One reason why some ecommerce stores convert poorly:

Their products are too available—they're always for sale on site. And shoppers are always within a few clicks of buying from competitors.

Put another way, there's no urgency driving people to purchase now.

Urgency motivates action. Entrepreneur Marcus Taylor tested two versions of a landing page. One showed just the price of an offer, and another had a “time left to download” countdown just above the price. The conversion rate was almost three times higher for the version with the countdown.

Two ways you can increase urgency on your ecommerce site:

1. Show limited stock levels to highlight scarcity, using an app like Stock Level Inventory Quality (for Shopify stores). Shoppers who feel FOMO buy faster.
2. Set a deadline. Add a countdown to indicate how little time is left on a deal, or show customers how soon they should order to get a product by a certain date. You can take this a step further by inviting shoppers to set a calendar reminder so they don't forget to buy before the deadline.

Don’t go overboard by using countdowns, stock limits, and “act fast” language. Nobody likes a pushy salesperson, even when that “person” is a piece of code on your website.

Bonus: If you run an ecom store on Shopify, check out our brand new playbook on Shopify conversion.

A single TikTok collaboration video can go viral and generate millions of views and tens of thousands of new users for your app.

But that's unlikely to happen for you unless you understand how to work with content creators.

A few tips to maximize your top of funnel acquisition through TikTok creators:

• Search for creators in your niche with 50k - 250k followers via relevant hashtags. Next, cross-check their 20-30 videos to get a rolling average of engagement—weed out some of the larger accounts that have poor recent engagement. Look for a minimum of 3 videos above 100,000 views, since this de-risks your opportunity to reach many new users.
• Personalize your creator outreach by mentioning the creator's specific audience, and how your partnership will benefit their audience. Also, email them at their listed email instead of sending a DM. Response rate is generally much higher that way.
• Work with your creators to make persona-centric videos. They tend to outperform generic problem-oriented creatives. Top-performing creatives often follow a standard formula:
• Open with a hook identifying the persona
• Highlight the problem
• Solve the problem through your product
• High performing examples: Student, UX designer
• Make sure creators clearly mention how and where to get your product—seems obvious, but many advertisers drop the ball on this and lose out on conversion.

Following these tips, Tactiq.io—a video meeting transcription tool—was able to generate 150,000+ new users on $1820 USD in spend.

This strategy works for some types of products better than others:

• Freemium SaaS products, since there's a low hurdle to get TikTok users to try for free.
• Broadly appealing products that solve a real problem. With TikTok's algorithm, it's harder to reach a very specific audience—your creator's content will be surfaced to very different users. Broad appeal ensures many types of viewers have a reason to get your product.

Fluff muddies messaging.

It's also kind of inconsiderate: It makes readers put in more effort than they need to understand your point.

Here are some free resources for keeping your copywriting fluff-free:

• The Handy List of Human Words—A good list for converting robotic language into human language (e.g., "deactivate" —> "turn off")‍
• Use Simple Words and Phrases—Another good list, this one from a group of federal workers who believe government writing should be plain and clear.‍
• Hemingway Editor—Copy your writing into the editor to see what its reading level is. (6th grade is good; 10th is too hard.) Check for too many adverbs, complex phrases, instances of passive voice, and hard-to-read sentences.‍
• Readability Test Tool—Copy text or a URL into the tool to check its readability according to the Flesch-Kincaid formula, and get helpful stats like average words per sentence.

Most companies don't measure leads generated from content.

If you don't measure, you can't calculate customer acquisition cost (CAC)—there's no way for you to tell whether your content marketing is profitable.

Here's an easy way to measure acquisitions from content marketing using a simple ‘thank you' page and Google Analytics.

Two steps:

1. Configure your opt-in forms so they point to a unique 'thank you' page after a user enters their email. Example: https://growandconvert.com/thank-you/ Anyone who lands on this page must have opted in through your lead capture form(s). Nobody else will see this page.
2. Set up a new goal in Google Analytics: Once your lead capture forms are set up to send opt-ins to that thank you page you made, you’ll need to configure the page as a new goal in GA. Here's a 2-minute setup video that shows you how.

