Rescue retail and ecommerce budgets by getting buyer feedback

Retail and ecommerce teams who trust their gut feeling without in-person testing are leaving money and opportunities on the table. You may have a hunch about what will work based on the past without considering new methods. Or, you may rely on feedback from friends and coworkers, who may or may not be the right audience. However, there's a better way to see why buyers aren't converting.

Capturing consumer perspectives is critical to optimizing digital touchpoints, improving conversions, and driving revenue. By getting customer feedback throughout the buyer journey, you’re validating projects before investing time and money into an idea that won’t achieve your KPIs. 

When you obtain feedback regularly and validate campaigns before launch, digital teams can make minor improvements to their existing journeys. Over time, these will: 

• Decrease cost per acquisition
• Increase website conversions
• Increase average order value
• Reduce shopping cart abandonment
• Improve email performance rates

When digital teams understand what’s possible with a platform like UserTesting, they have a light bulb moment. They realize there are so many possibilities, from validating ideas and improving efficiency to preserving resources and budgets.

It can also feel overwhelming. How do you try something new when schedules and budgets are stretched to capacity? 

Start with pre-built templates

A great option for digital teams is to start by using templates. UserTesting templates are test layouts designed by research experts and complete with pre-written tasks and questions, so that non-research teams can quickly get the answers they need. Templates can be used as-is to guide you—or customized to fit your needs. We offer one for almost any kind of focus, whether you're prioritizing website evaluation, mobile app evaluation, or landing page conversions, to name a few. 

Throughout this guide, look for UserTesting templates. Now, let's walk through the buyer journey's various stages to see how you can get video feedback with the UserTesting Human Insight Platform to increase conversions.

Validate the awareness stage

Getting your message right during the awareness stage can be tricky. Attention spans are short, so you have to get your message out in seconds. 

While analytics can tell you how many prospects convert, they don’t tell you why they did or didn’t. Here at UserTesting, we recommend obtaining feedback from your target audience before you launch: 

• Paid ads and social posts
• Online store or mobile app store descriptions
• Website banners
• Emails and newsletters

Using a platform like UserTesting, you'll be able to watch videos to see what your prospects and target audiences have to say. Get buy-in for an idea by showing video feedback of your target audience loving it, or go back to the drawing board when you discover it misses the mark. 

When pet insurance company, Everypaw, needed to increase its budget over the next several years, it needed to prove a new awareness ad campaign would make a significant impact. Leveraging A/B studies, they narrowed down their target audience and solicited feedback for a 30-second ad with UserTesting. Everypaw was pleasantly surprised at the positive reactions. Thanks to validating their ads before airing them, Everypaw saw an 85% increase in engagement compared to the previous year.

Ecommerce templates for the awareness stage

If boosting brand awareness is a priority, get started with these templates. Learn more about your target audiences. See what motivates consumers and learn how to speak their language. 

Sustainability	Inflation	Message and copy testing
With the sustainability perception template, get a better understanding of expectations and sentiments about sustainability for buyers and target audiences. Discover if consumers are unwilling to sacrifice cost, quality, or convenience for sustainable products.	Use the inflation perception template to learn what buyers and target audiences think and expect during an uncertain market. Discover how their buying habits change and why.	With the messaging comprehension template, ensure shoppers understand what you're saying and the value of the offer. Reduce risk in global markets by testing your messaging in other countries before going live.

Get feedback on paid ads

Retail and ecommerce digital advertising spending in the United States is forecasted to reach $38.4B for the year 2024. That’s a massive increase from the $12.5B spent in 2019. As you can see, optimizing your digital ads is critical, with large amounts of your budget spent on target online shoppers. At that scale, even your high-performing ads are worth getting in front of prospects and customers to see if minor changes would improve performance. 

Below, check out this clip, where we explain how we use video feedback from The Human Insight Platform to optimize the performance of our digital ads. 

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View the entire webinar here. 

Discover why people click on your search ads

Once you’ve decided how your ads will look for your test, you’re ready to understand why someone clicked on your search ad.

With the results, adjust ads accordingly and improve your click-through rate. Since higher CTRs positively affect your quality score, you’ll also save money and improve your ROI.

