How Convenience and Frictionless Commerce Drive Sales

We’ve long heard about the importance of providing consumers with a frictionless commerce experience. This means removing obstacles between someone discovering a new product and becoming a (hopefully repeating) customer such that the journey is organic, streamlined, and delightful. 

However, what must appear effortless to the consumer is actually a strategic process of optimizations across pricing, personalization, and selection. As we enter a time of omnichannel retail, consumers are increasingly valuing saved time and reduced hassle when they shop. The period in which many stayed at home has exposed them to the wide range of options and flexibility they have when shopping for what they need and receiving it in the way they want. This expectation is here to stay, and brands can respond to these values by maximizing convenience and flexibility throughout the shopping journey. 

50% of shoppers list convenience as a primary reason why they choose to shop online. This includes the ease with which shoppers find the products they’re looking for, how relevant recommended products are to them, and how friction-free checkout paths let them choose how and where they want to shop. At the highest level, friction along the shoppers’ path to purchase can result in lost sales, accounting for $22B lost per year. Businesses strive to improve and simplify the process of purchasing their goods for this simple reason:

• More experienced friction = higher drop off rate + lost sales + more brand erosion + less consumer loyalty
• Seamless, frictionless commerce = lower drop off rate + sales saved + higher brand value + higher consumer lifetime value

In other words, introduce too much friction into the purchase process, and shoppers will leave you faster than a contestant on MTV’s mid-aughts dating show Next.

Introducing frictionless commerce into your shopping experience

Your awareness media is designed to learn about new potential customers. When a shopper interacts with your ad on Instagram or YouTube, you’re learning about their purchasing habits, interests, and demographics. All of this information can be used to better target them (and look alike shoppers) with campaigns meant to drive consideration and conversions. The first-party data captured then helps segment audiences. Convenience from accurate targeting comes from meeting consumers where they are, providing them with the options they are looking for, and displaying clear next steps.

The last thing you want is for the shopping process for your product to be like a maze. Forbes notes that 85% of shoppers research a product before making a purchase online. 74% of them do so from a brand’s website, and 38% do so on social media. Convenience during purchase consideration requires weaving these touch points together and making it easy for shoppers to take next steps. The more often this is missed, the more likely your opportunities can be undone by these poor experiences.

Optimize the checkout experience, online and in store

80% of shoppers want same-day delivery while 23% of shoppers rated fulfillment options, such as delivery, purchase in-store, or buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) as important to their shopping experience. Brands that are looking to succeed in the omnichannel retail world need to optimize their websites, media, and social media to accommodate shoppers' preferences in where and how they shop. This may also mean investing in technology like MikMak Commerce Discover to make sure that your media and brand.com enables shoppers to choose checkout options like Instacart, Drizly, Minibar, and other retailers that offer same day delivery. 

And what data do you use to do this? One health care brand added online and in-store shopping options using MikMak Commerce Discover to their commerce experiences based on the shoppers’ geolocation. This flexibility provides shoppers the choice to have items shipped directly to their homes, or see in an instance what stores nearby have the product in stock. Within just a month of making this change, the health care brand observed consumer interactions with their shoppable media experiences doubled in time spent, and purchase intent increased 108%. In another case, a beauty care brand added Instacart as a checkout option to their brand website to enable same day delivery to their customers. After doing so, the beauty brands noted that nearly 25% of all Add to Carts on their product detail pages were for Instacart, and that their overall Add to Cart rate increased.

Leveraging consumer data for a convenient shopping experience

Reducing friction and inspiring purchases requires brands to understand their consumers’ shopping journey. That means:

1. Understanding who your shoppers are to develop winning media strategies.
2. Understanding what product categories, retailers, and check-out options your shoppers prefer across dimensions such as platform (Facebook, Pinterest, Snap, etc.), channel (social, search, display, etc.), geolocation and more. 
3. Using this information to build better and more targeted commerce experiences that drive higher conversions.

To learn more about eCommerce metrics, multi retailer eCommerce enablement software, and how they can be used to help your brand grow and protect market share, schedule a demo with MikMak today.