89% of brands expect to principally compete on the topic of customer experience, as opposed to price and product, as the main brand differentiator. As such, you should target and convert customers by granting digital shoppers an exemplary customer experience. By using website personalization techniques, you can tailor the consumer buying process to your user’s individual patterns and behaviors and facilitate the targeting and converting of website visitors into satisfied customers.

1. Welcome first-time site visitors with unique offers  

Prompt new website visitors with a “Welcome” message to launch a positive shopping experience.

 2. Entice website visitors with a personalized promotion and build a solid retailer-customer relationship

Offer one-time or limited-time discounts or gifts to create a sense of urgency, reduce cart abandonment and tantalize the customer towards making a purchase. 

3. Streamline the customer buying process with real-time product updates

Present shoppers with live! real-time announcements and stock updates to demonstrate how the company does not want the customer to miss out on an item or opportunity that they might want or need.

4. Motivate customers to convert with geo-targeted popups and shipping notifications

Geo-target popups and shipping notifications to encourage customers to purchase products uniquely tailored to their needs and delivered to their precise locations, according to geographically-calculated shipping rates.

5. Capture website visitors’ e-mail addresses to continue the shopping experience offsite

Capture the e-mail addresses of potential customers for marketing and retargeting purposes by using personalized triggers. Offer a coupon, discount, newsletter and other relevant content in exchange for the customer’s e-mail address and continue the fostering a positive shopping experience, even when the customer is no longer on the company’s website.

By utilizing various website personalization techniques, you will be able to optimize the conversion process. Welcoming new visitors with enticing offers, geo-targeting customers and presenting them with real-time updates are all effective techniques designed to lure new and existing customers into making a purchase. Combined with offers that enable you to collect email addresses, you will be able to efficiently target and retarget customers, enticing them to become returning customers with high brand loyalty.

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Barilliance recognized by esteemed eAwards for innovative personalization suite

Barilliance Solutions received the honor of being nominated for “The Best Software Solutions Agency” in the upcoming eAwards 2016.

The prestigious award, presented to the best e-commerce and digital marketing businesses in Spain, rewards digital agencies for providing the best software solutions to the digital sector, tailored to online stores, digital businesses and technological services.

Barilliance excels in providing comprehensive website personalization services to e-commerce companies, maximizing the returns of over 500 customers from more than 26 countries. Its services range from a customized trigger email booster to personalized product recommendations, geo-targeted website prompts and more.

Vote for Barilliance and help the company win the highly-coveted eAward for “The Best Software Solutions Agency.”

Follow these two simple steps to vote:
1. Register with this link

2. Click on the little hand in the following link: Best Software Solution Agency

Cast your ballot for Barilliance today!

Voting closes September 18th.

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We often see that one of the biggest obstacles online retailers face is visitor abandonment.  A great deal of money and effort has been spent bringing prospects to a site.  But then a large portion of those visitors just abandon.  Many never to return again.

We saw an average cart abandonment rate of 71.39% in 2015.  Mobile phone abandonment rates reached 76.99%.  That means that nearly 3/4ths of the shopping carts that are carrying items and were supposed to end in a transaction – but did not.  That’s a lot of false hope for online retailers.  

But there really is hope in capturing the business of those who abandon.

There are multiple avenues to regain prospects and turn them into paying customers.  And many of those cart abandonment solutions are seeing great results.

Cart Abandonment Solutions That Are Effective BEFORE Visitors Abandon

One effective strategy is to keep visitors from abandoning in the first place.  Here are a few ways that Barilliance allows businesses to effectively do that.

Exit Intent

Exit intent is one of the cart abandonment solutions that typically sees a 10% conversion rate in recapturing visitors interest at exactly the point when they are about to abandon the site.  And that’s just the average.  Some instance of exit intent have seen conversions as high as 100%.

Here’s how exit intent works:  As visitors move their cursors around a site, technology tracks those movements and predicts when visitors are about to abandon in accordance to where they move those cursors.  This is usually when a visitor moves their mouse to the address bar where they might be getting ready to type another website address or the back button where they might be going back to a previous website.

At that very critical moment where it’s detected that they might be permanently abandoning, a last moment incentive is presented to the visitor in an attempt to bring them back on-board.  With this last minute display, merchants can remind shoppers that they still have a full shopping cart – in case they forgot.  They can also offer a special discount to further push their shoppers to complete the order.

Below is an example of a last moment incentive that was used by one of our customers.

Send My Cart

Barilliance also allows businesses to let their visitors send themselves an email of their cart contents before they actually leave the site.  This is convenient in the event that they did not previously leave an email address.

Perpetual Shopping Carts

As mentioned, sometimes visitors just forget that they have items in their cart.  One way to remind shoppers that their cart is full is to display a perpetual shopping cart so visitors are always aware that their shopping cart has items in it.

Below is an example of how Jabong displays a perpetual cart that keeps cart contents visible.

This is one of the cart abandonment solutions that is very effective but is not used nearly enough.

MarketingSherpa reports that only 38% of websites were using perpetual shopping carts.  And as you can see below, 64% of those websites considered them to be very effective.

Cart Abandonment Solutions That Are Effective When Visitors Decide To Return To Their Cart

Not every shopper is operating on your timeline of adding an item to cart and then completing that transaction immediately.  Here’s how businesses can regain customer interest when shoppers decide they are ready to come back and complete the transaction.

Persistent Cookies

Another one of the cart abandonment solutions that many online retailers are not fully utilizing is the use of persistent cookies.

So what are persistent cookies?  Well, they keep contents in a shopping cart for an extended period of time.

Have you ever added items to a cart and then went back to the site a few days later to complete the transaction – but the items were gone?  

Unfortunately, this happens more often than you think.  And online retailers really need to think about why this is detrimental to their bottom line.  Think about it.  Sometimes shoppers just get busy.  they throw an item into the cart and then the phone rings, or dinner is ready, or junior needs a diaper change.   Life happens and shoppers are forced to come back later to complete their transaction.

In fact, according to Emarketer, 56% percent of visitors intend to save their cart for later.

Online retailers may feel that a large portion of their shoppers are abandoning their carts.  However, they’re really just choosing to complete their orders at their own convenience.

Here’s a look at how a study by Scanalert revealed the timeline in which over 8 million consumers were choosing to come back to their carts.

The study showed that 28% of shoppers took more than a day to complete their transaction, 21% of shoppers took more than 3 days and 4% came back more than 2 weeks later.

This is great data that shows how important it really is for online retailers to set their persistent cookies for as long as possible to ensure that visitors items will still be in their cart when they come back.

Unfortunately, data is showing that not everyone is using persistent cookies as one of their cart abandonment solutions.

The pie chart below shows how W3Tech analyzes the technology usage of Alexa’s “Top 10 Million” ranked websites.

Data shows how many websites are using persistent cookies.

Here you can see that 80% of websites were not using persistent cookies.  Out of the 20% that were, 32.6% used cookies that expire in hours and 31.7 used cookies that expired in days.

According to these statistics, only 7% of websites were equipped to keep customer shopping carts intact for shoppers who opt to come back to their carts after 1 week to complete their transaction.  That’s a very small piece of the pie.

Another troublesome aspect of persistent cookies is that some websites require you to register an account in order for persistent cookies to be activated and shopping cart contents saved.

This is troublesome because there are a great number of online shoppers who do not want to register an account but would rather make their purchase as a guest.

