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Sep 19, 2024 | 6 minute read

5 Commerce Profit Sucks - and How to Avoid Them

written by Seamus Roddy

When brands talk to us about their commerce, it's often in the optimistic, excited context of all the incredible experiences they wish they could offer customers.

But there's another side to those conversations. As often as we're asked by brands what experiences will boost their commerce performance, we're also asked this:

What are the biggest issues with my current online store? What's costing me conversions, revenue, and profitability?

Read on to learn about five common and costly commerce profit sucks. You'll also learn and see in action the ways that Elastic Path Composable Commerce can help you avoid these profit sucks.

1. Poor cart experiences and abandoned carts

Why abandoned carts are a profit suck: 68% of carts are abandoned by online shoppers – which means that most businesses are squandering double the amount of their realized online revenue just during checkout.

How Elastic Path can help: We offer fast, high-converting commerce carts for brands with unique, demanding needs. Even brands with highly configurable products can use our cart and checkout to clearly list prices, boost conversions, and accept multiple payment options.

In particular, merchandisers using Elastic Path Composable Commerce can set up quick checkout in a matter of minutes. Watch to see quick checkout in action.

2. Slow, poor-performing storefronts

Why poor storefront experiences are a profit suck: As businesses add and refine commerce experience, they often realize that all the capabilities in the world aren’t worthwhile if their site isn’t fast and high-performing. That's no surprise: slow-loading and poor performing websites cost retailers $2.6 billion in sales per year. Even the best products will languish on your storefront if your site is slow and hard to use.

How Elastic Path can help: We've routinely launched blazing fast commerce storefronts for retailers, manufacturers, and distributors with technical, configurable products, multi-currency pricing, and other demanding requirements. In fact, Astrak Group launched a storefront with Elastic Path Composable Commerce that was more than 400% faster than the Shopify storefronts they had been using.

We also offer Storefront Grader™, a free tool to analyze your store's performance and get actionable insights to improve site speed, conversion rates, and much more.

3. Bloated customer acquisition costs (CAC)

Why high CAC is a profit suck: Attracting new customers is an essential commerce activity. But when new customer acquisition costs start to creep upwards, you may win revenue while eroding your profit margins. If customer lifetime value (LTV) isn't high, you may even lose money overall on your customer acquisition, making your overall commerce operation a money suck.

How Elastic Path can help: We offer the tools to help you run marketing campaigns without bloated CAC and that actually improve your profit margins. In particular, our no-code, templatized, personalization-friendly shoppable landing pages allow you to offer beautiful shopping experiences for product launches, new marketing campaigns, and more.

4. Ineffective customer retention efforts

Why poor customer retention is a profit suck: Attracting new customers is great. But, sometimes, retaining and even selling more to your existing customers is a better way to build profit. Without strong customer retention, you run the risk of spending to acquire a customer and then losing them in a matter of weeks or months. Over time, your commerce efforts could be underwater, unprofitable, and at risk of losing investment from your broader organization.

How Elastic Path can help: Elastic Path Composable Commerce offers a slew of customer retention commerce capabilities, including member and loyalty catalogs, subscriptions, and more.

5. Commerce that doesn't meet D2C-level experiences

Why commerce that doesn't meet D2C-level experiences is a profit suck: We often talk to brands with B2B, B2B2C, or other business models. What we tell those businesses is that their buyers might be businesses, but they're also real people who use the internet and are used to strong experiences. When your commerce feels B2B, it really feels like it's been summoned by the Wayback Machine. This will depress your conversion rates, reduce your revenue, and take a major chunk out of your profits.

How Elastic Path can help: No matter your business model, your buyers, or the complexity of your products, Elastic Path Composable Commerce is built to enable D2C-level commerce experiences. We've helped a host of retailers, manufacturers, and distributors with demanding requirements offer extraordinary shopping experiences that are on-par with the best D2C storefronts on the market.

Ready to bring the best D2C-level commerce experiences to life - even if you have unique, demanding needs? Try Elastic Path Composable Commerce for free today, and see for yourself how our platform helps you avoid profit sucks and deliver extraordinary shopping experiences.

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