The eCommerce Newsdesk

The state of the industry

2022 has been a deviation from the pandemic period of the last two years and many SMEs have felt the strain.

Since 2020 we have seen increased online shopping behaviour across all industries, far surpassing initial estimates for the growth of online shopping.

In March 2020, 40% of UK Shoppers had been shopping more online as compared to before covid, whilst by February 2021 this had grown further to a whopping 75%.

This meant online businesses not only grew, but popped up for all manner of industries, with many physical stores foraying into the online space as well as the start-up of various new businesses, dubbed as a ‘wave of entrepreneurialism.

By April 2022 however, the Office of National Statistics reported that online sales registered a decline over all retails spaces with household goods stores seeing the largest decline with an almost 30% decrease.

It’s not all bad news though – online retailers are still benefiting from a 20% increase in eCommerce trading from pre-pandemic levels.

Ecommerce business owners are working through a difficult time as shoppers face a significant rise in the cost of living, meaning a more cautious approach about when and where they’re spending their money.

With all of this in mind and the slower start to the year, business owners have found they have needed to work harder to generate conversion activity whilst working through lower search volumes and increased competition.

This includes adapting strategy, amending product offerings and pursuing new target audiences.

Why is Conversion Rate Optimisation so important to eCommerce businesses?

One of the biggest factors that determines whether or not you make a sale? Your website.

If your website is difficult to use, slow loading or even just doesn’t have a user’s preferred payment method – then you risk losing a sale.

An increased focus on improving your user experience, and making it as easy as possible for users to complete the desired action on your website can have outstanding effects on your sales and revenue figures.

This process, known as conversion rate optimization (CRO for short) can include a range of methods including ensuring your site is fast loading, easy to navigate and contains enough product information to generate sales – and many more.

As more and more businesses enter the eCommerce sphere ensuring your website is up to scratch and your user experience is top-notch is a game changer.

If not, you may be sacrificing sales from otherwise quality traffic.

As marketing strategies go it’s one that affects all of your sales channels – not just paid advertising.

Every user that lands on your website will benefit from an enhanced experience, but we’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Miracle Leaf is a client where we were able to identify a number of pain points users may come across on their website.

After fixing these issues? Miracle Leaf was able to achieve a 158% year-on-year increase in their website revenue. Not bad.

The times, they are a-changin’

Changes in search volumes over the past few years aren’t the only big shift that we’re witnessing currently, we’re also seeing users around the globe become more and more concerned with one thing – their data; how it’s stored, where it’s going and ultimately who has access to it.

This concern is heralding a new age for data and there’s a lot of information out there as to how tracking will work moving forward.

For Google, this consists largely of a move away from Universal Analytics, and primarily third-party data, to GA4 – where cookies will be a thing of the past.

This isn’t a bad thing – although third-party data can help to improve campaign performance massively there are other data forms which can be even more valuable.

First-party data is one of those forms. An incredibly valuable data source which boasts increased communication, outreach and incremental revenue when used in marketing.

Knowing the right way to explain to website visitors why you collect this data can go a long way toward gaining trust with shoppers.

This is definitely a focal point for most brands moving forward to harness this valuable data source.

The switch itself? Here at Add People, our technical team is working on moving all current clients over to GA4 to ensure we’re gathering as much website data as possible before the big switch next year.

So rest assured; when the sun sets on Universal Analytics you’ll be all set to go on GA4.