Welcome Back Messages

And when those visitors do return to your website at their own convenience – Barilliance helps you to welcome them back with a reminder message.  Remind them that you’ve saved the items in their cart.

Cart Abandonment Solutions That Are Effective In Bringing Shoppers Back To their Carts

Now what do you do when your visitors have officially abandoned and you are losing all hope that they’ll complete their purchase?  Bring them back.

Shopping Cart Email Reminders

Reminding abandoned visitors that they’ve left items in their shopping carts is another one of many highly effective cart abandonment solutions.  And Barilliance let’s you do this with ease.

It’s a simple strategy really.  Once a visitor abandons their cart simply send an email to remind them that there are still items in their cart.

The best method is to test timed emails to gauge effectiveness.  A Barilliance study found that the best converting email campaigns consist of three triggered emails sent out at intervals of within 1 hour, 24 hours and 72 hours after cart  abandonment.   More than three emails can feel like an annoyance to some abandoned shoppers.

Often as more emails are sent, a more appealing offer is made.  This could be an increased discount at each email interval.

The important thing to remember here is to capture the shoppers email address early on in the checkout process so that you are able to send an email reminder.  If it’s one of the first few form fields, you can obtain it even if they drop out of the form at any point thereafter.

Conclusion

So there you see there are multiple cart abandonment solutions that are highly effective in recapturing the interest of abandoned shoppers.

Be sure to use strategies that keep them from abandoning in the first place.  Second, make sure their carts are still intact when they decide they are ready to come back and complete their transaction.  And finally, don’t be afraid to reach out and remind shoppers that their shopping carts are full.  

You’ve spent a great deal of money and time to bring in prospects.  All hope is not lost when they abandon.  With all of these strategies in place, it has been shown that you can recapture a good portion of that abandoned revenue.

The post Shopping Cart Abandonment Solutions That Should Not Be Ignored appeared first on Barilliance.

Retail e-commerce site owners are constantly on the lookout for new ways to optimize the consumer shopping experience and boost conversions. Yet, despite great efforts, an average 68.81% of digital shoppers abandon carts before making transactions, leaving trillions of dollars in company products in the company’s hands. Website visitors who registered with the e-commerce site only to abandon carts can be re-targeted by means of multistage trigger emails. Trigger emails remind customers why they initially browsed through the website and entice them to return to the website, recover their abandoned carts and make purchases. Incentives are the most common and most effective method of securing conversion via trigger email. The most astute e-commerce site owners will implement these methods can recover on average 18% of the abandoned cart items.

In an ideal world, retail e-commerce sites would not be forced to resort to offering discounts in order to make sales among site abandoners. Even better, site owners and developers would be able to prevent shopping cart abandonment altogether.

Realistically, a 0% abandonment rate is not possible. However, retail e-commerce site owners can take a series of actions to optimize the consumer shopping and checkout experience and remarkably reduce their company’s cart abandonment rate.

Most causes of shopping cart abandonment can be corrected if retail e-commerce site owners adhere to the following cart abandonment prevention checklist and modify their sales and marketing strategies:

Minimize perceived risk associated with online shopping

Despite the prevalence with which it is used, online shopping continues to be perceived as inherently risky. Customers fear that their order may be processed incorrectly, that the website is not secure, or that their identities will be stolen upon inserting their credit card information. Adding ssl certificates and trust seals, as well as customer testimonials, raise the website’s credibility and increase conversions. Usability tools can help record customer actions, in order to determine exactly why customers tend to leave the company’s website and prevent recurrence.

Reveal all costs from the start

A primary reason for cart abandonment immediately prior to checkout is the irritation and dissatisfaction caused to customers by the presentation of hidden costs, including required complementary items, shipping and taxes. The initial price viewed by the customer must be the final price that he pays, if cart abandonment is to be reduced. Retail e-commerce site owners must ensure cost transparency and present a shopping cart that calculates all costs as the consumer buying process proceeds. One way to facilitate this method is to use geo- targeting solutions to present customers with the shipping costs relevant to their location.

Interact with customers as they shop

Despite the distance created by the digital shopping experience, customers continue to crave intimacy and interaction while mulling purchases.  First, retailers can use personalization technologies to present different banners/messages to different customers. For example, if a visitor is browsing the site for the first time they can be welcomed to the site and even offered a welcome incentive. If customers are returning customers, or customers who are arriving from an affiliate site, they can be greeted and handled accordingly.  A more intimate interaction can be in the form of live chat. Chat invitations can be customized to match the consumer’s shopping needs. Offering live chat to help customers make shopping decisions has been proven to effectively increase conversions. Other methods of interaction likely to reduce cart abandonment include revealing to the customer how far along they are in the checkout process and how much money was saved by making a specific purchase at a given time.

Personalize product recommendations

Today’s shoppers are extremely busy. They look to the internet to provide a speedy solution to their consumer needs. Providing customers with real-time product recommendations based on their user behavior helps customers reach the merchandise they seek, increases the overall shopping cart value, presents upsell opportunities and ultimately boosts conversions. According to a  Barilliance study, up to 31% of e-commerce revenues were the direct result of personalized product recommendations.   

Auto applied coupons at checkout -Avoid diversions on the checkout page

When it comes to spending money, customers can be fearful, hesitant and tend to be in constant search of reasons to delay making transactions. Usability tests show that having a coupon code field on the checkout process could actually increase shopping cart abandonment; when a visitor spots coupon or discount code field in the checkout process, they might not always remember the coupon code they’ve received via an email or a popup and once they wander off into cyberspace looking for the discount, odds are they are going to become distracted and not return.

This serious problem can be easily solved by doing away with coupon codes altogether and using instead auto-applied coupons on email campaigns. Clicking on one takes the customer directly to the site and automatically applies the coupon for them. Now no codes are needed.

Conclusion

Following the above cart abandonment prevention checklist will enable retail e-commerce site owners to reduce the devastating blow of cart and site abandonment on revenues and will diminish the need for re-targeting techniques employed to promote abandoned cart recovery through trigger emails. While cart abandonment cannot be eliminated entirely, adhering to this checklist will optimize the consumer’s shopping experience, promote increased customer satisfaction and exponentially boost conversion rates.

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New statistics published today by Barilliance indicate that the average global cart abandonment rate during Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend was 68.8%. This data is based on 50 million users tracked by barilliance from November 25 to November 28, 2016.  Our data shows that the average shopping cart abandonment rate on desktops was 63.8%, 64.5% on tablets and 78.1% on mobile. Statistics for North America and Europe follow these global averages closely.

Cart abandonment rates are highest among mobile phone user, and lowest among desktop users. Retailers who retargeted users who abandoned their cart with shopping cart abandonment email saw conversions of 17.6% from these emails. The highest conversions were achieved on desktop 20.8% with 18.6% conversion rates for tablets and 14.1% for mobile phones.

