When you pay for a coffee by tapping your credit card, the card and card reader exchange key transaction information and kick off a series of data and compliance checks between your card issuer and the merchant.
For example, the payment processor might want to check that the card is legitimate, that the transaction amount is accurate, and that the transaction has been properly recorded in the card provider’s database.
All of these checks happen in a matter of seconds, and they’re enabled by secure standards that enable programmatic data transfer and verification.
But when businesses try to access funds they’ve already been approved for, these same types of checks can take over a week for banks and capital providers to process and execute. That friction–and hold-up in funds–can blindside a business.
It turns out that all the table-stakes aspects of consumer credit–fast transactions, programmatic data checks, and ease of use–are still missing in business credit, even though business credit is a much larger chunk of the economy.
At Finley, we’re building modern software to streamline, secure, and record all the transactions between businesses and their capital providers. Just a year and a half after launching, we’re managing over $2 billion in debt capital for innovative companies like Ramp, Even, and Ribbon.
Now, our team is hiring for software developers (US remote) interested in building B2B financial infrastructure. If you’re interested in learning more, check out https://www.finleycms.com/careers/ or email your resume to contact@finleycms.com.
The NYPD is searching for a suspect in the random stabbing of a 16-year-old girl that occurred in broad daylight outside a juice bar in Brooklyn on May 22.
NALA | Senior Backend Engineer (Go) | Remote (GMT to EAT time zones) | Fintech | YC W19
We are an African payments company (https://www.nala.com/our-story) that just raised $10m from top VCs to transform Payments on the African continent and are on a mission to increase economic opportunity for Africans worldwide .
We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to become a part of the core Engineering team at Nala and be our guiding light in architecting the product as we take on some interesting product challenges in our target to acquire 50K paying customers by end of this year:
– Develop own infra for sending payments across countries
– Drive customer FX rate down to zero
– We serve 5 countries at the moment – help us build infra to serve 12 countries by the end of this year
– Multicurrency wallet and P2P
.
If you love taking product ownership and have hands-on experience building highly reliable and scalable backend services from scratch for a tech product, we’d love to speak with you.
Brownie points if you’ve worked in Fintech, Payments, Crypto currency space. 😀
+ 100% remote
+ real-life impact through a SaaS in the health industry
+ the company’s dedication to current issues (e.g. Black History Month, Women’s International Day)
+ different levels of seniority available, from medior to senior staff
+ work from Ireland, UK, Germany, Canada, the US
Shopify is a leading global commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere. Shopify powers millions of businesses in more than … Continue reading New comment by CFShopify in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2022)"
So what gives, and how can you push past a three percent conversion rate? E-commerce optimization is all about making it easy for your visitors to buy from you.
How do you do that? It starts with diving into your analytics to see where visitors are getting stuck. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry—I’m going to walk you through it.
First, however, let’s talk about why CRO is different for e-commerce websites.
How Is Conversion Optimization Different for E-commerce Stores?
The difference in average conversion rates is partially because a service website might have one or two steps in the checkout process, while an e-commerce store could have five or six – meaning it’s all the more important for you to optimize your CRO.
This means e-commerce stores need to pay more attention to the purchase process, from product pages to the checkout page.
E-commerce stores have unique friction points, such as shipping and returns, which can impact purchase decisions.
Because of this, e-commerce owners need to take a holistic approach to optimizing their stores.
This might mean looking for opportunities to increase customer confidence through social proof and streamlined checkout processes.
Ultimately, e-commerce owners should focus on creating a frictionless purchase experience to boost their conversion rates.
Similarly, shoppers that click on product recommendations are four and a half times more likely to add items to the cart and complete a purchase.
Amazon, for example, recommends products based on previous purchases or items you looked at. This helps keep customers engaged with the site and increases sales.
They also use “Frequently Bought Together” prompts to show customers related items they may like.
Recommending relevant products to your customers also improves the personalization of your e-commerce store.
86 percent of consumers say website personalization affects their purchasing decisions. This is an e-commerce conversion rate optimization tactic you don’t want to miss out on.
