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Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
Baymard's usability research has documented that 17% of users have abandoned orders due to a “too long / complicated checkout process”.
Displaying a large number of form fields intimidates users, and causes needless checkout abandonments.
The article is divided into the following sections:
- How Many Checkout Steps the Average Checkout Has
- Why Form Fields Matter More Than Steps
- 5 Specific Ways to Reduce the Number of Form Fields
- Checkout Optimization: Getting Down to 8 Form Fields
We recommend this plugin if you would like to adjust WooCommerce's checkout fields.
Read more about Checkout Form Field Optimization
Preload allows you to inform the browser about critical resources you want to load as soon as possible, prior to them being found in HTML.
If you are optimizing Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), preload can be a game-changer for boosting download priority of late-discovered Hero images and resources, loaded via JavaScript.
Preload can substantially improve LCP, especially if you need critical images (like Hero images) to be prioritized over the loading of other images on a page.
Read more about potential performance improvements with the preload tag
Colm came across a new lightweight SEO plugin called Slim SEO which looks promising.
The whole plugin is remarkably only 40KB, so when they say lightweight, they mean it.
There is also zero configuration. Simply install it. All the SEO tasks are done automatically without going through complicated options.
Slim SEO is free but they plan to also release a separate paid, Pro version soon.
Check out Slim SEO
The QR code dates back to 1994, when it was first used by a Toyota subsidiary to track auto parts during assembly.
More information-rich than a barcode, QR codes were designed to unlock information like product files or manufacturing records.
It wasn’t until 2002 that the “quick response” code took on a new life as a way to drive viewers to properties like websites.
So when the QR code popped up on the screen for 60 seconds during the Super Bowl, the room’s reaction wasn’t one of distaste.
Read more about the interesting history and case for QR
This interesting twitter thread is well worth reading if you've thought about potentially moving to the Shopify eCommerce platform.
Two things stood out. The author, Moiz Ali says that the analytics "sucks" and the subscription options are "non-existent".
With regards to scaling, he says:
"As you grow your brand, Shopify isn’t the solution it used to be. Instead, Shopify becomes the technical debt that you can’t get out of. Simply put, Shopify is awful for larger brands."
Matt Mullenweg (co-creater of WordPress), in a reply, readily agrees.
Read the full thread about Shopify, the replies are worth checking out also.
Latest Shoptimizer updates
It's been a long time coming. But the big Shoptimizer and CommerceKit update will finally ship on Monday.
Here's a preview of just some of the features to expect.
As always, when you update, we recommend doing so on a separate staging site first. Our WooCommerce update guide has more details on how to do this.
That's it for this edition. Simply reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions, we read every message. Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus
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