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While many online retailers know that shopping cart abandonment is part of the business, not every retailer will experience the same abandonment rate.  Since the first step in solving any problem is understanding it, let’s see how we can measure the shopping cart abandonment rate in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics needs no introduction. This extremely powerful tool is used by over 10 million websites and is invaluable for analyzing and making the right marketing decisions. To measure the abandonment rate, we will make use of two advanced features: Goals and Funnel. Goals allow you to define and track conversion rates for various objectives. An objective can be anything: a visit to a certain page, filling and submitting a form or staying on the site for a certain period of time. A Funnel is the path a visitor is expected to take on his way to completing the goal. With these two terms defined you can probably already guess how we will set this up: our Goal will be the order confirmation page and the funnel will be the list of URLs a visitor must go through after adding an item to the shopping cart. In most ecommerce platforms, when an item is added to the cart, the user is automatically redirected to the cart page so the cart page will be our starting point followed by the checkout page. Note: To set up goals, you must be an administrator of the Analytics account 1. Click on admin, select your profile and the click on the Goals tab 2. Enter a descriptive name for the Goal, we’ll call ours “Cart to Purchase” 3.  In Goal type select URL Destination and enter the URL of your order confirmation page. This page is typically accessed only when an order is completed 4. Click the Use funnel checkbox to add the necessary steps to complete an order. In the screenshot below you can see that I added the cart page as step one and the checkout page as step two. 5. Save your Goal . And that’s it!  Depending on the amount of traffic on your site, it could take anywhere between a couple of hours to a couple of days to see meaningful data. How can we tell the shopping cart abandonment rate? Using the Funnel Visualization page. This report contains a lot of interesting data but the one we care about is the abandonment rate. We can see that in our sample data we have a 43.66% funnel conversion rate which means that our abandonment rate is 56.34%.
Go out and conquer the abandonment rate!

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When we design our products and specific features within them ease of use is one of our main concerns. We consider the fact that our customers can log-in and have a cart abandonment email templates ready for use in less than 5 minutes a major advantage. One of the things that make this possible is our built-in best practices together with default options that work well for almost everyone. But sometimes our customers want more control over how things are laid out in the email and now that is possible using our advanced HTML widget. Using the advanced widget you can create an HTML template that will be used to display the items that were abandoned in the cart. You are also not only limited to displaying the item’s image but can also display its name and price. To use the advanced widget simply edit your cart abandonment rule and check the Advanced widget (HTML template) checkbox. The widget is comprised of three sections: header, footer and item HTML. The header and footer are optional and can be left empty. The item HTML is displayed for each item in the email. This means that if you decide to display the item in a table then the tables’ tags need to be placed in the header and footer (since they are repeated only once) while the main table data is placed in the item HTML section. Inside of the item HTML section, you can use the following tokens: %image_url% – A link to the product’s image. This should be used in the `src` attribute of an `img` element. %product_name% – The name of the product %product_price% – The current price of the product %click_url% – This link will lead to either the product’s page or to the shopping cart, depending on the setting you choose in *Click on product images goes to*. It should be used in the href attribute of the a element. The advanced widget can be used in cart abandonment emails, viewed products emails, and post-purchase emails. Below you can see the difference between how cart abandonment items are usually laid out and a possible use of the advanced HTML widget:

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What is Cart Abandonment?

Did you know that cart abandonment can be the cause of lost sales that were engaged at your website? If you want to increase your conversions, keep reading what this issue is.

Imagine the following scenario: you are at the mall waiting for your friend to arrive. While you are waiting, you look around in the shops and find some items you like, so you pick them up and continue browsing. Your phone rings, your friend has arrived and is waiting for you at the nearby coffee shop. You hang up the phone put down the items (or ask the shopkeeper to keep them for you for some time) and go meet your friend. Regardless of the exact reason, you have decided to leave those items for now and perhaps come back to them later.

Applied to the online environment, this is cart abandonment – when customers add items to their online shopping cart but exit the website without making a purchase. The cart abandonment rate shows how many of the items that are added to the shopping cart are abandoned. It is calculated with the formula: added to cart/(added to cart+made conversions), (referring to the number of people) or by generating a Google Analytics report for cart abandonment, which uses the same formula.

Sample Cart Abandonment Data

Why should you care?

If your cart abandonment rate is high it means that many of your customers begin their purchase process but do not go through with it. The abandoned items are potential revenue that you are not obtaining as the transactions are not completed, which impedes your goal of maximizing profit.

Indeed, this phenomenon is quite a commonplace, with 65% of retailers having rates higher than 50% according to e-tailing, which means they have the potential to earn double their current profit. It is a major issue, contributing to approximately $18 billion lost revenue per year according to CPC strategy, and a worsening issue, with the average U.S. rates rising from an average of 70.5% to 76.3% in only 3 years, as shown below.

(source: Statista, 2015)

Why do shoppers abandon their carts?

There are numerous reasons for abandoning one’s cart. According to Statista, 2015, the top reasons are the following:

This shows that shoppers consider full transparency of the costs, coupon codes, security in transactions, variety in shipping options and a clear and short checkout process as prerequisites for online stores and necessities to make a purchase.

Other reasons for cart abandonment include return policies and customer service, not intending on purchasing now or being distracted during the process.

So what can you do about it?

1. Become knowledgeable of the common reasons for cart abandonment, as some may be prevalent in your online shop and of the most effective solutions.
2. Review your website, search for the said reasons in your website and make changes to prevent those features (or lack thereof) from affecting your conversions. For example, offer users a guest checkout option if they currently must make a new user account. You must remember to always measure and track your cart abandonment rates to review changes and strategies. However, those changes are not bullet-proof and are mostly not suitable to motivate customers who do not intend to make a purchase in the first place.
3. Use software to encourage customers to complete their transaction in such cases (i.e. conducting research) and post-cart abandonment. Barilliance provides innovative remarketing email software, with personalized templates and recommendations, which has proven to efficiently reduce cart abandonment by 10%-30%.

To learn more about when such software contribute and how they reduce cart abandonment and increase conversion, refer to this Barilliance article.

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The Age of the Customer

We now live in The Age of the Customer, a term Jim Blasingame coined, which refers to the idea that customers have the upper hand in the business world. While sellers are in control of the products and services offered, the customers are in control of the buying decision and the information they obtain (which includes customer experiences).

The shift of power is the result of the shift of information control. Information is now easily available and much of it is composed by the customers themselves (i.e. reviews) rather than being distributed by the seller.

Since customers began to understand their immense power in business transactions, they began to demand and expect their specific needs to be met. In this way, we have moved from The Age of the Seller and mass production, consumption and marketing (catering to the average person) to The Age of the Customer, niche businesses, product customization and personalization.

Website Personalization

Personalization is an effective method businesses use to create a sense of individuality and uniqueness, making the customer feel special and important and as though the company is paying particular attention to them.

In the e-commerce environment, one of the most powerful types of personalization is of the website. Website personalization is the tailoring of a site and thus of the user experience to each individual shopper. It is done automatically, in real-time by the company, using predictions based on big data.

This personally modified user experience makes the website more relevant to the customer and therefore leads to higher visit duration, product views and site visits, as well as higher average order value, revenue and conversions.

Website personalization is becoming more of a common practice, with 77% of e-tailers believing that real-time website personalization is crucial. And they are correct, website personalization is extremely successful in increasing engagement and conversions, with e-tailers who use it seeing an average of 19% increase in sales.

How do you Personalize?

It is extremely quick and easy to personalize your website using the Barilliance software. But first, we must understand how we can identify and segment shoppers in order to personalize accordingly and what types of website personalization we could use.

