Software and SaaS News, Tips, and Thought Leadership | SaaS Tips, Software Engineering Blog, and Software News

A 24/7 Secret Shopper for Online Stores

Written by Amberly Dressler | Sep 11, 2017 5:00:00 AM
Store owners are leaking revenue - and they know it - says Shoppimon CEO Roy Rosinnes. 

After all, there are some very common issues that online shoppers face regularly when trying to accomplish goals such as issues with on-site search, adding items to cart, site availability, missing images, and other negative factors that impact user experience and likelihood to buy.  In fact, according to Shoppimon's most recent report, the average ecommerce store loses 12.4 percent of annual revenues to site issues no one is aware of until it's too late.

Acting as a 24/7 secret shopper of sorts, Shoppimon identifies those issues in real-time to alert marketers/retailers of critical issues in the site's workflow. To avoid an "alert storm" Rosinnes told us that Shoppimon makes the distinction as to which issues users need to be made aware of immediately (such as a server slowdown) and which ones can wait until the morning (like a Pinterest button failing). Shoppimon's contextual understanding of a site's workflow goes even further knowing that, for example, missing images are more severe if they happen on a product page (a place that indicates strong purchase intent) versus the homepage. From there, Shoppimon provides its customers with feedback to take action on those issues.

For these reasons, Shoppimon is well-positioned to monitor sites and provide insights into their performance. The company did just that recently, taking a look at 644 online stores of varying sizes across three major industries (fashion, consumer electronics, and home and garden) over the course of 30 days. Here's a look at a few top takeaways:

+ The average ecommerce store faces 1-2 slowdowns every week. Approximately 50 percent of all slowdowns fashion stores suffer are severe. Whereas, 40 percent of slowdowns in both consumer electronics and home and garden are. 

+ Home and garden online shops are three times more likely to suffer issues that cause lost business than fashion or consumer electronics. 


+ Missing images was the top issue across all three industries. Here's the consumer electronics breakdown:

+ The fashion industry should be extra concerned by third-party services not working:



All of this said, is there anything stores can do before the holidays to improve their sites now? 

"The answer is definitely yes," Rosinnes told Website Magazine. "Being in the know and monitoring now is a must. If you know what the potential problems are on your site, you can potentially take action, which is key to making sure retailers can perform at top functionality."