Author: Vendrux

The landscape for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands is markedly different from just a few years ago.

Customer acquisition costs are surging, and traditional engagement channels are becoming harder to rely on for sales.

And on top of everything else, mobile is taking an increasingly larger share of the eCommerce market, making it essential to appeal to shoppers on smartphones.

For your brand to stay relevant in 2026, you need an approach tailored to the current day.

That means a focus on retention and lifetime value, and a mobile-first user experience.

Luckily for you, there are many brands well ahead of the curve that you can learn from.

This article will provide a deep dive into how DTC brands can leverage mobile apps to not only survive, but thrive in 2026.

We’ll explain why cheap engagement is getting harder, explain what you can do to overcome the surge in CAC, and show real examples of real brands who follow this blueprint.

So keep reading, and learn all you need to know to build a DTC eCommerce brand that lasts.

Vendrux helps successful brands boost revenue and retention by turning their websites into mobile apps. To learn more about how we can help your brand grow, without the overhead of traditional app development, get a free consultation now.

The Three Core Challenges for DTC Brands in 2026

It’s tough out there for DTC eCommerce brands.

It’s harder (and more expensive) than ever to reach your customers. Gathering data about your customers is more difficult. And consumers don’t interact with brands the same way they used to.

Your brand needs to adapt.

There are three challenges in particular you need to be aware of, that you need to build a strategy to combat.

Let’s look at these challenges now.

Traditional Engagement Channels Are Less Effective

For a decade plus, brands have been using a combination of email, paid ads and organic social media to reliably generate engagement and drive sales.

These channels are becoming harder to rely on.

Organic social media reach has collapsed to below 10%, while email open rates have dropped to 20-25%.

With organic reach dropping, brands can no longer rely on social platforms for free customer engagement.

And using paid ads to skip the queue is not as easy as it once was.

Ever since Apple’s iOS 14.5 privacy update in 2021, the reliable playbook of scaling through Facebook ads doesn’t work anymore.

It’s More Expensive to Get Customers

When engagement becomes harder, acquisition costs go up.

Nearly half of DTC brands are seeing higher costs in 2024 than 2023. The combination of lower organic reach, lower email open rates, and rising ad costs means lower profit margins for many brands.

In fact, a large number of brands are struggling to recoup the money they spend to acquire each customer.

This, obviously, is an unsustainable situation.

The brands who survive the surge in CAC are those who shift focus from acquisition to retention – devoting more resources to finding ways to increase revenue from their existing customer base.

Mobile and Social Commerce Rules

Mobile makes up 60% of all online sales, but most DTC brands are still playing catch-up.

80% of eCommerce traffic comes on smartphones. And with the average mobile conversion rate less than half of desktop, that can mean a decline in sales.

Many brands are stuck in a desktop-first mindset, when it should be the opposite.

Social commerce has changed the game even further. 

Customers discover products while scrolling Instagram or watching TikToks, and they want to buy right then and there.

Scroll through Temu or Shein and you’ll see endless product feeds that feel more like TikTok than an eCommerce site.

The days of carefully browsing category pages are over. If you can’t convert that impulse into a purchase in seconds, you’ve lost them.

For your brand to survive, you need to understand how modern customers buy, and deliver an experience that meets their expectations.

Why You Should Bet on Mobile Apps

Mobile apps have shifted from a nice-to-have to a strategic necessity.

The old DTC playbook of scaling through paid social and email marketing is broken.

Privacy changes have made tracking harder and acquisition more expensive.

Anti-spam measures are making it nearly impossible to reach customers through email. 

Building your own mobile app solves multiple problems at once.

• You own the customer relationship, no Meta middleman required.
• Push notifications cut through where emails get buried.
• Customers who download your app are your best customers, and they shop more often.
• Your app will convert better than your mobile website (even if the design and functionality is fundamentally the same).

In 2026, having an app isn’t about jumping on a trend or checking a box. It’s about having a direct line to your customers in a world where every other marketing channel is becoming more expensive and less reliable.

Let’s dive deeper into why every brand should have its own app.

Own Your Data and Customer Relationships

In an era where access to third-party data is disappearing and platform algorithms control customer access, mobile apps offer something invaluable: direct relationships.

Apps allow brands to:

• Build first-party data profiles without platform intermediaries.
• Track customer behavior across the entire shopping journey.
• Understand product preferences and browsing patterns.
• Own the customer relationship without platform dependence.
• Reach their users directly using push notifications.

An app lets you take ownership of your audience, rather than renting it through a third-party platform.

You should only expect these platforms to tighten their hold on customer data, making it more important every year to build an audience you actually control.

Increase Customer Lifetime Value

App users deliver more value than web-only customers.

This shows through higher purchase frequency, higher AOV, higher lifetime value, and more predictable revenue from app users.

The download itself acts as a natural filter, selecting for customers who already have a strong affinity for the brand. 

Installing an app is a high-friction decision. Consumers must value the brand enough to dedicate precious phone real estate and go through the download process. 

But on the other hand, shopping in an app is a lower-friction option.

It’s easier to open (with one tap from the customer’s home screen). It’s typically faster and easier to navigate, and there are less distractions to contend with.

This makes for a more pleasing shopping experience, and a higher likelihood of the customer coming back to buy from you again.

Nurturing high-LTV super-fans is crucial for DTC brands today, offsetting the increase in CAC with more steady, predictable, long-term revenue.

Reduce Your Dependency on Paid Social Media

Relying on paid social media to drive sales has become unsustainable.

It’s harder than ever for modern brands to measure and attribute their marketing efforts which, in combination with increased competition, is driving costs up.

Apps offer more efficient remarketing to existing customers, which offsets more expensive channels with a high-ROI revenue channel.

Apps have lower long-term customer acquisition costs post-install, and deliver more long-term value per customer, as discussed already.

You don’t need to quit Meta ads altogether, but in 2026, you need other, cheaper ways of getting traffic.

Unlock the Power of Push Notifications

Many brands find that push notifications, on their own, are reason enough to build an app.