GA will track how many users reach your thank you page (a “Goal Completion”). Measure that number against the cost it takes you to create your content, and you'll be able to calculate your CAC.

A common misconception about experimentation is that it’s all data, all the time.

Data is a critical part of it, yes. But there’s a human element to testing too. After all, you are trying to understand your users. On both ends, people are involved. While researching, hypothesizing, designing tests, and analyzing results, judgment is key.

One area where judgment comes in: when to make the call to override A/B test results.

Imagine you run a copywriting test:

1. One version of the copy is true and honest. You accurately portray your value props.
2. Another version slightly overstates the benefits of your product.

And the second version wins the A/B test.

You'll earn more short-term profit by going with the data and implementing the second version of the copy. But doing so could actually harm your customer lifetime value—those who purchased might feel deceived and likely won't purchase again.

You're better off overriding A/B test results when your winning test variant is harmful to your long-term sustainability and growth.

Another example:

When Netflix was testing Grace and Frankie (show) promos, they found that users clicked more on an image with just one co-star, instead of the two co-stars together. Netflix went with the image of the duo anyway.

Learning: You should also consider overriding your findings if they present ethical or legal concerns, don’t align with your company values, or run the risk of demoralizing your team.

Even if your Facebook video ads have strong hook, that doesn’t mean users will stick around to watch the whole thing.

And if your ad can’t sustain their interest, people probably won’t convert.

To find out if your video ads are generating interest, look at their average play time. Then look at their performance data in Ads Manager. There's a chart that shows the percentage of video plays for different seconds of your video ads. Use it to find out at exactly what times users drop off—then map these points in your video.

Consider why users might not be motivated to keep watching at these points:

• Is it after the first cut?
• Does text appear?
• If so, how long is it?

You're not looking to compare it to a play time benchmark—video ad lengths vary drastically between companies.

But you can look for the most intense drop-offs and consider editing your video ads to hold attention at those critical time periods.

Reddit is rich with content ideas and audience insights, but it can be difficult to navigate. Try these three free tools for more efficient Reddit research.

• Subreddit Stats: Find out which subreddits have seen the most growth in the last day, week, month, and year. Use it to find out what new trends or interests are gaining traction. For example, the recent growth in r/ArivaCoin might explain why a new cryptocurrency is gaining momentum. You can also look specifically at the growing subreddits relevant to your industry to see what kinds of content are being posted. Then see if you can relate this topic back to your product.
• Map of Reddit: Find out what other subreddits members of a particular subreddit are drawn to—in other words, where other segments of your audience may hang out online. For example, searching for the subreddit upcycling shows an overlap with subreddits like ZeroWaste, sewing, and declutter.
• Reddit Saved: Although you can save posts and comments on Reddit, you can’t easily search through this saved content. This app offers a solution, so you can continue saving content for inspiration and then quickly search for a specific post later.

Customers discover errors in SaaS products all the time. Or any product for that matter. When they do, Google is the first place they look for solutions.

If you’re a software company, you can target specific error message keywords your ideal customers might search for, and write about the solution for easy, high-intent ranking opportunities.

For example, SEO tool Ahrefs could look up a competitor’s keyword rankings and filter for error terms like “problem” or “fix” or “broken.”

Ahrefs can help fix the error, then try to persuade users to switch from their competitor.

Another example: If you’re a cryptocurrency SaaS, you might review Coindesk’s rankings for relevant errors or problems people are searching for and you know the answers to.

Some search volumes may be low, but the intent is generally high.

Anyone looking for solutions to such specific problems is feeling the pain and needs an immediate fix—if you can give it to them in an article, video, or FAQ page, you become the hero, the solution they’ve been searching for.

Amazon advertisers can consistently get around a 10% conversion rate. That's wildly high compared to most paid channels.

Amazon’s users are high-intent and ready to buy.

One mistake we see tons of first-time Amazon advertisers make: they fail to optimize their Amazon product pages.

