Amazon is betting that Prime members will spend heavily on deeply discounted items. It looks to lure web shoppers in with deals that range from seasonal decor starting as low as $6 to invitation-only deals like 60% off 50-inch smart TVs and savings on brand names such as up to 50% off Sony products and 30% off Lego items.

But exactly what Prime members are looking to purchase and how much they will spend will vary widely by age, income, and other factors, says new research from market research company Numerator and industry survey.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database. It ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

Amazon Big Deal Days closely precede holiday sales period

Nearly one-third of all consumers are expected to shop online during Amazon Prime Big Deal Days. While those won’t be as big as the 37% of consumers that shopped and bought this summer during Amazon Prime days, Prime Deal Days will “bring a significant boost to ecommerce sales in general, “with the first day of the sale potentially surpassing Cyber Monday in online shopping,” Numerator says.

Other research firms also suggest that while Amazon Prime Big Deal Days will generate big business for Amazon and other big chain retailers this week, many budget-conscious shoppers will choose to shop later and closer to online retailing’s biggest days: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Nearly half (44%) of consumers who plan on shopping during the 2023 winter holiday season say they plan to do so during a preseason sales event like Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, says research firm Mintel.

Shoppers remain budget-conscious

But Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain popular (45%) as consumers’ budget-focused mindset continues, says Mintel.

“Over a quarter (28%) of winter holiday shoppers agree that it is even more critical to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday because of inflation/rising prices,” Mintel says. “When asked how inflation impacts their spending, 42% of winter holiday shoppers say they purchase fewer gifts, while a quarter (24%) say they switch to lower-priced retailers.”

Even with Amazon and other retailers pushing big deals and deep discounts this week, consumers may remain more budget-minded than in earlier years, Mintel says. Three in five (59%) consumers who plan to do winter holiday shopping in 2023 say they want to spend the least amount of money possible, says Mintel.

“Consumers will participate more in preseason shopping sales, such as Amazon Prime Day, to take advantage of the deals and discounts,” says Mintel retail and ecommerce analyst Brittany Steiger. “They remain value-conscious and look to spend as little as possible.”

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The online marketplace announced two new features, Buy with Prime Assist, and Buy with Prime Cart.

Buy with Prime Assist allows sellers to offer Amazon customer support for no additional charge. The service gives customers access to a chat feature with Amazon customer service representatives who can answer questions about shipping, current orders and returns. 

Buy with Prime Cart is another feature designed to make off-site purchasing experiences more like the experience on Amazon.com. Previously, Buy with Prime functioned similarly to Amazon’s Buy Now feature, Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of Buy with Prime and multi-channel fulfillment, said in a blog post. Now, customers can buy multiple items at once, like a traditional online cart, he said.

What is Buy with Prime?

Amazon first launched the tool in April 2022. It allowed retailers to sell products also listed on Amazon from their own websites. Customers checked out using Amazon’s payment system and received orders using the ecommerce giant’s fulfillment network.

Retailers pay Amazon a fee to use the service, which Amazon has not disclosed.

There were about 167 million Prime Members who were eligible to check out using Buy with Prime as of March 2023, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a Chicago firm that tracks Prime members via consumer surveys.

Why is Amazon expanding Buy with Prime now?

Amazon relies heavily on third-party sellers on its marketplace, which ranks No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top 100 online marketplaces. A majority (63.7%) of GMV in 2022 came from third-party sellers, a figure that’s increasing year over year. 

“As Amazon loses some of its position as the search engine for shopping, it is using other tactics to gain intelligence and maintain market share,” Digital Commerce 360 senior analyst James Risley says.

“Shopify is definitely a threat in terms of providing an alternative for sellers,” Risley says. “More than half of sales on Amazon are from third-party sellers, and if they turn to Shopify instead of Amazon or favor their own Shopify site, Amazon loses out.”

Notably, Amazon recently allowed Shopify merchants to offer Buy with Prime on their Shopify websites.

“Amazon partnering with Shopify is really a test for both of them. Shopify can use the Amazon payment options as a way to make it easier for merchants to get out of the strict Amazon.com ecosystem while not abandoning all of its benefits. Amazon gets to pull a potential competitor a little closer and keep it from threatening its position too much,” Risley says.