Test your ad flow

If your message doesn’t match your landing page, you’re giving potential customers a poor digital experience they’re not likely to forget.

While landing pages are part of the click-through experience, focus on what happens between when your users click an ad and when they hit your landing page. When getting feedback about ads, ask contributors what they expect to see once they’ve clicked on your ad. Once they’ve hit the landing page, ask them if it met expectations and to explain why or why not. 

For more on how to optimize for search and SEO, click here. 

Validate the consideration stage

95% of consumers claim they leave a website whenever they have a frustrating digital experience, and only two in five organizations say they strategically optimize digital experiences through a deep understanding of customer journeys. 

With shoppers' high expectations for a good digital experience, increasing conversion rates is about optimizing to offer the most seamless experience possible. You can use video feedback to validate and optimize your consideration stage assets such as: 

• Landing pages
• Product pages
• Mobile app store descriptions and in-app feedback
• Online store descriptions and design

By conducting live conversations with your customers and target audiences, you'll improve personas alignment and learn more about their motivations and experiences. 

Ecommerce templates for the consideration stage

If you're looking to turn window shoppers into regular buyers, leverage UserTesting's consideration stage templates. Watch your target audiences as they browse your digital experience and explain what's working and what's not working. 

App store listing	Website conversions	Buyer personas
Leverage the app store feedback template to ensure your app store listing resonates with buyers. Increase app conversions by incremental improvements to your listing.	Use the website conversions template to watch consumers interact with your digital experience. Learn what motivates them to take action and where they run into roadblocks.	Use the persona characteristics template to bring your buyer personas to life. Gain empathy by learning first-hand about their attitudes and behaviors.

Validate a landing page

To test our landing pages, we use our landing page conversions template. Watching videos of a few visitors reading and experiencing your landing page will quickly tell you whether there’s room for improvement. By running a few simple tests, we found nine things we could improve on the copy alone to make our landing pages easier to read and more engaging.

When Rothy’s needed to relaunch their ecommerce website to improve speed, they relied on The Human Insight Platform to create a new site that customers would love. They started the process by running five fact-finding tests to understand shopper preferences. 

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Get feedback on app store descriptions

If you want to improve app conversions, start by optimizing your app store pages. Whether you’re an emerging brand or a household name, watching videos of consumers engaging with your app store shows you how they think. You’ll quickly learn if your messaging or images are confusing. Discover what information shoppers want to see before they agree to download your app. 

To show you how easy it is to get feedback on your iOS or Google Play Store app descriptions, we quickly ran a test using the App store feedback template on an existing retail ecommerce brand’s app.

Here’s what we learned about a brand's app store listing from just a few of contributors. 

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Validate the acquisition stage

For retail and ecommerce brands, conversion rates in the acquisition stage are some of the most important metrics. Getting video feedback from shoppers as they go through your transaction experience, shopping cart flow, website or app log-in, and registration are pivotal to increasing conversion rates. 

At UserTesting, we offer many templates for digital marketing, conversion, optimization, and ecommerce teams for testing your shopping experience. 

Ecommerce templates for the acquisition stage

If getting more items into shopping carts and increasing revenue per visit is your priority, take advantage of UserTesting's acquisition stage templates. Watch consumers go through your checkout experience to see if anything is confusing or frustrating enough to prevent them from making a purchase. 

Black Friday	Social media selling	Shopping cart experience
Get your digital experience holiday-ready. Leverage UserTesting's Black Friday templates, whether you're honing in on optimization projects such as cart abandonment, recent in-store experience, or understanding shopping behavior.	Use the social commerce template to validate and optimize messaging, offers, and flow of your social buying experience.	How enjoyable is the shopping cart experience for buyers? How do they feel about pricing? Use the ecommerce and shopping cart experience template to find out.

Get feedback on digital check-out flow

To show you how fast and easy it is to get insights from a few customer feedback videos, we ran a test with a retail and ecommerce store’s checkout experience using the Cart abandonment and Customer journey templates. 

Below, here’s what we learned in just a few hours. 

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Optimize social commerce 

Retail and ecommerce brands selling via social media can use video feedback to authenticate with consumers and improve conversion rates.

Watch shoppers move from your social media accounts to your ecommerce store to ensure it’s in a seamless and engaging flow. 