The Bases for Segmenting

There are numerous ways for segmenting shoppers and targeting them differently. Some of the most common identification aspects are:

• Demographics: age, gender, education, ethnicity and more.
• Geographic information (using geo-targeting): a crucial identification, as one case study showed that simple reference to the shopper’s location induced a 935.6% increase in conversion rates.
  • City, country (include shipping information and closest local store accordingly)
  • Current weather and temperature at the location
  • Current season at the location (winter in the U.K. is summertime in Australia)
  • Holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving – are all specific to the location)
• Time: month, the day of the week, time of the day. For example, a person browsing on a Sunday differs than a person browsing on a Monday and a person browsing at 4 am differs than a person browsing at 6 pm.
• Browsing device: each device used indicates on a type of person, each could be targeted differently.
  • Brands: Apple vs. Android
  • Type of device: iPhone vs. Mac vs. Tablet
  • Different iPhone models conversion rates 
• Type of visitor: first time visitor or returning visitor. If returning –  where did they abandon the site previously? At browsing, cart, checkout? 
• Social media attributes
• Real-time shopper engagement: their behavior on the site and preferences. What items are they viewing in terms of brand, style, type, size, etc.

This data on the shopper could be collected by yourself or by a third-party such as data from your CRM.

Where do you Personalize?

1. Personalized Promotions

Each shopper has different needs and preferences to which the promotions offered should relate. Is this the kind of shopper who is looking for cheap products? Offer them a 10% off of a category. Is this the kind of shopper who is frustrated with extra costs? Offer a discount on shipping or remind them of the availability free shipping with a higher order value. Is this the kind of shopper who researches to make a big purchase at once? Offer personalized complementary product recommendations. Is this the kind of shopper that is researching close to Christmas? Offer discounts on Christmas-related products.

Additionally, personalize the offers in a way that shows you know them and you are paying special attention to them. This includes location-specific greetings and offers, referring to the customer by their name such as “Welcome back, Jason!”, and sending out birthday greetings and offers.

Furthermore, it is effective to add one-time and time-limited personalized offers such as “until Monday” or “this offer expires in an hour”, to add a sense of urgency to the purchase and motivate the customer to finalize the purchase.

There are two major manners to presenting promotions on a website.

Pop-ups

Website pop-ups are very familiar to us all. They are effective in grabbing the shopper’s attention to a specific message we want to get across. They are also extremely useful to obtain the shopper’s email for retargeting purposes, to get leads and future conversions. Therefore, whenever you offer a discount on a pop-up only allow its use if the customer’s email is entered.

Some of the most useful and common pop-ups are the following:

– Welcome message for first-time visitors. Include a unique personalized promotion. 

The example above shows a personalization of offer according to the identification of first time visitors and the use of geo-targeting to personalize shipping information.

– Welcome back message for returning shoppers. Redirect customers to their previously abandoned carts.

– On scroll pop-up – appears after some engagement by the customer with the site. This could appear after a certain time on the site, on a certain page, or when the mouse is near a certain link. It could be used for promotions or as a call for action such as calling to enter an e-mail address as shown below.

– Exit-intent pop-ups – used to keep customers shopping and to prevent cart abandonment. Include a personalized offer based on the cart content and preferences detected to remind the customer of their interest.

Top/ Bottom Banners

It is safe to say that most websites have a top banner that is visible at almost every page on the site. It often includes messages regarding sales, promotions and free shipping availability. Rather than catching the customer’s attention as pop-ups do, this allows a constant reminder of the benefits wherever the customer browses. See below an example of how the top banner differs between a visitor from Australia and one from the UK.

2. Modification of Content

Many customers are not aware, but the main part of the pages may look different to different shoppers. This includes:

– The visuals: the promotions, visuals and categories shown on the main page or on the category page. For example, according to the weather at the customer’s location as shown below:

– The order of items: when sorting a product category by “most relevant”, “our favorites” or “best match”, the order of items shown may differ for each user according to different customer identifications and real-time engagement.

– Product recommendations: these can be of complementary or substitute items and they are located on many pages in the site. They should be personalized as proven by the Barilliance 2014 study, in which the personalized “top seller” recommendations were twice as effective as the non-personalized “top seller” recommendations. Moreover, the conversion rates of those who click on the product recommendations are 5.5 times higher than the non-clicking ones, proving personalization of recommendation is extremely effective.

– Social Proof: real time live updates which include, product updates (how many items left in stock) and urgency-inducing updates (“x amount of people are currently looking at this item”).

– Other: other modifications are small promotional parts of the site. For example, a customer who has not reached the free shipping quota on Sephora will see the message as “you’re only $14 away from FREE SHIPPING” and will have “TBD” for shipping on the checkout, whereas a customer who has filled the quota will see the message “you now qualify for FREE SHIPPING!” and on the checkout will show FREE for shipping.

3. Addition or Elimination of Content

Whereas the previous point discussed the seamless modification of the site, this point refers to the seamless addition or elimination of parts on the page.

One example is the auto-applied coupon. In the checkout page, for customers who have got a coupon it will be auto-applied, while for customers who do not have the coupon there will be no mention or indication of it in the checkout page .

Another example is the auto-filling of some elements in the checkout forms. Perhaps the customer had already entered their name or email, or you use geo-targeting and can locate the country they are in. Use this knowledge and auto-fill those elements to shorten the process for the shopper as well as to show them that you remember them.

How can you implement it?

Using the Barilliance software you can personalize your site in real-time for individuals, giving them a unique and relevant experience. How can you do this?

1. Define tags for your shoppers for identifying and segmenting them. For example, you may want to focus on age, gender, temperature, and first time vs. returning shopper.
2. Decide what type(s) of website personalization you would like to use and for which tag (or combination of tags). For example, for new visitors you would offer a pop-up with 10% discount, for a male located at a temperature of above 20 degrees Celsius you would present the site with the male summer category on the main page.
3. Continuously measure your success indicators while you implement different personalization strategies. This allows you to experiment with different tags and different messages and understand what works best.

Although personalization is extremely useful, there is a thin line between effective personalization and scary personalization. If customers are overwhelmed by the site’s knowledge about themselves they might fear and even leave the site. Therefore, always keep in mind that personalization is extremely effective, but with the right balance.

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One of the best practices to recover abandoned carts is by sending out cart abandonment emails, which reduces abandonment by 10%-30%. So, what kind of content can we put in the email that encourages customers to return to the site and to finalize their purchase?

Some of the most common strategies marketers use in remarketing emails are: offering a coupon or a discount, offering promotions based on order value or cart content as well as offering product recommendations.

Another option is to use personalized product recommendations in the remarketing emails.

What is it?

This means that instead of showing the same product recommendations in your emails to all of your customers, you will show different product recommendations that are particularly interesting to each individual shopper.

How does it work?

The right product to the right person:

Barilliance’s personalization engine uses the data associated with each specific email address and generates recommendations based on their most recent activity on the site. The shopper’s overall shopping behaviors, past purchases and browsing history are all taken into consideration.

The engine will consider specific items, product categories and brands viewed on the website as well as price range of items. More consideration will be given to items that were added to the cart or were recently purchased. If, however, there is not enough data to offer personalized recommendations, the products shown will be a mix of top sellers, items with a good click-through-rate and items you have manually selected.

At the right time:

The relevant product recommendations must be presented at the right time because the customer’s preferences and needs change over time. The right time is when the customer opens the remarketing email.

