Which eCommerce techniques are the most effective?

Anyone involved in ecommerce will have probably been asked what optimisation strategy they are going to utilise to drive engagement and increase their sales.

For people not particularly tied into the marketing tech landscape, the dizzying array of options can seem intimidating.

It is also hard to dig up much quantitative data on what effects different techniques tend to have from among all the marketing materials and technical jargon.

To try and counter this, marketing personalisation technology company Qubit has released the results of an unprecedented analysis into ecommerce user journeys.

The company looked at more than two billion user journeys and 120 million individual purchases to try and document the revenue uplift that different optimisation techniques can bring.

How do we know the results are legit? Well, because PwC has assured the data and the methodology.

“My team worked with the Qubit data science team to subject their methodology – i.e. their data capture, calculations and reporting – to our rigorous independent assurance procedures. The report by Qubit provides a detailed analysis of today’s marketing toolkit and, given the scale and depth of data analysed, is a first of its kind that I have seen.” said Sam Tomlinson, partner at PwC.

So, what did the results say?

A win for personalisation

Choosing the right ecommerce has real ramifications for brands. The report finds that there could be up to a 6% bump in revenue from selecting the right set of technique.

The top techniques measured in the report were:

–          highlighting items that are low in stock brought a mean uplift to (revenue per visitor) of 2.9%

–          leveraging the behaviour of other users to provide data about currently popular products (2.3%)

–          using time limits to spur users to complete transactions (1.5%)

The worst performing techniques were:

–          significant design changes to the design of a page only resulted in a mean uplift of 0.2%

–          changes that involves buttons lead to a mean uplift of (0.2%)

–          altering navigation bars or link structure also lead to (0.2%)

The clear winner of the optimisation landscape, according to the report, are programmatic and personalisation strategies.

Expereinces that tap into customer, product or brand data provide form two to 14 times more incremental revenue per visitor then more traditional optimisation efforts, some of which actually had a negative impact.

Personalisation based upon the personal preferences or recorded behaviour of consumers performed on average three times better than untargeted strategies.

The consumer desire for personalisation

“Ecommerce leaders have to get personalization right when they’re trying to compete against the likes of Amazon, and yet it’s so hard to know what really works,” Graham Cooke, founder and CEO of Qubit, said.

The research shows that 73% of online consumers spend the majority of their money with a core group of three to five websites.

50% of consumers report enjoying receiving product recommendations that are based on their interests. 48% are willing to share this information in order to become the recipient of a better shopping experience.

81% said it was very important that targeted promotions be based on their own preferences. Brands are likely to lose consumers if they ask for personal information and then fail to convert into a personalised shopping experience.

“We want every marketer to know precisely what tactics will help them beat the 800-pound ecommerce gorilla, and I invite other vendors in our industry to do the same.”

Tomlinson added:

“There are clearly longstanding issues around transparency in marketing, which will only be solved by advertisers and providers rigorously and openly assessing whether the services that marketers are paying for are actually delivering results”.