When customers can see what they’re buying and get an idea of how it will look and function in their lives, they feel more confident about the purchase.
Since your visitors can’t touch and feel your products, you need to make sure the media you use on each product page does them justice.
Make sure your photos are high enough resolution to support a zoom feature to show texture and details.
If you have the space, add a 360-degree view of the product so customers can get a complete look.
If your e-commerce store sells clothes or accessories, use models to show how the items look on various body types.
Besides images, consider using demo videos or explainer videos to show your products in action.
Remember, you don’t have to generate all the content yourself either.
Encourage customers to submit visual content or source your images and videos from social media, which perform double duty as social proof, which will help increase conversions.
Be sure to include all pertinent information, such as size, color, and fabric content.
Use clear and concise language to avoid confusion and highlight the unique features of your products.
E-commerce CRO Strategy #3: Streamline Navigation
You can’t make sales if site visitors can’t find what they want.
Your site’s navigation is often the first place shoppers look if they have a specific product or category in mind.
Navigation that is confusing, too complex, or difficult to understand will cost you sales and customers. In fact, a HubSpot case study found that simplifying or removing navigation elements from middle-of-the-funnel landing pages resulted in a 16-28% increased conversion rate!
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for e-commerce website navigation. The best way to design a website menu depends on the nature of your products and how your customers like to organize information.
Here are a few steps for creating effective e-commerce website navigation:
Use heat maps or do user testing to find how and where users click.
Prominently display categories on every page.
Include clear labels and concise descriptions for all menu items.
Create intuitive and logical menus based on how your customers browse your site.
Avoid burying essential menu items in nested sub-menus.
Test different navigation structures to see what works best for your customers.
An example of great e-commerce navigation comes from Apple.
If you have a large number of products, a drop-down menu that lists everything can be overwhelming.
If Apple included all its products and services in a drop-down menu, its website would have very clunky and confusing navigation.
Not only would that work against the brand’s minimalist image, but it’d also be hard for customers to find what they need.
Instead, Apple opts for clean top navigation with no dropdown or secondary menu item:
When visitors click on a top navigation item, they’re directed to a menu page that lists options within the category:
Doing away with a complicated drop-down also helps streamline the mobile user experience, which is increasingly important.
Providing a clear path to the products customers are looking for makes it easier for shoppers to find what they need on your site—which increases sales.
This can help improve your search engine ranking, as Google (and other search engines) favor sites that are easy to navigate.
If you’re unsure if your site is easy to navigate, or have seen drop-off points in your analytics, consider using a heat map tool like Crazy Egg to see where people click on your pages.
You can also use a tool like Optimizely to test different versions of your navigation and see which one leads to more conversions.
Once you’ve identified any potential drop-off points, it’s time to start making changes!
E-commerce CRO Strategy #4: Add a Wish List or Favorite Option
Wish lists and favorite options allow users to save items they might buy later.
This is a great way to increase conversions because it gives users the opportunity to “test drive” your site and come back later to buy products they love.
Creating a wish list also requires customers to create an account for your e-commerce store.
This allows you to offer relevant promotions and gather customer data to improve user experience and increase sales.
Wish lists can help you:
alert customers about special offers available for items on their wish lists
deliver targeted content based on items they’ve shown interest in
identify retail trends and seasonal activities to improve demand forecasting
understand what your customers are looking for and offer similar products
Research from Google found 40 percent of online shoppers think their experience would be better if they were offered a wish list.
In addition, make it easy for your customers to create wish lists on other platforms. For example, enable “Pin It” buttons so visitors can share your products on their Pinterest wish lists.
Or, promote the use of the “Save” feature on Instagram and Facebook.
There are many ways to make it easy for your customers to save products they are interested in.
If you use Shopify as your e-commerce platform, you have two options for adding a wish list feature: add custom code to your site, or add a wishlist app, like Wishlist Hero.
On BigCommerce, all you need to do is enable wishlists in your shop’s settings.
WooCommerce offers an extension so you can allow users to add items to their wishlist when they shop your store.
E-commerce CRO Strategy #5: Streamline the Check Out Process
To avoid losing customers at the checkout, make the process as quick and easy as possible.
