Shopify is among the top three largest e-commerce platforms in the world and has processed more than one billion orders with over 2.1 million daily active users. If you add that to the existing 1.7 million+ stores on the platform, imagine the number of stores you will need to compete with around the world to make sales. So, despite your marketing budget or discount offered to customers, it will hardly ever be enough to stand you out.

When it comes to on-site conversion, here are a few things that your Shopify or Shopify Plus store is missing:

Adware distracting customers

By this, we are referring to the online distraction that is generated by the browser adware on your site, with no exclusion to those optimized for increased conversions. But the worst part is that you can't see these distractions.

Shopify isn't the problem, neither are you. In fact, Shopify Plus stores have a secure infrastructure to cater for that, but the consumer’s web browser often becomes the weak link. This is because a typical internet user has an average of ten browser extensions and apps installed on their device. Although their aim is to increase productivity by comparing products across websites and other functions, they are often infested with adware.

This adware induces distractions across multiple pages of your store and could show on your pages as:

• Price comparisons

• Intrusive popups

• Competitor ads

• Adult content

• Video ads

This adware has also impacted Amazon's sales as well, causing them to lose over $25 billion due to shopper distraction. So this challenge isn't particular to Shopify Plus or Amazon alone. In fact, there are over 12,000 AdWare variants found daily, and the figure has been on the rise since 2016. 

How Adware affects conversion and sales on your Shopify Store

1. Longer page load time

• Mobify found that each 100ms improvement in their homepage's load time resulted in a 1.11% increase in conversion

• Walmart found that for every one-second improvement in page load time, conversions increased by 2%

• COOK increased conversions by 7% by reducing page load time by 0.85 seconds

These seemingly minor increases in conversion have a significant influence on the amount of revenue an e-commerce store generates. If an e-commerce site generates $10 million in annual sales and the conversion rate increases by 2% after the website's load time improves by a second (as in the Walmart case study), that's a $200,000 gain in revenue. This ultimately results in a loss of a whopping $200,000 if your site load time is increased by 2% (i.e if it takes your site an additional one second to load) due to injections from Adware. 

That is how browser-injected ads affect your site and revenue. They are not designed to be lightweight. They just want to inject themselves on every page possible.

2. Increased Cart abandonment rate

Loyalty has its place, but most customers really don't care what store they are buying from as long as they are getting it at the best price possible. So, if those injected ads pop up on your site and offer a better discount than what you are offering, most of your customers will likely follow the ads and buy from them. 

It displays competitors' deals on your store and checkout pages to customers.

Even if the shopper has previously been a loyal customer, they are likely to check out the ads because they will not look like spam. And as they keep checking out the ads and never returning to your site, your cart abandonment rate increases.

If you are wondering how to tackle this, you need to bear in mind that every shopper has different apps and browser extensions.  As a result, every customer receives unique distractions (ads). And this makes it hard to determine which adware strain implanted these irritating adverts, and what kind of ads are being displayed to your customers.

3. Broken customer’s journey

Before customers begin to abandon carts, what comes first is a broken link in their journey from shopping to checkout. The cart abandonment begins with the competitor’s ads displayed on your store and products.

Once your customers click the promotions that take them to another site or tab, it's simply too much effort for them to return to your site. You can't always expect your loyal customers to return if the deals your competitors are promoting are better than yours.

With this broken customer journey, even if your most loyal customers return to your site after seeing your competitor’s deal that is better than yours, you would still lose a significant amount of your site visitors or potential customers to these ads. 

4. Poor product page

There are still millions of customers out there who prefer physical shopping just so they can touch and feel the product before making a purchase. But modern e-commerce stores have gone a long way to give them the feel and experience of physical shopping. The product images and videos, product descriptions, and how easy it is to checkout are part of the customer experience that will undoubtedly account for how high or low your conversion rate will be.

Can you expect your customers to have a good customer experience if your site is injected with these ads that are equally delaying your product page load time? 

Some browser-injected ads sometimes nearly take over the entire product page of some stores. You don't want that to be your store.

Adware removal for Shopify stores

A great way to eliminate this distraction is by using adware removal apps that can identify adware strains and prevent the advertising they inject before your customer sees them - all on the consumer's browser.

By adopting this simple technique of installing an adware removal app, many big brands have raised their conversion rates, and your store can now do the same. Simply head to your platform’s app store and install the app that works best for you.