Amazon promises seller benefits

The online marketplace shared new data indicating that sellers who use Buy with Prime are better positioned than those that don’t.

Three out of four Buy with Prime purchasers, on average, are new customers to the brand, Amazon said. The tool also led to a 25% increase in conversion, on average, the online marketplace said. 

Other tools from Amazon also have positive impacts on sales. Retailers who added reviews from Amazon to their websites saw an average of 38% in conversion growth. Merchants using Buy with Prime cart reported 15% increase in units sold, on average, after adding the feature. 

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The typical ecommerce basket in East Africa is about 5,242 Kenyan shillings ($36), while a basket settled using a point-of-sale terminal averages 5,117 shillings (about $35), according to Agosta Liko, founder and group chief executive officer of Nairobi-based Pesapal.

The company forecasts East Africa ecommerce basket values will increase by as much as 18% in the next two years.

“It will be driven by growing acceptance among customers and by retailers diversifying to digital products,” Liko said in response to emailed questions.

Africa ecommerce growth

A report by McKinsey & Co. published in September projects East Africa’s payments market, primarily in Kenya and Uganda, to grow at 20% annually until 2025. West Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast, is the fastest-growing sub-region at 35%. On the continent, the industry is forecast to reach $40 billion by 2025. That would be up from $16 billion in 2020, according to the management consulting giant.

Other ecommerce payment drivers in East Africa are the travel and hospitality industry, telecommunications companies, utilities and government services, Liko said.

“Public policy continues to enable innovation and even drive adoption through e-government initiatives,” Liko said. “Ecommerce is still fragmented, but COVID-19 kicked this forward by a decade.”

The payments platform began operations in 2009. It offers services to more than 50,000 businesses and people in:

• Kenya
• Rwanda
• Tanzania
• Uganda

Pesapal partners with platforms including Apple Pay, Fitbit Pay and Google Pay, telecommunications companies such as Airtel Africa Plc, MTN Group Ltd., Safaricom Plc, and Tigo by Millicom International Cellular, to enable payments both online or at a physical point-of-sale.

Africa is the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, and with integration of innovations such as QR codes and near-field communication in phones, changes in its payments landscape are likely to accelerate, Liko said.

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Amazon ranks No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s new 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report, and the annual Prime Day sale draws millions of shoppers. 

Prime Day set a new record

Consumers spent $6.3 billion across U.S. ecommerce on the second day of the sale, according to Adobe Analytics data of 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and 100 million SKUs. That’s up 6.4% year over year. Spending was down slightly from day one of the sales event, which reached $6.4 billion. 

Total sales for the two-day event were $12.7 billion, a new record from Prime Day, per Adobe. That’s an increase of 6.1% over $11.9 billion in sales in 2022. However, it’s below Adobe’s expected growth rate of 9.5%.

Amazon called out the first day of the promotion as its biggest sales day in company history.

Consumers shopped for appliances and home goods

Amazon Prime shoppers focused their spending on items for their homes. Appliance sales were up 52% compared to the average day in June, according to Adobe. Housekeeping supplies and apparel were also popular, up 27% and 24%, respectively. 

“In an event typically dominated by electronics, we instead saw many shoppers stocking up on everyday essentials like pet food or pantry staples,” Numerator analyst Amanda Schoenbauer said in a statement. “It seems many used the event to save on their standard purchases or held off on buying larger-ticket items until the sale came around.” 

Amazon said in a press release that home, fashion, and beauty were top-selling categories. The single best selling product was the Fire TV Stick (3rd Gen) with Alexa Voice Remote.

Data research company Numerator gathered Prime Day information based on more than 98,000 orders, 34,000 buyers and more than 172,000 products. 52% of consumers told Numerator that they held off on buying certain items until they were discounted on Prime Day.

Home goods (28%) and household essentials (26%) were the top categories in Numerator’s data, followed by apparel (24%) and electronics (21%).

Stationery and office supply purchases were up 76%, according to Adobe, as consumers started looking for back-to-school deals.

How Prime Day consumers shopped

The average Prime Day order was $54.05, up slightly from $52.26 in 2022, Numerator found. 65% of households that shopped the sale made at least two separate orders, with an average household spending $155.67. Nearly one in five households (18%) made five or more orders. 