This means offering clear and concise shipping information, providing a guest checkout option, and ensuring all payment methods are available.
You should also ensure the checkout process is easy to navigate with all required information requested upfront.
Here are a few ways to streamline the checkout process:
Use a single-page checkout: This will keep customers from going through multiple pages to check out.
Save billing and shipping information: Customers hate having to enter their information each time they make a purchase, so make their checkout process easier by saving and auto-filling their information.
Use a progress bar: Let customers know how far along they are in the checkout process so they don’t get impatient.
Offer a shipping calculator: This will help customers determine how much their shipping will cost and whether or not they want to continue with the purchase.
Personalize page to their local currency: Customers feel more comfortable when they’re making a purchase in their local currency.
Reduce clicks: Try to make the checkout process straightforward, so customers don’t get frustrated and leave.
Provide order confirmation: Once a customer has completed their purchase, send them an order confirmation to let them know everything went through successfully.
Include trust symbols: Add trust symbols like security seals to reassure customers their information is safe and their purchase is legitimate.
Remember, the easier you can make it for customers to buy, the more likely they are to convert!
E-commerce CRO Strategy #6: Add More (and Better) Social Proof
Social proof is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal to boost e-commerce conversion rates.
Adding social proof elements to your site increases confidence in potential buyers and nudges them towards completing a purchase.
reaching out to influencers for social content creation
promoting UGC on your social channels
Frequently Asked Questions About E-commerce CRO Strategies
How can I improve my e-commerce conversion rate?
To increase your e-commerce CRO, consider adding recommended products, making sure your product pages shine, implementing simple navigation, providing a wish list option, streamlining the checkout process, and adding social proof.
How are e-commerce conversions calculated?
E-commerce conversions are the total number of visits to your e-commerce site divided by the number of purchases.
What is a good e-commerce conversion rate?
The average e-commerce conversion rate varies depending on the type of product you sell but is typically around two percent. Some of the top e-commerce sites have conversion rates between 5 and 10 percent.
What is CRO in e-commerce?
E-commerce conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of making adjustments to your site with the goal of increasing the percentage of visits that result in a purchase. In e-commerce specifically, CRO is focused on optimizing the product page, checkout process, and overall user experience.
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Conclusion: E-commerce Conversion Optimization
E-commerce conversion optimization is key to driving growth for your business.
While blogs and service sites rely on traffic from search engines and social media, e-commerce sites need to optimize SEOand every step of the buying process.
When starting an e-commerce conversion rate optimization strategy, start by looking into your customer data and website analytics. Use heat mapping tools to see where customers are clicking and what they scroll past.
Despite the growth of social selling for e-commerce, SEO keyword optimization is still crucial to long-term business success. Why? Because that’s how most customers find you.
Search traffic is responsible for 65 percent of e-commerce sessions. If you’re not optimizing for keywords, buyers won’t find you among your competitors.
SEO offers many other advantages. SEO offers many other advantages. For instance, it has a fantastic ROI when done correctly.
If you want further proof of SEO’s advantages, case study after case study shows how a few tweaks can potentially get your site to the front page of Google.
A few words of warning before I move on:
Don’t expect results overnight. SEO can take time to yield results, but it’s a valuable investment that pays off long-term.
Don’t let SEO overwhelm you. There are numerous areas of SEO I could discuss here, but let’s just focus on keywords for now.
Why Should E-Commerce Companies Care About SEO Keywords?
To stay ahead of the curve, you need to do everything possible to optimize your site, rank higher in SERPs, and increase visibility. You’ve probably guessed by now, but one of the best ways to do this is with strategically chosen keywords.
For guidance, your chosen keywords should be:
Relevant to your product and target audience.
Attainable in search results.
Lucrative in terms of driving targeted, profitable traffic to your online store.
When it comes to finding keywords, you need resources to help you along the way. This is where Ubersuggest comes in.
Ubersuggest is a free tool that makes it easy to research keywords and identify which ones to target.
But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s talk about how Ubersuggest helped our e-commerce customer, Portrait Flip, improve traffic and drive ROI.
