Cyber Weekend is simply across the nook, and it’s anticipated to be one other busy one, with vacation eCommerce gross sales projected to succeed in $235 billion—a rise of greater than 15% from 2021!
This anticipated surge in on-line buying represents an enormous alternative for digital storefronts of all sizes, particularly these which can be ready for the upper site visitors and able to serve each buyer with a seamless buying expertise.
See how your WooCommerce retailer runs higher on WP Engine
But when your eCommerce website isn’t fairly prepared for an inflow of on-line clients, now’s the time to arrange.
With Cyber Weekend quick approaching, use the next tricks to check your website, improve the place wanted, and roll out the purple carpet to your web shoppers!
Constructing an Finish-to-Finish eCommerce Journey
First impressions rely, and that rings very true for eCommerce websites.
Right this moment, one in 4 clients will depart your website if it takes longer than 4 seconds to load, and lagging efficiency, complicated product info, and wonky cart performance will all improve the already-high probabilities of cart abandonment.
Not solely that, however 64% of customers say they’ll take their enterprise elsewhere subsequent time if they’ve a poor expertise in your website.
However the reverse is true in the case of quick websites that take away friction from the eCommerce buyer journey and supply all customers with crisp content material, highly effective search performance, and a seamless checkout course of.
By taking a wider view of your eCommerce website(s) and the bigger buyer journey you’re offering—from discovery and consideration to intent, buy, and repeat engagement—you’ll have the ability to zero-in on key areas for optimization.
You can begin with these customer-centric questions:
- How lengthy do your website customers sometimes wait from first click on till a web page has absolutely loaded?
If it’s longer than two or three seconds, it’s possible you’ll be lacking out on larger conversion charges.
- What performance do you might have in place to raised accommodate product searches in your website?
Prospects who’re capable of shortly discover what they’re in search of are greater than twice as prone to full a purchase order.
- What’s the expertise like when clients add gadgets to their cart, proceed buying, or want to shortly try?
Cart Fragments and different components together with caching may very well be creating bottlenecks in your WooCommerce storefront.
All of those questions spotlight essential factors within the eCommerce purchaser’s journey that may be make-it-or-break-it moments to your website.
When you can optimize every space by yourself, WP Engine’s eCommerce plans ship shops which can be as much as 37% sooner, with as much as 18% larger conversion charges, all on a platform that’s optimized for WooCommerce.
Which means a direct improve to your eCommerce websites and your purchaser’s journey. With high-performance internet hosting, proprietary caching, enhanced cart performance by way of Reside Cart, and Prompt Retailer Search, which delivers extra related search outcomes as much as 10x sooner, WP Engine supplies a greater WooCommerce expertise for your entire eCommerce clients.
Discover out extra about WP Engine’s WooCommerce-optimized internet hosting plans—together with our 60-day money-back assure—right here, or communicate to a consultant now.
Testing, Testing, 123
Website efficiency, and particularly web page velocity, are vital components that assist your entire eCommerce expertise—70% of shoppers say web page velocity impacts their willingness to purchase from a web-based retailer.
The quickest eCommerce websites (with pages that load in two seconds or much less) do certainly see a number of the highest conversion charges, whereas conversions start to drop by a mean of 4% with every further second of load time.
Which means the additional seconds your viewers has to attend may very well be chopping into your backside line, however how are you aware the place you stand?
Testing your websites and the campaigns you intend to run in the course of the vacation rush will assist you to make tweaks the place wanted to make sure issues run easily as soon as site visitors picks up.
Load testing, for instance, is a standard strategy that simulates real-world load in your website that can assist you assess issues like scaling capabilities, safety dangers, automated code deployment, and goal monitoring, amongst others.
Correct load testing will provide you with a clearer concept of how many individuals can go to your website without delay, however earlier than you dive right into a load testing mission, examine along with your internet hosting supplier to ensure it’s authorised (or they could assume your website is being attacked by bots and block it).
You could find out extra about load testing in this book, and if you happen to’re in search of further website testing choices, you’ll find a large checklist of free instruments for testing WordPress website efficiency right here.
Much less Looking, Extra Discovering
Related content material begins with the content material itself, however ensuring your audiences are capable of finding the content material they’re in search of is essential to enhancing your eCommerce conversions.