With email open rates declining to 20-25%, push notifications offer a more immediate and effective communication channel.

Unlike email or social media, where marketing messages often go unseen, push notifications cut through the noise, with direct access to your customers’ devices.

They bring customers back at the right moments – when items come back in stock, during flash sales, or when cart items are about to sell out. 

The ability to automate abandoned cart notifications alone can generate tens or hundreds of thousands in revenue, for almost no extra cost and effort.

This direct line of communication turns periodic shoppers into consistent buyers.

Push has higher engagement rates than email, and its immediacy makes it perfect for time-sensitive updates (such as order status notifications).

Native Ecommerce Apps vs PWAs

Why are DTC ecom brands building native apps over PWAs?

If you’ve heard about progressive web apps, you might think that a PWA is a better option – cheaper, faster to build, easier to maintain.

These points are all true, and PWA do deliver a lot of benefits for the mobile user experience. But they don’t offer all the benefits of a native app.

Native apps have full access to push notifications, are much easier to download, and are just better for regular mobile shoppers.

Our advice? Build both.

How Much Revenue Can a Mobile App Generate for a DTC Brand?

The amount of revenue you can get from a mobile app depends on the scale of your store, but as a percentage, brands often see around 10-30% of their total revenue coming through their apps.

Brands with higher purchase frequency/mobile usage may see more, while those with a low repeat purchase rate (and more first-time customers) can expect to come in on the lower end of the revenue scale.

Check out our eCommerce App Revenue Calculator for a quick estimate of how much your app could make.

What’s the Average ROI for a Mobile App for Ecommerce Brands?

The ROI depends on factors like business model (high-frequency vs low-frequency), how much you promote the app, and the investment you put into making it.

Brands we work with at Vendrux often see significant ROIs – as much as 53x in some cases, due to the low cost and effort required to build and maintain the app.

What’s the Best Mobile App Platform for DTC Brands?

There are a lot of great platforms for DTC ecommerce brands to launch apps, but for most, Vendrux is the best. It’s the ideal mix of flexibility, service & support, and cost, letting you go live with beautiful mobile apps that require very little work to maintain, without the limitations of traditional no-code tools.

Get a free preview of your app now to see what Vendrux is capable of.

Leading DTC Brands Who Are All In on Apps

For DTC brands, the benefits of mobile apps compound. 

The combination of higher customer value, lower acquisition costs, and better engagement creates a virtuous cycle that transforms their economics. 

The potential return from an app, along with the low barrier to entry made possible by website to app services like Vendrux, makes it a winning strategic choice.

If you want to discuss how Vendrux can help you launch an app for your site in the next 30 days, book a free consultation now.

Otherwise, to learn more about what’s possible, here are a few examples of major DTC brands who are having notable success through their mobile apps.

Sleefs

Category: Apparel/Fashion

Key statistics: 

• 30% higher average order value in app.
• 3x more visits per app user.
• +40% conversion rate in app.
• Over 50k push notification subscribers.

The Sleefs mobile app has proven to be a game-changer for their business. 

App users have 30% higher AOV compared to other platforms, highlighting the app’s ability to drive more significant and sizable purchases.

App users also shop three times as often as non-app customers.

Plus, with a higher conversion rate in the app and over 50,000 push notification subscribers, Sleefs can directly reach and convert a highly active customer base, solidifying their app as a key driver of revenue.

Read more about Sleefs’ mobile app here.

Boozebud

Category: Alcohol

Key statistics: 

• 5x customer lifetime value from app users.
• 4x ARPU from app users.
• 10% of total revenue driven through their app.

The transformative results of Boozebud’s app include 5x customer lifetime value for app users, 4x higher ARPU, and one tenth of their total revenue coming via the app.

This is thanks to a more engaging customer experience, where app users spend more time, and ultimately more money, each time they visit Boozebud’s online store.

“We’re seeing that the customers who do use the app are more engaged, they’re spending more time on site, they’re spending more per transaction, they’re spending more overall. Push notifications give us a way to get in front of high-value customers within a walled environment. The app is paying for itself.”

Read more about Boozebud’s mobile app here.

Rainbow Shops

Category: Apparel/Fashion

Key statistics: 

• 10% of direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue driven by the app.  
• 7x LTV growth.
• 10% higher mobile AOV.
• 2x higher mobile conversion rates. 

The Rainbow Shops app is an integral part of their DTC strategy, driving 10% of their direct-to-consumer revenue. 

App users have a massive 7x higher lifetime value, convert at twice the rate of those on their website, and spend 10% more in each order than shoppers on their mobile website.

The brand is also able to use push notifications to drive cheap traffic, that tends to be more engaged and higher value than customers from more expensive channels.

“Push notifications are the cheapest and most powerful communication channel we have. We find that users who prefer to interact via an app are more loyal, buy from us more often and spend more time with our content.”

Read more about Rainbow Shops’ mobile app here.

reLink Online

Category: Medical Equipment

Key statistics: 

• 4x lifetime value from app users.
• 7x ARPU from app users.
• 20% of total revenue comes through the app.

App built with Vendrux

Medical equipment provider reLink Medical found immediate success by launching an app, which helped them pivot into a DTC model, after previously relying on rented sales channels like eBay.

The app provides for one fifth of their total B2C revenue, and customers who use the app have a 4x higher lifetime value and generate 7x higher ARPU, illustrating the ability of mobile apps to create long-term, high-value relationships with customers.

“About half our buyers on eBay are using mobile. If you’re gonna play in this world today, you need an app.”

Read more about reLink’s mobile app here.

Holy Grail Nail

Category: Beauty

Key statistics: 

• $20k increase in monthly revenue (7% increase in revenue) in the space of three months.
• 15% higher average order value in the app.
• 20% of total revenue generated through the mobile app.

Holy Grail Nail has achieved remarkable results by launching their mobile app, adding $20k in monthly revenue in only three months – a 7% overall revenue boost.

Customers through the app spend more in each transaction, and the app as a sales channel has growth to contribute one fifth of their total revenue.