Just under half of orders on July 12, 45%, were made on smartphones, Adobe said. That’s up from 41.5% of orders in 2022. Adobe attributed the increase to growing consumer comfort shopping on mobile devices, and the ease of making impulse purchases.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) played a much bigger role on Prime Day

On day one of the sale, 6.4% of all orders were made using buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services, per Adobe. Those orders drove $461 million in revenue, up 19.5% from the first day of the sale in 2022. On July 12, BNPL made up 6.6% of online orders for $466 million in revenue, up 21% year over year. For both days, BNPL was used in 6.5% of orders, generating $927 million in revenue, which is up 20% from 2022.

“For months, consumers have felt the effects of persistent inflation and an uncertain economic environment, and it has pushed shoppers to embrace more flexible ways to manage their spending around the Prime Day event,” Adobe analyst Vivek Pandya said in a statement. “The revenue growth attributed to buy now, pay later is a preview of what we can expect in the months ahead, especially as we near the holiday shopping season.” 

BNPL was used most in the apparel, furniture and electronics categories, Adobe said.

Beyond Amazon

More than half of Prime Day shoppers (54%) compared prices at competitors, many of whom were also holding sales events, according to Numerator. 36% checked Walmart for prices, and 25% consulted Target. 37% of shoppers said they did not look at any other sales.

Consumers that did look beyond Amazon chose curbside pickup in slightly greater numbers than in the past. 20% of orders from retailers that offered the service used it on July 12, up slightly from 19% in 2022, according to Adobe.

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Amazon ranks No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s new 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report, and the annual Prime Day sale draws millions of shoppers. 

Spending and order size grew modestly

July 11 was the biggest ecommerce day of 2023 so far, according to Adobe Analytics data of 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and 100 million SKUs. Adobe says U.S. consumers spent $6.4 billion on the first day of the sale, up 5.96% year over year. That’s only slightly lower growth compared with 2022, which was up 6.1% over 2021, per earlier Adobe data.

Sales growth didn’t meet Adobe’s forecast of 9.5%.

“Prime Day has become one of the biggest ecommerce moments of the year, as consumers latch onto major discounts from a number of different retailers,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights Vivek Pandya, in a statement. “The record spending so far shows us that consumers are tapping into their inner bargain hunters, stocking up on specific categories such as electronics and apparel while the discounts remain steep.”  

The average order on the first day of Prime Day was $56.64, according to data research company Numerator. That’s up about 6.5% over $53.14 for the same period in 2022. The average household of Prime Day shoppers spent $134 on the first day of the sale, per Numerator, with 20% of households spending over $200.

Consumers focused on appliances, household and grocery products

Appliances led the day, with sales up 37% compared to the daily average in June, Adobe found. Toys, apparel and electronics sales were up 27%, 26%, and 12%, respectively.

Two of the top five products on July 11 were household and grocery products, Numerator found. One Amazon product made the top five list: the Amazon Fire TV stick. This marks a change from previous Prime Days. In 2022, three of the top five items were Amazon brand, and all five were in 2021, according to Numerator.

Home goods was the top category, according to Numerator’s survey of Prime shoppers, with 27% of respondents saying they’d made such purchases. It was closely followed by home essentials (26%) and apparel and shoes (25%). 21% of consumers said they purchased electronics, and 20% shopped for beauty products.

Consumers looked at retailers beyond Amazon

Some of Amazon’s biggest competitors held online sales during Prime Day, and many savvy customers compared prices across retailers. 65% of surveyed shoppers told Numerator that they planned to shop other sales. Target (37%), Walmart (32%), and Costco (20%) were the most popular competitors. Over one-third of shoppers, 35%, did not plan to look beyond Amazon.

However, those competitors didn’t see the same growth as Amazon. Non-Amazon online sales during the first half of the day were down 10% year over year, per technology company Salesforce Inc. Electronics, footwear and furniture were the top categories at non-Amazon retailers in the first half of the day.

Some discounts were down, but consumers didn’t seem to mind

The most significant discounts July 11 on Amazon were electronics (16%), toys (15%), apparel (13%) and computers (10%), according to Adobe. Electronics were available at a much steeper discount than the 6% Adobe recorded in 2022. Computers were also slightly more discounted than last year, compared to 8% off regular prices in 2022.