43% of web shoppers go on to an internet site’s search bar, and shoppers who use search are 2.4x extra doubtless to purchase after they discover what they’re in search of.
Searchers additionally drive extra income, spending 2.6x extra throughout cell and desktop in comparison with customers who don’t use search.
So how are you assembly your clients’ search expectations? Whereas native WordPress search performance could be restricted, there are methods you’ll be able to enhance the search features in your WooCommerce website(s).
Prompt Retailer Search, for instance, brings the ability of ElasticPress to your WooCommerce retailer, supercharging the web buying expertise with sooner, extra related search outcomes and useful “did you imply?” help (in addition to autocorrect and near-spelling ideas).
By figuring out and intercepting search queries and offloading them to a separate server, Prompt Retailer Search supplies a rising variety of WP Engine’s eCommerce clients with sooner website speeds and better conversion charges.
And Prompt Retailer Search is sooner than ever, as queries at the moment are routed by a devoted API, separate from WordPress, which returns outcomes greater than 10x sooner than earlier than.
For prime-traffic eCommerce shops and different websites the place search velocity is vital, conversion charges can expertise important fluctuations primarily based on the distinction of just a few milliseconds.
Utilizing instruments like Prompt Retailer Search, these fluctuations could be significantly diminished, making certain customers on probably the most highly-trafficked websites constantly expertise a quick, related search (and website) expertise. Take a look at the video under to search out out extra:
Prompt Retailer Search is included with all of WP Engine’s managed WooCommerce plans, which mix high-performance internet hosting, proprietary caching for WooCommerce, and WP Engine’s industry-leading platform efficiency that can assist you present one of the best on-line buying expertise to your entire clients.
Give Checkouts a Second Look
As soon as your website guests discover what they need, it’s additionally essential that you just take away all attainable blockers between them and the “Purchase Now” button.
With cart abandonment charges hovering round 70% (and even larger—85%— for cell customers), optimizing cart performance along with the general checkout course of is extraordinarily essential for the success of your websites.
However cart abandonment has many causes, and though issues like transport prices and taxes play a major function, sluggish website velocity can also be a serious driver.
For WooCommerce shops particularly, the usage of cookies to bypass cache can have an effect on static pages, even after a client has added an merchandise to their cart. This could create potential slowdowns, as static content material served with out cache can greater than double a web page’s load time!
To treatment this difficulty, WP Engine has carried out a brand new approach of dealing with cache exclusions that detects when dynamic content material is being served. Our proprietary caching system, EverCache®, is now capable of circumvent the cookies utilized by WooCommerce and optimize cache supply for static pages.
EverCache® additionally mechanically bypasses cache when it is going to break performance, together with cart performance, on checkout pages, or for authenticated customers.
The outcomes have been distinctive, with extra of our eCommerce clients’ cached pages being served, particularly for guests additional down the gross sales funnel.
Along with caching, WooCommerce Cart Fragments may create points for eCommerce web sites.
Whereas they supply wanted cart performance (together with the “add to cart” motion your clients use when choosing an merchandise in your website), Cart Fragments are additionally AJAX requests that may shortly add up—and sluggish your website down.
To help with the Cart Fragments dilemma, WP Engine has launched Reside Cart, which optimizes the WooCommerce Cart Fragments requests that make your cart dynamic in order that they solely run after they’re wanted.
Constructed into all eCommerce plans, Reside Cart eliminates the Cart Fragment AJAX name from occurring at pointless instances, and improves the scalability of cart and web page speeds throughout your total website, all with out dropping dynamic cart performance.
When a buyer provides an merchandise to their cart, Reside Cart masses pages 1.5 seconds sooner (on common) than the default Cart Fragments script, and it helps preserve your website from dropping connections underneath steady load.
These advantages and extra might be particularly well-received throughout high-traffic gross sales occasions like Cyber Weekend. As clients flock to your website and peruse your catalog of merchandise, you’ll relaxation simple understanding they haven’t come this far solely to desert their carts.
Spend This Fall on the Stuff That Issues
You could possibly spend one of the best a part of fall engaged on all these things, or you would discover a smarter approach to Woo. Internet hosting your eCommerce websites on WP Engine’s WooCommerce-optimized eCommerce platform will offer you the platform and the efficiency you should win extra gross sales this Cyber Weekend and past!
View our eCommerce plans right here, or communicate to a consultant to search out out extra.