Therefore, Barilliance’s personalized product recommendations in emails are dynamic and are generated in real-time – when the customer opens the email instead of when the email is sent. Once they are generated, they remain the same for 24 hours. If the email is opened again after 24 hours a new set of recommendations will be generated.

Other features:

The product recommendations should include easy and clear calls for actions, such as “Buy Now”. Furthermore, you may also choose to include a discount or coupon for the specific items, items category or brand recommended to increase the likelihood of click-throughs. However, as the Co-founder of Barilliance stated, the personalization of recommendations is so effective that the customer “will respond to the offer even without a promotion”.

Why is it so effective?

Unsurprisingly, when shoppers receive the latest arrivals or discounted items from their favorite category or brand, their experience becomes more relevant and they are more tempted to make a purchase. Moreover, the dynamicity allows more accurate and relevant recommendations as it takes into consideration the current status of the user, the product stock levels and more changing factors.

Therefore, the dynamic, personalized product recommendations in remarketing emails are extremely effective as they transfer the right message to the right shopper at the right time. Indeed, adding such feature to your remarketing emails can lead to 30% increase in sales conversion rates and 35% in click-through rates.

After implementing Barilliance’s personalized product recommendation in cart abandonment emails EyeBuyDirect.com experienced a 175% increase in their email click-through-rate and 30% increase in their conversion rate. Another company experienced their click-through-rate increase from 6% to 50% as well as an increase of their ROI. Lux Fix experienced a 85.7% increase in email conversion rates and a 136.2% increase in recovered sales from cart abandonment emails.

The post Add Product Recommendations to Cart Abandonment Emails? appeared first on Barilliance.

Cart abandonment is known to be a major issue in e-commerce, with an average rate of 71.39% in 2015. A study found that only 49% of visitors who reached the checkout begun filling in their details, and of those who did, only 16.5% completed it.

However, not all hope is lost. There are steps you can take to start recovering those abandoned carts and obtain some of the lost potential revenue:

1. Capture more emails

While some of the abandoners return on their own, some only return after being motivated by the company. Therefore, you should implement strategies that encourage customers to return to the site and finalize their purchase. In order to do so, you must be able to reach out to those customers, most often via email.

Consequently, the higher your email capture rate is, the more emails you send and the higher conversion rate you experience.

However, most abandoners abandon sites without providing any details. Therefore, you should implement strategies to capture more visitors’ email addresses.

Such strategies are the following:

• Optimize your checkout page

Make some changes to your checkout page to improve your email capture rate, such as positioning the email field in the top three fields, having one checkout page and more.

• Use Pop ups

Pop ups offer customers something of value, which can only be obtained by providing an email address, thereby ensuring its capture. The value should be personalized. Pop ups are particularly effective for capturing email addresses of new, anonymous visitors.

You can implement a welcome pop up solely targeted at first time visitors, which often offers a monetary incentive. You can also implement an exit intent pop up, which appears to all shoppers who are about to abandon the site and may offer a discount, cart save, becoming a member and more.

• Use Triggered Emails Booster

Some visitors have already provided you with their email addresses but are not currently logged in to your site. Instead of bothering them for their details again with a pop up, the triggered emails booster feature allows you to identify such customers easily, pairing them with their associated email.

2. Send personalized, multi-stage emails

One of the best practices to encourage abandoners back to the website is the multi-stage abandonment email campaigns. This practice leads to an average of 18% conversion rate (though some companies can reach even 40%) and allows the company to re-engage with customers and build a relationship.

According to a Barilliance study, the most effective email campaign consists of three triggered emails sent out at intervals of 1 hour, 24 hours and 72 hours after cart  abandonment. For best practices of emails’ contents refer to this study.

The emails’ content and type of incentives must be personalized according to the cart content, purchase history, brand affinity and more, to send the right message to the right shopper and thereby improve conversions to about 10%-30%. Furthermore, the cart content should remain on any device the link to the site is opened with, tackling issues caused by device-hopping.

3. Continue campaign on-site

Your customers click on the link in the abandonment email and return to the site, but your job does not end there. The customer journey must continue with the same tone and message of the email.

How?

For example, have a “welcome back” pop up with the customer’s name, if you offered a discount in the email, echo it on the site to ensure them and auto-apply it at the checkout, etc.

4. Implement persistent cookies

When the abandoners return to the site, they are ready to make a purchase. If their cart from the previous browsing session is gone it can prevent them from making the purchase, as they must browse and research again, which takes time and effort.

To prevent this from happening you should have persistent cookies, which keep the cart contents (and other customer information) for future sessions. The cookies should not require the customer to make an account (as many customers don’t) and should take place for as long as possible, as a study by Scanalert found that 4% of customers return after 2 weeks.

Combining the two points above, a simple “welcome back” message and saved shopping cart can increase the conversion rate by as much as 70%.

Follow those steps and you will be able to capture more emails easily and identify returning (not logged in) users with Barilliance’s triggered emails booster. You will target abandoners more effectively with multi-stage email campaigns and continue the abandoner’s journey with the same tone and personalized messages, while saving their carts with persistent cookies.

All of these will allow you to begin recovering more abandoned carts and increasing your conversions.

The post Take These Steps to Start Recovering Abandoned Carts appeared first on Barilliance.

As an e-tailer you must be aware that shopping cart abandonment is a predominant issue in e-commerce. In order to know how to tackle it you should be knowledgeable of the common reasons for this phenomenon.

According to Statista, the top reasons for cart abandonment in 2015 are the following:

1. Unexpected shipping cost

The top reason, cited by 25% of cart abandoners is tackling extra costs when they are about to proceed with the checkout. Hidden costs, which may also include taxes and required complementary items, often cause irritation and consumer remorse (especially if they are deemed high).

Solution? It is crucial companies fully disclose the final cost from the very beginning, or even include it in the item’s cost and offer ‘free’ shipping. Indeed, cpcstrategy found that free shipping is deemed “critical” to 73% of customers to make a purchase and will encourage 93% of shoppers to buy more online.

2. Having to create a new user account

In the age of immediacy, where we do things quickly and seek instant results, having to put time and effort to complete a transaction is a nuisance to many consumers. As Statista shows, 22% of cart abandoners do not complete purchases when they need to create a new user account.

Solution? To combat this, it is essential to offer customers a guest checkout option.

3. Was conducting research to buy later

Many consumers prefer browsing products and companies and conducting research on the price, quality, shipping and more, before they make a purchase. Therefore, they may exit the website with items in the shopping cart and return to them several times before they make a purchase (if they do not find a better alternative).

Solution? Implement a price match guarantee pop up to ensure customers.

4. Concerns about payment security

Some consumers have security concerns regarding the website, the order process and credit card information.

Solution? it is important to include SSLs and customers’ reviews to assure the consumers.

5. Long and confusing checkout

Similar to making a new user account, if any other factor makes the checkout process long, it is an annoyance to the consumer and they may end it mid-process. Moreover, if the checkout process is not smooth but rather confusing, the poor experience of the consumer will motivate to give up mid-process.

Solution? Keep the checkout short, minimize form element and have clear calls to action.

6. Couldn’t find a coupon code

Since consumers are aware that coupon or promotion codes are often offered, they will usually look for one. If they cannot find a coupon code they may decide to wait until they are offered one or until there is a discount on the items. This mindset is particularly strong when the coupon code search bar is near the checkout and is noticeable, enhancing the idea that if they do not have any discount they are paying too much.

