Batch
A new way to prevent abandoned carts on Shopify
The shopper experience has evolved but the shopping cart hasn't. Merchants want to capture more immediate value from shoppers but the way people shop has evolved. Batch tips the balance back in the merchant's favor.
Out of the box, your Shopify account doesn't allow you to customize much in the way your checkout flow looks and behaves. This can have a dampening factor on your control over conversions, especially if you are a highly visual brand that relies on its image to drive engagement.
Part of the novelty of an application like Batch is that it behaves as a legitimate checkout alternative. It aims to capture more immediate value from customers who have the intention of abandoning items in their cart.
And now, it is also the only application of its kind to introduce deep checkout customization features. This enables your brand to stand out by its ability to innovate for customers while retaining a fresh and consistent look throughout.
Read the full announcement: https://bit.ly/batch-custom-checkout
Oh boy, Batch retailers are in for a treat next production deployment!
The average checkout flow takes about 60-90 seconds to complete. Due to the nature of our product and interacting with both full price items and discounted purchases (offers), the need to surface more information dramatically increased the time needed to complete a checkout, which in ecommerce is the kiss of death.
By far, the biggest drop-off for us was the checkout form itself, not the Batch UX. Offers were selected in droves, but the checkout was not being completed at a high enough rate, despite users not having to pay anything to place an offer.
The previous iteration contained several form fields:
- first name
- last name
- address
- apt/suite
- city
- state/province
- zip/postal code
- country
- credit card
Good God. Ten form fields (including the CC field).
While all of these are required, and most checkout flows simply deal with this issue, we decided to experiment with ways to abstract information non-critical to the user, and otherwise automating data entry where possible to reduce the number of actually required form fills for the checkout to be possible.
The first change was to combine the first and last name fields. Whenever the text field is filled, I cut up the name into an array (in case there are middle names), assign the last element to the last name and everything else before it as the first name. Works wonderfully.
The next change was to abstract all secondary address fields, namely:
- apt/suite
- city
- state/province
- zip/postal code
- country
That would represent a super meaningful 50% reduction in the number of fields to fill, but they are still needed, so how to abstract them?
For this, we reached for Google Maps' autocomplete. There are a few libraries around. This allows us to capture as few as 3 keystrokes into the address field, propose possible addresses, and automatically fill in all of the other address fields based on the clicked address.
The second part of this task was designing an abstraction for the secondary address fields. They start off hidden (though their values are still committed to the state so they can be sent over to the payment process.
When the Google autocomplete is filled in, the found address is clearly returned to the shopper as a new UI element so they can validate their selection. An 'Edit' button hides the that UI element and makes the form fields visible again, enabling anyone having selected a wrong or incorrect address to modify their selection.
The last change was to fully remove an initial summary screen between the offer selection and the checkout flow. Since that information is already reflected in the final confirmation screen, it made sense to simply remove it.
All said and done, these product changes enabled us to trim the time it takes to complete a checkout from an average of 90 seconds down to less than 20 seconds, a 450% improvement that both shoppers and merchants will benefit from.
And it's going live today for all Batch merchants!
Eyal out
Batch quietly soft launched 3 days ago as the app was made listed. While there are still some product polish items to finalize, it's time to start testing channel/market fit and begin investigating which channels we ought to focus our energy in.
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PRODUCT REVIEW
A Shopify Plus merchant we've been working with recently made the switch to a drawer based shopping cart, which is a use case we hadn't yet run into despite testing a few themes.
We rewrote the logic that inserts the Batch app into the consumer website and merchants can now drop the button exactly where they want to. This manual insertion will overwrite our automatic one and work seamlessly.
As it were, this also opens up an interesting door as merchants can now place the Batch button wherever they want in their website, including Product pages, the Index, or even in a dedicated "Make an Offer" section or page.
Also did a mobile responsiveness pass. Tailwind generally makes this a breeze, but the challenge is ensuring the CSS of the client website doesn't bleed into the Batch app and, in the opposite way, that our CSS does not influence the website in any way.
While prefixing our CSS (and Tailwind) generally prevents this, we have some elements (radio buttons, range sliders) that are pretty Frankensteiny, and adding an id or a class generally breaks them. This is something we'll need to keep an eye on and improve over time.
We also recently dropped Segment into the app for the first time. We'll work out the tracking plan so we can begin benchmarking the new MVP and check whether we're within the ranges we modelled out when we came up with the business model.