BrüMate

Category: Home/Kitchen

Key statistics: 

• 56% higher sales per session in their app, compared to the website.
• 43% higher conversion rate in the app.
• 10-20% of total monthly sales coming through the app.

BrüMate’s app delivers exceptional returns compared to their website, with a notable increase in conversion rate and sales per session.

Their app offers a more personalized and engaging customer experience, with the addition of push notifications as a scalable, low-cost sales channel that the brand has full control over.

The app now generates 10-20% of their total monthly revenue, with a much increased efficiency ratio compared to all their other sales channels.

Hobbiesville

Category: Toys/Games

Key statistics: 

• 10% of their customers use the app.
• App users contribute 40% of their total revenue.
• 3x higher conversion rate in the app.
• Push notifications generate 2x higher response rates than email.

Hobbiesville’s app has become a powerhouse sales channel. 10% of their customers use the app, but this segment generates 40% of the brand’s total revenue.

A large part of this is due to the effectiveness of push notifications, which generate 2x higher response rates for Hobbiesville than email, as well as the app’s CRO, which significantly outperforms their website in conversion rate.

Béis

Category: Bags/Luggage

Key statistics: 

• 67% higher conversion rate in the app.
• 15% higher AOV.
• 13% of total revenue comes from their mobile app.

The Béis app has quickly become an essential sales channel for their brand, driving 13% of total revenue.

Customers using the app convert at a higher rate, and spend more in each transaction, as a result of a smoother, distraction-free customer experience.

Anatomie

Category: Apparel/Fashion

Key statistics: 

• 2.5x conversion rate in the app, compared to their mobile website.
• 5x higher lifetime value from app users.
• 1.5x average order value in the app.

For Anatomie, an app has proved to be a powerful platform for cultivating long-term customer loyalty and increasing revenue per transaction.

Customers in Anatomie’s mobile app have a 2.5x higher conversion rate compared to those on their mobile website, as well as a 1.5x higher average order value, both of which contribute to a significant increase in lifetime value from customers who shop through the app.

Obvi

Category: Health/Nutrition

Key statistics: 

• 2x higher conversion rate in the app vs the mobile website.
• 98.6% app user retention.
• 15.2% higher AOV for app users.
• Over 137k push notification subscribers.

Obvi’s app drives impressive results, with double the conversion rate compared to their mobile website, and an almost flawless retention rate of app users.

Additionally, app users spend more, with a 15.2% higher AOV, while over 137k push notification subscribers provide a direct channel for engagement.

Art of Tea

Category: Food/Beverage

Key statistics: 

• 3.4x higher conversion rate in the app vs the mobile website.
• 4.6x higher order value per session in the app.
• >20k total app downloads.

Art of Tea’s app delivers a premium shopping experience, with a higher conversion rate and AOV than their mobile website. With over 20 thousand downloads, the app has successfully captured a dedicated audience and significantly elevated the brand’s online sales performance.

Recode Studios

Category: Beauty

Key statistics: 

• App grew their total revenue by 63%.
• 7x conversion rate in the app.
• 50% repeat purchase rate through the app (20% higher than their mobile website).
• 16.89% conversion rate on abandoned cart notifications.
• 25k monthly active app users.
• 200,000 app sessions per month.

Recode Studios’ app has revolutionized their business, growing their total revenue as a result of a 7x higher conversion rate and a 50% repeat purchase rate through the app – highlighting the effectiveness of mobile apps on CRO and retention.

Another key aspect is the app’s power to recover lost sales, with the brand generating an impressive conversion rate of nearly 17% on abandoned cart push notifications.

Want to see more brands having success with mobile apps? Check out these case studies of brands who used Vendrux to turn their website into high-converting mobile apps.

4 Steps to Make Mobile a Priority for Your DTC Brand

Mobile optimization is no longer optional for eCommerce brands. It’s the baseline.

With a growing majority of eCommerce sales happening on mobile devices, catering to these shoppers must be your top focus.

Beyond ensuring your website is responsive and functional on mobile (a given for most brands today), here are four steps to truly prioritize mobile and help your brand achieve its full revenue potential.

1. Design Mobile-First

Although most websites today are usable on mobile, many are still designed with desktop users in mind.

The result? A “shrink and fit” experience that treats mobile as an afterthought, limiting your site’s effectiveness on smaller screens.

Instead, adopt a mobile-first design approach.

Begin by crafting your site specifically for mobile users, focusing on intuitive navigation, fast loading times, and a seamless user experience.

This ensures your site feels native to mobile devices rather than forced to fit.

Learn more: check out 15 Mobile eCommerce Best Practices to maximize mobile conversions.

2. Streamline the Purchase Experience

Mobile shoppers demand simplicity and speed. Unlike desktop users, they’re less tolerant of extra steps or clunky processes that disrupt the buying journey.

To keep mobile users engaged and prevent drop-offs, eliminate unnecessary friction in your purchase flow.

Key optimizations include:

• One-click checkout and mobile wallet integrations (e.g., Apple Pay or Google Pay).
• Simplifying form fields and inputs.
• Reducing the number of checkout pages.
• Optimizing site speed to minimize delays.

These changes aren’t just nice-to-haves – they’re critical for capturing mobile shoppers’ attention and loyalty as mobile commerce continues to dominate.

3. Launch Your App

Once your mobile website is fully optimized, the next step is to launch an app.

A mobile app brings unmatched value to your brand, helping you drive more revenue from your existing traffic.

App users tend to spend more per order, shop more frequently, and exhibit greater lifetime value than mobile web users.

Apps also provide an owned channel for engaging your customers and collecting invaluable first-party data, especially as privacy regulations tighten.

One of the best parts? If you’ve done the first two steps, you’re already most of the way there.

As long as you have a mobile-optimized website, you need only minimal adjustments to repackage your website into an app that customers can download and enjoy.

This approach requires significantly less investment than you might think and is almost guaranteed to deliver a strong return on investment.

