometimes, it may seem like keeping costs low will increase conversion rates. However, discounts are not always the way to go.

Depending on the audience and type of products, customers may be willing to pay more. They’ll want to do this, especially if the brand offers more value. Value in this regard may be:

• Swift delivery
• Top-notch customer service
• Excellent packaging
• Product quality
• Money-back guarantees

Trust

Brand trust means the customer will always choose to buy from that brand. Even if other competitors are a tad more accessible, the shopper will still seek out brands they trust.

Attaining brand trust is possible with customer reviews, open customer communication lines, live demonstration of services and products, etc.

Let’s take customer reviews as a reference point. 84% of shoppers put stock in online reviews. Some read as many as ten reviews before making a single purchase.

Fabletics, Fashion, USA

Responding to the reviews, whether they are positive or negative, deserves our special attention. Brands that openly and honestly reply to the reviews, work with negatives, and help to solve problems quickly, even if the customer is not satisfied with services or products, build more trust in the brand.

According to Brightlocal, 97% of customers, who read the reviews, read the responses to those reviews. And by the way, customers are grateful if they love the brand and are happy with the services.

They often mention the brand and its products in their social media posts, Instagram stories, and photos, share their positive experience, and bring friends to the brand! So, it’s a good idea to respond.

Why is My Conversion Rate Dropping?

Even if we follow the best eCommerce practices, sometimes we have the hard days trying to level up our conversions. It may drop for some not obvious reasons that we need to explore. Usually, conversion rate decrease is the result of a combination of different factors, including:

Slow Page Speed

Tools like Pingdom and Google Speed Insights are great for page speed analysis. A drop in page speed may be due to large image sizes.

Consider compressing images before uploading them on the website. Another solution to explore is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs). Instead of loading the full desktop version on smartphones, the website will load a fast mobile version.

Website Error

Sometimes, a drop in eCommerce conversion site statistics may be due to a website error. It may be that key buttons like “add to cart” or “sign up” are not working.

Run a diagnostic by testing out critical pages and buttons on the website. Be sure to evaluate the Main, Product, and Shopping Cart pages on different devices and browsers. BrowserStack is a tool that can prove useful here.

Poor Product Pages

Ensure product pages have all the necessary information to influence purchasing decisions. These include but are not limited to copy, product features, and high-quality images.

Not Enough Customer Proof

Customer reviews and recommendations influence whether shoppers will make a purchase. With the Trustpilot widget, it’s possible to include customer reviews and advice on website pages.

Outperforming Competitors

If the completion has higher conversion rates, they may be doing something different. With analytical tools like Buzzsumo and Owler, it’s possible to gain insight into competitor tactics. Also, go to their websites, try to make a purchase, pay attention to their product pages and website features. Create a list of the ideas about things that may positively influence the competitors’ conversion, create a spreadsheet, and compare it with your website. Such type of analysis may help you find your strengths and the areas for growth.

Trouble with SEO

The website must have top quality copy and images with specific keywords to get plenty of organic traffic. If the website has these and still sees low traffic, it may be an indexing issue. There may be a need to hire a professional to check it out.

Use keywords to improve content quality and rank better on Google. Keyword research tools to help site owners figure out what their target audience is searching for includes:

• KWFinder
• SEMrush
• Keyword Tool
• Google Keyword Planner

As part of SEO, image optimization is also important. Include the focus keywords in the title and alt description of images. Do this for both videos and images on your website, so the search engines can easily understand your site and rank it.

When we already suppose the reasons where we have a space for improvement, let’s se how we can do better and grow the conversion rate.

How to Do eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization?

In this section, we will tackle how to increase the eCommerce conversion rate for a business:

Review Your eCommerce Conversion Funnel

The eCommerce conversion funnel is the “imaginative path” a customer must follow to make a purchase. It starts from the entry point to the website to the moment they complete the purchase.

By reviewing the eCommerce conversion funnel, it’s possible to spot the points where prospective customers veer from the purchase path. The four primary stages we should pay attention to are:

The Landing Page

A good landing page should attract customers and make them want to remain on the website. It should also have a singular CTA and lead generation potential. If customers are leaving after visiting the landing page, then it may be lacking.

InfiniteMoon, Pillows, USA

The Product Page

The product page stage of the eCommerce conversion funnel should provide information — lots of it. Ideally, customers should get all of the information they want about a product on this page.

Also, it’s possible to optimize the product page by adding customer reviews. Here’s an example of a product page from Forever 21 with all of the essential features:

Forever 21, Fashion, UK

The Shopping Cart

When reviewing this stage of the eCommerce conversion funnel, look out for surprise costs. To optimize the shopping cart and checkout page, add multiple payment options. Additionally, be sure to provide security assurances.

The Purchase

This part of the eCommerce conversion funnel is for people who make purchases. Review the strategies the brand uses to keep a correspondence with such customers. This will affect brand trust and loyalty. Furthermore, it will determine the possibility of repeat business.