Solution? Auto-apply coupons when given via email or pop ups, otherwise, make the coupon bar less visible.

7. No express shipping available

In some cases, consumers are looking for a product they can have quickly, perhaps for a particular occasion. Therefore, when there is no option of express shipping and it is longer than is desired, it is of no use for customers and they will abandon their items.

Solution? Offer express shipping for a higher shipping cost.

—

Other possible reasons for cart abandonment that are not mentioned in Statista are the following:

8. Lack of payment options

According to a ClickandBuy survey over 50% of regular online shoppers will cancel a potential purchase if their preferred payment method is not available.

Solution? Offer as many payment options as possible, including local payment methods, such as AliPay in China.

9. An unfavourable return policy

Such policy is one that costs money or offers return in too little days. According to cpcstrategy, 2 out of 3 shoppers would buy more online if returns were free.

Solution? Offer free 30 days return.

10. Lack of customer support

Customers need intimacy and interaction during their buying process, as much as in physical retail, if not more. A study by LivePerson found that 83% of online shoppers want some form of help during their online shopping process and 51% of shoppers are more likely to make a purchase if they have customer support via live chat.

Solution? Provide a live chat option.

Other reasons include, the price of the product itself is too expensive, real-life diversions, cross-device hopping, website crashes and more.

The post Top 10 Reasons Your Shoppers Abandon Their Carts & Tips for Shopping Cart Recovery appeared first on Barilliance.

Companies nowadays offer a multitude of items. This gives customers many choices but can also hinder their search.

Due to time constraints and the accepted level of effort exerted on a search, customers may not be able to go through all of the items on the site. As a result, some customers cannot find the exact item they were looking for or an item they truly desire. Consequently, some customers may purchase an item with a high level of cognitive dissonance or not make a purchase at all.

This is where presenting customers with personalized product recommendations can help. These recommendations allow customers to find the products they need and are relevant to them quickly and easily. The items generated are personalized according to the individual’s browse and purchase behavior and product information (such as product inventory). They are created in real-time in order to be the most accurate and relevant as possible.

This optimizes the products discovery process and eliminates the issue of long and effortful searches. The ease of use and being given more (and relevant) choice enhance the user experience and as a result enhance the customer engagement and brand loyalty. On top of that, personalized product recommendations tend to trigger impulse purchases as well as induce a higher average order value.

Accordingly, personalized product recommendations induce more conversions, as customers who click on the product recommendations have a 5.5 times higher conversion rate than those who do not. Overall, the personalized product recommendations account for 12% of total revenues.

Indeed, after implementing Barilliance’s personalized product recommendations, 3balls.com saw a substantial increase in their conversion rate with nearly 30% of shoppers responding to it favorably.

So what kinds of product recommendations can you use?

It is important to know that product recommendations come in many shapes and forms and can be used in many different manners. Here are some variations you can examine and use:

Type of products recommended:

Generic recommendations:

• Manually selected featured products on the home page
• New arrivals
• Best sellers
• Top reviewed/ top rated
• Sales and offers

Personalized recommendations:

• Personalized featured products on the home page
• Similar items (upselling)
• Complementary items (cross-selling)
• Recently viewed

Titling the recommendations:

The similar and complementary product recommendations can be expressed in many different ways, which affects how they are perceived and thereby how effective they are. For example, similar items can be titled “visitors who viewed this product also viewed” or “customers also bought”, while complementary items can be titled “you might also like” or “complete the look with”.

What type to present to whom?

It is important to segment new and returning visitors. Since you don’t have information on new users, you should use generic product recommendations.

Once the customer has started browsing the site, you can start gathering more information about them. Then you can start to match the type of generic recommendation to each customer. For example, if the customer has sorted the items on the category page from low to high, the customer is likely to be price-sensitive and so they should be presented with recommendations of sales and offers.

Once the customer has started viewing some items, you now have information about their preferences and needs. For such shoppers, as well as returning visitors (with you have past information of), you should present with personalized recommendations.

Location of the recommendations:

The product recommendations can be used on any page, such as landing, category, product detail, out of stock, shopping cart, search results and confirmation pages. Personalized product recommendations can also be used on cart abandonment emails, to return the customer to the site by attracting them with more relevant products.

On each page, the visitor is at a different stage of their journey, the goal of the recommendations is different and you have different amount of information about the customer. Therefore, on each page, the product recommendations type, title and message will differ.

For example, see how the message of the recommendations changes between the product and cart pages to suit each location:

For the best practices of product recommendations, refer to this study.

The post Why Should You Use Product Recommendations? appeared first on Barilliance.

Why should you create a sense of urgency?

Urgency is the sense of a pressing, high priority matter that requires a quick action. The sense of urgency is extremely effective in shifting customers’ decisions towards making a purchase.

Why? Let’s return for a moment to our behavioral decision making class in university…

Dual Process Theory of the Mind

This is one of the most well-known theories, in which customers are are described to have two different systems of thinking.

System 1 utilizes intuition, impulsiveness, and emotion and makes decisions in an automatic, effortless and fast manner. On the other hand system 2 utilizes reasoning, analysis and logic and makes decisions in a controlled, deliberate, effortful and slow manner.

While we often use a combination of the systems, system 2 is dominant when we make high-cost, big decisions. 

However, when urgency is prevalent, our minds shift and we predominantly use system 1 rather than system 2. Our cognitive efforts drop and our immediate, impulsive thinking takes charge.

Therefore, when urgency takes place we take action quickly – an action we may have not made if urgency was not a part of the equation.

Fogg’s Behavioral Model

This model also helps in understand why urgency induces purchases. The model defines three things that must take place for a target behavior (making a purchase) to occur.

The first is high motivation, the second is high ability and the third is a trigger (a push to purchase the item). There are three types of triggers – facilitator, which shows the customer what to do, signal, which shows the customer how to proceed, and spark, which encourages and entices a purchase. 

Urgency is a type of a spark trigger as it pushes the customer into making the target behavior.

To read more about the model as well as about strategies to increase customers’ motivations and abilities, refer to the cart abandonment prevention guide.

When we desire an item, although we have the motivation and ability to purchase it, we may still hesitate and may not make a purchase. Once we feel the sense of urgency, we use system 1 to make an automatic, fast decision and we are stimulated by the spark trigger to make the ‘target behavior’.

As a result, when we sense urgency we often do make a purchase and do so quickly.

How do the shoppers’ activity notifications induce urgency?

The real-time notifications present information that create a sense of urgency. This information can be about competition (other shoppers), scarcity of items (low inventory) or time-sensitivity. In this article we are focusing on competition.

Being aware that others are viewing or buying the same product, creates a sense of urgency as you become aware that you are not in an isolated environment rather you have ‘competition’ over the item.

This leads to customers to make quick purchasing decisions, thereby increasing conversion rates.

Examples of notifications:

• “X people are looking at this product right now”
• “X shoppers have this item in their shopping cart”
• “The last purchase of this product was from NYC 12 minutes ago”
• “This product is the number two best seller in the category”

So how effective are the notifications, really?

If you combine notifications of shoppers’ activity with notifications of scarcity of items, the sense of urgency intensifies. Furthermore, the notifications also increase conversions by providing transparency and social proof, which raise confidence that the company and product are of high value.

Ultimately, according to Barilliance’s Co-Founder, Nir Ben-Dor, in just 6 months of implementing these notifications, sites experienced an increase in their conversion rates.