Portrait Flip is an online store that creates real portraits by real artists from customer photos around the world. Using Ubersuggest for its keyword research, the company increased its organic traffic by 70% in just two years and increased revenue by 32.33 percent over their goal.
Perhaps you think that’s unattainable. However, there’s a simple reason behind the enhanced results: you drive more relevant, organic traffic to your website by optimizing your pages by targeting the right keywords.
How to Use Ubersuggest to Create a Killer Online Store
From SEO audits and competitive analysis to monitoring results and adapting your approach, plenty goes into running a successful online store. However, there’s no need to get overwhelmed. With the right tools, creating a killer e-commerce store isn’t complicated.
Below are five steps to creating a killer online store using Ubersuggest. (link to each section)
Once you do that, go to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.” Next, add your website URL and name.
It’s also essential to connect your project to your Google Account to see how your keyword strategy is affecting your Google presence. Here’s how to do that:
Go to the dashboard.
Select the project you want to connect to Google Search Console.
Click ‘connect with Google.’
Connect the account or select the ‘Use another account’ option.
Remember, SEO takes time, and there might be some trial and error along the way. Therefore, once you’ve set it all up, I recommend you use Ubersuggest at least once a week to:
Check-in on your SEO progress (you can use the different weekly alerts to help you understand where to focus your efforts).
Work through the suggestions in your dashboard.
See what your competitors are up to and take small steps each week to compete against them.
Find new keywords to target on your product pages (try A/B testing product pages with different keywords to see which one ranks higher).
Portrait Flip did this and achieved significant success and savings:
“We were able to create and implement a clear SEO strategy with Ubersuggest starting in January of 2020 that helped our organic traffic take off. We’ve saved thousands of dollars on paid advertising by keeping Ubersuggest at the heart of our SEO, and we’ve watched our SEO and our revenue grow exponentially, too.”
Step #2 Perform an SEO Audit.
The Ubersuggest Site Audit is the best place to start with your Keyword Strategy. When you perform this analysis, you get a general overview of your website’s SEO standing.
From here, you can understand where your website ranks in terms of industry-standard for optimal SEO health.
To perform a site audit:
Go to the project dashboard.
Find SEO explorer on the left side menu and select ‘SEO Analyzer.’
Wait for the analyzer to create a report; your report sorts errors by difficulty and how fixing them impacts your SEO.
Review your report. Pay careful attention to the ‘See All SEO Errors,’ on the associated tab.
Click ‘What is this, and how do I fix it?’ on the associated tab.
Once you’ve reviewed the major issues, select the ‘SEO Analyzer Overview’ option. This takes you back to the site audit main page.
Now, you’re ready to review the second part of your audit report, which details your desktop and mobile web speed. Use the orange circular toggle, to switch between Desktop and Mobile reports.
Fix the issues, return to the ‘SEO Analyzer’ overview, and choose the ‘recrawl’ button at the top of the page.
Finally, review the report to see if you’ve fixed the errors or if there are any fresh ones.
Here’s how Portrait Flip used the site audit feature.
First, Portrait Flip optimized its results by focusing on the ‘Broken Link’ finder.
This helped the business understand where it was losing potential customers due to broken product links.
Portrait Flip also found the ‘Page Load Time’ report invaluable, as the company was keen to see if any added website code was inadvertently increasing its load times.
Again, this may not seem like a significant issue. However, speed is crucial for online shopping. Ideally, you want your e-commerce store to load within two seconds. Anything above that adds to your bounce rate and customer dissatisfaction and leads to lost sales.
After fixing simple issues on the Portrait Flipw website, 98 percent of the revenue generated from its SEO and PPC efforts in 2021 came from organic search.
Step #3 Research Keywords to Target
Now, this is where the fun starts.
You can use the Ubersuggest Keyword Reports to understand which keywords to include in your content to drive relevant and lucrative traffic.
The keyword overview allows you to see how competitive a keyword is and its search volume trend over time. To narrow down your keyword choices, think of the general search terms your target audience might use when searching for a product you sell.
The keyword research feature shows you how people search for keywords related to your business and your products. It enables you to uncover valuable keywords that other competitors aren’t targeting.
