Turning one-time customers into repeat buyers becomes increasingly important during a recession.
Acquiring one new user can be a burden, but finding ways to reduce friction during shopping and checkout is a proven method of increasing the lifetime value of existing customers.
An important note: One study found that nearly 60% of consumers abandon their cart before making a purchase due to password issues.
“In times of recession, you need to make it easier, not harder,” said Ari Jacoby, CEO and co-founder of Deduce.
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That begs the question: Do you know how many people signed up for your site last month but didn’t verify their email address? Well why not?
If you’re trying to recalibrate online sales, this guest post from TC+ includes formulas for calculating Lost Lifetime Value (LTV) due to customer churn on a monthly and annual basis.
Seriously, if you don’t work to calibrate every system you have, you’re just leaving money on the table.
Thank you for reading,
Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, londonbusinessblog.com+
@yourprotagonist
Should founders announce down rounds? This PR Expert Says You Have Nothing To Hide
Image Credits: Ysr Dora (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
If your house was damaged by an earthquake, would you be ashamed?
Likewise, founders need not feel squeamish about accepting funding that lowers their valuation, advises Kate Johnson, VP of PR at BLASTmedia.
“Instead of pretending no lower valuation has happened, change your mindset,” she writes.
“You have nothing to hide and in terms of PR, no news is not good news. So focus on adjusting your expectations.”
3 views: Thoughts on Flow
Image Credits: Edwin Remsberg (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Last week, Andreessen Horowitz wrote the largest individual check in company history, investing $350 million in residential real estate startup Flow.
The kicker? Flow’s founder is Adam Neumann, the former WeWork co-founder who resigned and relinquished majority voting control after the company withdrew its IPO filing in September 2019.
In what they describe as “a non-exhaustive list of why Marc Andreessen and Adam Neumann have misread America’s housing problems,” reporters Tim De Chant, Dominic-Madori Davis and Amanda Silberling share their respective take on the deal:
- Amanda Silberling: Venture Capital Won’t Save Us
- Dominic-Madori Davis: Zeal? Are we doing it?
- Tim De Chant: Neumann is right – you can’t force intercourse
Why the ‘last click’ in ecommerce matters – and how to do it right
Image Credits: selimaksan (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Marketing manages the sales funnel, and product and engineering teams drive the customer experience as they browse and shop.
But who owns your cash flow?
“You may have perfected the top of the funnel, but you could very well have missed the holes in the bottom,” said Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, who shares several strategies for optimizing the checkout process and explains why it should be guided from the top:
For the CMO, the gains lie in ensuring that potential customers generate more revenue and that a better checkout process encourages repeat customers.
For the CFO, the numbers are obvious: a percentage point improvement in conversion is more powerful than a percentage point improvement in total web traffic.
Surviving the SaaS Tsunami: Optimize Your Tech Stack to Reduce Risk and Free Up Cash Flow
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Startups that don’t use a vendor management framework to oversee their tech stack are flying in a thick fog: There’s no easy way to know how much or what they’re spending each month.
In reality, most IT teams are unprepared (or even interested) in managing a recurring schedule of software updates, let alone tracking cost or effectiveness.
Everyone is looking for places to make incremental improvements: Being in charge of a dedicated resource or procurement can improve your bottom line (and reduce your security risk).