I’m going to walk you through how I design checkout flows for small retailers with one goal in mind: reduce cart abandonment by at least 30%. Over the years I’ve tested dozens of tweaks, and I’ve seen that well-designed checkouts aren’t about flashy features — they’re about removing...
Mar 22, 2026
• by Élise Martin
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When I first started advising clients on customer support strategy, the question I heard most often was: “Should we invest in conversational AI or stick with live chat to reduce tickets?” It’s a valid question — both approaches promise to deflect tickets, speed responses, and improve customer experience, but their costs and impacts are very different depending on context. Over time I’ve...
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I’ve spent years watching how big brands turn simple ideas into addictive customer habits. One of the most visible examples is Starbucks: approachable tiers, clear benefits, and a mix of emotional and transactional rewards that keep people coming back. As an indie e-commerce owner, you may think tiers like these are out of reach without a large budget—and I used to think the same. But after...
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I remember the first time I watched a customer tap “Checkout on Instagram” and complete a purchase without ever leaving the app. It felt like witnessing a small miracle: the friction of redirecting to a separate site—slow load times, forgotten passwords, and abandoned carts—had simply disappeared. For small retailers, that streamlined path can be the difference between a sale and a lost...
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I’ve run dozens of live webinars and, if I’m honest, I used to treat each one like a one-off event: a lot of prep, a spike in registrations, a few sales... and then silence. Over time I learned that the real value of a webinar lies in its recordings. By repurposing them into an evergreen sales funnel, you can turn a single piece of content into a predictable revenue machine that works while...
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I remember the first time I turned a heatmap into a roadmap for conversion improvement. We were seeing frustratingly high checkout abandonment rates on a mid-size e-commerce site—around 68%—and it felt like pulling teeth to identify where customers were dropping off. Once we layered customer journey heatmaps with session replays and a few targeted tests, abandonment dropped nearly 40% within...
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I remember the sinking feeling when a product I launched last year started to underperform within the first week. The ads were driving clicks, but conversions lagged. Reviews were mixed. Our target audience wasn’t resonating the way we’d hoped. I had 30 days to turn it around. What saved that launch—and many others since—was a rhythm I now call targeted micro-influencer sprints. If you're...
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I get asked a lot: "Which content formats actually earn organic backlinks when you have zero budget?" As someone who’s spent years helping niche B2B sites punch above their weight, I’ll be honest — not every "free" format moves the needle. But some consistently outperform others, especially when you tailor them to the audience’s workflow, pain points, and data needs. Below I share the...
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Running a 7-day ad test is one of my favorite sanity checks when launching a new campaign. It’s short enough to move quickly, but long enough to collect meaningful signals—if you know what to look for. Over the years I’ve learned that the temptation to chase impressions or vanity metrics can derail predictive insights. Instead, you want a small set of reliable indicators that help you...
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I run a lot of creative tests before I let a TikTok ad campaign loose. Over the years I’ve learned that a viral-looking video isn’t enough — you need predictable signals that tell you whether a creative will perform once it’s scaled. I want to share a practical, six-step pre-launch test I use to predict ad performance on TikTok. It’s simple, repeatable, and it saves budget (and...
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I used to think loyalty programs were a solved problem: offer points, throw in a discount, and watch repeat purchases climb. But after running tests across multiple clients and analyzing hundreds of thousands of transactions, I realized most programs aren’t failing because customers don’t like rewards — they’re failing because rewards are designed for an imaginary “average” customer...
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