Prime members were largely pleased with these discounts, according the the Numerator survey. 68% said they were extremely or very satisfied with the deals, and 67% believed deals so far were better or the same as last year. Just 15% said 2023 was worse than 2022, while 19% were unsure.

Discounts were not as promising for shoppers at Amazon’s competitors. The average price discount among non-Amazon retailers is 18%, a 17% decrease from 2022, according to Salesforce. Average prices were up 6% over last year, a sign of continued inflation, per Salesforce.

Better sales could still be coming, though.

“With soft online sales reflecting lackluster online discounts, consumers in the U.S. shouldn’t despair. We anticipate retailers will ratchet up discounts before the end of Prime Day,” Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce, said in a statement. 

Not all prices are marked down on Prime Day, though. Last year, Amazon merchants raised prices 3% or more on 13.72% of the top 10,000 selling items on the Amazon marketplace, according to a report from Noogata, an artificial-intelligence data analytics platform for Amazon sellers.

Early sales may have eaten into Prime Day

Many other retailers started sales earlier than Amazon’s official start.

“According to early data from Prime Day in the U.S., it looks like retailers may have beaten Amazon to the punch by running promotions last week,” Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce said in a statement.

More retailers held 4th of July promotions than offered site-wide sales to compete with Amazon’s Prime Days on Tuesday, according to a Digital Commerce 360 analysis of the Top 1000.

Amazon held its own pre-Prime Day sales, too. Crocs were the most popular item sold on Amazon during the week of June 26 through July 2, followed by the Kindle Paperwhite and Apple Airpods, according to web traffic measurement firm Similarweb Ltd.

From July 1 to July 8, consumers searched for “portable air conditioners” and “electric bike” more than any other terms on Amazon. Crocs also remained popular, according to Similarweb. Searches for “Roku” and “TV” dominated the electronics category, and the Nintendo Switch was the most searched for video game term.

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Emily Newton

Artificial intelligence has seen rapid growth across many industries. As supply chain leaders seek to become more efficient and resilient, they can no longer afford to overlook this growth. AI forecasting can give distributors the edge they need in this rapidly evolving market.

Data-based decision-making is already a critical driver of success for distributors. Supply chain operations generate considerable amounts of data, providing important insight if organizations can harness it. AI can take this advantage further if distributors learn how to implement it effectively.

How AI Forecasting Helps Distributors

If distributors hope to capitalize on AI fully, they must first understand where it is most useful. With that in mind, here are three areas where AI forecasting can help distributors make smarter decisions.

1 – Predicting Demand

Demand forecasting is the most obvious application of this technology for distributors. Machine learning algorithms can analyze past demand fluctuations to predict similar shifts in the future. Distributors can then adjust inventories in response to prevent stock-outs or surpluses as clients’ demands change.

Carrying costs often account for as much as 30% of total inventory costs, so preventing surplus amid dwindling demand is crucial. However, shortages carry similar gravity, as they can lead to lost business. The key to both issues is adapting to demand changes before they occur — AI provides the necessary insight to enable that adaptation.

Machine learning algorithms excel at spotting subtle patterns in data humans may miss. Consequently, they can accurately identify signs of demand shift before they are noticeable to human analysts. Distributors can then increase stocks of items that will be in demand soon and decrease those that will see less demand.

2 – Optimizing Inventories

Similarly, AI forecasting can help distributors optimize their inventories for greater supply chain efficiency and resiliency. These changes go beyond adjusting stock levels in response to incoming demand. AI can also determine the best inventory storage methods and layouts.

Just as AI tools analyze client ordering data to predict demand shifts, they can analyze warehouse workflows to identify inefficiencies. Algorithms may detect which products see the most demand, or the ones warehouse workers must travel the most to pick and pack. Adjusting to these insights lets distributors move inventory faster and with fewer errors.

A distributor may need to place some products closer to loading bays or reorganize their inventories to make more products easily reachable for workers. Like client demands, ideal layouts may change over time, and AI can predict and suggest these changes, too.

3 – Streamlining Supply Chain Operations

Distributors can use AI forecasting to apply similar benefits to their supply chains as a whole. AI-powered management platforms can integrate with over 100 different apps and services, providing more insight into how each supply chain operation affects the others.

