Conversion rate optimization & the Importance of E-commerce in a post Covid-19 world

E-commerce is an ever-growing field that has undergone steeper growth resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to this and consumer expectations guiding/following this trend, small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are forced to enter the space that was previously only dominated by large corporations. With technological improvements and supply chain advances, companies are now able to enter the space with far less friction leveraging tools such as e-commerce platforms (for example: Shopify, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, WooCommerce). These platforms enable companies to manage portions of an e-commerce business more easily such as inventory, order management, parcel carrier setup, and online storefronts very accessible to many offered in scalable packages for the business. Considering what these tools provide as base solutions and the previously researched elements in other studies, this study focused on elements that are not inherent to these platforms, requiring investment and consideration otherwise, such as: additional high-quality pictures, user reviews, free returns, free shipping, promotional offers. Then, these elements were tested by monitoring the change in respondent perception of various pages via a survey AB. The data was then analyzed with 4 hypothesis tests and a few other analyses to answer some key hypotheses that were synthesized following a literary review. The takeaways suggest the following: an e-commerce platform-based site provides the key base site elements and meets consumer expectations relative to their previous shopping experiences. Free shipping and free returns advertised on a site page (welcome page for this study) has a positive impact on conversion. Additional high quality product images, special offers, and displaying product reviews were not associated with a statistically significant increase in conversion in this study. As conversion rate optimization (CRO) methods should not be applied as a list of best practices in all situations, it is suggested by the author that these takeaways be considered for any specific business while knowing that these elements and others should considered and tested for any specific business as presentation choices, specific customer base, and many other factors can create very different outcomes