The Truth about Cyber Monday

Truth about Cyber Monday

Are you missing out on precious Cyber Monday sales due to one simple factor most eCommerce brands are missing? Discover how improving your login success rate can result in quicker sales, higher conversion and happier customers.

Cyber Monday is the biggest holiday-shopping day of the year by sales, now outpacing Black Friday, one of the busiest days for eCommerce. But since the pandemic, it has been anything but predictable. In 2020, customers who had never considered buying online joined the ranks of online customers. That and the fact that people saved more money than usual led to an enormous increase in eCommerce sales worldwide. Back then, laptops sold out, bikes were unavailable, and anything DIY flew off the (virtual) shelves.

This year, experts predict that Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending in the UK will decrease from £6 billion in 2020 and £4.8 billion in 2021 to just £3.95 billion in 2022. Spending across the UK is expected to drop by more than £850 million (18%).

Fewer customers mean eCommerce retailers must put more effort into every customer interaction. We’re confident that eCommerce brands will have already improved the obvious areas like website speed and functionality. Instead, we’d like to show you an area that is overlooked by over 80% of your competition. And it has the power to increase your Cyber Monday profits significantly.

How did Cyber Monday start?

The term “Cyber Monday” dates back to 2005. Back then, most people accessed the internet via desk computers, and high-speed internet was more common in offices than at home. The saying goes that people, fresh from a relaxed Thanksgiving weekend, came back to their office desks and then used their employer’s high-speed internet to buy what they liked. As the name suggests, the biggest discounts on Cyber Monday are on tech products.

Is Cyber Monday still a thing?

It’s now even bigger than Black Friday. During the peak hour of Cyber Monday 2020, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM, the buying rate in the USA reached an incredible $12 million per minute. And while we won’t see these numbers this year, a survey from Zendesk showed that 4 in 5 consumers are more excited than ever for this year’s Black Friday. Increases in living costs let many consumers look for bigger deals and discounts.

Make your Cyber Monday more profitable

You have heard the usual tips to increase sales on Cyber Monday: create gift guides, level up your marketing, and streamline shipping fulfilment. But there’s one area you need to consider: your login success rate.

Your customers are always on a journey. For you, their destination should be a purchase from your business; for them, it’s solving their problem or enhancing their lives. Your product or service is just the way to get there. That means any friction in the buying process could make them stop in their tracks and look at a competitor’s website instead. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to buy. Just like browsing in a brick-and-mortar store, online shopping should be an experience your customers can enjoy, not endure. So you ensure your website or app is fast, your user interface is easy to navigate, and your CTA is clear from the get-go. Everything is going well. And then, at the last moment, your customer jumps ship. They leave their shopping in the online cart and abandon your website.

What happened?

There are a few things to consider here, but we’ll tell you the one reason so many companies overlook: the login experience.

Your login success rate might be around 60–85%. This is really low than what it can be, but if it’s lower, than your authentication is slowing you down and losing you sales. We would like to save you money and help you win more revenue by making one simple improvement. Let’s examine further. At which stage do your customers abandon their cart?

Cart abandonment

Why do web buyers abandon shopping carts? Given that the retail industry is losing out on £18bn each year due to abandoned carts, you’d think that question is on every eCommerce business’ mind. It’s not.

Only 27% of retailers analyse the browsing behaviour of customers who abandon their carts. That means you’ll never know why 3 out of 4 visitors on your eCommerce site don’t turn into customers.

We’ll tell you:

Creating a password is in the top five reasons why carts are abandoned, along with a long and confusing checkout process and security concerns. The average checkout today is 5.2 steps long.

Not much of a change there from 2012. But today, speed in the checkout process is of the essence, especially when it comes to Cyber Monday. So why don’t we eliminate a few steps and make it easier for your customers to purchase? Could you let them skip creating a password and tighten security at the same time? If you can pull that off, your customer’s journey immediately becomes more pleasant and frictionless.

But there’s even more to gain. Cyber Monday is one of the busiest days of the year, not only for your website but for your helpdesk too. How many queries does your helpdesk get for password resets? If you don’t have the necessary data, let us help you out with some numbers:

55% of people worldwide have to reset a password at least once a month. Now imagine the same people surfing for the best deals on websites they haven’t looked at since last Cyber Monday. What are the chances they’ll just glide through the checkout process?

Helpdesk costs

And what about your team? They’ll be working flat out during Cyber Monday. No doubt your helpdesk will be ‘all hand on deck’ to resolve customer tickets and queries to enable people to resume their buying experience on this important day for retail and eCommerce. The chances are the requests skyrocket over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If password resets and login issues were eliminated from helpdesk queries, would this save your business substantial operating costs?

Password resets

A password reset stops customers in their tracks. It interrupts the flow of the purchase. Password resets are painful, and we don’t want your customers to associate any pain with your brand. Just look at how much time a potential customer could spend resetting a password.

Here’s a typical guideline for a customer service representative:

Ask how they accessed the sign-in page. If they are in the right place, send them a reset link.
Send them the correct sign-in link if they need to be in a different place.
Verify their email address to make sure they receive the password reset email.

Now imagine you’re the customer here. How many minutes will you have to spend resetting your password? And will you go through all these steps or prefer to give up on that nice sweater or the latest gadget and find them elsewhere?

So let’s start from the beginning. How many steps does it take to set up an account with your eCommerce store? Can you take out a few? How many? Remember, the shorter the login process, the higher the chance customers will stay on your website and complete the purchase.

What about setting up a password?

Creating a password that includes 12 characters, a mixture of both uppercase and lowercase letters, letters and numbers and the inclusion of at least one special character isn’t a great brand experience.

And the chance that your customers will remember their creation later is close to nil.

But for eCommerce businesses operating in the European Economic Area, complying with PSD2 is compulsory. To ensure strong customer authentication, you must provide two-factor authentication to card issuers during transactions.

According to the SCA guideline, you need to confirm your customers’ identities in two of the following three areas:

anything exclusive to the user (credit card, smart card, or mobile phone)
something the person alone is aware of (like a PIN or traditionally, a password)
a unique feature that identifies the user (face scan or fingerprint)

The problem: traditional multi-step SCA slows down the purchase process. And that’s the last thing you want on a Cyber Monday.

That’s where MIRACL comes in: We provide single-step multi-factor authentication, in just two seconds, within the browser window on any device. There are no redirects, second devices, SMS, or passwords. One PIN and you’re in.

Where every second counts, a single-step login SCA experience can make a huge difference in your eCommerce sales. Would it make sense financially to switch? Find out here with our handy calculator.