What is eCommerce friction?
Ecommerce friction occurs when something disrupts or slows down the shopper’s flow and dissuades them from completing their purchase. It’s frustrating for shoppers and damaging to brand perception, which can mean lower conversion rates and reduced customer loyalty.
With rising consumer expectations, the tough economic climate and increased competition in the eCommerce world, your shoppers are becoming less and less tolerant of friction in their customer journey. A slow-loading site or irrelevant product recommendation could be all it takes for them to abandon your website in search of a more frictionless alternative.
How to reduce eCommerce friction
Download our Ultimate Guide to Reducing Friction in the eCommerce Customer Journey, created in collaboration with the experts at Antavo, Mapp, Vaimo and Yottaa. You’ll learn about topics including site speed, personalization, loyalty programs, site search and more.
In the meantime, keep reading to discover 3 ways to reduce eCommerce friction and create a smooth journey for your online shoppers, taken from the guide.
1) Personalized product recommendations
Product recommendations are an effective way to inspire customers with products that resonate with them, which in turn increases purchases and fosters loyalty.
With data such as past browsing behavior and purchases, you can show your shoppers highly relevant recommendations that reflect what they’re interested in.
If you don’t have any browse or purchase data for a customer (for example if they’re a brand new visitor to your site), there are other ways you can tailor your recommendations, such as filtering by price affinity or showcasing your bestsellers.
GolfClubs4Cash displays a product recommendations carousel at the top of their product listing pages to help customers avoid sifting through thousands of products per category. These recommendations are based on predictive behavior of “people like you buy”, which falls back to “frequently browsed” and then “new products”, all filtered to collection category and price affinity.
Source: golfclubs4cash.co.uk
GolfClubs4Cash’s product recommendations have led to a 49% increase in website conversion rate and a 10% decrease in exit rate, proving that this tactic can help reduce eCommerce friction. Read their full success story for more inspiration.
2) Dynamic banner personalization
Dynamic content gives you the power to personalize every step of the customer journey to an individual’s preferences, behavior and real-time context. Each of your customers see timely, relevant content, which in turn encourages clicks and sales.
Almost all content has the potential to be used dynamically. For example, transforming your banner into a piece of dynamic content allows you to show each website visitor or email recipient the image that’s most likely to spark their interest and keep them engaged.
Animed Direct gives their BAU email newsletters a boost with dynamic content. First, they capture the name of their customers’ pets as zero-party data and then they personalize their email marketing with dynamic hero banners that pull in the pet’s name. This tactic serves to delight the customer, grab their attention and encourage them to click through to the website.
Source: Animed Direct email
Read their full success story to learn more.
3) Create a cross-channel cart abandonment experience
If a customer leaves your website without buying the product they were browsing, you need to make it easy for them to return to it and complete their purchase.
Cart abandonment emails and SMS are an effective way to do this, but the messages you send must align with your other channels so that your customers can see their recently carted items across multiple channels.
Beyond cart recovery messages, you can also display website popovers that show the recently cart item the next time the customer enters your website. Speaking of popovers, another type to implement are exit intent popovers that give shoppers the option to have a list of their carted items sent to them via email. Retargeting ads that show shoppers the item they abandoned are also a good way to bring them back to your site.
Cottages.com uses a popover to remind visitors of their last viewed accommodation, including an image of the property to help jog their memory.
Source: Cottages.com
Some final thoughts on reducing eCommerce friction
Consumers expect a smooth, friction-free experience when shopping online, and the added economic pressure coupled with increased eCommerce competition means they have little tolerance for any friction in the customer journey.
This means it’s vital for your brand to reduce any eCommerce friction in your customer journey.
A few ways to do that include:
Displaying product recommendations personalized to each shopper
Adding dynamic banners to your website and marketing emails
Creating a cohesive cross-channel cart abandonment experience
Download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide to Reducing Friction in the eCommerce Customer Journey for even more ways to create a friction-free experience for your shoppers.