Vendor and 3PL management is one of the most beneficial examples of this analysis. AI can analyze financial data and past timelines from logistics partners and vendors to determine which ones offer the best rates or highest efficiency. With this information, distributors can change 3PLs or vendors to streamline their expenses or shipping times.

As machine learning models analyze more data about past disruptions, they can forecast future challenges, too. That way, AI tools can alert distributors when to expect delays, shortages, or similar obstacles so they can adapt accordingly to mitigate the impact.

AI Forecasting Best Practices

Despite this potential, it is important to remember AI forecasting is just a tool. The extent to which distributors will experience these benefits depends on how well they can use this technology. Consequently, distribution leaders must keep some AI best practices in mind.

First, distributors must recognize AI requires vast amounts of data to work accurately. Consequently, using Internet of Things systems and similar technologies to provide data from across the supply chain is a crucial prerequisite for AI implementation. Because poor-quality information costs organizations $12.9 million annually, distributors must also clean their data before feeding it to AI algorithms.

Distributors must also recognize between 60% to 80% of AI projects fail, most often because of a lack of focus. Before investing in AI forecasting, businesses must identify a specific use case, then determine what data they need to enable that application. Taking a smaller, more focused approach to AI will minimize related expenses and boost the project’s chances of success.

Similarly, distributors should start by using AI in just one area before using it to inform larger decisions across more workflows. Starting small and expanding slowly will help them learn first-hand how to use AI effectively, leading to better returns on investment.

Modern Distributors Need AI Forecasting

The supply chain sector is facing rising obstacles. In the face of increased competition and quickly evolving demands, distributors must become as cost-efficient and agile as possible. To do that, they must capitalize on AI forecasting.

Effective AI implementation will soon become a differentiating factor between top-performing distributors and all the rest. Learning about this technology and how to use it sooner rather than later is critical to future success in the industry.

About the author

Emily Newton is an industrial writer reporting on how technology disrupts industrial sectors. She’s also the editor-in-chief of Revolutionized, covering innovations in industry, construction, and more.

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Adobe produced the report based on 100 million SKUs across 18 retail categories including groceries, personal care, and appliances.

Biggest declines

11 of the 18 categories Adobe monitored showed year-over-year price declines in May. They were driven by decreases in discretionary categories, Adobe said. The largest year-over-year price decrease was for the flower and gift category. Prices declined 27.8%. The category continued the trend from April, when it also showed the largest decrease.

Computers and electronics also decreased significantly, down 16.45% and 12.04%, respectively, year over year. 

Appliance prices dropped 7.9% year over year, and 2.4% month over month. This was the largest drop in the category pricing since Adobe first began tracking in 2014. Appliance prices decreased for the eighth month in a row, Adobe found.

Home and garden prices also decreased 6.3% over last May, when prices were up 2.5% over May 2021, per Adobe. 

Grocery prices increased again

Online grocery prices rose 8.2% year over year and 0.3% month over month in May, Adobe found. Though prices keep going up, Adobe noted that the rate of increase has slowed for eight consecutive months. Online grocery prices were up 9.3% year over year in April, 10.3% in March, and 11.4% in February. Growth peaked in September 2022 at 14.3% year over year.

Ecommerce splits from other retail

Adobe says it uses the same general methodology that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to track prices in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In May 2023, online prices fell 23% while the CPI grew 4%. That’s on track with recent months, with Adobe and BLS findings diverging. In April 2023, ecommerce prices declined 1.8% year over year and the CPI was 4.9%. In March 2023, ecommerce prices decreased 1.7% per Adobe, while the CPI grew 5%

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A prime example is buying flowers for Valentine’s Day, says Katie Hudson, content director at online flower retailer UrbanStems.

UrbanStems sells about five times its typical volume in the week leading up to Feb. 14, Hudson says. During this week, a large share of UrbanStems.com browsers are looking to buy and will convert on any page on UrbanStems.com, even the pages without the conversion-driving features the retailer added to help with year-round sales, like a countdown timer.

“The week of Valentine’s Day, the intent to purchase is so high that we’ve seen — and we’ve tested this a few times — we’ve seen people convert better on our normal shopping experience for that week because they don’t even need to know our story,” Hudson says.