Here's how you can optimize yours:

• Add a compelling title that includes at least one keyword. When you run an Amazon ad campaign, you’ll gain critical keyword insights that will help you further optimize your product page, based on which search terms are converting. Until then, use competitor research tools like Helium 10 or AMZScout and keyword tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google's free Keyword Planner.
• Keep your product description between 250 and 1,000 words. Most Amazon shoppers don't read—they'll skim your description specifically to make sure it solves their problem. High-converting pages will list about five bullet points. Give shoppers what they want, and nothing more.
• Use keywords, but don’t repeat them. Keyword stuffing is as frowned upon on Amazon as it is in content marketing—and Amazon might demote your product's organic ranking if you repeat your keywords too many times.
• Good photos might not be enough. Consider adding a high-quality, high-resolution video. Your video should show the product in use. Pictures can hook shoppers, but a quality video demonstrating the product is often what converts shoppers who are comparing your product to competitors. Aim for around seven images and one video.
• Make it honest. Your product reviewers will be the first to call you out for overpromising or being inaccurate.

Customer reviews are important, but you might not have them yet—all the more reason to launch Amazon ads and drive conversions.

If you sell a high-ticket item like a program or a service, you're likely relying on some combination of free content, ads, and sales to move leads through your funnel towards purchase.

But consider this complimentary tactic: Create a paid email course.

Build a low-cost course or challenge (under $100) delivered via email, designed to give users a quick win by solving a specific problem in a short amount of time—ideally no more than 7 days.

The benefits of these courses are threefold:

1. Compared to longer, more intensive courses, they're easy to make. If you're already creating content, it'll be easy enough for you to repurpose existing material.
2. Because they’re a paid product, these courses filter out users only looking for freebies—when there's skin in the game, people take your content seriously. And the low price point attracts those who are hesitant to purchase your more expensive offerings.
3. They build on your credibility, giving customers a taste of what you have to offer.

A paid email course moves users further down your funnel, making it easier to upsell more rigorous programs or services later on.

Some examples and ideas for paid email challenges:

• Sean Anthony's 7-Day Challenge → Funnels users toward Sean's Email Side Hustle course
• An intro to design course → Leads to retainers for a creative design agency
• How to Start a Keto Diet in 7 Days → Funnels users toward customized meal plan services

Content with minimal search value might hurt a website when left unpruned.

This happens all the time, yet most companies don't realize it's negatively impacting their search ranking.

To find out if your site suffers from a thin content problem, follow these steps:

• Open a fresh tab to Google search
• Type in the search modifier "site:www.your-domain-url-here" ex: site:demandcurve.com
• Head to the absolute last page of the search results and scroll to the bottom

If you see a message from Google that says something like:

"...we have omitted some entries very similar to the [big number] already displayed"...

Then you've got a thin content problem on your hands.

To fix it, use Google Analytics + AHREFs (or SEO tool of choice) and:

• Delete no-traffic, no search-value pages, OR
• Rewrite and optimize them using a premium tool like Clearscope

It may hurt to kill underperforming pages that you've spent time creating, but you want to be swift and complete here.

Unless your site is new or suffers from mission-critical technical SEO errors, expect to see an uptick in rankings within a few weeks.

Email open rates have always been kind of a vanity metric.

They rarely have any effect on business outcomes. And they don’t tell you how good your email is. They tell you how good your subject line is, and how much recipients liked your past emails.

With the release of iOS 15, they’re even more useless.

Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection keeps senders from knowing if an email has been opened. It also blocks senders from seeing recipients’ IP addresses.

Instead of caring about open rates, here are some better metrics to monitor:

• Click reach rate: percentage of subscribers driving clicks. Calculated by dividing unique clicks by unique sent over a given period.
• Click-through rate: percentage of unique subscribers who click on an email. This is an obvious, yet important metric.
• Revenue per subscriber.
• Revenue per email.

Focus on improving these metrics—and avoid the rest—to increase the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

The best testimonials start with skepticism.

It's easy to think that start-to-finish positive testimonials drive the most conversions.