How to Launch Your App in Less than 30 Days

Vendrux is the best way for any DTC brand to launch their own apps.

No coding, no rebuilding, no massive investment required, virtually no overhead.

You’ll go live in 30 days (or less), for no risk, with an app that does everything your website does, and more.

Click here to learn more about how Vendrux works, or get a free consultation to talk it over with one of our eCommerce app experts.

4. Leverage Push Notifications

Having an app unlocks powerful opportunities, and chief among them is push notifications.

Push notifications are a game-changer for DTC brands, providing a direct, cost-effective way to engage customers.

Use them to:

• Announce promotions and new product launches.
• Recover abandoned carts with timely reminders.
• Drive repeat purchases with personalized messages and promotions.

Unlike email and SMS, which are increasingly losing their edge, push notifications show up directly on users’ lock screens, commanding immediate attention.

Despite their low cost and high impact, many brands are only beginning to explore their full potential.

Learn everything you need to know about using push notifications to drive sales and boost retention in our ultimate guide.

Wrapping Up

The brands that fully embrace mobile will be the ones to thrive in the rest of the 2020s and beyond.

As smartphone usage continues to grow, especially for eCommerce, traditional engagement channels like email and social media are becoming less reliable for driving consistent engagement and revenue.

A mobile-first, app-first strategy is the key to building a sustainable, future-proof brand.

That’s where Vendrux comes in.

Vendrux makes it easy to turn your website into fully functional, revenue-generating mobile apps in less than a month.

For a fraction of the cost of custom development, you can launch apps that rival those of the world’s leading brands.

Here are just a few reasons Vendrux is the best way to build your app:

• Your app comes with native features built in, including push notifications and native navigation UI.
• Your apps sync perfectly with your website, eliminating extra management overhead.
• We handle everything, from building and publishing your apps to ongoing maintenance, so your team can stay focused on growth.
• There’s minimal cost involved, as well as a money-back guarantee, so there’s literally no risk to see what an app can do for your brand.

If you’re ready to future-proof your eCommerce business with mobile apps, we’re here to help.

‍Learn more about our process, and why this is the smartest way to build shopping apps in 2026, then book a free consultation to bring your app to life.

You’re spending big to drive traffic to your store. But traffic doesn’t pay the bills – conversions do.

The average ecommerce store converts 2.5-3% of visitors into customers. The top quartile converts at 5% or higher. For a $10M brand, closing that gap is worth roughly $2M a year with no incremental ad spend.

The instinct is usually to chase tactics: button colors, shorter forms, a third social-proof badge in the footer. Those occasionally win, but the bigger lift sits upstream, in the research that figures out where visitors drop off and why.

The sections below cover what a CRO program looks like in practice, what it costs, the shortlist of agencies worth considering, and how to decide whether to hire one in the first place.

What is CRO? And What Does an Agency Do?

CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization – is about boosting your store’s conversion rate, and getting a higher share of website visitors to follow through and make a purchase.

A good CRO program does three things:

• Instruments the site so you can see where the funnel leaks.
• Runs controlled experiments that prove or disprove why.
• Compounds the learnings so each round of testing sharpens the next.

The headline metric is conversion rate. The metrics that move with it are revenue per visitor (RPV), cart completion rate, AOV, and repeat purchase rate. Healthy programs track all of them, not just the topline.

One thing to understand is that CRO is not the same everywhere. For a D2C ecommerce site, it’s a unique project, that you shouldn’t get confused with CRO for other verticals.

Two things separate ecommerce CRO from CRO in B2B or SaaS:

Checkout is where most of the loss happens

Every ecommerce site has a multi-step purchase flow with shipping, payment, taxes, discounts, and account decisions stacked into it. Baymard puts the average cart abandonment rate at 70.19%. A program that doesn’t focus on improving your checkout experience first is missing the most obvious lever for improvement.

Mobile is the majority channel (and the worst-converting one)

Mobile traffic makes up 60-75% of sessions for most brands, but converts at less than half the rate of desktop. A 0.5-point lift on mobile usually moves more revenue than a 1-point lift on desktop, simply because the base of sessions is larger.

Where Ecommerce Funnels Lose People

Before you optimize anything, you need to know where you’re losing people. CRO is as much about plugging leaks as it is about smooth copywriting and convincing people to buy.

If they’re on your site already, they’re interested. Yet most sites lose potential sales, by creating unnecessary friction, or leaving objections unanswered.

Here are the most common offenders:

Product Detail Pages

Most visitors who land on a PDP don’t add to cart, and the reasons are rarely aesthetic.

They can’t find a size, they can’t tell when the order will arrive, the photos aren’t clear, the reviews are thin, the price hits differently than the ad implied.

PDPs are for objection handling. CVR lifts usually come from making the product feel real: better photography, clearer sizing, ship-by-date logic, structured reviews, social proof tied to the specific product rather than the brand.

Cart and Checkout

Of the 70% of carts that get abandoned, shipping cost surprise is the single biggest driver. 

Requiring the customer to create an account, opaque tax math, and checkout flows that feel longer than they are, round out the rest.

Some things help improve CVR, and reduce lost carts here:

• Show shipping cost on the cart page or earlier
• Shorten the visible checkout to one screen
• Offer guest checkout as an option

It’s all about avoiding surprises, and reducing friction that could cause your customer to change their mind.

Mobile Experience

Slow load times, cramped layouts, thumb-unfriendly forms, and the friction of typing card details on a small screen all compound to add friction and decrease conversions.

A site converting at 4% on desktop and 1.5% on mobile isn’t a “mobile problem” in a vague sense. It’s a specific list of fixable frictions, almost always with names attached: time to interactive, image weight, form field density, payment method support.

What a CRO Project Looks Like

Here’s what a project typically looks like when you’re hiring a CRO agency.

The cycle, simplified: instrument, research, hypothesize, test, ship, revisit. The instrumenting and research take longer than most brands expect, and they’re where the program lives or dies.