But when online shoppers aren’t converting as well as retailers would like, merchants must determine what data they can use to guide shoppers to the right products. They also must identify improvements they can make to their site experience to lead shoppers to convert. Improving conversion rates is an ongoing process. Four retailers share how they’ve improved their web experience and marketing tactics to boost their conversion rates, such as by creating a faster checkout page and surfacing more engaging on-site search results.

64% of retailers said they improved their conversion rates in 2022 compared with 2021, according to a Digital Commerce 360 retailers survey of 73 online merchants in February 2023. Additionally, 22% maintained their conversion rates year over year, and just 14% had declining conversion rates. Most retailers surveyed had conversion rates of 1.51% or better.

Better than “normal.” Enhanced site tools are conversion drivers

UrbanStems is always monitoring its conversion rate, and it continually tests design features to improve conversion, Hudson says.

The “normal shopping experience” on UrbanStems.com is the baseline pages running on Salesforce’s ecommerce platform. UrbanStems also runs design feature experiments using web design vendor Zmags’ Fastr Frontend interface, which connects to the platform via an application programming interface.

The vendor allows Hudson to add new pages or custom-designed sections of pages to UrbanStems.com that aren’t limited to its ecommerce platform’s template, rather than submitting a ticket to the retailer’s web developers each time she wants or needs to make a change.

Some of those changes include adding a countdown timer, updating promo codes in real time, and the use of an inventory badge that indicates how many units of a product are available. Each change helped UrbanStems improve its conversion, Hudson says.

UrbanStems created a specific landing page with a countdown timer for Valentine’s Day for shoppers visiting the retailer after clicking on a Facebook or Instagram ad.

The UrbanStems website shows shoppers flower arrangements with the highest conversion rate first.

Flower retailer UrbanStems shows shoppers visiting from Facebook and Instagram marketing language for shoppers unfamiliar with the brand.

When UrbanStems tested a Zmags landing page versus its normal shopping product listing page, the Zmags landing page always had a higher conversion rate compared with the normal shopping page, Hudson says. Now, she tests one Zmags frontend page versus another to see how well different creatives lead shoppers to convert.

In addition to using Zmags, UrbanStems also uses Contentsquare, a digital experience analytics platform, to gather additional shopper data. Contentsquare offers a heat map that allows Hudson to see where shoppers are clicking on UrbanStems.com.

“Are people clicking more on this orange bouquet that’s $70, or are they clicking on this pink bouquet that’s $70?” Hudson says, adding that she tries “to get a sense of where people are gravitating. If we’re seeing a super-low clickthrough rate, we will update the creative in some way. Overall, we’re always monitoring conversion rate.”

Got a hunch? Time to test new features

Valentine’s Day accounts for a large chunk of annual revenue at UrbanStems. But outside of peak seasons, Hudson tests pages and market products based on hunches and trends.

One test Hudson conducted was based on delivery dates. Many of the products on UrbanStems.com are tied to a particular delivery date. Because of that, shoppers might see that certain bouquets are unavailable until a week or two after the date they browse the website. If a bouquet is unavailable, it automatically gets pushed down on the UrbanStems product listing page. But Hudson had a hunch that shoppers might not be as concerned with the delivery window. If that were true, the retailer could show top sellers at the top of the listing page regardless of the availability date, rather than expecting shoppers to scroll to the bottom of the page to find them.

“You might come to one of our landing pages and then see the peony bouquet, and then you can click it and be like, ‘Oh, I can’t get it until Feb. 21,’” Hudson says. “But what we tested was even if that was the case, we were driving a higher conversion on the landing pages where we were not tying our inventory to delivery date. It was allowing us to put the best-looking bouquets or the top-selling bouquets front and center.”

Displaying prices with discounts included spikes conversion

Wow Skin Science also added new features to its site to help with conversion. The personal care brand noticed shoppers were leaving at checkout after adding items to their carts, says Sudeep Bansal, vice president of growth.

After surveying shoppers, Bansal discovered shoppers expected their promotions to be applied to their cart before checking out. When they didn’t see the promotion applied before checkout, they would abandon their cart — and they wouldn’t return to it.

“So we introduced a widget in the cart where the offer that’s available for the customer is visible, loud and clear,” Bansal says.