But "reverse testimonials" can be more effective. They start with skepticism: fears, doubts, or obstacles.

Everyone has objections. Testimonials that address them first build connections with others who are on the fence because of their own reservations. Plus, they add a storytelling arc, from problem/concern to success.

You can get better, transformational testimonials by asking your reviewer a few key questions:

1. What was the problem you were having before you discovered our product?
2. What did the frustration feel like as you tried to solve the problem?
3. What obstacle would have prevented you from purchasing?
4. What was different about our product?
5. Take us to the moment when you realized our product was actually working to solve your problem.
6. Tell us what life looks like now that your problem is solved or being solved.

Asking questions also gives helpful guidelines to testimonial givers, so they aren’t staring at a blank screen trying to think of what to say.

Bonus for higher-converting testimonials: If possible, align a testimonial's messaging with its placement. If your customer talks about a specific feature, spotlight their comments in your marketing surrounding that feature, like a dedicated landing page or re-engagement email. If they came across your brand through a YouTube ad, how much more effective would it be if the testimonial giver also discovered you through YouTube, clicked, and is now thriving?

Ecommerce cart abandonment has skyrocketed. Retargeting helps, and it's even more effective if you time it right.

Pre-pandemic, ecommerce shoppers abandoned their carts about 70-80% of the time. For some industries, that number rose to nearly 95% with the onset of Covid.

One theory: Our online shopping style now more closely resembles our pre-pandemic window-shopping habits. We look, we make a mental note, we move on.

You won’t recover all those lost sales, but you can get many of them back through retargeting messages (email, SMS, app notifications) or ads that remind shoppers about the products waiting for them.

Don’t retarget right away, though. Test waiting one to three days.

Sooner than that, and you might be marketing to shoppers who simply haven't proceeded to purchase yet but intend to. Longer than that, and there’s a good chance they’ll forget about their interest in your product.

When you do retarget, consider using scarcity or urgency to drive the purchase.

Example: Say you normally run a simple retargeting ad for a product a shopper added to their cart. Try adding messaging to your ad indicating how many other people bought the product today. Or, if true, indicate that you're running out of stock, and they should act quickly to get one.

A shorthand tactic for quickly assessing the performance of your Facebook/Instagram video ads: measure "thumb stop rate." This is a measure of how often people stop scrolling through their feed to pay attention to your ad.

• A high thumb stop rate indicates that your video’s intro grabs users' attention.
• A low one (less than 10%) means you need a better hook.

The thumb stop rate isn’t a default metric in Facebook’s Ads Manager. You’ll need to create a custom metric and add it to your ad dashboard.

Here’s how:

1. Go to your Ads Reporting page.
2. Click Customize to open the Customize Pivot Table sidebar.
3. Select the Metrics tab.
4. Click the Create button.
5. Fill out the custom metric creation form using the formula: 3-Second Video Plays / Impressions.

Add this metric to the Ads Manager view you look at each day. Consider creating new hooks (or entirely new videos) for any ads with weak openings. This is the first touch point to folks watching the rest of the ad.

Time-to-value measures how long it takes for new users to experience value from your product.

You want this to be as short as possible.

• Airbnb's time-to-value is one click: search a location for rentals.
• SimilarWeb's time-to-value is one click: analyze any website or app.

Both companies' time-to-value is immediate, free, and doesn't require setting up an account.

More examples:

• Loom: The user you send a video to gets immediate value. They can watch the video without needing to sign up.
• Miro: The user you send the board to gets immediate value. They can instantly start collaborating with you without needing to sign up.
• Calendly: The user you send your calendar link to gets immediate value. They can see available times and book time with you without needing to sign up.

So, if your model allows, see if you can shorten your users' time-to-value through your product.

You can also take this a step further. Unlock value incrementally by creating two different product experiences:

• First time-to-value: New users get instant value by accomplishing the first step in their customer journey (this is the experience described in the examples above—finding a rental, analyzing their website). Give users access to a useful portion of the full product, but not the whole thing. Prompt them to create an account to get access to the rest.
• True time-to-value: Once they sign-up, present users with a second wave of value by presenting features that previously were locked. Help them continue their customer journey by picking up from where they previously left off in the first experience. For Airbnb, that means seeing the availability of rentals they discovered. For SimilarWeb, that means viewing the full report and comparing to competition.