In the first weeks, the agency or in-house team gets the analytics in shape, deploys session recording (Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Contentsquare), runs heatmaps, polls customers, and reviews support tickets. The output is a prioritized list of conversion barriers and a written hypothesis for each one.

A good hypothesis sounds like this: “Cart abandonment spikes 22 points between cart and shipping because cost isn’t surfaced earlier; adding an estimator at the cart page should recover 6-10 points.” Not just “let’s try a green button.”

The backlog gets ranked, and the top items move into test design. Variants are built, QA’d, and deployed through Optimizely, VWO, AB Tasty, or Convert. Sample sizes are calculated up front. Tests run until they hit statistical significance or the time limit.

Winners ship. Losers are documented along with the learning, which is often more valuable than the win itself. The cycle repeats.

The single biggest mistake teams make is killing tests early. A 15% lift on day three usually flattens to a tie by day fifteen. Statistical discipline is what separates a working program from a sequence of inconclusive tests.

What You’re Buying From a CRO Agency

A CRO agency sells four things, regardless of how it’s marketed:

• A research process that produces hypotheses with specific impact estimates.
• Testing platform setup and the discipline to run tests properly: sample size, runtime, significance.
• Backlog prioritization, so the highest-impact tests run first.
• An implementation pipeline that ships winners without quarter-long handoffs to your dev team.

The differences between agencies show up in the depth of each piece. A research-led agency runs eight weeks of qualitative work before its first test. A velocity-first agency starts testing in week two with shallower research.

Both can be right; the wrong fit for your situation will burn six to twelve months and a few hundred thousand dollars.

DIY, Agency, or In-House?

CRO can be done in a number of ways. Smaller companies might have this as a small task among others; high end companies might have a specific CRO team in-house.

Here are a few recommendations on how to approach this:

DIY Below $1M Revenue or 50K Monthly Sessions

Below this scale, classical A/B testing is statistically dishonest. You don’t have enough sessions to reach significance on meaningful changes, and the math punishes you with false positives. Use heatmaps, session recording, and customer surveys to find the obvious friction. Apply known best practices rather than testing them. The opportunity cost of a founder running experiments is high; cleaner wins live elsewhere.

Agency Between $5M and $50M

This is where agencies pencil out. The traffic supports real testing, the revenue justifies the retainer, and you don’t yet have the scale to staff a dedicated optimization team. A good agency compresses the learning curve by years; you get pattern recognition built across dozens of comparable brands rather than discovering it solo.

In-House at Scale, Often Hybrid

Once you’re running 15+ experiments a month and have dedicated analytics and dev resources, in-house starts winning on iteration speed and product depth. The hybrid that performs best: an in-house testing core for day-to-day, an agency on retainer for specialized work like personalization sprints, deep research projects, and major rebuilds.

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A common path is to hire an agency for six to twelve months specifically to build the testing culture, frameworks, and backlog, then bring the program in-house gradually as capability develops.

What Does CRO Cost?

Here’s a general idea of what you can expect from a CRO agency, plus the different kinds of pricing models used.

Monthly retainers ($5K-$25K) are the default for ongoing programs. The retainer typically buys a set number of experiments per month, research, reporting, and a strategic lead. Enterprise programs at high testing velocity run above $25K per month.

Project pricing covers audits and one-off engagements. A comprehensive site audit costs $5K-$15K. A targeted project (rebuilding the checkout flow, launching a personalization program) ranges from $10K-$50K.

Performance-based pricing is offered by a minority of agencies, usually tied to measurable lift. The model aligns incentives well but generally requires meaningful traffic to generate statistically significant tests fast enough for the contract math to work.

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The agency you choose will give you an exact quote. It’s typically a good return on investment, and one of the easiest ways to see a real, incremental lift from your investment, since the goal is to lift metrics that directly impact revenue.

How to Choose the Right CRO Agency

There are thousands of agencies out there that can help you with CRO. Choosing the wrong one can set you back thousands, not to mention the time and opportunity cost.

Here are some tips on picking the right partner.

Match the Specialization to Your Problem

If checkout abandonment is your biggest leak, hire an agency that specializes in this, with case studies that show similar problems to yours. 

If you don’t yet know where you’re losing visitors, hire one that leads with research and funnel analysis. A landing-page specialist will run landing-page tests no matter what your real problem is.

Press on Win Rate

Ask for the past year’s win rate on tests run for brands your size. A healthy figure is 25-35%. Higher than that usually means the agency is running risk-free, predictable tests; lower usually means hypotheses aren’t grounded in research. Either way, the answer tells you something.

Read Case Studies Skeptically

Conversion lift percentages are almost always cherry-picked. The more useful numbers are revenue impact, RPV change, and how long the program ran. “300% lift on PDP A” tells you less than “$1.4M incremental annual revenue across nine months of testing.”

Watch for Traffic-Method Fit

Classical A/B testing requires sessions to reach significance. If you’re under 50K monthly visitors, look for agencies that combine qualitative research with sequential testing or Bayesian methods. A good agency tells you upfront whether your traffic supports their methodology.

Avoid 12-Month Locked Plans

CRO is iterative; the right roadmap evolves with what the data reveals. Be cautious of any agency that delivers a year-long fixed plan in the pitch. Better arrangements have a 90-day opening, a research-led first phase, and explicit reroutes baked into the contract.

Top Ecommerce CRO Agencies

Here are some examples of highly regarded CRO agencies, and what they specialize in. Check these companies out as you start your search.

Blend Commerce

Blend Commerce is a specialist Shopify CRO agency that helps brands increase revenue by getting customers to Buy Now, Buy More, and Buy Again. Their approach goes beyond surface-level UI tweaks. They run full-funnel behavioral analysis, A/B testing, and onsite personalization to uncover what’s blocking conversions and implement changes that drive measurable and sustainable revenue uplift.

Blend leverages their Buy Trifecta Framework, which focuses on improving your core growth metrics: Conversion Rate, Average Order Value, Customer Retention and Purchase Frequency. This ensures brands aren’t just getting more first-time purchases, but also nudging customers toward higher-value orders and repeat buying behavior.