Since the model is transactional (we take 4% of what we generate for merchants), it's important the product performs per that spec, otherwise we will be forced to utilize a more generic SaaS model where we would define pricing tiers, but that would stunt our earning potential and we'll cross that bridge if we ever get there.
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TRAFFIC REVIEW
Twitter Ads
We're up to 140 tweet engagements on about $37 of spend, which is still better than yesterday's performance; Aiming targeting at English and Japanese speakers only did increase impressions, but website clicks dropped.
We're at 35 website clicks on $37 of spend. I removed the language targeting to let it collect more data.
This channel has potential but I'm concerned about available inventory.
Twitter Profile
We tweeted 15 times in the last 30 days. We picked up 2 new followers as a result of starting to publish these updates.
Tweet impressions are up 80% to 16.5k thanks to the ads. Profile visits in the last 28 days grew to 111, a 38% improvement over yesterday.
To grow, we need to start following some influential accounts and actively participate, and reply to tweets. We need to think about which audience we want to build, and what that audience cares about.
Tweeting about growing a store would help a lot. I recently replied to a Reddit post that answered a seemingly popular question among merchants. It might make sense to publish the answer as a blog post and/or a tweet storm.
Shopify App Store Ads
Kicked off ads and earned 10 clicks on $30 of spend, 1 install. $30/install is certainly workable, but we need way more data to see if this make sense.
While an ad to install conversion of 10% is not great but workable, a CTR of 0.8% is not going to work at all. We'll need to adjust the name of the app and its headline.
I'd want to hit a 2% CTR at least, if not higher, considering the keywords we're after and the merchants on the platform should perform far better, which means the messaging isn't correct.
To be frank, leading with nebulous features such as "recover carts, clear inventory and increase cashflow" may not be ideal in an App Store where most popular apps' headlines are very clear about the functionality it enables for the store.
Shopify App Store Listing
Last 7 days traffic is at 279. Yesterday's visit to download rate has grown from about 10% to 17%, more than likely as a result of sending more qualified traffic through Shopify Ads.
We earned 3 installs installs from different sources -- but none from referrals. It's definitely going to be worth building a content marketing strategy to kickoff organic and referral traffic.
Based on my findings and the ad CTR, I'm going to put together 10-15 app headline variations and start testing one every two days. I'll use the Shopify App Store Index to keep track of our rankings across categories and whether or not the rankings grows as we change the headline.
Website
Last 7 day traffic is at 77 users. Not currently a focus.
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Until tomorrow!
Eyal + the Batch team
Working on a new startup can sometimes be a highly frustrating experience.
You know things often take far longer than you plan, so to compensate, the plan you build often exaggerates how long things will take. It accounts for the uncertainties you'll undoubtedly face as you try to reach your goals.
Of course, you can always fake it til you make it. There's a lot of merit to doing that, but it doesn't work for everything.
It certainly doesn't work for concepts that do not have any awareness among the general population -- new ideas that the average person will probably reject because of how different it is compared to life as they know it.
It also doesn't work for concepts that feel super obvious, because that virtue actually makes them very difficult to materialize; I can assure you that Uber is as much a technical and logistical marvel as it is an obvious idea. Some would argue that working on obvious ideas is harder because of this paradox.
Over time, we've seen hints that Batch might be one of those ideas. It feels obvious, but in principle, there are several nuances and dimensions at play. It's a deep, deep rabbit hole and Alice has gotten lost in it plenty of times.
That's why we decided to take the slow route. We spoke with dozens of Shopify retailers and worked hard to understand what they're trying to accomplish and what forces are in the way of that progress.
We observed a new and radical shift in the way people shop online, and set our sights on that intersection: to offer a complimentary checkout experience that would benefit both shopper and merchant within the new and unique contexts impacting the evolution of ecommerce.
If you use binoculars, you can even make out that it's going to be a pretty long road ahead exploring what this thing is, isn't, could be and what it truly is.
And then, once you know you're onto something real, you must mentally prepare yourself for the bootstrapping journey of actually building it, iterating on it and making it viable. That in of its own can often take even longer than the first step of validating an idea and giving it meaning.
In the beginning, there's a period of deafening silence as you pour your energy into the initial version of your product. It needs to be perfect, but not too perfect that you'll launch too far into the future.
You understand implicitly that this is a game of balance, that you can't skimp on what usually is considered nice to have.