“The customer could just apply that offer and move forward in the journey. We saw a significant delta in conversion rates for that,” Bansal says, declining to share the retailer’s conversion rate.

To further improve the customer experience, the site autofills a shopper’s address during the checkout process. It also provides easy navigation on the homepage so shoppers can get to the products they want quickly.

“One challenge we see is there’s too much information available on the internet today,” Bansal says. “When people come on our site, they get confused on what they want to buy. We have about 500 different SKUs listed on the site, and when the customer comes in, the customer doesn’t really know what is the right product for [them].”

Wow Skin Science alleviates this with its beauty quiz. It asks shoppers for information such as:

• Age
• Skin type
• What scent the shopper prefers
• What the shoppers’ concerns are

After finishing the quiz, shoppers receive a personalized suggestion of individual Wow Skin Science products to try as well as skincare kits. Conversion rate is higher on personalized product suggestions shoppers receive after taking the quiz, Bansal says. He attributes the increase in conversion to shoppers trusting that the suggested products will work for them. Shoppers are also given the option to automatically filter the website’s product listing page based on what the shopper filled out in the beauty quiz.

Don’t make it hard for a customer to give you money

Wrist Mafia also noticed shoppers were abandoning their shopping carts. It improved its conversion rate after optimizing its landing pages and improving checkout speed, says CEO and founder Johnny Brown. Wrist Mafia is a subscription-based retailer that allows customers to receive a new watch. The subscriptions it offers are monthly, every three months, bi-annually or annually.

Wrist Mafia’s previous interface, ReCharge, made shoppers leave the retailer’s Shopify-hosted site to complete the payment process. ReCharge had a separate processor and application built on top of Shopify, rather than an interface that integrates directly into the platform, Brown says. Shoppers couldn’t use Shop Pay or Google Autofill forms during checkout, which decreased conversion, Brown says, without sharing specifics.

“If you have to go through six pages to check out, you’ll lose most of those customers,” he says. “We did.”

Wrist Mafia’s customers can now check out in less than 10 seconds, he says, down from two to three minutes. That checkout speed improved after the retailer implemented subscription-management vendor Ordergroove’s interface in September 2022. Ordergroove helped reduce the number of pages shoppers had to navigate to subscribe by three pages, Brown says.

And to acquire new subscribers, Wrist Mafia heavily discounts the first watch in the subscription, Brown says. That discount for the first watch is the best available price other than during the Cyber 5. Cyber 5 refers to the period from Black Friday through Cyber Monday.

This conversion-driving tactic also helped Wrist Mafia grow to about 11,000 subscribers at its peak in early 2022, up from about 2,000 subscribers at the beginning of the pandemic.

Within three months of implementing Ordergroove, Wrist Mafia grew its subscriber base 63%. Its subscribers can pay monthly or prepay for three- or six-month subscriptions.

UrbanStems, Wrist Mafia and Wow Skin Science all share a similar theory in their approaches to improving their conversion rates. Make it easy on the shopper. The three merchants have improved their conversion by improving the shopper experience. And they did that by making it easy to find products and pay for them.

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This is part of Digital Commerce 360’s March 2023 Strategy Insights edition. Our members have access to all the articles in this month’s issue, Data-Driven Retail.

The post Retailers use data to improve web conversion and improve the customer experience  appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

“The week of Valentine’s Day, the intent to purchase is so high that we’ve seen — and we’ve tested this a few times — we’ve seen people convert better on our normal shopping experience for that week because they don’t even need to know our story,” Hudson said. 

The retailer’s conversion rate increased 12% year over year for Valentine’s Day 2023. A large part of the retailer’s sales come through its customized landing pages, Hudson said, declining to provide dollar figures. 

The retailer had its highest sales number on Feb. 12, Hudson said, though she declined to provide a dollar amount. 

“We all knew people were going to wait until the last minute, and they did,” Hudson said. 

Using a ‘Fastr Frontend’

UrbanStems is always monitoring its conversion rate, and it continually tests design features to improve conversion, Hudson says.  

The “normal shopping experience” on UrbanStems.com uses Salesforce’s ecommerce platform and is limited to Salesforce templates. UrbanStems also runs design feature experiments using web design vendor Zmags’ Fastr Frontend interface, which connects to the platform via an application programming interface (API).  