Their work is backed by ecommerce industry awards, statistically significant A/B testing results, and deep Shopify technical knowledge. Blend typically starts with a CRO Insights & Roadmapping engagement, using a PECTI scoring model to prioritise high-impact experiments. Brands then move into CRO Implementation Retainers where Blend builds, tests, and measures ongoing improvements each month.

Their program is best suited for Shopify brands doing at least 7 figures per year and who want structured, data-backed experimentation over guesswork or generic best practices.

Blend drives home its value with data-backed wins at every turn. In one experiment, making subscription benefits more visible on product pages doubled sign-ups, a 104% increase in auto-ship selections.

In another case, a simple “Popular” badge on products increased revenue per visitor by 28.95%. Within just six months, one wellness brand saw an astounding 124X ROI and 36K new subscribers thanks to Blend’s optimizations.

With 2+ new A/B tests per client each month and a 95%+ first-pass QAQC rate ensuring quality, this multi-award-winning Shopify CRO specialist backs up every bold promise with tangible results. 

Convertibles

Convertibles was founded to help Shopify brands move beyond generic conversion optimization toward true personalization.

They recognized that most ecommerce stores show the same experience to every visitor – regardless of who they are, where they came from, or what they’re looking for – and that this one-size-fits-all approach leaves significant revenue on the table.

This shapes their approach to conversion rate optimization, with a hyper-focus on personalization, built for today’s ecommerce brands.

Convertibles bridges the gap between paid advertising and on-site experience, ensuring that different customer segments receive tailored experiences that match their intent, demographics, and buying psychology.

Spiralyze

Spiralyze is the original predictive CRO agency, pioneering the predictive conversion optimization strategy that uses data science and AI to forecast winning designs before testing. They operate on a performance-based model, guaranteeing clients an average 30 percent lift in conversions within 90 days or they pay nothing.

Every discipline from research, UX design, copywriting, and development to analytics and QA, is handled in-house, giving clients a full-service team that launches experiments faster and delivers measurable, scalable results.

Notable clients include Okta, ServiceMax, and several Fortune 500 companies, with proven uplifts ranging from 30 to 90 percent in conversion rates across landing pages, product pages, and lead funnels.

Invesp

Founded by Khalid Saleh, Invesp is one of the pioneers in experimentation and conversion rate optimization in North America.

From eBay to 3M and even the Discovery Channel, Invesp is more than just an agency. They’re hired for their sharp conversion optimization insights, user experience design that answers all your questions, user research that uncovers your business’s motivations and barriers, and training that transforms your team into agile, data-driven pros.

With 22,000 A/B tests and a success rate 4.5 times the industry average, Invesp is the real deal.

Speero

Speero is a top-tier conversion optimization agency that collaborates with marketing and product teams to build and scale CRO programs through user experience research and experimentation.

With an impressive client list including MongoDB, Native, Miro, eBay, P&G, Codecademy, and Monster, they are clearly doing something right.

Their process includes internal audits, CRO assessments, user research, and A/B tests, and they even help integrate these experiments into your business operations.

Fun fact: they helped MongoDB ramp up to 100 tests per year in just six months and boosted Native’s revenue by $1.5 million. Talk about a game-changer!

The Final Word on Hiring a CRO Agency

The agencies that consistently win are research-first, statistically disciplined, and honest about what their methodology can and can’t do at your traffic level. The brands that get the most out of them come in with a clear sense of where their funnel leaks and what they’re trying to recover.

Pick the agency that fits the problem you have, not the one with the most recognizable client logos. Run them for 90 days against a research-led opening phase before signing a longer engagement. Judge them on revenue impact, not test counts.

Done well, CRO is the highest-return spend in most ecommerce marketing budgets. Done badly, it’s a $200K-a-year bonfire. The difference is the process behind the testing, and that’s what you’re hiring for.

Your checkout flow is a critical part of your overall customer experience.

The global cart abandonment rate stands at a staggering 69% – and the majority of abandoned carts happen during checkout.

The checkout is the money page. The key, make or break moment where you either get paid or the customer abandons their cart.

Reducing the bounce rate here by just a few % can mean hundreds of thousands or even millions on the bottom line.

Luckily, it isn’t rocket science.

There are a few logical factors that are proven to improve the checkout experience due to the basic facts of human psychology.

By following best practices, measuring the results, and continuously tweaking things over time – you’ll have a perfectly optimised checkout and make more money.

So, if you’re ready to take your checkout process from good to great, you’re in the right place.

Read on and let’s cover the strategies that will help you keep your customers happy and your sales soaring.

Understanding Checkout Optimization

On a high level: our goal is to streamline the process as much as possible, removing friction where we can, while making the customer’s experience as smooth and efficient as possible.

Fundamentally, most checkout problems are caused by unnecessary friction, over-complication, and a lack of upfront transparency.

Common Checkout Challenges

More specifically, these common culprits can ruin checkout UX, leading to customers getting frustrated and putting their credit cards back in their wallets:

• Confusing navigation or complex processes that frustrate shoppers
• Lack of transparent pricing or unexpected costs added during checkout
• Insufficient payment options that don’t meet customer needs
• Security concerns and lack of trust

These tend to be the core problems. In a later section, we’ll cover all the ways these crop up in much more detail.

Fogg’s Behavior Model

B.J. Fogg, psychologist and behavior scientist at Stanford, is famous for creating the Fogg Behavior Model.

The model is useful as an overall north star for our checkout flow optimization.

Fogg’s model essentially states that the likelihood of a specific behavior is determined by three elements converging at the same moment:

1. Motivation
2. Ability
3. A prompt

Put another way, you need to make it easy for someone to do something, make them want to do it, and then trigger them to take the action.

The prompt must come when motivation and ability is high. Otherwise it will be perceived as irritating and will be less effective.

As you read through the advice in this article, think about how it ties into Fogg’s model – everything we do will be somehow increasing motivation and ability.

What Makes a good Checkout Flow

So, given what we’ve learned, what makes a checkout experience good?