How Portrait Flip uses these tools:
Content marketing is at the heart of Portrait Flip’s efforts to attract traffic to its site. For example, the business used blogging and posted regularly on its social media channels. However, these efforts weren’t driving traffic the way the company hoped.
This is where Ubersuggest proved its worth.
The Keyword Overview report enabled Portrait Flip to find relevant keywords to focus on and that prospects use in their searches.
Next, Portrait Flip optimized its blog posts and e-commerce product pages with new keywords.
Finally, Portrait Flip used the Keyword Idea and Content Idea reports to help them plan out their next blog topics.
The results were exceptional.
Portrait Flip exceeded their traffic expectations in one quarter by over 27 percent—and that’s without any paid advertising. If you’re planning on using these reports, here are a couple of tips to get the most out of it them:
Find The Most Competitive Keywords
Use the ‘SEO Difficulty’ filter to help determine which keywords are more competitive than others. Be intentional in comparing this with the ‘Paid Difficulty’ feature to help decide if you should pay for Google Ads against the keywords.
NOTE: Keywords with high Paid Difficulty are usually lucrative. However, they are almost always more expensive.
Search by Location
If you want to attract a worldwide audience, search for global keywords on the ‘location’ tab. You can target your geographical search towards specific local traffic or by country. This can help you find unique keywords in different regions to target.
Step #4 Conduct a Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is an essential part of any effective SEO strategy. By understanding your competitors, you can learn what techniques and keywords they’re using to rank well in search engines and replicate their successes.
Ubersuggest makes this task more manageable than ever. Just use the following tools:
Keywords by Traffic: Go to Ubersuggest, enter the competitor domain URL, and hit “Search” to find the top keywords that the website ranks for. Note any organic keywords and monthly traffic, the domain score, and backlinks. You can also add your competitor’s URL as a project in your Ubersuggest dashboard for regular tracking.
Backlinks Opportunities: Discover what websites are linking to your competitors and get a detailed overview of who to reach out to request links back to your site. Here’s how:
1. Enter your domain name or URL from your site into the Backlinks Opportunity tool. (Linked above).
2. Enter a competitor domain or a URL from their site.
3. Click ‘search.’
You can also use the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension for keyword analysis directly in Google search results, YouTube, AND Amazon pages for further insights.
How Portrait Flip used Ubersuggest’s competitive analysis tool:
Portrait Flip monitored how its competitors were performing and what keywords they were ranking for. Specifically, the company used the Keywords by Traffic and Top Pages by Traffic reports together to get an idea of keywords they were losing out on. Using the information, Portrait Flip secured Page #1 on Google above competitors for primary keywords that drove converting traffic to their site.
Step #5 Start Tracking Your Progress
As you work on your SEO Keywords, it’s critical to be patient and track your progress over the long term.
Although you might see results with your plan in the next few weeks, as I’ve repeatedly stressed, SEO is an ongoing process and it takes time to get results. Typically, you can expect to wait a few months, so if you’re not seeing immediate progress, don’t get discouraged.
When you track your keywords, you can see which ones aren’t working and use some fresh ones to optimize your content.
Then rinse and repeat!
Keep testing and learning. A/B test different targeted keywords on product pages over time and track to see which performs best.
You can use Ubersuggest to monitor keyword performance. Here’s how:
In your Dashboard, you can view SEO progress over a specific time. Plus, you can see your progress in keyword ranking and estimated traffic value.
How Portrait Flip did this:
As they tracked their progress, they found that most of their year-to-year growth came from organic traffic, which steadily grew once they started using Ubersuggest.
Conclusion: Using Ubersuggest to Improve Your E-Commerce Store
One of the toughest tasks for e-commerce business owners is standing out from the competition. Gaining visibility, discovering the right keywords, identifying backlinking opportunities, and conducting competitive analysis are some of the most challenging tasks every online store owner faces.
Fortunately, Ubersuggest offers a solution to these common problems, allowing you to enhance your e-commerce store in key areas. This allows you to increase visibility, attract targeted prospects, and enhance conversions.
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