By including two separate, valuable experiences, you'll likely turn more browsers into paying users.

If you've tried traditional influencer marketing and didn't get the ROAS you would have liked, consider this.

Here are three ways to increase influencer ROI:

1. Try whitelisting: Whitelisting involves running ads through influencer accounts. Here's the best part: Influencers are often willing to create better content for you. Why? Because you’re putting ad dollars behind influencers’ accounts—and they’re getting new followers as a result. You’re helping them promote themselves. So they're more likely to create the content for free if you agree to put a certain amount of ad dollars behind their account.
2. Repurpose content: Influencers will create content for you. It's likely you've worked out an agreement to have them post it on their account. But you can stretch it much further. With permission, use the content across your other marketing assets: website, blog posts, ads on other channels, sponsorships, etc. Influencers are usually happy for the extra exposure. And you can save thousands by avoiding product photo shoots.
3. Retarget: Influencer marketing should bring potential customers to your website, but few will convert if they only see your message once. Test a retargeting campaign: Serve ads to those in your influencers' audience who clicked through to your site. Since these people already know who you are, you can use targeted language. It's likely retargeting will drastically improve your customer acquisition cost from influencer marketing.

We wrote a playbook on influencer marketing. It walks you through exactly how we test influencer marketing as a performance channel.

For every second a page takes to load, bounce rate goes up.

Test your site on Google PageSpeed Insights. If you get a mediocre score for site speed, try this:

1. Use a heatmap like Hotjar to see which sections of a product page aren't generating as much interest. Cut them. Loading fewer items is more impactful than simply reducing element sizing.
2. A reminder to remove all plugins and custom code you don't need.
3. If you keep it, optimize it: Resize images and use the WebP image format, Google's preferred format. Kraken.io offers image compression and optimization.
4. Lazy load—only load elements as a user scrolls over them. How you lazy load depends on your CMS, but whichever tool you use, make sure you follow Google's recs so the Googlebot still sees all your content.

Simple and fast way to tighten up conversion on your homepage.

Most ecommerce companies offer deep discounts on popular items for Black Friday.

This strategy might result in a lot of sales, but it often decreases your average order value (AOV) and doesn't guarantee meaningful profit.

Instead of single-item discounts, try bundling popular products with other items and offering a smaller discount. Consider this process:

• Group products that are frequently bought together in bundles.
• Test selling these bundles months before your sale. Now would be a good time.
• Promote them to your existing audience through unpaid channels (email, social media, website banners, checkout upsells). This will keep costs down as you find your most profitable bundle.
• You'll know you've found a strong bundle when it consistently converts without a discount and holds a low return rate.
• When Black Friday arrives, offer a discount on the best-performing bundle.

Choose a discount that results in a final price that's higher than your current AOV.

Offering bundles could help you realize the lifetime value (LTV) of your customer quicker, and develop better customers than you'd get offering standard promos.

There's a powerful feature in most email service providers that very few take full advantage of: dynamic content blocks.

You can use dynamic content to show slightly different messages to your audience based on their behavior and preferences. You can dramatically improve click-through and conversion—without having to create multiple versions of the same email.

A few use cases:

• Promos: Give only first-time buyers a gift when they complete the purchase of the abandoned item in their cart.
• Net-promoter score survey: Ask your customers to fill out a survey to receive a 20% off coupon code. For those who have already submitted a survey, remind them that they have an unused coupon.
• Referral programs: Ask people who haven't referred yet to refer to unlock a reward. But ask people who've already referred to refer more people for an even better reward.
• Newsletters: It's likely some of your subscribers have read your blog posts. Pitch your product's most relevant feature based on the posts they've read.

When you find a high-converting block, you can add it to all your email flows (new subscribers, first-time purchases, and post-purchase). At every stage in the lifecycle, show people the offer most relevant to them.