Using audience insights from on-site checkout to create content that sells
Learn how on-site checkout can unlock more revenue for publishers with deeper shopper insights.
In 2023, the rise of retail media is blurring the lines even further between content and commerce. Retailers are coming armed with their finely-tuned conversion machines and are eating into the content space once owned entirely by publishers.
To stand a chance, affiliate publishers must look for more sophisticated ways to generate revenue from the content they produce. That means crafting more highly-converting commerce content, as well as retaining the attention of their existing audience.
Using data to optimize content
The first step of optimizing for any metric is to understand current trends and inputs that contribute towards the target metric. For commerce content conversion rate, those inputs include the content itself, the products being featured and their price, and a host of factors outside of your control such as the merchants' own website.
Without a more granular understanding of the shopping journey from discovery to checkout, publishers are left to guess how they can improve their commerce content.
Carted's on-site checkout enables publishers to capture data-driven insights and use those to create highly effective conversion optimization strategies.
By bringing the entire shopping journey onto your own website, Carted empowers publishers to gather and analyze fine-grained detail about the how, when, and what of their readers’ shopping behavior.
And, because those actions are taking place on your own site, they are easily linked to your own context — a particular article, a particular category, or a particular author.
The behaviors themselves can at first seem relatively benign, especially at first glance. However, additions and removals from cart, product views, checkout funnel reporting, and orders placed in aggregate, provide powerful trend insights that are specific to your own audience on your own site.
Carted’s pre-built Google Analytics ecommerce integration unlocks the shopping insights previously only available to retailers. Publishers can equip themselves with the tools to devise simple, high-impact tactics to move the conversion needle.
Examples of those are included in the table below.
| Insight | Strategy |
|---|---|
| “Our readers add to cart from beauty articles most often at 12-2pm, but will complete a purchase most often at 7-9pm.” | Create retargeting ads, automated emails, and social posting schedules that remind readers about those products in the evening. |
| “Our readers will add products from merchant A to their cart more often than merchant B, but convert to a purchase less often.” | Determine if high shipping costs are deterring conversions for merchant A. Prioritize merchant B in future content, or select products from merchant A that qualify for free or reduced shipping fees. |
| “Our readers often build a cart of products without progressing through to checkout.” | Create an abandoned cart strategy using email or push notifications to remind readers of their cart. Additionally, surface those products on your site as a personalized reminder in subsequent visits. |
| “Our readers are viewing this product often, but not adding to cart.” | Analyze why readers may be hesitant to purchase the item. Is it particularly expensive? Are key features well-explained by the surrounding content? |
| “Adds to cart for a popular item have dropped significantly.” | Create an automated report to email your content team with a list of out of stock products that can be replaced with an in-stock item. |
| “The number of checkouts we’re seeing placed on our site aren’t matching the report we receive from our affiliate network.” | Create an automated report to identify broken affiliate links that are costing you revenue. And, identify those merchants that seem to have issues recording conversions. |
See it in action
If you're unfamiliar with the ecommerce reporting in Google Analytics, the below provides examples of the information available. Carted's integration with Google Analytics can be implemented in only a few minutes.
Schedule a demo
If earning more revenue from your commerce content with on-site checkout sounds right for your business, our team is ready to chat.
Contact us today and we’ll be in touch to provide your team with a demo.