With the New Year comes plenty of resolutions - and optimization is an evergreen list-topper. Optimization isn't romantic nor revolutionary; rather, it’s the workhorse that creates value on the margins. This set of benchmarks from 2021 showcases some of the areas across the shopper journey that are ripe for optimization, and can take conversion rates from bland to best.
The Value of One Second
Site speed is the ultimate commerce bridesmaid. While speed is often considered, it is far too rarely actioned, typically losing out to another -- and likely promising -- investment. But, it turns out that speed is one of the most thoughtful gifts a retailer can provide a shopper. And, those shoppers give back, deepening their journeys, and showering sites with conversion. Here's the value of a one second improvement in average page load time across a session.
The True Cost of Shipping
Shipping became a hot topic once again in 2021. With shipping speeds stretched due to supply chain and delivery challenges, surcharges and expedited options were given real consideration. So, what impact do <gulp> shipping fees have on conversion? When looking at the amount of shipping fee paid as a percentage of order value, a relationship is revealed. When this ‘shipping fee share’ goes up, checkout completion goes down. Put into numbers, for every 10% point increase in shipping fees there is a corresponding impact on checkout completion rate, falling 6.3 percentage points on desktop and 3.7 percentage points on mobile.
Heavyweight Strength, Lightweight Speed
Representing your brand digitally means innovation provided by third party technologies and the requisite images and rich media. All told, this resource-rich digital approach provides plenty of room for optimization, as seen through the page load times of the heaviest of pages. However, optimizing those resource-intense pages provides merchants with the requisite strength and innovation at the speed of lightweight pages.
It's How You Finish
Checkout has gained a reputation for being the curmudgeon of digital - cranky, and easily angered -- most retailers have found it best to leave checkout alone. However, checkout holds a unique opportunity to optimize the final step at the edge of shopper journey. Ahead of optimization, is simply knowing the score. Checkout performance varies across devices; checkout completion rate on desktop is 52.5%. Mobile, though, falls a full 10 percentage points to 42.4% - clearly showing that the mobile experience gap lives on.
For the entire greatest hits LP from 2021 is here. Or, enjoy the smooth sounds of these EP's:
+ Best of ... Customer Experience.
+ Best of ... Delivering Traffic