Never did I think I'd actually need a Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and a Cookie Policy for an MVP. Then again, we never did aim to be a sales channel -- that was a happy accident that happened to multiply our potential, one we reserve the right to explore in the future.
As you explore and develop your market, your product, your business model and your go to market plan, new things obscure your original view of the future. Prospective customers readjust your direction as they clarify what they actually care about and (most importantly) are willing to pay for.
There's usually a lot of going back and forth and I was prepared for that, but so far, building Batch has exceeded the bounds of that experience and much more.
In my mind, "building a Shopify app" used to be a 30 day thing. And if you keep yourself to a really small role, it can be that short, too.
But I didn't realize how high we were really aiming by giving this thing a go. Every new challenge illustrated that we picked a really, really hard challenge. It's one of the hardest problems in ecommerce, and we have the chutzpah to think we can solve it.
I've lost count of the times we've doubled or nothing. We've brushed fatal blows half a dozen times in the eighteen months it's taken to ideate, explore, validate and build Batch into what it is today.
They say, 'build it and they will come' is a dangerous proposition. I think today my view is closer to 'build it while they're arriving.'
The challenge of course is that every time we felt close to the answer, close to launching, something fundamental got in our way preventing us from reaching that milestone.
It's the classic story. And you have to muddle through it. There are no spectators watching the sacrifices that must be made to get through this stage.
As a result, there's been a lot of going back to the drawing board. We discarded several prototypes over conversations with retailers. We've tried several directions on a concept that could go a million different ways.
Last year, I started exploring the idea with people in my network. Of course, each of you reminded me that execution was everything, and that this would need to be built in a way that felt as obvious as the other features merchants have to rely on every day.
"Build it well, really well," is the number one piece of advice I received. It's because growth by product is the number one growth channel. It amplifies everything else you do.
Our product helps merchants sell out their inventory with a single click while also helping shoppers get great deals on items they'd otherwise abandon.
It's a bold claim that took several tries to nail.
And by God, we've done it.
Today's an exciting day because Shopify has approved Batch as the latest Sales Channel to go live on the Shopify App Store.
It's been a long time coming, and the hard part is ahead of us, but I'm glad to be out of the quicksand and back on solid ground.
We're through the uncertain times and we can mark the true beginning of our journey to help merchants make money, move product and kill coupon codes once and for all.
I'm lucky to be doing this with Mikhail Levkovsky and @groverlight without whom this thing would still be stuck in our minds. That was a lot of nights and weekends.
But nothing can stop us now.
Hereeeee weeeee goooooo againnnnn!
With our Shopify launch incoming, we're starting to pay more attention to marketing. We need to build up the brand assets because Shopify has accepted us as a Sales Channel, which is incredibly exciting!
Being a Sales Channel is far more involved and our website and servers will need to be ready for the inevitable volume of users. The approval process has a big scope compared to the usual Shopify app, but we're going through it.
In the meantime, Batch is now upcoming on ProductHunt. Subscribe to keep in touch with development and launch updates.
After more than 100 merchant and customer interviews, we’ve finally completed our MVP and submitted it to the Shopify App Store, where will now go under review before (hopefully) being accepted for listing.
We also took the opportunity to submit our app to the COVID-19 Shopify App Challenge, which seeks to help merchants admist the pandemic.
We strong believe that Batch is going to give these merchants a new superpower!
With our expected launch date becoming less and less likely to happen in January, I made the decision to jump into the Product alongside our CTO to speed things up.
I'll be focusing on the clientside front-end which consumers will interact with, while Mike focuses on the rest of the Shopify backend and order management.
Grover and I started this company expecting to build this product on our own. As a technical growth guy and talented UI/UX phenom, building a SaaS product for the midmarket from A to Z was our biggest risk, and one I was keen to reduce while also creating more value for the company by ensuring that whichever talent we bring on is someone truly additive to the culture we want to create.
Couldn't have come across anyone better than Mike, who I've known for several years. Mike and I worked on Spoil and we're excited to be able to work together again. To say Mike fills our gap is a big understatement. He's one of the few people I'd immediately qualify to be a cofounder with, so I'm really excited the three of us are embarking on this journey together.
What's more, Mike convinced a colleague, JP, to jump on board and help us out. JP immediately took to our mission and just like that, our company headcount has doubled. Of course, the pie has been sliced, but if I've learned one thing over the course of my career in entrepreneurship, it's that people is everything.
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.