Command C’s Quickstart Guide to Ecommerce Optimization Strategy

Ecommerce is evolving, and retailers can often feel pressure to stay at the forefront of their product category. To maintain pole position, it’s important to keep the online store – and the internal operations – updated. But this can be tough, as merchants often have time and money constraints. Given that it’s crucial to keep current, what’s the first step to take? Let’s walk you through it.

Where are you today?

Through years of experience in ecommerce, Command C has developed a strategy to help retailers like you navigate the best path forward. We always begin with one question: “Where are you today?”

We ask this because we want to understand what’s working and what’s not with the company’s ecommerce site, both on the frontend and backend. We never want to add a new feature or enhancement just to do so. On the contrary, we want to understand the cause and effect relationship that any work on the site will have.

In the Command C process, a client’s answer to this question falls under one of three categories: Challenge, Equilibrium, or Growth. In the Challenge stage, retailers are dealing with issues like low conversion rates, consistent site bugs, frequent user complaints, and slow load times–to name a few. It’s crucial to resolve these pressing problems and stabilize the site and operations. Without that stable foundation, you can’t move forward to grow and optimize your site. It would be like choosing paint colors for a house with a cracked foundation. It’s fun to update and refresh a home, but there are more important issues to tackle.

Once technical bugs, admin inefficiencies, and an unstable technical base are stabilized, a store can move into the Equilibrium stage. This is where you’re in a more stable position but you know your site could convert more sales. You want to grow, but you are not sure how. This is a tricky stage. In Challenge, it’s clear what the issues are and what to fix. In Equilibrium, it can be harder to know what’s important to fix first.

Moving from Equilibrium to Growth means your store is in a place where you can start focusing on optimization. You’re no longer firefighting, you’re in a place where you can strategize and focus on the long-term.

It’s easy to want to jump right into the optimization phase. But the purpose of asking, “Where are you today?,” is to see the big picture. Too often we meet retailers who are eager to employ a new tactic without a real strategy behind it. For example, companies may spend five figures a month on a Facebook campaign to generate traffic, while at the same time, they’re not converting sales onsite due to technical issues at checkout. Why spend money to increase conversions when the conversion process itself is broken? The first step in the order of optimization is to know where your site is at.

Plan to Prioritize Based on ROI

Let’s say a merchant has solved the issues associated with the Challenge phase, and they’ve passed through Equilibrium, addressing low-hanging fruit, improving workflows, and starting to implement new features. Now in the Growth phase, we can work toward optimizing the site. We look to the data, as well as merchant long-term goals to guide our focus.

With this in mind, there are generally three main pathways to boost onsite conversions:

• Increase the average order value (AOV)
• Improve the rate of conversion
• Boost the number of repeat purchases

Some retailers will want to pursue all three of these, but before diving in headfirst, it’s important to ask, “Why are you moving forward with a particular strategy?”

For example, if you’re selling billiard tables, your customers won’t likely buy more than one. But they will need pool cues, tip chalk, balls, and other accessories. As a result, your goal becomes increasing the average order value through bundle products and other incentives.

For a wearable brand, however, it’s more likely that customers will return and purchase again over the course of a few months or years. In this case, we would talk with you about how best to implement all three strategies to increase conversions.

Start closest to the money

When in doubt, a great way to bring your site strategy into focus is to start closest to the money. Meaning: work backwards from the instant a sale is finalized. From there, go through the shopping process and see where you can optimize. Is the checkout process clear and efficient? Prior to checkout, can shoppers easily see that their item has been added to the cart? From the product page, can customers select features like size and color seamlessly?

While you’re reviewing your site, remember this: your customers come to your site through various points of entry. We tend to think of the homepage as the starting point – and it is for some shoppers – but not for all. Are you making a strong first impression on every page? For instance, do people understand your brand story from the product pages, as well as the homepage?

While the pace of ecommerce is swift, retailers should develop a clear strategy for prioritizing site optimization. At Command C, we work with retailers to diagnose their current site and operations issues. Once these problems are resolved, we guide them toward the best approach for growth, based on their business model and long-term plans. Our goal is to help merchants set their ecommerce strategy while maximizing their return on investment at every step.

A Strategic Technical Roadmap is a great place to start if you’re seeking guidance around where your site currently stands. You’ll discover opportunities to stabilize or enhance your tech stack, and we can help you answer questions around big technical decisions such as a platform migration. Reach out to learn how we can help your store whether you’re ready for optimization or need to build a solid technical foundation first.