Industry overview
What is shaping retail
Retailers and D2C brands compete across stores, apps and marketplaces. Store experience, availability and convenience decide where shoppers go next.
- Shoppers move freely between online and offline
- Store experience is a key differentiator
- Loyalty programmes and personalisation drive repeat
Client background
A home and lifestyle online retailer, working in United States & Canada. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.
- Organisation
- A home and lifestyle online retailer
- Sector
- Retail
- Team engaged
- Digital Marketing
- Services
- Landing page & CRO, E-commerce marketing, Digital analytics & reporting
Client challenge
The online home and lifestyle retailer attracted strong traffic, but many shoppers abandoned their carts at checkout, particularly on mobile. Paid advertising was becoming more expensive, so lost checkouts were especially costly.
Research objectives
- Deliver on the brief: reducing checkout drop-offs for an online retailer.
- Set measurable targets and a tracking baseline before launch.
- Improve results through structured testing, reported in plain language.
Target audience
Scope: Website checkout flow.
Audiences we typically reach in retail
ShoppersStore staff and managersOnline customersLoyalty membersFranchisees
Geographic coverage
Coverage: United States & Canada. Markets: United States and Canada.
- United States
- Canada
Research methodology
A test-and-learn programme: a clear baseline, focused campaigns and weekly optimisation against agreed targets.
- 1Brief
- 2Funnel analysis
- 3Session recordings
- 4A/B testing
- 5Insight
We analysed the checkout funnel step by step, reviewed session recordings to see where shoppers hesitated and ran a short survey of shoppers who abandoned their carts. Changes such as showing shipping costs on product pages, guest checkout and fewer form fields were tested through A/B experiments.
Landing page & CROE-commerce marketingDigital analytics & reporting
Sampling strategy
- Audiences were defined from the client's customer data and platform targeting, with test and control groups where possible.
Data collection
- Campaign, website and CRM data were tracked daily through analytics and ad platforms.
Data quality & validation
- Conversion tracking tested end to end
- Consistent UTM tagging on every link
- Numbers reconciled between ad platforms and analytics
- Two-person check before anything goes live
Data analysis
- Funnel analysis from impression to lead or sale
- A/B test results on creatives, keywords and pages
- Channel and campaign attribution
Key findings
- Checkout completion improved significantly, especially on mobile, and revenue from existing traffic rose.
- Surprise shipping costs had been the single biggest cause of abandonment.
Removing surprises at checkout recovered sales without extra advertising.
Recommendations
- Build on the core insight: removing surprises at checkout recovered sales without extra advertising.
- Focus effort where the evidence was strongest: checkout completion improved significantly, especially on mobile, and revenue from existing traffic rose.
- Re-measure after the changes to confirm the effect.
Business impact
- The retailer continued running monthly tests on product pages and checkout.
What changed in the business as a result of the work. Impact is described qualitatively.
Deliverables & next steps
- Insight report and management presentation
- Interactive dashboard
- Campaign assets and landing pages
- Monthly performance report
- Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
- A natural follow-on question: what drives repeat purchase?
Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.