On a high level: simplicity, clarity, and speed.

Well optimised checkouts tend to have:

• Clear Navigation: guiding customers through the process with intuitive design and clear instructions
• Transparency: disclosure of all costs upfront, including shipping and taxes, to avoid unwelcome surprises for customers
• Multiple Payment Options: a variety of payment methods for different preferences
• Mobile Optimization: a smooth UX process on mobile devices, where a significant % of transactions occur
• Security & trust Features: display security badges and trust signals to reassure customers that their information is safe

We want to inspire confidence in the customer, and trust in our brand, while respecting their limited time, privacy and attention span.

In Fogg’s terms, we want to maximise their motivation and ability to complete the checkout while prompting them to do so optimally.

8 Checkout Optimization Best Practices

Let’s get more granular with 14 specific, actionable tips.

In CRO, best practices are not to be blindly followed, but they are to be used as a starting point if you’re getting subpar results.

Once we have all the best practices covered, then we can establish a useful baseline from which to test, measure and tweak in a continuous process of optimisation.

1. Allow Guest Checkout

If there’s one thing you take from this article: allow guest checkout.

This is an absolute must for reducing bounce rates and abandoned carts. One ecommerce brand made an additional 300 million dollars simply by ditching forced registration and allowing guest checkout.

If you don’t need them to create an account or even log in to order, why would you make them?

You’re adding friction and decreasing the customer’s ability to make complete the checkout, therefore making it less likely.

Don’t be needy, don’t be greedy for information for your CRM. Respect their time and privacy, and give the option to check out as a guest if you can.

It’s also important that the Guest Checkout option is the most visually prominent.

Of course, you can and should incentivise account creation too. You can do this with a simple message like this, lifted from the $300m example above:

“You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

2. Simplify & Optimize Forms

According to research by the Baymard Institute:

The average checkout flow today is 5.2 steps long and has 11.8 form fields….. This unnecessarily increases the perceived and actual complexity of a checkout for the end user

They also found that 26% of users have abandoned purchases during the checkout solely because it was too long or complex.

For most sites, the form fields can be reduced to 8, so this is a good target to aim for.

Baymard have a few suggestions for reducing form fields and simplifying the process for customers:

• Opt for a single “Name” field rather than separate first and last name fields
• Consider hiding unnecessary fields like “Address Line 2”, “Company”, and “Coupon Code” to simplify the form
• Implement zip/postal code autodetection to streamline the address input process
• Hide “Billing Address” fields when possible, assuming it’s the same as the shipping address
• Allow users to delay account creation until after the checkout process is completed

Reducing the overall number of form fields only to the essentials reduces the cognitive load on shoppers, making it much easier to complete purchases.

You should also try to pre-fill forms wherever possible to reduce friction further.

For a deeper dive, check out:

3. Use Progress Indicators

Progress indicators guide users through the checkout, offering a visual cue of their completion status.

It helps customers to understand:

• How many steps they’ve covered
• Which checkout steps lie ahead

It’s a way to reassure customers that they’re making progress, and that the end is in sight. This can reduce the chances of them becoming frustrated and quitting.

Make the progress indicators:

• Visually prominent
• Simple and understandable  
• In keeping with your brand

This can significantly enhance user experience by setting clear expectations.

4. Add Trust Signals

Remember that you’re asking people to hand over important personal information and money. You really need to make sure that a lack of trust doesn’t put them off at the last moment.

This is absolutely crucial, with some estimating that up to 50% of cart abandonments are due to security concerns.

Research also suggests that a customer’s perception of the security of the checkout is driven by “gut feeling” and that they make an evaluation very quickly. Some ways you can nail this:

• Use well-known trust signals like SSL certificates and trust badges
• Confirm that you offer secure payment options
• Explicitly explain what “SSL” means if you have non technical customers
• Visually highlight the credit card field (more later on)

According to more research by Baymard Institute, the actual specific certificate you use doesn’t seem to matter much, with completely “made up” certificates with padlock logos performing better than the majority of official badges.

The important thing is that it “looks” like a secure checkout should look in the customer’s mind.

5. Offer Free Shipping & Remove Additional Costs

Unexpected costs are the number one reason for cart abandonment.

The customer getting to the checkout and seeing that the real price is 20% higher than they were expecting is a sure way to have them close the tab. Nobody likes “surprises” of this nature.

That’s why free shipping is offered by a ton of the top brands today. According to Invesp:

“9 out of 10 consumers say free shipping is the top most incentive to shop online more and orders with free shipping average around 30% higher in value. 93% of online buyers are encouraged to buy more products if free shipping options are available whereas 58% of consumers add more items to cart to qualify for free shipping”

There are many ways you can go about this.

For a start, be upfront on the product pages about any shipping costs you have and make customers aware of the price inclusive of taxes.

When it comes to offering free shipping, its something you need to think about how it makes sense for your business.

For example you could offer it for all items, over a certain order threshold, or to members or repeat customers.

A popular one is to offer it over a certain threshold, for example 10% higher than your average order value. This could actually increase AOV itself, interesting research by UPS found that ~40% of customers will often increase their order to get free shipping when available.

6. Offer Multiple Payment Options 

According to the Baymard Institute, 21% of all online stores fail to offer more than one payment option. 

These days, that isn’t enough. 

According to Statista, the traditional credit and debit card payments are still popular, making up ~30% of ecommerce transaction volume in recent years. 

Digital wallets though have emerged as the #1 option though in recent years, driving more than half of all transactions and predicted to rise to 56% by 2026. 

Other payment methods are also growing in popularity, albeit more slowly. 

A growing segment of customers appreciate buy now, pay later (BNPL) services. According again to Statista:

BNPL accounted for 5 percent of global e-commerce transaction volume last year and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16 percent between 2022 and 2026.

BNPL platforms are lead by PayPal currently, with dedicated services like Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay capturing decent slice of the market.

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Depending on your niche – you may also want to consider other options like cash on delivery or crypto payments. 

