The Ecommerce Performance report, produced by Econsultancy in partnership with Conversion.com, explores the extent to which organisations use experimentation to improve ecommerce performance, looking at ecommerce strategies, approaches used to identify and address issues, and barriers to delivering an optimal ecommerce experience.

The research is based on a survey of more than 400 ecommerce professionals.

While growth in online sales continues in a seemingly unabated fashion, the world of ecommerce is becoming more and more competitive, with established brands generally having got their act together, and more disruptive start-ups coming up with innovative and compelling propositions.

Against this backdrop of opportunity and competition, the report explores the importance of improving and maintaining ecommerce performance through experimentation.

The key findings from the research can be summarised as follows:

  • Ecommerce goes from strength to strength, but is becoming more competitive.
  • Companies strive for a strategic approach to ecommerce, but capability gaps are evident.
  • Experimentation is recognised as the bedrock of performance optimisation, but there is a gap between expectations and reality.
  • Companies will need support to realise their ambitions around personalisation as resource is focused on getting the basics right.
  • A failure to quantify checkout abandonment is losing companies significant sums of potential revenue.
  • Complexity and technical shortcomings are among the most significant barriers to progress.
  • Conversational commerce and AI for personalisation are very much on the radar.

The report also makes five main recommendations for companies seeking to improve ecommerce performance through experimentation.