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Validate in-store experience

For retail and ecommerce brands, omnichannel customer journeys have more than than just an online presence. Getting feedback about your in-store experience is crucial to optimization and should be equally prioritized. 

Thanks to the in-store experience template, retail, and ecommerce brands can quickly and easily find out about a shopper’s most recent in-store experiences.

Below, here’s what we learned in just a few hours. 

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Validate the loyalty stage

Converting engagement into loyalty is key to long-term success. Get video feedback from your consumers on: 

• Loyalty apps and programs
• Social media engagement
• Customer experience

When My Pup Powered by Purina decided to prioritize engagement for their app, they had no idea how much things would change.

Through UserTesting, the pet product extraordinaire discovered that customers already knew exactly what they wanted. The goal was to give users an experience that would be meaningful to them, and it worked. The team simplified content, added weekly tips and checklists to track progress, improved the colorful design, and simplified navigation. 

After listening to customers, engagement rose by 365%, returning users increased their usage by 28%, and active users rose by 48%. However, Purina isn't stopping there. They plan to continue optimizing the My Pup App with the help of UserTesting. 

With UserTesting, we’re seeing increased conversion rates across the board.

Varun Shah

Chief Executive Officer, Eccentric Engine

Skipping feedback is getting riskier

Without in-person testing, retail and ecommerce teams are left trusting their gut. They work off hunches based on past campaigns, which may not be applicable to what's being worked on now. They rely on feedback from friends and coworkers, who may not be the right audience. They engage in methods that don't involve talking directly to buyers, which creates too much room for assumptions. 

Consumer needs and buying habits are changing

Still not convinced? While learning from consumers and customers was always a better option, markets are evolving at such a rapid pace that it's getting riskier to skip validation and optimization.

With customer needs and buying habits constantly changing, relying on historical data is ineffective. Predicting what will happen tomorrow with yesterday's data isn't enough anymore. This calls for your team to be open to new methods and ideas, and to evolve alongside your customers. 

New digital audiences

It’s no secret that the pandemic jumpstarted digital experiences and brought new people to online shopping. Two-thirds of B2C organizations reported an unusual growth in digital and mobile visitors. As new and different shoppers browse online, speaking their language is not always easy. You also risk offending buyers, which can have a disastrous effect online, where almost anything has a way of living on. 

UserTesting helps us quickly settle internal debates between executives by showing us the clear preferences of customers.

Diane Leung

Conversion Rate Optimization Manager, Everypaw

Preparing for a cookie-less future

For the last decade, digital teams have relied on third-party cookies for data. It’s a technology we've come to know and trust. It drives ads, tracks touchpoints, and is essential for multi-touch revenue attribution. 

In 2020, however, Google announced its plan to end the use of cookies in Chrome by early 2022, which has been moved to 2024. Their ambitious goal is “...to create web technologies that both protect people’s privacy online and give companies and developers the tools to build thriving digital businesses to keep the web open and accessible to everyone, now, and for the future.”

For now, the end of cookies will limit access and insight into digital audiences. According to the 2022 Adobe Digital Trends Report, only 21% of respondents feel prepared for a cookieless future. However, the UserTesting Human Insight Platform is a 100% opted-in technology that retail and ecommerce brands use to gain empathy for their shoppers. 

Organizations using human insight get results

Not only is it important to understand how buyers feel, but is your offer compelling enough to purchase? Does it align with their needs and values? Here's a look at the results organizations have seen using video feedback to improve conversion rates. 

135% increase in ecommerce sales	13% increase in revenue from mobile purchases	7% increase in revenue per website visit
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Dick's Sporting Goods focused on improving its online shopping experience and developing a curbside pickup program. Video feedback allowed them to see what was working and what needed to change about the experience.	When HP Inc.'s web team noticed the website was not converting buyers as well as it should, they needed a tool to help them make decisions during the redesign process. Thanks to customer feedback, the team developed an experience that was more intuitive, effective, and enjoyable to use.	To drive conversions for more than 600,000 daily visits to Walmart.ca, the Walmart Canada Site Optimization team started by relying on analytics and A/B testing. But when the team needed guidance on what to do next, they used buyer feedback to understand their audience better, resulting in a better digital experience.