So the bottom line: make sure you offer the option to pay by digital wallet, credit and debit card, and BNPL if appropriate. You’ll make more sales and your customers will be happy to have their preferred option available. 

This Baymard Institute article has some other good payment UX tips for a deeper dive. 

7. Make it Fast and Mobile Friendly

According to Statista – in 2023 $2.2 trillion of ecommerce sales occurred on mobile. That’s 60% of total sales worldwide. 

So having a great mobile checkout UX is crucial. 

The first thing is to make sure everything loads fast. 

Google research way back in 2015 found that consumers are more impatient on mobile, and since then they’ve come to expect an even better and faster experience as web and mobile technology have both improved dramatically. 

This is something to task your web developers with. If you think your checkout might be too slow on mobile – optimizing images, using browser caching, and cutting out any heavy scripts are all potential improvements. 

When it comes to the general UX, less is more. Make sure you minimize the number of steps and form fields required to complete the purchase, leveraging autofill and stored payment information whenever possible.

8. Make your Cart Persistent

This isn’t exactly a checkout optimization tip, but it’s closely related.

A persistent cart saves the items a customer has added. Even when they abandon their cart and “bounce” from the site, when they return later, the cart will still have the same items in it so you have a second chance at getting them to complete the checkout. 

Persistent carts generally rely on cookies for guest users, and user data for customers who are signed in to your store. 

Persistent carts should be used alongside abandoned cart notifications – email, SMS and mobile push notifications that remind customers of the items in their cart and nudge them to return and complete the purchase. 

This is very effective. 

You can use a service like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or OnmiSend for email and SMS notifications. 

For abandoned cart push notifications – more effective than both email and SMS – building apps with Vendrux is the best option. We built a custom feature that sends abandoned cart notifications on autopilot (more on that later). 

Testing and Analyzing Checkout Performance

Once you’ve implemented the above you’ll have a good starting point for the optimal checkout experience.

As we said though, best practices aren’t to be blindly followed in all cases. They’re best seen as a starting point for further testing and optimization.

Let’s look at how to use A/B testing to analyze your checkout data so we can continuously refine and improve.

A/B Testing Checkout Elements

A/B testing, also known as split testing, involves comparing two versions of your checkout page to determine which one performs better.

This allows you to make data-driven decisions and improve your checkout.

To get started:

• Identify important variables: pinpoint elements on your checkout page that might affect the buyer’s decision. These could range from the layout, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, form fields, different trust badges, and copy
• Create variants: Develop alternate versions of your checkout page. Change one element at a time to isolate its effect on the conversion rate.
• Test Simultaneously: Launch both versions of your checkout page at the same time to a similar audience, so that external factors don’t skew your results.
• Analyze Results: Use analytics tools to measure which version leads to higher conversion rates. The key is to focus on statistically significant data to guide your decisions.

Remember, A/B testing is an ongoing process. Continuously test and update your checkout page to adapt to what your customers are telling you.

You can get a thorough guide to A/B testing here.

Analyzing Checkout Conversion Rates

Whatever tool you use to test and gather data on your checkout, there are a few common pointers to keep in mind.

• Track the Right Metrics: Focus on metrics that directly impact conversions such as cart abandonment rate, average order value, drop off points, and dwell time.
• Customer Journeys: map out the customer’s path to purchase to pinpoint where you’re losing potential sales. Tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and form analytics can give insights.
• Segmentation: Break down your data by customer segment (e.g., new vs. returning customers, mobile vs. desktop users) to uncover specific patterns.
• Performance Benchmarks: Compare your metrics against industry benchmarks to set realistic targets for improvement. Also establish your own benchmarks to track future improvements and optimization. 

By implementing the 8 best practices we outlined above – and by continuously testing and tweaking – you’ll be well on your way to an optimized checkout. 

How to Deal with Abandoned Carts 

One key point we made was the importance of a persistent cart.

Unfortunately, even with a perfectly optimized checkout you’ll still get abandoned carts. Life happens, people get distracted suddenly, anything can happen. 

What you do after they abandon their cart is just as crucial. Effective cart abandonment strategies can transform lost opportunities into conversions.

Here are a few important tactics:

• Act Quickly with Email Reminders: send abandoned cart reminders by email, SMS and push within 24-48 hours. Highlight key incentives like free shipping and returns, and ensure the call-to-action (CTA) navigates directly back to the checkout (with their items saved)
• Personalize the Recovery Experience: Tailor your messages to display the specific products left behind. Personalization increases the relevance and urgency of the message, making it more effective
• Offer Incentives: Sometimes a small nudge is all that’s needed to convert an abandoned cart into a sale. Consider offering a limited-time discount or free shipping to entice customers back to their carts.

A particularly powerful tool is abandoned cart push notifications. 

Build the Ultimate Mobile Checkout with Vendrux 

There are plenty of platforms for sending email and SMS notifications to customers.

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Push notifications are in a league of their own though, but you can only send them through native ecommerce apps for iOS and Android. 

Native ecommerce apps usually take months to build though, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

This is where Vendrux comes in. We build apps for you, in just weeks for a fraction of the usual price. We do this by converting your existing web store into iOS and Android apps. These apps are high-end, feature rich, and worthy of a multibillion dollar brand.

The great thing about this is that you can reuse everything from your existing web store. That includes your now well-optimized checkout experience. 

Everything we’ve previously recommended – from multiple payment options and trust signals to progress indicators and guest checkout – will work in your apps just like it does on the web. 

That means you can just focus on creating a great mobile UX for your web store, and the apps will take care of themselves because they update automatically and sync directly with your site. 

We give you unlimited push notifications – you can send out targeted, customized push messages how you want, when you want. 

And we built a special feature for abandoned cart notifications too. It uses local notifications, and detects when a user has closed your app with items still in their cart. This triggers a notification sequence designed by our team to entice users back into the app and close the sale. 

It’s everything you need to give users the best possible experience on mobile, boost sales and conversions, and maximize cart recovery. 

Check out some of our example apps, and get in touch with one of our team to learn more. 

Get a free preview of your app and book a demo call today.