Integrating sustainability at the very core of customers' ecommerce experience with Shopify

A conversation with Nic Dunn from Charle

Nic Dunn is the founder of Charle, a London-based, Shopify-accredited expert agency, who works with a wide range of brands across the globe to design, develop and optimise Shopify and Shopify Plus stores. On a day-to-day basis, the Charle team works closely with the concept of buying behaviours of customers, how ethical the brand’s efforts are, and how the merchants’ approach to sustainable processes, products and post-purchase engagement is incredibly important to buyers.

Nic spoke with us about how he thinks having a sustainable approach to ecommerce is a win-win situation. Here are the questions we asked him: 

What influences customers' buying experiences?

“Customers leaving a website before they’ve engaged with a store or even after they’ve added something to the cart is one of ecommerce merchants' biggest mysteries. At Charle, we work with some of the world’s most ambitious brands to help them identify key design, user experience and foundational problems within a website that can deter customers. Brands’ approaches to sustainability is one of the things we look at. Research has found that 62% of young consumers in the United Kingdom say they would reconsider buying if retailers better communicated about their environmental impact.”

How important is sustainability?

“Sustainability can be an amazing unique selling point (USP) to set you apart from your competition. Consumers are growing more conscious, and they are consistently making more ethical purchasing decisions.”

“We are seeing more and more brands driving sustainable processes through their offering with the rise of certifications such as B-Corp and 1% For The Planet. Not only is it amazing for the planet, but it’s also a win-win for converting customers, as they build a sense of loyalty and trust to your brand.”

How do you go about communicating an online store’s sustainability?

“Quite often we see our merchants overthink how they can use sustainability or USPs in general when convincing customers. We always take it back to basics, starting with the message they want to communicate and then shaping the store design to achieve that.”

“We absolutely love how easy it is to deliver a clear, clean and concise message of eco related pledges directly through Shopify when connected with Verdn. Customers won’t dig around searching every part of a page for USPs — it’s right there in your face as part of the value proposition. We also love how Verdn’s UI is customisable and can therefore fit into basically any page!”

How do you optimise the roll-out of a campaign focused on sustainability?

“Although Charle works on a lot of large scale projects, we also know the power that small tweaks, design changes and integrations can have on customer engagement. It’s a big plus when those changes also represent something that will protect our planet. Our memberships are designed for Shopify and Shopify plus merchants so that they can have developers on hand to make tweaks and changes, and even integrate amazing apps like Verdn. You can learn more about memberships here.”

You can learn more about Charle by visiting their website. They also recently wrote an article about Verdn, which you can read here.