Shoppable websites: mistakes we see and how to fix them.
Adimo's Head of Marketing, Sarah Marsh, explores the common mistakes still being made with on-website ecommerce enablement and showcases what Adimo have up their sleeve to help brands combat them.
Historically, FMCG brands have always had a problem. In the absence of their own D2C fulfilment capabilities, they’ve understandably relied heavily on third-party retail partners to generate the bulk of their sales. As a result, they’ve rarely needed to view their websites as tools for product discovery and sales.
Over the last 5 or 6 years in particular though, that has had to change. The global pandemic propelled ecommerce to the forefront of retail sales, and forced brands to reevaluate their presence on the digital shelf and how they used both their universally recognised names and their owned digital assets (including their own websites). As a result, we’ve seen more brands either investing in their own D2C (a move which requires a lot of investment and infrastructure), even more brands embracing shoppable technology on their website as a way of enabling on-site ecommerce (the less resource-intensive route) - or a combination of both.
Shoppable Website: the good, the bad and the ugly
The move towards shoppable technology has allowed brands to leverage the huge volumes of product discovery traffic that brand searches have afforded them. Beyond an increase in on-site engagement, ecommerce enablement tools like Adimo are building convenience into online shopping - creating seamless experiences that not only drive sales but also promote deeper customer loyalty.
By turning their sites into virtual storefronts, brands empower their customers to effortlessly discover and purchase products, eliminating the kind of dead-end journey or friction that’s been needlessly extending the sales funnel for years. Turning their sites into virtual storefronts and therefore collapsing on-site journeys has directly translated to directly to increased sales and conversions, fueled by impulse buys, cross-selling opportunities, and a smooth checkout experience by clicking directly to retailer.
Under the hood is where the real benefits are being felt though, with on-site shoppable technology collecting a wealth of valuable shopper behaviour data. By capturing everything from product views and retailer engagements, to price comparisons and purchase leads - brands can build up an incredibly detailed picture of just how ‘purchase ready’ their site visitors are, and gain invaluable insights into their preferences. This detailed picture can be used to inform and tailor offsite marketing activity and drive greater ROI.
However, the problem is that not all on-site shopping experiences are created equal. At Adimo, we’ve heard from brands facing the same challenges time and time again, including:
Insufficient information: we’ve seen brands adopt solutions (or even make their own) that don’t show the most up-to-date pricing, promotional offer or even stock availability information, making it harder for customers to make informed decisions. This could lead to inflated engagement numbers as visitors click around to try and find more information and ultimately leads to higher drop-offs in the shopping journey
Disjointed UX: to maximise conversion rates, a seamless onsite user experience is crucial. All too many times we see (or don’t see) call-to-actions hidden below the fold or even tucked away inside navigation menus, making it difficult for users to take necessary action or make decisions quickly. Even worse than this are experiences that don’t blend in natively with the wider site - launching slow pop-ups or new pages that disrupt the user journey and take customers away from their intended activity. This again, can quite quickly lead to dips in conversion and higher bounce rates.
Dead ends: the cardinal sin for any shoppable solution though is one that facilitates a dead-end journey. We all know how frustrating it is when you click a link only to be met with ‘404 page not found’ - in shoppable experience terms that’s literally the difference between generating sales, or not. And we see this a lot where the tech in question is powered by a product catalogue rather than retailer indexing.
Taking the fight to bad shopping experiences
With so many out-of-the-box shoppable solutions now available, the temptation to opt for a low-budget ‘set-it and forget it’ option is very real. The best conversion rates and ROI are achieved when you’re closely monitoring the performance of your shoppable integrations - but with so much on marketing teams’ plates, who does that sit with? You? Your brand or ecommerce teams? Your website agency?
Adimo is taking the fight back to bad shopping experiences, and removing the heavy lifting from reporting and optimising your on-site website integrations with our ‘Embedded Buy Now’ solution.
This clever little integration sits on website product pages and uses machine learning algorithms to surface the highest-performing retailers and pricing information (based on user behaviour) to customers in an environment that feels completely native. The benefits of this?
Automatic optimisation for conversion means teams don’t have to worry about interpreting data and making changes themselves. Automatic optimisations for retailer performance translate into conversion rate uplifts!
Up-to-date pricing and promotional offer information - all our solutions are built with our retailer indexing tool at its core. Price, offers and product availability get checked daily reducing the likelihood of site visitors seeing a disjointed journey with incorrect information
Seamless UX - no pop-ups or redirecting to a separate shoppable page, Embedded Buy Now is exactly that - an embedded experience with buttons and pricing that look like they’ve been there all along
Hands-free set-up - Embedded Buy Now revolutionises the way shoppable experiences are set up, completely removing the need for hands-on integration or website agency involvement - and therefore reducing the wider impact on costs, budgets, or problems.
We’ve been working with some of the world’s leading CPG brands to upgrade their on-site shoppable solutions. By simply switching to our Embedded Buy Now solution, our clients have seen a significant uplift in conversion rates across a range of categories - in some instances by as much as 178%! We hope you’ll agree that this is proof that when you have the right shoppable experiences in place on your website, that feel native and prioritise seamless conversion - you can capture brand discovery traffic and effectively drive sales.
To find out more about getting started with Adimo’s Embedded Buy Now or other onsite solutions, get in touch today.