The vendor allows Hudson to add new pages or custom-designed sections of pages to UrbanStems.com that aren’t limited to its ecommerce platform’s template, rather than submitting a ticket to the retailer’s web developers each time she wants or needs to make a change.  

“It’s for a creative audience to be able to do things on those key parts of the site where your brand vision is paramount,” said Ryan Breen, chief technology officer at Zmags. “You really want to do something not restricted by templates.”

Breen said it’s typical to see a drop-off after a shopper goes to a landing page that a company put “all their effort into” creating.

“I know the moment. I’ve fallen off,” Breen said. “Hand-designed, cool site, to template hell. It’s usually right around the category page.”

There are often differences in opinion among the merchandisers, marketers and development agencies producing custom pages, Breen said.

“Everything becomes a ticket to another team to another team to another team, and you aren’t doing that in a day,” Breen said.

Changes UrbanStems makes to improve conversion

Some of the changes UrbanStems made include adding a countdown timer, updating promo codes in real time, creating shoppable tiles on the retailer’s blog, and using an inventory badge that indicates how many units of a product are available. Each change helped UrbanStems improve its conversion, Hudson said.  

When UrbanStems tested a Zmags landing page versus its normal shopping product listing page, the Zmags landing page always had a higher conversion rate compared with the normal shopping page, Hudson says. 

In the case of Valentine’s Day, the Zmags product landing page (PLP) UrbanStems created on its site resulted in a 35% increase in conversion compared with its templated PLP, Hudson said. UrbanStems tested the page from Jan. 24 to 29.

“We weren’t even expecting to run the test so short, but the numbers were so significant,” Hudson said.

The Zmags pages have tested and performed so well for UrbanStems that the retailer now tests one Zmags frontend page versus another to see how well different creative leads shoppers to convert. 

UrbanStems top-selling Valentine’s Day products

“Unsurprisingly, red roses were our top seller,” Hudson said.

And the retailer saw the biggest conversion lift on SKUs in the $70 to $100 range, she said. Furthermore, people are more likely to include add-ons such as vases to their Valentine’s Day purchases, she said. 

UrbanStems also orders in lower volume SKUs that have a higher price point to experiment with what shoppers are comfortable purchasing. The flower retailer offered a SKU for Valentine’s Day that was over $200 and sold out.

“Granted, we ordered at a significantly less amount, but I’m always honestly surprised to see what people are gravitating toward,” Hudson said. “I think sometimes it could be that when you see a higher price point, it feels like a more luxurious gift, which it certainly is. The over $200 price we offered had a mixture of fresh florals and orchids in it, which we’ve never done before, a bouquet with mixed orchids. It came with a vase as well. The fact that that sold out was a little surprising to me because it was something different that we’ve never sold before.”

UrbanStems also offered peonies during the Valentine’s Day season. 

“Peonies overall was a huge win for us,” she said. “We actually sold out of peonies a week before Valentine’s Day.”

All those SKUs led to UrbanStems’ average order value (AOV) increasing 12% year over year around the February holiday.

Making marketing adjustments by channel

Hudson said even though UrbanStems knows the intent to purchase is “really high” leading up to Valentine’s Day, the retailer also wanted to make sure it showcased products at price points it knew shoppers were looking for based on sales data at the end of January and in early February. 

It also wants to make sure it’s sorting products that are on sale or have a high buy-to-detail rate. Buy-to-detail rate is an analytic that shows the percentage of people who bought an item on a website after viewing that product’s page. 

UrbanStems only used Zmags in its landing pages for shoppers coming to the site from paid social media marketing. The retailer didn’t experience any dips in conversion leading up to the holiday, Hudson said. Additionally, UrbanStems increased conversion on paid social 83% year over year. 

Moreover, it spent less on paid social this year compared with 2022. Paid social transactions increased 27% year over year, she said. Those transactions come from Meta, TikTok and Pinterest. UrbanStems targeted the male audience on Meta platforms and found it responded to promo codes and the countdown timer Hudson implemented. 

Those performance increases were “pretty wild for us and really exciting,” Hudson said. The next big challenge, she added, is taking those wins and applying them to its next big sales period: Mother’s Day.

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The post Online flower retailer UrbanStems increases conversion 12% during Valentine’s Day season appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.