Implementing real-time notifications

Start utilizing this technique and implement such strategy with Barilliance’s Live! software, which allows you to create dynamic, personalized and customized real-time notifications. The software includes an automatic conversion optimization tested against a control group, to present the optimal messages to each customer. Read more to learn about the feature and how it creates social proof.

The post Create a Sense of Urgency by Presenting Real-Time Notifications of Shoppers’ Activity on Your Site appeared first on Barilliance.

Email marketing is a very common strategy for driving customers to your site and increasing conversions.

Being so common, consumers are exposed to 78 new emails on average every day (The Radicati Group). This is a lot of noise your email is surrounded with.

So what can you do for your email to stand out to customers?

Follow these 5 hacks below to increase click-through-rates and sales.

Hack 1 – improve your subject line

Your subject line is the first thing your customers see in their inbox and so it greatly influences the email’s open rate. According to Chadwick Martin Bailey, 64% of people open emails because of the subject line.

The subject line must be interesting to entice the consumers’ curiosity and so the opening of the email.

How can you make it interesting?

• Ask a question or provide an answer in the email
• Use captivating words such as “surprising”, “now”, etc
• Capitalize all words in the subject line (as you do for titles)
• Make it short and to-the-point

Hack 2 – have one call to action (CTA) per email

Too many calls for action will be overwhelming and give customers too much choice, so customers will most often be confused and do nothing.

Instead, use one CTA to focus the attention of the recipient, increasing the likelihood of click-throughs.

Hack 3 – make your CTA more desirable

The more desireable your CTA is, the higher the likelihood of your customers’ click-throughs and therefore of sales.

How?

Copywrite – what you write before the CTA and on it matters. Some motivating techniques are:

• Ask a question before the CTA (“want to see how to…?”) or lead to it (“find out how to…”)
• The CTA should emphasize personal choice (“I want to…”, “show me…”)

Buttons – do not use linked text as your CTA, instead use buttons. They are more visible and more attractive to click on.

Color – use attention-drawing, urgency inducing colors such as red or orange.

Change on hover – use 3D buttons that move on hover and/or a color change on hover.

Hack 4 – be personal

Your recipients are not to be viewed as statistics, but as people who you need to form relationships with. For this reason, you should not write as a corporation but rather in a personal manner.

How?

To – instead of addressing the recipient with “Hello!”, address them with their first name (“Hello, Sarah!”). However, some argue customers already understand their names are software-generated. For this reason, check the effectiveness of this strategy with A/B tests.

From – instead of sending the email from Sephora: email@sephora.com, you should use the a personal name of an employee, such as Josh from Sephora: josh@sephora.com.

Replies – you must allow and encourage customers to reply to your messages, and then, of course, reply back to them. Make it easy on them to begin a conversation, simply by replying to the email you’ve sent.

This is important as it shows the recipients that they are treated as humans and the company cares about them. It allows them to get help with anything they need, reducing barriers to purchases. It also allows the company to obtain more feedback and improve.

Inject the brand’s personality – throughout the email (the language, images, signature, more) express your brand’s identity. All of your emails should be on-brand and not bland. It could be humorous, trendy, use best friends vibe and more.

This allows you to maintain a strong, consistent brand as well as to make a personal connection with the consumers.

See how Etsy used hacks 3 and 4 – a clear, orange CTA and using their personality.

Hack 5 – resend emails

An unopened email does not necessarily mean that the consumer was not interested in the email. It could simply mean they may have missed it or saw and forgot it.

So send it again.

If it wasn’t opened the customer has not seen it. There is no harm in sending it again, just the benefit of increasing probability of the email being seen.

The post 5 Practical Email Marketing Hacks to Double Your Sales (#4 Is Powerful!) appeared first on Barilliance.

What are real-time notifications?

Imagine Mike, who wants to book a double room in a hotel in Boston for a couple of nights. He finds a nice hotel at a decent cost and in a good, central location. However, he decides to return to the site later, once he has done more research and compared prices with other hotels.

What Mike doesn’t know is that at the same time he looked at that hotel, five other people were looking too and there were only two double rooms left. So by the time Mike comes back to the site, there are no rooms available anymore.

The same issue happened to Sophie, who was looking at the latest Nike running shoes. Since she was hesitant, she decided to look back at the product in a few days. But when she returned to the site size 38EU was out of stock, as when she first viewed the product there were only 5 in-stock.

But what if they did know of those things from a notification appearing during their first search?

Since the room was satisfactory for Mike’s needs and Sophie’s motivation for buying the shoes was high, they would have probably made the booking right then and there.

Why are these notifications effective?

So why would this new added information in the form of real-time notifications motivate Mike to book the hotel immediately?

These notifications are composed of three concepts that motivate customers to finalize their purchase – transparency, urgency and social proof.

1. Transparency

Transparency is the full disclosure of things by the company to the customer. When the customer has complete knowledge about a situation, he or she can make better, informed decisions.

While customers have full knowledge of their internal needs and decisions, in e-commerce they are often lacking external information. However, external information (i.e. inventory, other shoppers’ activity, etc) can change customers’ shopping decisions.

For this reason, the real-time notifications’ transparency allows customers to be aware of the complete situation and make a shopping decision accordingly.

2. Urgency

Urgency is the sense of a pressing, high priority matter that requires a quick action. The sense of urgency is extremely effective in shifting customers’ decisions towards making a purchase.

When customers sense urgency they are triggered and stimulated to make a purchase and make that decision quickly, automatically and intuitively, resulting in more conversions (see an elaborate explanation here). This same decision might be different if they were not under the impression of urgency – they were not triggered and were to take time and analyze the decision.

Urgency can be created with regards to shoppers’ activity (“x people are viewing this item”) and/or to inventory levels (“there are only two items left”).

3. Social proof

Social proof is the influence of other people over an individual’s decision making, which is proven to have a great effect on customers’ decision making, particularly in e-commerce (see an elaborate explanation here).

Social proof in e-commerce translates into customers believing other shoppers’ decisions are correct or optimal and let them influence their personal decision.

As a result, customers value the opinions of other shoppers more than the company’s sales efforts. Also, other shoppers’ opinions influence may change or strengthen their personal thoughts of the item or the company. The customer is particularly susceptible to this influence if his beliefs are not fully founded yet (she is still hesitant).

Real-time notifications provide social proof to shoppers, even when they don’t intentionally look for it. Social proof can be about the company (“x people are shopping right now”) or about a specific item (“x people are viewing/bought this item right now”).

Since other shoppers’ activity is not public in e-commerce, revealing this information imitates traditional retail environment and enhances social proof. Both types convey popularity, which enhances the trust and perceived value towards the company and item.This builds the customer’s confidence, which reduces hesitations and leads to more conversions.

Combining the three techniques, the notifications are extremely efficient in showing the company cares, building trust, increasing customer engagement and ultimately, increasing conversions, by as much as 8%.

Implementing the real-time notifications

Types:

There are 15 different types of notifications:

1. Social proof of company:

• “X people are shopping now”

2. Shoppers’ activity urgency & social proof of item:

• “X people are looking at this product right now”
• “X shoppers have this item in their shopping cart”
• “Last purchase of this product was from NYC 12 minutes ago”
• “This product is the number two best seller in the category”

3. Inventory urgency & social proof of item:

• Stock updates: “hurry up! Only two left in stock”

(Transparency is inherent in all).