It’s a good idea (and a must-do step) to set up Google Analytics for your online store with eCommerce settings. There you’ll find the conversion settings and can set up the conversion funnel with critical steps to track which step needs optimization and where your customers may go away.

You may have some work to do with your shopping cart, or even already on the payment page. When you indicate the steps that require optimization, it’s the right time to think about what you can do to succeed.

Follow eCommerce Conversion Best Practices

The following are useful eCommerce tips to increase conversation rates:

Keep Your Website Fast & Smooth

A single second of delay can result in a 7% drop in conversion rates. But an increase in speed puts you in front of your competitors (even if your website pages are below them on Google search results).

Test & Analyze Your Website Design & Usability

Make sure everything on the eCommerce website looks nice and tidy. More importantly, ensure that every button works and is easy to use. Try making tests in BrowserStack for your key pages and tow the user purchase path by yourself.

Add Customer Reviews

Customer reviews on an eCommerce website increase the chances of shoppers completing a purchase. Also, be sure to update these reviews regularly. Platforms, such as Trustpilot, Google, Facebook, and Instagram, will help you collect the reviews and gain more trust.

Turn Your Customers Back with Follow-Ups

Encourage repeat business by keeping in touch with your customers. Use promo codes, discounts, and newsletters to engage with the audience.

Be Responsive

Fast customer support is great for eCommerce businesses. Whether on the website or via the app, be as accessible as possible. Include a live chat on your website: people like to communicate and ask quick questions about the product. Your fast response can be decisive.

Make it Easy to Check Out

Over 30% of customers abandon their carts because the checkout process is too complicated. To make it easy, avoid extra costs, offer flexible payment options, and an opportunity to make purchases without a user account. Here are some common issues that may affect the checkout process:

Source: VWO

Try eCommerce Conversion Tips from Marketers

Some time-tested marketing tips and tricks to boost conversion rates include:

‘Time is Running’

By adding a visible counter to the website, brands can install a sense of urgency to the purchase. This example from jewelry giants, Ernest Jones, is a great illustration:

Ernest Jones, Jewellery, UK

Certain types of people are responsive to urgency and impulse buying and are afraid to miss the great product and opportunity. So even if you think that will not work with you, that works with others. Maybe, you are the other type of person – we’ll talk about that later.

‘1 1=3’

We all want more for less. Offering a significant discount after multiple purchases can be a great incentive for customers to keep shopping.

‘You may also like’

This is the “related items” strategy. It can awaken curiosity in customers. Even after buying our product, they’d want to check out items they may also like. Here’s how Amazon uses this conversion tip:

‘Best Fit’

This marketing strategy involves suggesting other products that complement the one a customer is checking out. For instance, if a customer is checking out shirts, the “best fit” technique will suggest the best shoes to go with the shirt.

Or if we choose a piece of cheese for dinner, the store can indicate a wine that goes perfectly with that cheese and will make our dinner ‘Bellissima’! We all love harmony and balance, so why don’t we check the other products to make our set even better? – And, yes, that’s why we, of course, need them (and want).

‘Switching Product’

This eCommerce conversion tip involves offering the product at a lower price — for first purchases. This may come in the form of discounts or special offers. After the first purchase and increased brand trust, it’s possible to get the customer to buy at the average rate.

‘Good Price’ (among the high)

This method for increasing eCommerce conversion rates works best for products in the luxury category. If a customer is checking out high-priced products, the system can suggest alternatives. These alternatives will have a lower price that remains high enough to seem acceptable.

‘I’m OK’

This works similar to the ‘best fit’ technique. If a customer chooses a high-priced product, the website can offer suggestions they may like. However, these suggestions will have lower (and already more acceptable) prices.

Abandoned Cart Follow Up

It’s inevitable. Some customers will not complete the purchase process. However, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to convert them to customers.

By following up with emails, it’s possible to convince customers to complete their purchases. These emails should include some form of motivation to complete the purchase, e.g., promo codes, freebies, and discounts. Here’s an illustration of a follow-up email from Whiskey Loot.

Whiskey Loot, Drinks, USA

Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads help to increase sales by using ads on third-party sites to reach out to visitors. eCommerce businesses can target customers that have made a purchase.

Even if they didn’t complete the purchase, the info from their browser cookies could come in handy. With this info, it’s possible to make sure they see ads about the products they checked out on the website. Below is an excellent example of a retargeting ad from Frank and Oak.

Frank And Oak, Fashion, Canada

Analyze Results with eCommerce Conversion Tools

eCommerce conversion tools are useful for tracking and analyzing user behavior. With the results from tools like Google Analytics, eCommerce entrepreneurs can get insights into:

• How visitors find the website
• How long visitors remain on the site
• What countries the visitors are from
• If they are new or returning visitors

Some helpful tools for eCommerce conversion tracking and case study include:

• Marketo
• Optimizely
• Leadformly
• Crazy Egg
• Metrilo

It is easy to see the importance of the conversion rate for an eCommerce business. Only with knowledge of how this metric works can help site owners and managers take steps to improve their business.