How to implement it?

Barilliance provides such software called Live!, which allows you to create dynamic, personalized and customized real-time notifications. The software includes an automatic conversion optimization tested against a control group, to present the optimal messages to each customer. Read more about it here.

The post Real-Time Notifications Can Increase Your Conversions by up to 8% appeared first on Barilliance.

What are triggered emails?

There are multiple reasons for sending emails to customers throughout their shopping journey. However, sending them manually is time-consuming, effortful and confusing.

Instead of manually sending out emails, you can have emails sent out automatically. These are called triggered emails – emails that are sent out automatically due to pre-set triggers.

Such triggers can be split into 3 categories:

• Action or behavior of a customer
• Event on your site
• Time

You can set different messages to send out according to different triggers, at a pre-set time (i.e. immediately after the action/event or a set time after it happens). Additionally, the message must be personalized to each customer in real-time (according to her shopping behavior, progress in the customer journey, etc.).

Why should you use triggered emails?

Since these emails are sent out automatically, they are simple to use, effortless and time-saving.

Since triggered emails create personalized messages and experiences that are relevant to the customer’s situation, they induce higher engagement, click through, satisfaction and conversion rates. The emails establish, build and maintain trust and customer loyalty and therefore result in higher customer retention rates.

According to Forrester Research, triggered emails can generate 4 times more revenue and 18 times greater profits than regular emails. Additionally, Epsilon found that triggered emails have a 152% higher click-through-rate than regular emails.

How do you implement triggered emails?

Know the types of triggered emails:

There are endless triggers you could set for your emails. Some of the most common and essential ones can be found in this article of 9 examples of triggered emails that draw subscribers in.

Inject your brand’s personality into them:

It is essential to inject your brand’s personality into every email sent to your customers. This gives a consistent, familiar feel of the brand and a holistic brand experience. Furthermore, it improves the brand image and enhances trust, satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Personalize your emails:

Personalization is key in emails as the right message should be sent to the right customer at the right time. This way the message is relevant and more effective.

Implement the software:

Use the Barilliance Triggered Emails feature to select, set, personalize and customize the triggered emails you send out to your customers.

The post What are Triggered Emails? appeared first on Barilliance.

Why should you care about social proof?

Social proof is the influence of other people over an individual’s decision making. Social proof has a great effect on customer’s’ decision making.

Why? Let’s return for a moment to our behavioral decision-making class in university…

Ash’s Conformity Experiment

This famous experiment of the 1950s best illustrates to what extent individuals are influenced by others in terms of their thinking and decision making.

For the experiment, an individual was sat with a group and was asked to choose the shortest stick out of a few. There was a clear difference between the sticks’ lengths and a clear answer, however, the group deliberately chose the wrong answer. The experiment found that 36.8% of individuals conformed to the group, saying the wrong answer. This shows the power groups have on the individual’s decision making.

Reasons for conforming

There are two main reasons why some people conform. The first is the normative social influence, where the individual conforms to avoid social punishment or obtain social reward. In other words, to be perceived as normal and a part of the group. The second is informational conforming, where the individual was genuinely convinced the group was right and his original thinking was wrong.

While the experiment shows customers shifting their decisions from an obvious answer to the wrong answer because of social pressures, imagine the power of groups and society when the answer is unclear and the individual is hesitant.

Even more convincing, no?

Indeed. And this is the sweet spot where you should utilize social proof to induce confirmation to groups.

Conforming in e-commerce

Social proof in e-commerce translates to a customer believing the group’s, other shoppers’, decisions are correct or optimal (“they know best”) and lets them influence his personal decision (i.e. informational conforming). For example, “if 50 people bought this item it must be good”.

As a result, customers value the opinions of other shoppers more than the company’s sales efforts. Also, other shoppers’ opinions influence may change or strengthen their personal thoughts of the item or the company. The customer is particularly susceptible to this influence if his beliefs are not fully founded yet (he/she is still hesitant).

How do other shoppers’ activity notifications induce social proof?

Real-time notifications provide social proof to a shopper, even when they don’t intentionally look for it. Social proof can be: 

– About the company (the place is popular and busy)  

– About a specific item (the item is desired/bought by others)

Since other shoppers’ activity is not public in e-commerce, revealing this information imitates traditional retail environment and enhances social proof. Both types convey popularity, which enhances the trust and perceived value towards the company and item. This builds the customer’s confidence, which reduces hesitations and leads to more conversions.

Examples of notifications:

– “X number of people are looking at this item”
– “Bought by someone x time ago”
– “Bought by x number of people”

So how effective are the notifications, really?

The notifications also increase conversions by providing transparency and a sense of urgency (induced by other shoppers’ activity and scarcity of items), which raise confidence that the company and products are of high value and heighten pressures on making a quick purchase.

Implementing real-time notifications

Start utilizing this technique and implement such strategy with Barilliance’s Live! software, which allows you to create dynamic, personalized and customized real-time notifications. The software includes an automatic conversion optimization tested against a control group, to present the optimal messages to each customer. Read more to learn about the feature and how it creates social proof.

The post Create Social Proof by Presenting Real-Time Notifications of Shoppers’ Activity on Your Site appeared first on Barilliance.

As an e-tailer you must know how important cart abandonment emails are to recovering your lost sales.

There are many different types of content you can use in your emails, such as showing abandoned cart items, product recommendations, offering discounts or free shipping, highlighting customer service help and more.

Customers respond best to different types of contents depending on their demographics, shopping habit, stage at the shopping journey and reasons for abandoning their carts.

This means that the most appealing, relevant content can change depending on the person and can change for the same person over time.

So how can you ensure that the abandoners are exposed to the optimal content for them in cart abandonment emails?

Personalize your cart abandonment emails.

How can you personalize your cart abandonment emails?

Personalization 1:

What? Personalize the type of content that is used in each email to each customer.

How? Address the issue that caused the customer to abandon their cart and consider known shopping habits, stage of the journey and first time vs. returning visitor.

– For price sensitive, first-time visitors – offer a discount
– For those who abandoned due to shipping costs – offer free shipping
– For those who wanted an out-of-stock product – suggest sending them a ‘back in stock’ email
– For those who abandoned due to confusion – suggest helping them with their process

Personalization 2:

What? Personalize the content itself that is put in each email.

– Personalized product recommendations (see FAQ) – show relevant products
– Personalized discounts – offer different discount percentage or discounts on different things (i.e. only for items in cart, specific category or brand, etc.)

How? Personalize according to the customer’s:

– Demographics (age, gender, etc.)
– Location (geo-targeting)
– Cart content
– Purchase and browsing history
– Overall shopping behavior
– Brand affinity
– Price sensitivity
– Most recent activity

And more.

Why is personalization of cart abandonment emails important?

You should personalize your cart abandonment emails so that each of your customers receives the most relevant content and experience. This way the message will be optimized to the highest effectiveness in motivating the customers to recover their carts (your lost sales).

Therefore, personalization in cart abandonment emails induces higher customer engagement rates and reduces cart abandonment rates by 10%-30%.

For example, Lux Fix, an online fashion retailer, implemented Barilliance’s email personalization solution and personalized product recommendations in emails. This resulted in 85.7% increase in email conversion rates and 136.2% increase in recovered sales from cart abandonment emails.

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